The “Stanley Kubrick: Taming Light” website was launched last week. The exhibition runs until October 31st in the Lighthouse cinema. I was asked to design and develop the site, in keeping with Kubrick’s taste and style. Interestingly, I discovered that Kubrick’s favourite font was Futura. Although this is not too surprising as he used it for the posters and title sequences of “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Eyes Wide Shut”, as well as for the Kubrick collection DVD boxset. Tony Frewin, Kubrick’s long-standing assistant, stated in an article in the Guardian that Futura was indeed “Stanley’s favourite typeface. It’s sans serif. He liked Helvetica and Univers, too. Clean and elegant.” I also incorporated a number of social media networks and tools into the website’s design in order to help promote the show and keep people that were interested in attending updated. You can join the show’s Facebook group or follow @KubrickTaming on Twitter.

The website had to be turned around quite quickly and as is often the case there were delays with getting some of the artworks ready and content delivered for the site. However, it was launched in time for the opening night and to the curator’s satisfaction. I have still yet to attend the show but I am hoping to see it over the weekend while I check out some of this year’s Darklight events. I’ll also be collecting a specially commissioned limited edition poster 0f the main illustration from the website homepage, designed by Martin Ansin. Ansin’s hand-drawn retrospective of some of Kubrick’s classic characters is overseen by a portrait of the director and is available as a collector’s item as a high-quality print at the Light House Cinema or by e-mailing kubricktaming@gmail.com. The limited edition of 250 is available to buy for a very reasonable price of 50 euros. Read about the poster in Ansin’s own words.

The exhibition was curated by John Maguire, a film critic with the Irish Sunday Business Post newspaper and the Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show on 100-102 Today FM. Read about the show in John’s own words on his blog.

The show has received quite a bit of coverage including articles/ features on:

• Film Ireland
• Darklight
• Filmbase
• Cinematical
• Le Cool
• The Lighthouse Cinema
• IFTN (Irish Film and Television Network)
• Candy Collective
• The Irish Times
• The Sunday Tribune
• The Sunday Busines Post
• RTE’s “The View”
• Scamp
• Movies.ie
• Today FM’s “Ian Dempsey – Breakfat Show”
• Newstalk’s “Culture Shock”
• Kiersten Essenpreis ‘You Fail’ Blog
• QBN
• Entertainment.ie

I attended the advance/ member preview of the new Science Gallery exhibit yesterday evening – ‘What If…’.  The exhibition investigates where design meets science to explore the weird, wonderful and sometimes scary possibilities for future technology. The exhibition is curated by leading London based design duo Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby (www.dunneandraby.co.uk).

The project features some very visual and interesting design works, produced by twenty designers from around the world, as well as a range of thought-provoking questions. The exhibition is interesting to me on a number of levels. Firstly, as an interaction designer/ practitioner and interactive media professional, I was familiar with Dunne and Raby’s work – specifically their “Technological Dream Series: Number 1, Robots (2007)” piece. Dunne & Raby both spoke at the opening of the exhibition. The pair use design as a medium to stimulate discussion and debate amongst designers, industry and the public about the social, cultural and ethical implications of existing and emerging technologies. They use interaction design to ask questions rather than to solve problems. Their designs provoke people to consider implications and not necessarily applications – “critical design.”

Anthony Dunne is the head of the Design Interactions department at the Royal College of Art in London and was recently awarded the Sir Misha Black Award for Innovation in Design Education in 2009. He previously studied Industrial Design and completed a PhD in Computer Related Design. Fiona Raby was a founding member of the CRD Research Studio where she worked as a Senior Research Fellow leading externally funded research projects, and she taught in Architecture for over 10 years before teaching in Design Interactions. Dunne’s and Raby’s professional and academic backgrounds are evident in the exhibition. While certainly provocative (read the “Greyhounds are not medical devices. Don’t let this happen” article on Indymedia) but not quite shocking, Dunne and Raby do succeed in getting people to question possible decisions society might have to make in the future if/ when science and technology meet design in more extreme ways. Gallery director Michael John Gorman said in an article in the Irish Independent that the exhibit examines “possible future scenarios through products you might buy in the future.”

