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Exploring the interesting things that make our world work, and the people that make them happen.
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Why it's important that Android isn't sexy. »
A nice take on the non-premium smartphone market.
The takeaway is that the idea of Android is exciting because it gives mobile access to people who can’t/won’t pay for something like an iPhone. Sure, you don’t get that “polished” experience, but there are more situations than not where having mobile technology is more important than a cool sliding animation when you send a text message (that’s blatantly reductive, but hopefully the point is clear).
In this context, it’s important to forget about Android as “Android” and think of it as an effective mass-market mobile operating system. The Android branding is irrelevant compared to the OS’s utility.
The iPhone is heralded as the most revolutionary mobile phone in human history, but the cold and harsh truth is that for all the cheering and punditry, the iPhone’s impact on the world is negligible. Sure, it had a huge impact on the smartphone market in rich countries - but it didn’t have such an impact on the world.
For all the bad jokes directed at the company during its trying times, Nokia is the technology company that truly changed the world. Nokia put a mobile phone within every person’s reach. Even people in some of the poorest places on earth were given the ability to communicate wirelessly, thanks to Nokia making the mobile phone affordable to everyone. Personally, I see this as one of the greatest achievements of the technology world, but sadly, it’s often overlooked because “ooh Apple has pinch-to-zoom!!!1!”
What Nokia did for the mobile phone, Android is doing for the smartphone. It’s not Apple that’s going to put a smartphone in every corner of the globe - it’s not Microsoft; heck, not even Google, but Android. In ten to fifteen years’ time, we will look back and regard Android as the technology that enabled even the poorest people in this world to have access to the web (and thus, knowledge), just like we regard Nokia as the company that put the mobile phone in every corner of the globe.
Challenges of communicating a shipped project »
To start, this is the quote that offered the biggest insight for me:
A train track’s trajectory might, for example, set the angle of a bathroom urinal wall; but — regardless if the original alignment is visible or not — that wall experienced in place won’t necessarily bring a Johnny Cash rail song to mind while one is taking a leak.
Understanding architectural form has always been a huge challenge for me. Maybe that’s why I latched onto typography; typography offers such clear perspective on the “why” and “how” based on all of the various historical and cultural influences. But I still find myself grappling with questions about why things look the way they do, and how that those forms — fundamentally and experientially — relate to how the thing works, or where it is.
It’s the translation from diagram/landscape to building that still gets me, and this piece touches on that connection. How is the “influencing” landscape eventually affected by the structures that are built into it? Are those structures (and infrastructures) changing that landscape, and if so, is it in a way that feels integral to the origins?
I appreciate the disclaimer at the end of the essay where the author states that “architects are not required to be intellectually rigorous.” Practically speaking, there seem to be very few opportunities where are “real-life” architects — the ones not being displayed and discussed in essays like this — have a chance to be completely rigorous with their intellectual intentions. Compromises have to be made, and budgets are always a reality.
This is actually my biggest problem with the development of Manhattan’s Midtown West area. I would argue that most of NYC’s authenticity stems from lots of localized agendas being driven by people and organizations with good taste. Those individual interests help reinforce lots of different identities in a small space, without the feeling of a single tyrannical developer just putting up condos with the hope of selling units ASAP. Space is at a premium, and that tension seems to have worked well for Manhattan so far.
We’re now at a point where Midtown West — approximately between 23rd and 50th, west of 8th Ave. — is one of the few remaining spaces ripe for development on the island. We’re also at a point where a few major development companies (namely, Vornado) have lots of control that is mainly in the corporate interest. Do their architects have any interest in upholding that architectural/historical integrity when it comes to making the most of this space?
It seems like a lot of responsibility to give to these architects, and this is where this essay rings true. How much attention should be paid to uncovering and creating these forms that embody the “last frontier” of Manhattan? How practical is it to think that they’ll be able to overcome the “impossibility of common interpretation,” as the author calls it, when putting up these buildings? Manhattan is dripping with influential “landscape” that could easily inform a building, and I wonder how much effort will be spent into addressing those influences.
