JasoNunes

Assumptions we didn't even know we had...

2010-01-29T12:30:00.001-05:00

A great mini-Ted talk by Derek Sivers:

Beautiful glass works

2010-01-14T10:56:00.002-05:00

From Danish tool maker Steffen Dam.

From Cool Hunter:

The process for making the panels begins by using the traditional glassmaking method for solid objects. Dam then covers each solid block of clear glass, employing a welding torch with "either colored glass powder, a thread of black glass, layers of metal foil or thin layers of carbon." Once all of the applications have been added, the object is covered in several more layers of clear glass and each one is fused together to make one Specimen Panel—an otherworldly biology lab usually consisting of 25 or more individual glass blocks.

another one for #thingsIcovet

Amazing porcelain artworks

2009-12-16T07:14:00.003-05:00

By Kate D. MacDowell

categorized under "things I covet"

I miss making props...

2009-12-15T12:01:00.003-05:00

Just made an IV bag for our last day of shooting for Exit Strategy. Not bad (if I do say so myself) for a ziplock bag, a used saline solution bottle, and hand cream pump. It made me nostalgic for the good old days when I made a living as a crazed MacGyver cranking out sets and props for some of the best straight to video horror films of the 90s.

Here's some grainy old nostalgia:

I love this concept: Infographic Coins

2009-12-08T10:16:00.002-05:00

From designer Mac Funamizu a redesign of coins based on pie chart slices.

Back from the wilds of Pennsylvania...

2009-12-07T13:37:00.002-05:00

...from the Exit Strategy shoot. Fantastic locations. Amazing performances. The hardest working crew in show business. What more could you ask for? I can't wait to see edited footage.

In the meantime, here's a crappy iPhone photo from the shoot:
of our incredibly talented (and beautiful) actors--Erica Hernandez, and Gabrielle Senn--in our favorite location.

Mandlebulb - The Mandelbrot fractal in 3D

2009-11-29T13:37:00.002-05:00

Inspired by Rudy Rucker (one of my all time favorite authors), the 2D Mandelbrot rendered in 3D. Amazing.

What's your poison?

2009-11-25T11:39:00.002-05:00

Internet Vices by illustrator Patrick Moberg

Websites as substance addiction. I think I'm a Tumblr Vimeo kinda guy. How about you?

is a bottle of wine

A quiet night in with a couple friends, and a couple of their friends. Spilling nostalgic stories, flipping through photo albums, singing favorite songs, aiming for poignancy, and occasionally stumbling onto it. Emotions flow freely and without thought.

is a tab of good acid

Everyone here is pretty nice and pretty chill. You'll witness some truly beautiful things. Sometimes emotional, visits can be long or short, but you'll leave amazed, and with a better understanding of the world.

OK, so what about Four Square? That's gotta be some variation on Twitter (cocaine)... rock cocaine? Freebase? What'cha'think?

We got both kinds -- Creepy & Cuddly

2009-11-22T11:11:00.002-05:00

I love these mohair sculptures by Alexandra Newmark

Happy Halloween

2009-10-31T09:00:00.001-04:00

I vant to suck your bluud.

Here's a pic of me from Halloween 30 years ago taken by my friend Tom Lisowski. (Thanks, Tom!)

Cell Size and Scale

2009-10-30T15:17:00.002-04:00

Very simple, but effective interactive data visualization from the Genetic Science Learning Center of the University of Utah that shows the relative scale of things like amoebas, skins cells, viruses, etc.

Starting with a scale we can understand--Coffee beans, and grains of rice...

you can quickly zoom down to the level of cells, viruses, finally ending at a carbon atom, and get a real sense of how small these things really are.

Very nifty.

Exit Strategy is GO!

2009-10-08T12:36:00.003-04:00

We're cracking open champagne over at Small Media Extra Large. Teen Nick has hired us to create and produce a multi-episode pilot of a web series called Exit Strategy. I've been working on the series bible and scripts, and am really excited about the world we're creating.

Interactive Story Diagrams

2009-10-01T13:37:00.002-04:00

OK, I admit it, I'm a diagram junkie.

I really enjoy this Flickr set of diagrams from the planning documents for the CDX game:

Where am I?

The Story Plan

Who's a cooler band than They Might Be Giants?

2009-09-22T08:21:00.002-04:00

A slick mobile homescreen ineraction model...

2009-09-21T15:11:00.002-04:00

...for Android phones from Larva Labs.

I really like the way the message centric interface splits a user's life into the private and the public. Email, text messages, and phone calls vs. news and friend feeds. And how easily and intuitive it would be to define a preference between private vs. public priority.

Click on the Watch Video link to watch a demo.

How important is analytics?

2009-09-16T08:52:00.004-04:00

I've often thought of it as one of the primary foundations of web 3.0 (not to overuse an already overused phrase.)

Understanding how your audience interacts with your content and experiences is vital not only towards understanding how much to charge an advertiser, but also in being able to create targeted, personalized experience. The contextual web.