I particularly liked the following works:

WHAT IF…Our emotions were read by machines? - Belief Systems, 2009 by Bernhard Hopfengärtner

“Facial micro-expressions last less than a second and are almost impossible to control. They are hard wired to the emotional activity in the brain which can be easily captured using specially developed technological devices. Free will is now in question as science exposes decision-making as an emotional process rather than a rational one.This ability to read emotions technologically could result in a society obsessed with emotional reactions. Emotions, convictions and beliefs, which usually remain hidden, now become a public matter. ‘Belief systems’ is a video scenario about a society that responds to the challenges of modern neuroscience by embracing these technological possibilities to read, evaluate and alter people’s behaviours and emotions.” Twitter hashtag: #beliefSG

WHAT IF… Probability could be 100% guaranteed? – Coin Flipper, 2009 by Dot Samsen
“We often use randomness and fate to help us make decisions. Some decisions are so hard to make that we leave the responsibility completely to fate or randomness-by flipping a coin. This can make us feel less guilty or believe we’ve reached the ‘right’ decision, but what are our true intentions behind these decisions? The Coin Flipper aims to challenge this apparent randomness to reveal our true intentions.” Twitter hashtag: #coinSG

WHAT IF… We could modify clouds to snow ice cream? – The Cloud Project, 2009 by Zoe Papadopoulou & Cathrine Kramer
“Developments in nanotechnology and planetary scale engineering point to new possibilities for us to conform the global environment to our needs. These advances combined with a dream to make clouds snow ice cream inspired a series of experiments that look at ways to alter the composition of clouds to make new and delicious sensory experiences. Using ice cream as a catalyst for dialogue, the project’s focus is to welcome people into a nano ice cream van and allow new audiences to experience and imagine emerging scientific developments and their consequences. The nano ice cream van will visit Science Gallery from 12th November-4th December 2009.” Twitter hashtag:#icecreamSG

WHAT IF… We had to rent trees to offset our carbon footprint? – BuyProduct, 2009 by Dot Samsen
“Carbon credit brings the ‘convenience’ back to the ‘inconvenient truth’. Global warming has been driven by capitalism. Now we are trying to solve global warming through capitalism. Is this possible? From an ecological perspective, CO2 is a by-product of the living, either directly or indirectly. From the economic perspective, CO2 may become the world’s largest commodity market. What do we consider the price of our own by-products? This project aims to criticize the carbon trading system as well as raise awareness of how good we are at destroying the planet.” Twitter hashtag: #treeSG

WHAT IF… We tried to make a toaster from scratch? – The Toaster Project, 2009 by Thomas Thwaites
“Thwaites went on a quest to build an electric toaster from scratch, seeking iron, copper, mica, nickel and crude oil (for the plastic case) from disused mines in Britain, then attempting to process the materials at home. This nine-month process to make a simple toaster is absurd, but so too is the massive industrial activity we pursue to achieve additional comforts at ever lower prices. The laboriousness of producing even the most basic material from the ground up exposes the fallacy of returning to some romantic ideal of a pre-industrialised time. But at this moment in time when the effects of industry are no longer trivial for the environment, the throwaway toasters of today seem unreasonable.” Twitter hashtag: #toasterSG

WHAT IF…Domestic robots could be self-sufficient? – Carnivorous Domestic Entertainment Robots, 2008 by James Auger & Jimmy Loizeau. Engineered by Alex Zivanovic.
“This project approaches the subject of robots from an alternative perspective. Inspired by methods of survival in nature this series of robots references strategies of adaptation and bio-mimetics in their design. Developed for the home, they avoid the stereotypical forms normally associated with robots and adopt a contemporary fashionable design aesthetic. The robots utilise a microbial fuel cell to power themselves, generating energy from biomass in the form of common household pests. This gives them autonomy and to a degree they become living entities existing in a similar way to an exotic pet such as a snake or a lizard, where we provide living prey and become voyeurs in a synthesized, contrived microcosm.” Twitter Hashtag: #robotsSG

