How far would you go to achieve your dreams?
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Author Archives: David
Complaints Choir
You can’t get rich by working
And love doesn’t last forever
In the public sauna they never ask
If it’s ok to throw water on the stoveOld forests are cut down and turned into toilet paper
And still all the toilets are always out of paper
Why products on sale drive the people crazy?
In the middle of Helsinki they built another shopping hell
…
Finnish artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen collected the pet peeves and angst-ridden pleas of people in Helsinki, and then composed this choral work around the list of complaints. Birmingham has also chipped in with their very own Complaints Choir, and I could see no reason why Singapore should not chip in too.
Complaining is for the longest time the national past time: forum pages are often inundated with them; kopi-tiams see groups of uncles-and-aunties rattling on about jobs, the gahmen (Government) and bus fare prices; school kids complaint about homework; adults complain about working hours and their bosses etc.
There are so many good reasons to channel complaining into a song like this. Turning negativity and pessimism into a creative work of art dissipates the grunt – as you sing along about the pet peeves, they may become a little more tolerable, a little more bearable, and perhaps even, a little cuter.
The issues sang in the Complaints Choir are also very localized – only those who’re here can really know and identify with it. In Singapore’s version, maybe there could be: NKF, forgetting to tap-out on buses, about choosing HDB flats close to your kid’s primary school, GRCs, .. these are stuff that makes it Uniquely Singapore. As much as it is a daily gripe, it still gives a facet of life here – something that once you see it, you know you’re here.
I can imagine Finns all over the world nodding in agreement with the song, identifying with the complaints – “Oh yeah! I’m really irritated by that!”, and yet among all these emotions evoke a warm sense of nostalgia and identity, a love for Helsinki for all its quirks and particularities.
So someone, make one already!
Walking on (Corn Starch) Water
Add corn starch to water and stir slowly. Keep adding until the suspension is near its maximum concentration – what happens next becomes rather interesting. It’d exhibit what is known in physics as “Non-Newtonian fluid” properties in which the viscosity changes with the applied strain rate.
In layman’s term, it means that if you apply abrupt force on it, the suspension behaves like a solid. For example, if you quickly poke it with a stick, the stick would bounce back. But if you slowly insert the stick into the fluid, the suspension would still behave like a liquid, and the stick would submerge.
This makes for interesting effects, like in the video above: it is entirely possible (or even, somewhat easy) to run on top of a corn starch pool. The first application that came to my mind is actually… freshman orientation games. But of course, the cleverer and more serious people are researching on this effect in applications like bullet proof vests – the armor would be soft and flexible in normal situations, but when impacted at high velocity by a bullet, that part of the vest would behave like a solid, repelling the bullet.
Cool!
Self Portrait
Recently, there was an influx of Youtube videos in which someone took a picture of him/herself everyday over many years, like Noah (6 years) and Lee (3 years), and then putting them together in a single video to show the changes through the years. It’s a reflection process – seeing how you have changed over the years; it’s also a tremendous evidence of perseverance – to be disciplined enough to literally take thousands of photos of yourself.
Of course, in true Internet-phenomenon fashion, various video replies have also surfaced, ranging from the “comparison” to what must be a million other spoofs. I’m not sure whether you have had similar ideas in the past – I have. Though I’d never got started. Some other ideas also include clipping the newspaper front page of my birthday every year, just to see how the world has changed as I grew older. (No, I don’t even have a single one).
In a similar fashion, the Goldberg family also has their way of documenting the family. On June 17th every year, every member of the family would take a photo of themselves, documenting the addition of new members, growth of existing ones, and perhaps in the future, departure of some. While the Youtube videos trump in terms of number of photos taken, they definitely did not have the same history or legacy as the Goldbergs – they started way back in 1976.
It’s quite interesting to see how the picture chart grow: initially, there were only two – Diego and Susy. As the years pass, the couple become older, while their babies would eventually grow to be adults in year 2006.
Full pictorial genealogy to today here.
Passionate Users
When it comes to how you’d measure how satisfied a user is with your product/service, an article summed it up quite succinctly and simply: the words that you need to look for coming out of the user’s mouth is: “COOL!”.
That’s where passion begins. Those are the words I want every user of my product to utter. Ideally followed up by something like:
“Dude, you have to check this out.”
I don’t want their reaction to be a measured, rational, dispassionate analysis of why the product is better than the alternatives, how the cost is more reasonable, feature set more complete, UI more AJAXified. I don’t want them to pause to analyze the boring feature comparison chart on the back of the box.
That is an incredibly high mark. Satisfying the user so completely that he is left with nothing but amazement, and it’s not stopping there: he is so satisfied from the product that there is nothing but a compelling, almost religious desire to spread it around – to his friends, families, and even strangers – just for them to experience the experience as well. This is the pinnacle of user satisfaction – have them like it so much that they just have to evangelize it.