It must be pretty important. Adobe just spent $1.8 billion to buy Omniture an audience analytics company.

Levels of intimacy...

2009-09-14T13:41:00.001-04:00

A great diagram showing the 10 levels of intimacy from Please Enjoy

"Safe no matter what you make..."

2009-09-14T13:38:00.002-04:00

I really enjoy this Play-Doh campaign from Singapore:

Beautiful Infections

2009-09-10T13:59:00.002-04:00

Smallpox, HIV and an 'Unknown Future Mutation'

I love these lamp worked glass sculptures by Luke Jerram of various viruses. Beautiful.

Pay More. Live Less.

2009-08-24T16:42:00.002-04:00

My new philosophy...

xkcd - the voice of a generation...

2009-08-24T11:02:00.003-04:00

...of us geeks! I love this comic. (for obvious reasons)... enjoy:

Big Belly Trash Compactor

2009-08-18T17:34:00.001-04:00

A really nifty simple idea:

In our cities, waste collection can be pretty wasteful itself. Garbage trucks have to make near constant trips to keep public trash bins from overflowing—contributing to traffic and pollution. To keep our cities in harmony, we'll have to figure out a better system for urban waste collection. The people at BigBelly Solar already have one solution.

I believe you, Elaine Morgan!

2009-08-04T08:44:00.002-04:00

Ever since I read The River That Flows Uphill at the urging of a family member I've been totally bought into the hypothesis that at some point in time a human ancestor was aquatic (or partially aquatic). I've always wondered why I never heard much about the theory. Heh, I guess I didn't realize that in believing it I had relegated myself to crackpot status. Apparently I am crackpot no more! (Well, maybe just a partial crackpot.) Elaine Morgan has come up with a ton of great answers to why humans look so different from our closest ancestors--why we are naked, why we walk upright, why we've got a subcutaneous fat layer--and all of 'em point to a life in the water.

Subdivisions

2009-07-28T14:18:00.002-04:00

Artist Ross Racine's work really hit me. Aerial views of fictional suburbs. Each was drawn freehand directly on the computer. Beautiful fantasies.

Found on SwissMiss

The Useful Vs. The Cool

2009-07-27T15:24:00.001-04:00

I mentioned this blog post in an earlier post. Here's a quote:

Traditional agencies in the digital space (and indeed traditional digital agencies) are easily seduced by the power of Flash and the wonders of animation; we want attention and spectacle but what happens next? Why should the user stay, what are we asking them to do and where should they go next? The campaign microsite is perhaps the prime expression of this tendency-as Iain Tate puts it, impressively punchily, in Campaign:

“No one cares about your bloody microsite. In 2009 the flashy high production value microsite is finally starting to feel irrelevant. Sites that seem to do everything, but deliver nothing.”

At the opposite end of the spectrum, design in the digital space has become so seamless, effortless and professional that it’s arguably all getting a bit predictable. Usability was (quite rightly) the holy grail for many years, reaching its apotheosis in Jakob Nielsen’s controversial useit.com-the ultimate in functionality. Now it seems though that perhaps every easy, effortless site is much like every other easy, effortless site.

You know what's always bugged me... this idea that usability is the only goal of user experience design. It leaves guys like me who came out of interactive design out of the equation. When I was first recruited by iXL it was because I was a broadcast designer, and because I understood things like motion, and visual and auditory feedback. Sure, part of what I was doing was making sites more usable by giving users clear feedback about what they could click on, and clue them in to what would happen if they did click on it, but it was also about trying to make the then static, boring web a bit more exciting, and tv like. Not slapping on motion for motion's sake (which to me was the problem with splash screens, and so much early flash stuff) but to make the web a more pleasant, enjoyable, fun experience. I think most sr. level, intelligent people who do what I do know that there are many different components to a great UX, and usability is only one.

(Whoops, I originally said this was Jesse James Garrett's but it turns out it's Peter Morville's. Heh... (sorry Jesse and Peter...) ... thanks for the correction JJG! )

Usability is only one aspect of the whole. A UX needs to tackle all of the above:

useful
desirable
valuable
accessible
credible
findable
and last but not least usable

ANYWAY, not to get up on my soap box, but that's what I think about this issue/debate... and I think the guy is absolutely right, there is a tension between usability and disruption... but that shouldn't mean that there is then an inherent conflict between disruption and UX.

AND, (last thing I'll say on the subject)... I actually don't think that disruption is the right way to think about what the goals of most agencies are either. I think it's an easy out. Like usability is to UX. Disruption is what we understand because that's what traditional advertising is. It disrupts an experience with another, louder, hopefully somewhat entertaining experience, so someone can get paid. But, well, for me, the idea of advertising/marketing offering some value or utility, is where we might think about the standard disruption experience evolving. If the disruptive experience becomes useful, then it's something that will be sought out, and it won't need to disrupt. Of course, this is a whole heck of a lot harder to figure out... just like making an experience usable, and desirable is harder to figure out... but that's what separates the true innovators in our fields from the dinosaurs who are 5 steps away from getting stuck in the tar pits.