WHAT IF…Jimmy Carter had been re-elected, would the world be greener? – The Golden Institute, 2009 by Sascha Pohflepp
“In an alternate United States set in the 1980s, where Ronald Reagan never happened, the Golden Institute for Energy was the world’s premier think tank for alternative energies. From weather modification and lightning harvesting to using the freeway system as a source of power, the Institute’s ambitions were grand and their impact on American life significant. How might its legacy offer a fresh perspective on our present challenges in regard to the environment?” Twitter hashtag: #goldenSG

WHAT IF…We could evaluate the genetic potential of lovers? – Evidence Dolls, 2005 by Dunne & Raby
“Evidence Dolls consists of one hundred plastic dolls used to provoke discussion amongst a group of young single women about the impact of genetic technology on their lifestyle. How will dating change when DNA analysis can reveal the presence of undesirable genes? Evidence Dolls come in three versions based on penis size (small, medium and large). A black indelible marker is provided to note down any characteristics on the dolls body. Hair, toenail clippings, saliva, and sperm can be stored in the penis drawer.” Twitter hashtag: #evidenceSG

WHAT IF…Robots were designed from an emotional point of view? – Technological Dreams Series: No.1, Robots, 2007 by Dunne & Raby
“It’s a dream that refuses to go away. Robots are destined to play a significant part in our daily lives-not as super smart, functional machines, nor as pseudo life forms, but as technological cohabitants. But how will we interact with them? What new interdependencies and relationships might emerge in relation to different levels of robot intelligence and capability: intimate, subservient, dependent, equal?

Robot 1: This one is very independent. It needs to avoid strong electromagnetic fields as these might cause it to malfunction.Robot 2: This robot is very nervous. It analyses everything with its many eyes. If a person approaches too close it becomes extremely agitated and even hysterical.Robot 3: This robot uses retinal scanning technology to decide who accesses our data. It demands that you stare into its eyes for a long time. It needs to be sure it is you.
Robot 4: This one is very needy. Although extremely smart it is trapped in an underdeveloped body and depends on its owner to move about.” Twitter hashtag #emorobotSG

The exhibition was also interesting to me on a purely visual level. As a designer, occasional film-maker and keen photographer, the imagery both in the exhibition and the staging of the works is really interesting. I took quite a few photographs of the exhibit, which are on Flickr. Lastly, as a user of social media, I was interested to see that visitors to the Science Gallery are able to post their opinions about each of the displays on the social networking site Twitter, via hashtags that accompany the description of each piece.

The exhibition is free (although a small donation is requested in order to cover costs for running these exhibitions in the Science Gallery) and open to the public until December 13th 2009. Further details are at the end of this post and on the Science Gallery’s website.

Refresh Dublin – running in conjunction with the ‘What If’ exhibition:

I am delighted to announce that the first Refresh Dublin event will be held in the Science Gallery on Thursday October 29th, running in conjunction with the ‘What If’ exhibition. More information on Refresh Dublin is available on the website: http://www.refreshdublin.org. The speaker line-up for the first event will be announced next week. You can sign-up for updates via the website, follow us on Twitter or join the Facebook group.

—-

08:10:09-13:12:09

WHAT IF…
FUTURE FORM, FUTURE FUNCTION?
Science Gallery,
Dublin.
Website

“WHAT IF…insects could diagnose illness? WHAT IF…clouds were modified to snow ice cream? WHAT IF… we lived in a society where our every thought was public? These are just some of the questions asked in the upcoming exhibition at Science Gallery which probes the space between reality and the impossible and where designers meet scientists to explore the future.

WHAT IF… has been curated by leading London based design duo Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby and features a range of works by designers who have explored everything from using animals as life support machines, through to what happens in a society where machines can read your every emotion.

On show in the gallery will be a diverse range of work including The Race by Michael Burton which looks at how people and their non-human cells can coexists and scrutinizes our inadvertent creation of superbugs like mRSA through the misuse of antibiotics and James King’s Dressing the Meat of Tomorrow looks at recent advances in tissue engineering which enable us to grow meat without the expense, cruelty and traditions of rearing the whole animal.
We want your comments and thoughts on the pieces on show. Each individual exhibit has its own Twitter hashtag – if you comment on this exhibition please use this hashtag.”

*Canux is the Canadian user experience workshop that is hosted by nForm.