In the end, does it matter? I don’t say this with exasperation, but more with pragmatism in mind. Which concerns and powers get balanced in a project that involves so much money, in such an important city? Will the investors be lured by the tales of “landscape,” and if so, will that landscape even be legible, without explicit explanation?
That is, you cannot understand what generates the order by simple inhabitation. You have to be told.
Public legibility has always been incredibly important to me, and it has always felt like diagrams and history were a good place to start. From those roots (or, parameters), you can develop a project that feels right and makes sense. It upholds that responsibility to be “intellectually rigorous,” a burden that I hope many architects feel everyday. However, if the end result is just an illegible abstraction of those original seeds of intellect, how does the public actually understand the project?
These are questions and concerns addressed by architects throughout a project, and my intention isn’t to say that too much time is being put into justification, rather than end result. Instead, it’s an issue of communication between the origins of a project with the end result, especially as perceived by the public. I’m making some sweeping generalizations, even with the use of “public,” but this essay points to a very real problem I have always had with architectural communication: In the end, who cares? Who is the audience, and where does that connection to “landscape” become clear? For who? When? Importantly: why?
At the office, I do lots of “communication” work for the company. There is always this problem of distillation when it comes to communicating the final project, and much of it comes from suppressing the juicy details of process, and highlighting the eventual value proposition for the user. The end users don’t care about engineering challenges, they just want something that works.
I see this as very much the same problem. Even if your final product is directly influenced by something, and even if you make design decisions for very explicit reasons, how much of it matters in the end? Whether it be landscape, engineering resources, or time constraints, you have to ship something in the end. How that shipped or built project communicates the process is a tenuous issue.
seeing double (Taken with instagram)
pedals?
How sharing really hasn’t changed all that much in 91 years
When I picked up my 91 year-old grandfather last night from his apartment to bring him back to our house for Thanksgiving dinner, he had a page clipped from the NYTimes magazine in hand.
“It’s about martinis. They don’t use vermouth anymore! I want your dad to read it.”
My grandfather really likes martinis. In fact, most memories I have of martinis involve some combination of my dad and grandfather either preparing, drinking, or talking about starting on their “second half.” I wasn’t surprised that he had taken the time grab this article with my dad in mind.
When we got back to our house, Gramps gave the article to my dad telling him to read it when he got the chance. My dad said thanks, looked it over, and then started preparing martinis.
When I came downstairs this morning, the martini article was sitting on the kitchen counter.
I was suddenly struck by something very poignant. If I had found an article about martinis, it probably would have been in the online version of the NYTimes magazine (in fact, that article is here). I would have emailed it to my dad, not clipped it out.
But my grandfather, despite a successful mechanical engineering career and constant tinkering with electronics for his old cars, has no interest in the world of computers and the internet. When he reads an article, it’s in the paper version of the paper. We he wants to share something, it’s related to a topic he really cares about. And the person he shares it with is someone he knows will get a kick out of it.
Sharing, however, requires tearing out, driving over, and presenting the article to the recipent, with a verbal description of why the article is being shared: “You should read this because it’s a about martinis. They don’t use vermouth!”
This morning, the article was already buried under an emptied bowl of Goldfish, a pair of gloves, and a wooden spoon. It was just like an email that gets pushed further and further down in your inbox, gradually forgotten after the momentary thrill of entertainment.
Even though the mediums are changing, sharing is still the same deep down. It’s just about getting the good stuff to the right people and sharing they joy.
(Source: 8tracks.com)
NJ Transit unveils new map, designers pissed off
NJ Transit unveiled a the newly redesigned rail map on Wednesday. The most striking features are New Jersey’s weirdly morphed geometry, and cramped layout of lines nearest to New York City where the network is most dense.
The map was done by an in-house design team, and the final result helps reinforce Erik Spiekermann’s point that government agencies are awful design clients:
We have great architects, we have great designers, we have great engineers. We don’t have clients. What we need is culture of clients.
