Double K Design Blog: i Feel Good + More » iPhone

This is cool – “30gms”

krisdoublek — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 06:14:24 +0000

“Not just the recommended daily dose of Fibre, 30gms is also a new design blog created by London design practice Fibre. 30gms is dedicated to exploring design and visual culture with your odd bit on found type, kerning and poorly placed apostrophes. They’re fastidious those Fibre folk.” – http://30gms.com/tags/C35/P10/

Also, it’s parent site: “Fibre” is cool as… that is probably one of the most massivest understatements i have made in this blog. Check it out for yourself:http://fibredesign.co.uk/
Their projects are… too too fine…

Re: the videos for the last post + Further insight…

krisdoublek — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 07:56:42 +0000

RE: “Brinstorming time! Yay!”… –> The videos in the last post that I wrote on 18th Oct 2007 are actually best viewed simultaneously. Play them both at the same time and the effect is surprising and the contrast of colours and sounds and movement actually work really well. Although they are somewhat opposing images streaming at the same time, they compliment each other the result is one that exaggerates the qualities of both of them. This kind of dialogue is an idea for my final visualisation for my application. The interaction of the visuals to try to mimmick the abstract interaction between the user and their environment in the real world while they are ironically plugged into their iPhones and mentally disengaged from their immediate surroundings.

After talking to Petra, I have been filled with motivation and inspiration for my visualisations. We talked about representing the relationship between the user’s weather and the actual weather as more of a conversation of interacting projections. Following specific rules and ideal conditions would dictate what would be seen by the user. We talked about the music in the iPhoe being the driving force for the user’s emotions and I was already thinking about colour – in particular, primary colours and colour rules that applied in creating secondary/ tertiary colours. but Petra suggested – referring to her work Uzume, that chaotic patterns would be a better metaphor for emotion an weather since it cannot really be defined by set rules.

Another suggestiong was that instead of using iEatBrainz or some other Meta Music database, that the user input their own colour choice or emotive reference to a song. It was pointed out to me that music selection and what we feel like when we are listening to songs is extremely personal. When a love song may remind one person of their wonderful boyfriend or girlfriend that they love to bits, the same song might remind another person of their ex partner who they would sooner slap in the face than say hello to. So the song would have exactly polar reactions. By allowing the user to input their own song info, the visualisation would be more meaningful to them and more meaningful in general since it would not be based on generalisations.

BRAINSTORMING TIME!! YAY!!!!

krisdoublek — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 02:59:33 +0000

I’m just gonna throw out some words that came up in my brainstorming session this morning with Rob and Kaz — hopefully Petra can develop my ideas more too tomorrow!

Folding, ORIGAMI (love this one), Rules, Rule between relationships, Distortion, Grids + Data + Images + Distortion, Patterns of interaction, Comfort level measurement, Emergence from chaos, Emergent art, Colours, Primary/ Tertiary colours + colour rules, how to make relationships noticable yet not blatently obvious, weather data aggregation, kaleidescope, Johnathan McCabe (Origami Butterfly), http://sf.anu.edu.au/~jrm900/The_Front/ob3halfpartcomp.mov…

SOOOO much to look at and think about!! eek!

Some inspiration:
“They move slowly”

“Flying Underwater”

Thank u Pat8037 for the input – MY BEAT’s new feel

krisdoublek — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 01:36:34 +0000

Trends of phone users – in particular Generation X and Y in relation to what is happening around the world.

Part 1: My Beat – is a way that a user can be part of and visually see and experience their personal story in relation to the global community. The iPhone would track their song selection. Each song is assigned a colour (in a way representing the “mood” of the song. This information would then be ”plotted” against the actual geographical weather.

Part 2: This is only the individual story. At the swivel of the finger the user can add other iPhone users and their song choices’ visualisations resulting in a visualisation that could be respresenting the user and their immediate community (city) to the country they are in, to the entire world.

Part 3: This ambient visualisation would remain active in the background or foreground of their iPhones and after a time (of a month, a season, a year) the user would be able to look at the resulting visualisation – this would be interesting when they will be able to draw observations about their emotions/ or a comminty’s collective emotions in correlation to significant events e.g. traumatic events, national holidays like christmas or eid etc…

It would just be a visualisation (not a compiled playlist from the visuals) but instead of using the gestural interface which could be ambiguous, a more definitive way of collecting user “emtional” data and translating it into this digital narrative.

I like this better… simple, back to the original “light bulb spark” but ALWAYS on the lookout for tweaking the protoype to be cooler and more sophisticated.

Something else to consider

krisdoublek — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 08:54:05 +0000

Note to self: research AT & T rates and local wifi costs and rates – for various hosts e.g. Optus, Vodafone, 3, Telstra etc…

What about a monthly rate?

Include this in user evaluation and feedback.

The day I met my first iPhone owner…

krisdoublek — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 00:47:02 +0000

Today at work I had a the monumental experience of meeting with someone (not from the USA) who had bought an iPhone. He bought it on eBay, unlocked and he said that he loves it. The user is 22-25 years old, he is a 5th year engineering student from Wollongong University and he works part time in an office in the city. He catches the train when he comes to work, which means he spends at least an hour on public transport – to and from work.

His take on the iPhone: He said that he loved the restaurant widget and I discovered that there is a infact already a weather widget on the phone, but it needs wifi connectivity to be active (obviously). The phone is currently not connected 24hrs to the Optus network (the user’s choice), it is only connected when he physically connets it to a local wifi network. He said the gestural interface was not difficult to learn and when he was demonstrating the phone’s capabilities, he didn’t seem to have any problems a dn he seemed to know his way around and was very comfortable with navigation.

On my inspection, the iPhone is super slick. The graphics are excellent and watching a movie even on a small screen is large enough to be enjoyable – especially when on pblic transport – and it is far more discreet than a laptop and larger than a screen of a video iPod. The transitions from widget to widget are also very cool. It is futuristic and looks and feels “at the forefront” of mobile phone technology.

The user also said he prefers his iPhone to having all his gadgets. “It is my phone, and iPod all in one and it weighs less”. The camera is high enough resolution for the screen which would be large enough for photos you would want to post on the internet. 2 megapixels seems like plenty for the practicality.

He had also downloaded an “Ants” application where ants crawled across the screen and you had to squish them. This shows that users who own such slick technological devices are pretty keen on the little cool applications that go with it. That’s a big call – especially since I have only talked to one user, but I think that’s the case – I will research further into this. This user is the model user for the user group I am aiming.

The Verdict after touching and seeing the iPhone “in the flesh” (so to speak) – IT IS MAAAD. I want one after seeing it (seeing one for real has “generated a need”) and even though there is not video capability or GPS or wifi all the time – it looks cool and the GPS and the wifi will be available eventually. Same with the video – it doesn’t seem lacking – it has excellent movie and youtube and internet browsing capabilities so you don’t even notice it. All the bad reviews – I gonna have to say – are critics being super crititcal - the iPhone is one slick-ass gadget and I can’t wait to buy my own!!