My name is Niamh Redmond. I’m from Dublin, Ireland. On December 28th 2009, I am moving to Vancouver, Canada. At the end of 2008, I made a number of tough decisions. I decided to resign from my job, to reassess my career direction and to begin the process of applying for a Canadian visa. It wasn’t easy to do and I struggled with defining what path I wanted to take in my career and where I wanted to go in order to gain more experience. Each option that I considered kept coming back to a common theme – creating a great user experience.  

I have worked as a graphic designer, a usability analyst, a multimedia designer, a webmaster and an online project manager within various ICT, marketing and communications teams. I have been asked to make websites look “cool”, I have been requested to cut corners on projects in order to save time and money rather than to adhere to best practice standards. I have had people look quizzically at me when they ask me what it is that I do. I have thought to myself if only there were more people and more resources or if only colleagues and company stakeholders were more receptive to the importance of user experience. 

I know that I want to work in an environment in which I can utilise my skills and experience fully. I simplified my thinking and I reminded myself about why I got involved in this industry in the first place. The university modules that I most enjoyed involved research, writing, designing a product or service, solving a problem for a user, making things work better, telling a story, assessing a system in order to improve it and designing an interaction. Everything came back to creating an experience that was user-centered, user-friendly and simply, usable! 

I have determined to do that which I enjoy. I enjoy writing, researching, designing, making websites, playing games, reading, learning, taking photographs, experimenting with new technologies, making videos, watching films, listening to music, engaging with people, and thinking about how to create good experiences. As our world is filled with more devices and our lives are increasingly influenced through social networks, I am committed to designing experiences that are useful, usable, desirable, findable, accessible, credible and valuable. 

When I started my undergraduate degree in Multimedia in 2000, it was the first course of its kind offered in Ireland. I remember the excitement and enthusiasm that I felt. While gaining four years of mixed corporate in-house and freelance experience, I have come to see user experience as the key to the success of a product or service. The disconnect that can often exist between the people who offer a product and the people who actually use it can be reduced if, as experience design practitioners, we are given the opportunity to spread user-centered thinking. User experience can tie together people from different disciplines who care about good design. I care about good design and I realise that user experience isn’t one small aspect of a design project or an optional add-on. It is a basic requirement. It is about how people live and what they do. Those companies and organisations that are unwilling to recognise this fact and change, are being left behind.

- Niamh.

This post was written as an entry to the “Fly me to CanUX” workshop competition hosted by nForm. This years theme is “doing more with less” – “learning how to be a more effective UX practitioner and do better work even when you have less to do it.” More information about the workshop, which takes place from November 12-14, 2009 in Banff, Alberta can be found on the Canux website.

Photo by collinmel (cc)

Last week I attended an Arduino and Flash workshop, hosted by Ben Arent/ CASL on behalf of the IxDA Dublin. The cost of the workshop included a fully loaded Arduino kit loaded with resistors, sensors and switches from SKPang. So plenty to experiment with afterwards. 
I had previously heard about Arduino and understood that the goal of the Arduino project was to make tools available that are accessible, low-cost, flexible and easy-to-use to develop interactive devices. 

I viewed the workshop as a chance to take a crash course in Arduino and as a break away from designing wire frames and interaction flows for web sites. The workshop also provided attendees with a chance to expand their skill set, start sketching with hardware and in Ben’s own words  to “think outside the web.” The possibilities that Arduino opens up include opportunities for new products and services that can improve businesses and the users experience. An example of this is BakerTweet, created by Poke.

Albion, a bakery in London, uses Baker Tweet to announce what is being cooked in their kitchen. Check out the video:

Thanks to Ben for a good introduction to Arduino. The full workshop agenda has been posted by him on his own website.

Related Links:

• - Arduino project website: http://www.arduino.cc/
• - Arduino wiki, aka the Playground
• - Arduino Tutorial
• - Make Magazine article on the Arduino

Do you sometimes forget how to type the copyright symbol, the Apple icon, the cloverleaf symbol on the command key or a trademark logo? Yes? Then this tool is for you. For web designer/ developers, there is a handy “as html” toggle option that will copy the character as html code. i.e. “” as text or “” as the html option. And before any Irish readers wonder, yes – they have included fadas too.

