zydar

Ever wandered what the most and least wanted painting looks like? Then you need to check this out: Komar & Melamid: The Most Wanted Paintings. These guys polled people in different countries to determine what painting would be most and least desirable. It's actually pretty entertaining and intriguing to see. Denmark's least wanted is hilarious.

They didn't stop at paintings though.. They created two hilarious and incredible songs that follow the same theme. Please, please listen to these. The design behind these pieces is pretty amazing. I now know why Kenny G has had such a successful career, you can't help but "like" him! (*cough*)

In a week I'm going to be saying goodbye to something I've had in my life for the past 13 years. I started working at Lanit Consulting when I was 15 doing things like sweeping the floors and minor computer repair. I owe a lot to Chris Miller for taking me on when I was so green. Lanit has been, as one friend put it, true blue for me. I was able to work for them from Boston and Myrtle Beach. And during other times when I wanted to do more with my church, they let me work part time. They've been very accommodating and it has been an absolutely awesome place to work.

Why am I doing this?

Going out on my own isn't going to be easy, but I feel like it's a necessary step. The pressure I've been feeling has been great and I'm trying to handle it gracefully! Here are several reasons why I'm doing this:

• I've gotten too comfortable and less reliant.
• I didn't have the hunger or time to pursue my dreams.
• My dreams didn't align with my job.
• I wanted to try something new.
• I want to fail.

I'm not failing right now at what I want to pursue, because I'm not doing it. I want to fail faster so I can meet my goals. My dream is to create interactive experiences with music. I'm not quite sure what it looks like, and am going to create one of those this year. You might think of it as an online album that you interact with somehow. In order to do this I'm going to freelance and try to build enough capital to do my own personal projects. Now, if I may make a pitch to hire me :).

Need help?

If you need some help with a new or existing website, check out my portfolio and then contact me. I'd love to help you out with any projects you might have.

There was one other thing that really stood out to me in the design of the Buick Lucerne. The use of icons. Or really, the poor use of icons. It seemed like icons were used for everything, and without labels. I'm a fan of icons when they are easily understandable, but in this case they weren't.

Elegant Icon Hell

Icons create visual immediacy and are supposed to help you locate something quickly. Icon design fails when it is hard to locate or creates confusion as to its function. In other words, you shouldn't have to think about what the icon is or it's function every time you look at it! Look at the steering wheel with me. It is the epicenter, if you will, of quick access to common functions when driving.

The cruise control functions are on the left side of the steering wheel. In the 2007 model I drove, there were no labels on any of the buttons. This picture is of the 2008 model, so they've sort of resolved the SET and RESUME buttons by putting labels on them (RES is still hard to understand). Every time I looked at the steering wheel, I thought, what the heck does this button do again? + and - icons are no good! That other icon that turns the cruise on and off is no good! Just give me a label underneath in a sexy, legible typeface and I would be happy. If you were a first time driver, or even an elderly person, would you be able to understand these without the manual or experimenting? There's actually a learning curve to using the cruise control in this car!

I feel they compromised the design by trying to be too elegant. Think about when you are about to enter a nice shopping store or mall and you can't figure out which side to open the door on. Or even if you need to pull or push. There's no visual cue to help a person understand how to use it. So every time you go to operate the door, you have to think as you are approaching how to open it and hopefully not look like an idiot in the process. This is what operating a Buick Lucerne is like for me. I actually felt dumber operating it because of how often I failed at simple functions.

The right side of the steering wheel controls the stereo. Can you guess how I failed on that? You would think the up and down arrows would control the volume. No that would be too easy to understand, instead they switch the track on the CD or change the radio station. I can't tell you how many times I used those thinking they would adjust the volume and failed.

Context! Context?

Another big issue I had with the cruise control icon, is that they used the same icon on the dashboard. Most cars will have a "CRUISE CONTROL" light on the dash that is lit when cruise is engaged. The Buick did not, and what made it worse was the context of the icon. They placed the icon above the fuel gauge instead of in the area of the speedometer. It took me literally several uses of the cruise control to figure out what the light meant. At first I thought our fuel was doing really well because the light was green. Context would dictate that the light had to do something with the fuel right?

Elegance is usable, desirable, and findable

True elegance is form and function equally balanced. It's a hard thing to accomplish and I wish so bad that Buick could have accomplished this with their design. For some reason, I want the American car companies to give me something that I can truly like. For now, the Japanese designers and German designers are beating them in that arena and it doesn't look like it will change anytime soon.

I was looking at kottke's Best Links 2007 and came upon The greatest long tracking shots in cinema. If you haven't seen Children of Men yet, I'd highly recommend it. It has some of the best action long takes I've ever seen. Plus I love the contrast between an immensely violent society and the passiveness of the protagonist, Theo Faron.

Another awesome, no ridiculous, action long take is from the movie The Protector. Check this out:

Seth Godin on a new site www.iminlikewithyou.com. I totally agree with his points on this site, especially this one:

b. the opportunities in creating engagement online are far bigger than most people anticipated.

This site appears to be completely written in Flash. I went ahead and signed up wondering what it would be like and felt a little overwhelmed by the interface. It definitely made me want to explore and figure out what the heck was going on. Lot's of pictures, plus a nifty comment system.

