“Then there’s the Coke incident when they were presenting a worldwide concept to Coca-Cola in Atlanta. As Watson recalls it, the two shuffled to the stage and Jo started tuning a guitar but were interrupted by McCann’s global creative director asking who their target audience was. “Stretching to his full five foot four, Mo said in a laconic mutter, fair to the microphone for all to hear: ‘Any cunt with a mouth’. The president of Coke thought this was the most precise targeting he’d heard all day,” said Watson.”
“Say you need to design an umbrella stand. Some sort of tubular object immediately comes to mind. But Fukasawa insists that we should eliminate this idea. He says all we should do is cut a groove 8mm wide and 5mm deep into the concrete floor at the building’s entrance. Visitors looking for a place to put their umbrellas would be quick to look for a spot to stick the top end. As if the umbrella itself were on the prowl for a place to stand, it would no doubt easily discover the groove that had been set there in anticipation, and all the umbrellas would stand in a neat row. And yet people using it may have no idea that the groove is an umbrella rack. The orderly row of umbrellas would be the result of unconcious behaivour. Fukasawa rests his case: the umbrella rack design is complete unto itself.”
“An affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment, that allows an individual to perform an action.”
“If an actor steps into a room with an armchair and a softball, Gibson’s original definition of affordances allows that the actor may throw the recliner and sit on the softball, because that is objectively possible. Norman’s definition of (perceived) affordances captures the likelihood that the actor will sit on the recliner and throw the softball. Effectively, Norman’s affordances “suggest” how an object may be interacted with. For example, the size and shape of a softball obviously fits nicely in the average human hand, and its density and texture make it perfect for throwing. The user may also bring past experience with similar objects (baseballs, perhaps) to bear when evaluating a new affordance.”
“Norman’s adaptation of the concept has seen a further shift of meaning, in which the term affordance is used as an uncountable noun, referring to the property of an object or system’s action possibilities being easily discoverable, as in “this web page has good affordance,” or “this button needs more affordance.”
“Don’t ignore the things that on the surface may not seem crucial to creating great advertising. Like spending time to identify what the real problem is — not just the advertising problem but the business problem, and embracing the limits imposed on you. It’s often there the real gem lies.”
Simplicity is the world view of the child or uninformed adult, fully engaged in his own experience and happily unaware of what lies beneath the surface of immediate reality.
Complexity characterizes the ordinary adult world view. It is characterized by an awareness of complex systems in nature and society but an inability to discern clarifying patterns and connections.
Informed simplicity is an enlightened view of reality. It is founded upon an ability to discern or create clarifying patterns within complex mixtures. Pattern recognition is a crucial skill for an architect, who must create a highly ordered building amid many competing and frequently nebulous design considerations.”
- 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, Matthew Frederick
“There aren’t too many places in the world where you can’t buy a Coke, and that includes some of the remotest parts of developing countries. Coincidentally, that’s often where aid organizations have the hardest time delivering medicine and other supplies. That’s why ColaLife is lobbying the international beverage behemoth to open up its distribution channels for some constructive piggybacking. The nonprofit is working on a wedge-shaped package that can deliver goods in the space between the bottlenecks in a full crate of Coca-Cola, and in partnership with another NGO, it has already performed a successful test of the idea in Tanzania. In its quest for global beverage dominance, Coca-Cola may have inadvertently built the best tool for international aid. You can’t beat that.”
I wish I had a collection of strangers’ thoughts. Particularly the thoughts that relate to me. What do these strangers think when I buy my coffee? Do they make comments about my hairstyle? Do they think I walk funny? Do I look better from behind? Am I cute? Do I smell? Do I ever look ‘homeless’?
I wish they were scrawled in each individual’s handwriting,
on scrap pieces of paper,
and stuffed inside a hat.
I wish I had an aggregator to sort through these thoughts. One that censored the extreme opinions and ordered the others in an item by item catalogue. An aggregator that would pick the most salient thought of the day and posted it on a blog. The blog would be private and only I would have the password. I could view it on my iPhone.
Then I could make changes accordingly and live a better life. One where I never worry about what others think.
“Schopenhauer had said that - that life was to be perceived not as a book you would write but as a book already written, something to be gotten through, so as to detach oneself from suffering, which was an outside thing, really; not actually in the text. Everything was to be accepted. The world was here. Everything was here. Mark liked Spiderman more. As it existed in what was here, in the world, that ‘Mark liked Spiderman more,’ Andrew knew, it similarly existed that ‘Andrew’.”
Tom stood in a subway car. He was looking out the window at nothing while clutching onto a rail. There was a man sitting beside him looking distant. Tom imagined the man pulling a carving knife from his jacket pocket. Then he imagined that knife stabbing Tom twice, once in the heart. Then Tom imagined himself saying goodbye to everyone he ever knew. He imagined himself thinking that he should have written a note to all those people in case he was ever stabbed on a train. Then he rewound his thoughts. He began writing the letter in his head.
“This is a letter to everyone always.
I want you all to know that dying was an incredible experience. I was completely ready for it. It doesn’t hurt a bit and I feel great. If you’re fond of sleep then you’re gonna love this even more. My last moments were incredible and I said goodbye to you all. It was glorious. Just remember: If I can do it, you can too!
P.S. Heaven doesn’t exist, but wherever I am it’s really fun. They have jumping castles.”
He decided the sentiment was right but the words were not. He wanted everyone to know what will happen always would. He imagined everyone at his funeral enjoying themselves except for the people who didn’t get it. He imagined trees that had lived before anyone he might have known, and would live for longer than they ever could. He imagined the world decaying beyond repair. He imagined the universe expanding. He imagined lots of things. Then the train stopped and he left the subway car. Then he forgot to imagine. And lost it all forever.