The Konst & Teknik website has more examples of selected works from the studio, which are interesting. I like the “Analogue vs. Digital” experiments with the concept of reality in moving pictures.

(Found via bobulate and swissmiss).

I have been featured in Smashing Magazine’s latest article “How To Create A Great Web Design CV and Résumé” by Kat Neville of safetygoat.

Kat devised a CV design challenge/ competition in which ten Web designers had to design the same résumé in only a few hours. Each designer had to translate a fictional character, Steve Stevenson’s work experience, education and interests into their own unique style. A summary of good tips for Web designer résumés is featured at the end of the article. If you’re interested in taking the challenge yourself, visit misterstevenson.com for all the rules each of the designers followed and the chance to add your own entry.

If you are interested in learning about my design methodology, please continue reading below.

Design Methodology for the Steve Stevenson CV Challenge:

When I finished my undergraduate degree I went to my college’s careers advisor with a customised CV that I had designed. She suggested that I tone down the “need to design it”, which at the time confused me a little. I mean, I was a multimedia designer after all! I would be seeking design-related employment with creative types in design-related companies. Anyway, I put my ego back in its box, went home and thought about what the careers advisor had said.

What is the role of a designer? To design, to engage, to be creative, to innovate, to inspire, to break conventions, to think outside the box? Actually, no. Certainly, we should aspire towards and challenge ourselves to do some, if not all, of the above but at the end of the day we are providing a solution to a problem. We are helping people in some way. Simply put, design comes down to basic principles such as clear communication and problem solving. There may be many more media to design for than in the past but the principles still continue apply.

Screenshot 01

When it came to this challenge, I set myself a couple of restrictions – I wouldn’t spend more than 3 hours on it, I would only use three colours and a maximum of three fonts. Initially, I decided that the CV should be black because I wanted it to be different and who said CV’s had to be on a white background anyway? (See screenshot 01). The thing is, no one decided that a CV had to be on a white background. However, this didn’t add any value to the design and think of how much ink would be wasted. So, scratch that idea.

During the process I found myself going off on another tangent (see screenshots 2 and 3 below to see what I mean). I tried to introduce an element of “fun” by presenting the cover of the CV as a “fold, cut and paste” DIY business card. I asked one person what they thought of this. On first glance, they couldn’t understand what they were looking at. After I explained it to them, they started to get it. But, therein lies the problem. I shouldn’t have had to explain this to them. User testing is clearly as important for CV creation as it is for website creation! The design of the CV should be clear and intuitive. With this idea, I was trying to be too clever. Unsuccessfully, as it would have made a lousy business card anyway and who was going to bother to make it in the first place! To echo the career’s advisors words, I had to tone down the “need to design”.

Screenshot 02

Screenshot 03

At this stage in the process, I had to remind myself of some of the principles that I strive to design by; namely, clear, simple, minimalist, clean designs that are usable and functional. And as designers should know, simple design doesn’t mean simplistic, simple is hard to achieve. In the words of Leonardo da Vinci – “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”.

Another query made during the “user testing” phase related to the fact that the words “CV”, “Resume” or “Curriculum Vitae” were not included. A fair point but I decided to omit them as this document would be presented to the reader/ viewer as a CV i.e. they would receive it attached to an e-mail indicating that a CV was attached or they would be handed it/ presented it as a CV. I’m open to debate about this decision, however.

Why would I design a CV – a document that is intended to clearly communicate a person’s education background, employment history and skills – any differently? I shouldn’t. I have no doubt that other people would approach this challenge as a way to be very creative and to showcase the fictional designer, Steve Stevenson’s design skills. But again, where should Steve’s design skills really stand out? They should be showcased in his portfolio – the work there should speak for itself. In the same way that when I go to a restaurant, I want to be able to read the menu without being distracted by how well (or in the case of being distracted, how badly) designed it is. I read the menu to decide what food I want to order. I would read a CV to decide on whether a person was the right fit for a job.

At the same time, I didn’t want my contribution to resemble another CV template that someone could easily choose from Microsoft Word, for example. So, it had to be somewhere in between – a clean, simple, functional design but that added a some personal branding for Steve to set him apart from the crowd and from commonly used CV templates. I also wanted to incorporate something into the design that would hint at his web design experience.