If you were looking at this site from a usability perspective, it fails on a lot of levels. But so do video games. It really is intriguing to see a site that makes you explore, learn, and figure out how to use it.

Over the weekend we drove to Kansas City and along the way, we saw a brand new Kohl's that had been built along I-70. As we passed by, my wife exclaimed "What an abomination!". I couldn't help but totally agree with her that it was indeed extremely ugly, and it stood out like an emo kid at a senior center Wii bowling tournament. The architects obviously thought to create something that acted as a billboard, showing no respect for the surroundings or environment while saying "Look at me!".

Why do so many people, including me, go to these stores? I don't think I have ever enjoyed my experience at a Wal-Mart, Kohl's, or Target. They are bland, vanillin environments that depress me rather than lift my spirits. The only time I've ever felt happy in one is if I've seen someone I know and they tell me a joke. I want to understand why these are so popular. Maybe Donald Norman can tell me.

Three Levels Of A Big Box

In Norman's book, Emotional Design, he talks about three levels of design:

• Visceral Design - Appearance
• Behavioral design - The pleasure and effectiveness of use
• Reflective design - Self-image, personal satisfaction, memories

Norman says this about the Reflective level:

Of the three levels, the reflective one is the most vulnerable to variability through culture, experience, education, and individual differences. This level can also override the others....Reflective design, therefore is about long-term relations, about the feelings of satisfaction produced by owning, displaying, and using a product. A person's self-identity is located within the reflective level..^[1]

Now granted, he's talking about the design of products in a simplified manner, but I think we can apply this to how we interact with all design. I feel that there is no doubt that big box stores fail at the first two levels. They are neither beautiful nor enjoyable to go to. There are too many choices, long lines, other stressed out people, hard to navigate, etc., etc. Honestly, I don't think they care that they are failing miserably at those two levels. Here is their genius. They know that the reflective level trumps the other two, and if there's one thing about Americans, our weakness is our self-identity. We want to be rich, feel rich, and have riches. To us, that is of vital importance because riches mean worth. Let me explain.

Conclusion and Philosophical Rant

When I lived in Boston, I didn't have a car and would walk to get my groceries at what some would say to be a small grocery store. I didn't feel very rich going to that grocery store because I didn't have many choices and it wasn't very convenient. I usually couldn't get something that I could have gotten at a Wal-Mart, and it definitely wasn't as cheap. The other problem was that it was just a scaled down version of a big box chain of grocery stores. So, the only thing this grocery store had going for it was that it was the closest to me.

When I go to a Wal-Mart, Kohl's or Target, I feel rich. I can buy anything in that store if I wanted to. And there's alot of junk to buy! I can ignore all the bad experiences I've had at the visceral and behavioral levels because big box stores make me feel rich and therefore important.

What do you think? Give me your observations.

1. Norman, Donald. Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books, 2004. 38.

Recently, my family and I took a trip to Tennessee to see some relatives. We rented a Buick Lucerne for the trip, and even though this car has some strengths, I thought I would mention some flaws in the design of the car.

The Fuel Cover Problem

When we picked up the car, the gas tank was almost empty so I went to my local gas station to fill it up. Now maybe I was having an off night, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to open the gas tank on the side of the car. I was looking for a gas lever inside the car near the drivers seat, and I also inspected the cover of the gas tank to see if I could pull it open. After 10 frustrating minutes, I OPENED THE CAR MANUAL. Now if I was Buick, and I was trying to get a younger audience to buy my cars, I would do some user testing to see what people that are used to foreign cars were expecting with simple things like opening the gas tank. After looking around in the car manual, I found the small section (read hard to find) that explains how to open the gas tank. You push on the outside cover. Oh joy of joys.

Ok, now I could feel like a total idiot at this point, but then I remembered the concept of learned helplessness. This basically means that if someone designs something poorly, people that have a hard time using it feel inadequate and blame themselves. You see this frequently with computers and older people who didn't grow up with them. I don't blame (but maybe question) my intelligence, I blame the designer for making me read THE STINKIN' MANUAL.

The Fuel Cover Solution

This is where a user affordance would have been really helpful. Just put some obvious dimples on the outside cover and all would have been well. It wouldn't have distracted from the design of the car, and I would have known just by looking at it that I could do something with it.

To Be Continued..

Lately I've had this idea. I want to do something more with my talents than make money. I also have had a big desire to do more artistic projects and to experiment with music. Light Sum is a codename for that idea. It's name means "the sum of light" where light is a metaphor for doing good in the world. Originally, the name came from a song I wrote, but after thinking about it and seeing that another author had coined a phrase around it, I'm going with it.

Do you want to do more with your talents, like help a non-profit organization? Drop me a line.

Welcome to zydar.net. My name is Chris Ellingsworth. I'm a musician, artist, and web professional. I've been doing music and art all my life, and I've been doing this web thing for about 13 years now. I live in a small town in the Midwest and have a gorgeous wife and two beautiful daughters.

My purpose and my dream is to create engaging and emotional experiences through music, design, storytelling, and any medium that can accomplish that. Most of the portfolio work shows my experience with traditional software application development. I'm trying to shift away from this and head towards a different direction. I'll be posting my thoughts on this in the future.

Drop me a line any time if you have questions or just want to say hi! I'm looking forward to the future of this site and where it goes from here!