There are plenty of talented (and opinionated) designers who would kill to work on a project like this, but there doesn’t seem to be any impetus for agencies like NJT to invest additional resources in design. Complications like budget and hiring processes undoubtedly make it challenging — maybe impossible — for the NJT to hire a professional designer. I’m also sure that one of the biggest fears is likely that a pro designer would make something too “design-y,” high-brow, abstract, indulgent or inaccessible to most people.
Sure enough, “over-designed” is exactly what happened with Vingelli’s 1972 map, which squished NYC’s geography and made Central Park look like a small square. From Visual Complexity:
The result was a design solution of surprising beauty. However, Massimo Vignelli reached a level of abstraction that quickly ran into problems. To make the map work graphically meant that a few geographic liberties had to be taken. For instance, Vignelli’s map represented Central Park as a square, when in fact it is three times as long as it is wide. It is said that Vignelli had planned a second, complementary map that would have been more tied to the actual above-ground geography, but the city never let him do it.
It’s still debatable whether or not people would have eventually figured out Vignelli’s abstract leap of faith, but that leads to a bigger question: Are public transit maps a forum for adventurous design moves? And how do we define “adventurous”?
All that said, I’m an apologist for government transit agencies. Whether or not they have a good handle on visual information design (which I think ultimately stems from having someone in charge with good design taste), they’re doing the best they can. Releasing an updated version shows that NJT is cognizant of helping customers figure out where they’re going. And the MTA, despite the persistent news budget troubles and service interruptions — still gets a lot of people from here to there and wants to do better, and is always tweaking their map.
From Transit Maps:
Far from being the paradigm of customer friendliness that was promised, this map comes across as sad, tired and amateur.
I feel that there has to be a better solution than this, where the light rail systems around Hoboken and Newark are crammed into a tiny space with miniscule station names, while vast amounts of space remain empty throughout the rest of the state.
Unfortunately, despite its best intentions, this map is hideous.
And from Second Avenue Sagas, regarding the scope of the map:
Still, despite the upgrades, there’s no small bit of state-based protectionism involved. While the PATH system gets its day in the sun and the Port Jervis line branches into New York, New Jersey Transit pays scant attention to SEPTA’s connection from Trenton to Philadelphia and beyond. Transit networks are regional, but this map doesn’t extend far beyond the borders of the Garden State.
See the PDF here on the NJ Transit website.
(Source: twitter.com)
This Post has Been Declared a Link-free Zone »
Links in articles are distracting.
I thought that links would be a distraction from writing I hoped would be interesting enough in its own right to hold the reader’s attention.
But that was a long time ago and I soon came round. Today, when working on a post, I look forward to planting links that will shoot their tendrils outwards from the text. I want the links to be truly useful and I spend time trying to pick good ones. I work on the basis of an idealized image of a super-motivated reader who will be so committed to the subject that she will want to pursue every lead I can offer.
The Coffeeshop Fallacy »
This is something that has always interested me, and it’s refreshing to see someone articulate it so well. Basically, it’s easy for us to want something despite a complete lack regard for the work required to get it.
The fallacy points out that your penchant for coffee shops is completely disconnected from the responsibilities of owning a coffee shop. The environment created in the coffee shop is the public result of the owner’s hard work. That experience is explicitly devoid of the mundane behind-the-scenes responsibilities like cleaning, payroll, and maintenance. That’s all hidden from the customers because they just want a nice place to sit and drink coffee — not bothered with ordering supplies or paying rent.
It’s like Hollywood. Customers at the coffee shop are like the audience in the movie theatre. The audience doesn’t care about quibbles with casting departments, production budgets or deadlines. They just want to watch the movie, and it’s the producer’s job to ensure that gets done. Hide the shitty stuff and make it look easy.
The problem is that people don’t understand that there is a shitty part. That, by definition, is the coffee shop fallacy: a mismatch between the work one imagines to be involved in a pursuit and the actual day-to-day labour.
The shitty part isn’t unbearable or exclusive; it just requires more attention, focus and dedication than most people are willing to give. Productive people, however, are willing to put up with the shitty-ness because they know it will yield an awesome final result. They understand what needs to go on in the background to “make it look easy” and ship the final product or experience.
The guy who sits in the coffee shop, looks around and wants his own someday is just dreaming big.