My solution?

A landscape-layout of 3 columns, which borrows the commonly used web layout. Sure, this 3 column layout has long been a ‘norm’ in web design and no one is really breaking conventions or thinking outside the box when they design a web layout with a header, 3 columns of content and a footer… but what if this layout is applied to a CV? I used the header area for Steve’s logo/ personal branding and for his contact information. I used the 3 columns for his education, experience and skills, left to right. And finally, I used the footer as the location for some information about his interests.

I used 3 fonts:

- A beautiful font called “Nevis” for Steve’s name and the main headings (available for free download from Ten by Twenty/ Ed Merritt.)

- Helvetica Bold for titles

- Helvetica Regular for all other text

To create the “SS” logo, I used a variant of the shape of the Bauhaus font.

I used 3 colours:

- Orange (technically I used two different shades of orange… so I broke my own rules slightly but then again you’re allowed to break the rules now and again!)

- Black

- Grey

I stopped designing before my 3 hours were up.

My aim was to design something in which each element served a function; every shape and line, the colours and their use, the font variations and text sizes were chosen to communicate something to the reader. For example, each orange line serves a purpose by separating the areas of content from each other. Similarly, the word “freelance’ is in orange to highlight where Steve’s “work” experience ends and his “freelance” experience begins. One mistake that I made when I first started designing years ago was that I had too much going on in my designs. Once I learnt how to eliminate unnecessary elements in my designs they became much clearer and usable – Don’t decorate, communicate!

I welcome your comments and feedback. If I had more time, I would have made the links in the PDF document clickable and perhaps tried to refine the design a bit more (maybe swapping the location of the ‘education’ and ‘skills’ columns to give his skills more prominence) but I figured that you should be able to design a one-page CV within 3 hours!

So without further ado, please see below for my attempt at a clean, simple and functional CV design that isn’t a word template but that isn’t trying to be overly clever or too “design-y” either!

Final design (click image to enlarge)

Read the article “How To Create A Great Web Design CV and Résumé” or download the PDF (PDF, 56kb).

I have had a few requests for the original source file for the CV and I am happy to release this under a Creative Commons licence, which means that you are free to download, share, copy, distribute, remix and adapt the work provided that you attribute the work to me.

Download the original source file (Illustrator .EPS file, 516kb).

- Niamh.

@nredmond

Susan Kare, the “Mother of GUI”:

Have you ever used a Macintosh computer? If yes, do you know the key on the bottom left of your keyboard that says  “command”. Can you picture the cloverleaf-like “infinite loop” symbol beside that? Or how about the the “Happy Mac” icon image to the left? Kane designed them.

OK, so you’re not a Mac user. Do you know the fonts Geneva, Chicago and Monaco? Kane created them.

How about Facebook – have you ever received or given a “gift” on Facebook? You know the pixel images that you can send to a friend? Kare designed many of the icons for the Facebook Gifts application.

So, you don’t use a Mac, you haven’t heard of those fonts and you’ve never been on Facebook?! Have you played Solitaire? Kare designed the graphics for the computer game.

Background:

A member of the original Apple team, Kare designed the user-interface for the first Macintosh computer. She pioneered pixel art and icon-making, both as a functional tool and a fine art. Clients of Kare’s design practice, Susan Kare User Interface Graphics, have included Autodesk, Facebook, Getty Images, Glam Media, Hyperion, IBM, Intel, Intuit, Motorola, Nokia, San Francisco Water & Power, Siebel, Swatch, and Weatherbug. Kare recently created a line of retail products for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She is currently the Creative Director at  Chumby, where she is working on the Chumby device, a handheld computer that runs software widgets.

“I believe that good icons are more akin to road signs rather than illustrations, and ideally should present an idea in a clear, concise, and memorable way. I try to optimize for clarity and simplicity even as palette and resolution options have increased.”

- Susan Kare.

Some other notable women in technology, media and design:

• Ada Lovelace: described as the “first computer programmer”.
• Hedy Lamarr: an actor and communications technology innovator. Co-inventor of the first form of spread spectrum, a key to modern wireless communication.
  