These are the kinds of products that creates a fan base of its own – people would make video tributes to it; spoof it; make stuff about it that goes viral. And those are really the highest forms of honor and endorsement – possibly one of the most effective ones too, now that our attention span to individual advertisements across any platform are greatly reduced.
Some examples that I could think of are Apple products and Mozilla Firefox. While there may be other companies having items that can match the sale volume of Apple’s gadgets, how many can also boast websites created by fans in anticipation of future products? iPhone Concept Blog features fan art sent from around the world in anticipation of Apple’s iPhone. People dedicating many hours of their time, painstakingly dreaming up and illustrating what your company might produce in the future.
How about Firefox? It inspires users enough to have a site showcasing fans who spent time developing 30seconds flicks to advertise Firefox – free ads made and widely distributed by fans evangelizing the browser. Or how about this picture below – crop circles cut in the mark of Firefox – perhaps to advertise it to aliens from outer space?
So, when you’re designing, set that ideal in mind – “satisfied” is a good start – but look beyond! Have them enthralled! Thrilled! Mesmerized! They’d tell the world about it, perhaps make guides and hacks around it; they’d be your most persuasive marketers. Have them evangelize your products!
Windows Vista Network Icon
The “Network” icon in Windows vista looks like it’s already on life support.
Flavored Bullet
Season shot – flavored bullet, so you don’t have to remove the bullet, nor marinate the wild games! Shoot ‘em birds with Teriyaki-flavored bullets, and put the bird into the stove! Teriyaki bird you get!
Not released yet, but here’s the site.
Quotes from the Advertising World
You know how it is: clients give you business, and so they’re always right. Even when they aren’t. And sometimes, they just give such unexpected but firm demands that you don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. AdVerbatims has an excellent collection of amusing exchanges and idiosyncrasies exchanged between clients, art directors, copywriters, account executive etc. in the colorful world of the advertising business. It seems like all these exchanges could only happen in the advertising world too.
Here are 10 of my favorites:
#200- “Can you make the design 17% better?”
(Client, giving feedback to Account Executive)
#191- “Can we make the whites whiter?” – “Not really, its NTSC white is 255 255 255.” – “Yes, but can we make the Whites Whiter?”
(Client)
#179- “We need to send the client a .jpg of the image as soon as possible.” – “Sure. Do you think the .jpg will fit in this size envelope?”
(Agency, Intern to another intern, who was holding up an actual 6×9 envelope)
#171- “I went into photoshop, I just bought a copy, and I increased the image size to say 300 dpi, what do you mean it’s not high res?”
(Client, after beeing asked for 5th time for a high res version of the image)
#162- “What we give you is what you get.”
(Agency, Manager of graphic department, to a client)
#156- “This sky is too much of a dusk and too little of a dawn. Are we sure this is the dawn we saw yesterday?”
(Client, Brand Manager who was present on a shooting at 4 o clock in the morning)
#152- “If you can’t tell me exactly what you want the poster to look like, how am I supposed to design it?”
(Design House)
#118- “It’s amazing how well you interpreted the brief. This piece is exactly what we wanted, you could not have made it any better, I love it. But I also think it’s too good. This is for a bigger client, a more international one. We’re not like that. See if you can do something shittier that we can use.”
(Client, same Marketing Manager)
#116- “Can’t you make that dog smile? Don’t you have a smile filter on this expensive machine?”
(Agency, Owner)
#113- “We need your help. According to what I understood from the client, we have to put subtitles on the radio spots. Is that doable?”
(Agency, Account Assistant)
Minority Report Style Touch Screen
This is the real life version of Minority Report style user interface – a multi-touch sensor screen. Usually touch screens are only able to work with one point of contact at a time, but this can work with multiple points simultaneously – and thus instead of having to direct all our motion into one point (like controlling a mouse pointer), we can use all our fingers at one go.
This might not seem like much – you might think “oh yeah, so now you’ve got 10 mouse pointers!” – but freeing up the hands from a interfacing tool (like a mouse pointer, a stylus etc) gives a whole lot more intuitive and intimate interaction with the software – like how the Wiimote would open a whole new dimension of playing games.
Most of the video to me is just snazzy effect, but at around 2:40, Jeff Han demonstrated the light table application, which I think is fantastic. When you have a lot of things, you need to sort out the mess, and quickly switch between stuff – that’s where this product really shines.
Plus, now that we’re already so sedentary, it does no harm to have an interface that may help us shave an ounce off our flabby arms!
White Blood
It’s white, it looks like milk, but it works like blood. Made from substances similar to the Teflon coating in your frying pan, this white liquid known as Oxycyte can carry up to 50 times the amount of Oxygen as normal blood, making it a great candidate for treating traumatic injuries. Its particles are also a whole lot smaller than the red blood cell, allowing it to squeeze through narrow constricted capillaries to reach the injured tissues.
Don’t expect it to replace our natural blood though – while it has vastly superior oxygen carrying capacity, it is lacking in other properties of blood – carrying hormones, fight infection, regulating pressure etc.
Interesting stuff from PopSci.