• Grace Hopper: an American computer scientist and naval officer. A pioneer in the field, she was the first programmer of the Mark I Calculator and developed the first compiler for a computer programming language. Known as the “Mother of COBOL.“
• Barbara H. Liskov: first American female Doctorate of Computer Science (1968).
• Roberta Williams: a well-known computer and video games game designer and arguably the most influential female gamer of her time. In March 2002, GameSpy listed Williams as one of the 30 Most Influential People in Gaming.
• Sally Floyd: most renowned for her work on Transmission Control Protocol.
  
• Anita Borg: founding director of the Institute for Women and Technology (IWT). Read about the “Pass-it-on” awards program.
• Jeri Ellsworth: created a Commodore 64 emulator within a joystick, called C64 Direct-to-TV.
  
• Mary Lou Jepsen: founding chief technology officer of One Laptop Per Child.
  
• Frances E. Allen: First female recipient of the ACM’s Turing Award.
• A notable/ intriguing mention for Frances Gabe: Inventor of the self-cleaning house!
• Barbara Askins: Inventor who developed a totally new way of processing film.
• Krisztina Holly: Helped develop the world’s first computer-generated, full-color reflection hologram.
• Muriel Cooper: A pioneer of design for digital media, who founded the Visible Language Workshop, part of MIT’s Media Lab, in 1975. Cooper worked with her students to create an electronic language for building ‘typographic landscapes‘ – complex, malleable documents in real time and three-dimensional space. Cooper gave concrete functions to such principles as layered information, simultaneous texts, and typographic texture. Cooper’s work was signified by a focus upon information design and the use of clean, simple lines. She was the first art director of the MIT Press — for which she also designed their logo.
• Red Burns: Considered by many to be the godmother of Silicon Alley, New York’s downtown multimedia hub. Burns is the head of New York University’s Interactive Technology Program. During the 1970s and 1980s, she designed and directed a series of telecommunications projects. Burns has received a number of awards including the Matrix, and Crain’s All-Stars Educator’s Award. She has also been named one of Newsweek’s 50 for the Future, one of Silicon Alley Reporter’s 100 Top Internet Industry Executives in New York and one of Crain’s 100 Most Influential Women in Business in New York. She received the Mayor of New York’s Award for Excellence in Science & Technology.
• Laurie Anderson: Experimental performance artist and musician. Invented several devices that she has used in her recordings and performance art shows and created a number of multimedia presentations.
• Elaine Bass: Film title designer for movies including Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear (1991) and Casino (1995). These titles were innovate at the time as they were conceived as films-within-a-film, narrative sequences that set the tone for the drama to follow.
• Marian Bantjes: Innovative typographer whose work has included projects for Saks Fifth Avenue, Stefan Sagmeister, Michael Bierut/Pentagram, the AIGA, Winterhouse, Bruce Mau Design, Rick Valicenti (Thirst), Print Magazine, wired, The New York Times, Wallpaper, The Guardian, seed, FontShop, Houghton-Mifflin, Little, Brown & Co., Knopf Books, Young & Rubicam Chicago, and numerous other publications and companies.
• Esther Dyson, the “Mother of Start-Ups”. Founding director of ICANN, author, serial entrepreneur and serial venture capitalist. Dyson was an early investor in Flickr, del.icio.us, Zedo, Technorati, and many more start-ups. “Release 2.0: A design for living in the digital age”, her 1997 book on how the Internet affects individuals’ lives helped me to think clearly about the “Digital Age” while studying for my undergraduate degree.
• Molly Holzschlag, the “Mother of Web Standards”. Lecturer, author and was named one of the Top 25 Most Influential Women on the Web. Molly promotes standards and best practices to create highly sustainable, maintainable, accessible, interactive and beautiful Web sites. Molly.com.
• Jessica Helfand: Critic, author, lecturer and designer of interactive media. A “founding writer” of the Design Observer weblog.
• Loretta Staples: Head of U dot I, specializing in the design of graphical user interfaces (GUI). She focused exclusively on the design of graphical user interfaces for 15 years at Apple Computer; in her own consultancy, U dot I; and most recently at Scient, an eBusiness strategy consulting firm. Her work has included specialised applications, conceptual models, and prototypes for emerging technologies.
• danah boyd: Social media expert, researcher at Microsoft Research New England, a Fellow at the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society and blogger. Apophenia.com

Other blogger’s that also chose to write about Susan Kare:

• Ada Lovelace Day: Susan Kare by Anjali Ramachandran
• Susan Kare by John Coulthart
• Ada Lovelace day: Featuring Susan Kare by Kat Neville
• Ada Lovelace Day 2009: Susan Kare by Nicole Peterson

The unfortunate thing in this case is that the product that was advertised is actually quite a good deal – Meteor have launched their “Broadband to go” mobile broadband service at a competitive rate in comparison to other operators, namely 3, Vodafone and O2 (although I do think that the current 5GB monthly limit is a bit low). However, perhaps a more unobtrusive ad would have caused me (and other potential customers) to check out the product voluntarily and have brought me to the product web page in a less unhappy and frustrated mood!

Social networking is not exactly new to politics but as the web has evolved so have the strategies and tactics of political campaign teams and the online profiles of politicians. One thing that has struck me as very interesting throughout the U.S. presidential campaign this year was the overall design factor behind each candidate’s brand, graphic identity and website. A topic that I will be looking at in greater detail in a later post but for now I want to focus on the way in which Obama in particular has utilised the web and social media to promote his campaign.

Obama is everywhere. He was the first candidate to start using widgets to make it easy for anyone to donate to the campaign through his social media tools and networking sites (see the screenshot above).  He was the first candidate to have a LinkedIn group and the first candidate with a profile on BlackPlanet.com, MiGente.com and GLEE.com. You can connect with Obama on all of the usual suspects too, of course -  Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter. The Washington Post have called Obama the “King of Social Networking”, the New York Times have labelled him the first “wiki-candidate”, there is even an official Obama iPhone application and a website, Barack 2.0, dedicated to analysing the Obama campaign’s use of social media from a small business perspective.

In previous political campaigns the online strategy seemed to be to get as many visitors to a candidates website as possible, a strategy not limited to politics, however, as many sites took a tunnel-vision approach to website hits. Since the web is a much busier, interactive, diverse, on-demand and collaborative world now, and while these social networking sites are still somewhat in their infancy, their value in reaching and engaging with people is another important performance metric. Not only does Obama’s web strategy reach people though, it calls them to action. All of Obama’s networking tools serve as extensions of interaction and user involvement centered around a clear call to action – get involved, volunteer and/ or donate.

I wasn’t expecting to receive an e-mail like the above.

And I was not expecting to be a 2nd LinkedIn connection to Obama either. But the question remains, regardless of the means what will the outcome be? Could the wiki-candidate be a wiki-President? We will find out very soon.

To be continued…

- Niamh

I saw the new Microsoft advertisement on tv earlier today. Microsoft’s response to Apple’s “I’m a PC… I’m a Mac” advertisement seems more like a retaliation than an innovation. “I’m a PC and I’ve been made into a stereotype.” Is that an admission that the smaller rival is winning or are they taking them head-on?

What’s clever about Microsoft’s ad is that it focuses on the everyday nature of the PC and the good they can do in the world. A nerdy PC-user is just a scene setter. The ad then quickly moves through lots of different types of PC users including an African school teacher, a blogger for Obama, a McCain supporter, people wearing jeans, designing jeans, and studying genes and not to mention some celebrity endorsement in the form of Pharell Williams, Eva Longoria and BG himself. This is a refreshing contrast to the Apple ads because they take place in a variety of different, colorful locations, with a variety of races and cultures, rather than existing within Apple’s clinical, white world.

Microsoft’s I’m a PC – Life Without Walls website features more information and a chance for users to become a PC on TV by uploading their own “I’m a PC’ videos, which Microsoft will use for their online advertising and TV campaigns.True, this could be considered a great Parthian shot at Apple but what about the people who use both PC’s and Mac’s? We’ve got 2 Mac’s and 4 PC’s in our house… what does that make us? *Niamh walks away saying “I’m a PC and a MAC”… Though, I’m more of a Mac! *

Watch the “I’m a PC” video on YouTube.