May 31, 2006

I had my first stained glass workshop last night and I think I may have found a new passion.

I forgot how relaxing and at home I feel making art in a common studio space. It's fucking fun people. It doesn't hurt that there's this really nice and eminently genuine french (from france) young lady instructor with the hands of a ninety-year-old gendarme to help me and to make fun of me when I ask for a band-aid.

"C'est le verre Miriam, tu va etre blesser tout le temps. Tu peut pas avoir une band-aid chaque fois!"

There are three other people in the class and we all listened to the french jazz radio station and learned to score and tear glass and then how to trace cartoons for the learners window we will be producing.

Tearing glass is really interesting. You first score the glass with a little wheeled cutter, then it' s not really like breaking the glass into two peices, the closest analogy is tearing. You grip the glass on either side of the score between your thumb and your curved index finger and then just pull out swiftly. At first I couldn't do it, because I wasn't putting the right pressure on the motion or something, so I could sweat and struggle and my glass stayed as solid as could be. Then suddenly by acident I pulled the right way (quickly and without much effort), and the glass broke along the score like it was made of spun suger. What I had forgotten about learning to use your body a certain way is that once you discover a way to do something, it becomes hardwired really quickly, it's not so cerebral as other types of learning.

Of course we are practising now with clear window glass which is very simple to tear and to score. Coloured glasses all have different tempers because they are a mix of minerals, and dyes and all that. So once I have moved up in the class I will probably become more frustrated.

All in all though, in comparison to my driving lessons the stained glass course was a complete success.

May 30, 2006

Thanks to Wanda the talking fish;

Let me take you a button-hole lower.
-- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"

May 29, 2006

What is user centered design? How is it different than regular design? What is the end goal of user-centric design?

"The key to successful web applications is how much it puts the user in the center of the process". What this means is that any design, for any webpage or web-application needs to take into consideration the user, not the looks.
- webreakstuff.com

Art design: How does ths website reflect my or my clients aesthetic? Closer relationships to vanity publicshing or fine art.

User-centric design: What are we offering our users. How do we make it clear to our users how they can maximiaze ther experience of our website.

When is it important/neccesary
When you are offering a service or creating a website that requires users in order to accrue value (most websites).

When is less important/neccesary

When your website is primarily an aesthetic vehicle without the requirements of clarity, comprehensability, and usability that a site with a broad user base requires.

commonly misunderstood to be user-centric when they are not

tagging

Tags require the search query before we know what we’ll be searching for. Tags require people to create the map before they’ve traversed the territory; they suggest the map is the territory, a veritable impossibility considering the territory constantly changes.

In cases where we’re not sure where we’re going, we develop default categories, nebulous ‘other’ realms, gigantic formless piles with little use beyond remembering that we wanted to pile something somewhere. Tufte points to ancient mapmakers and their habit of proclaiming “here there be monsters”, and for librarians, certainly, these piles house the uncategorizable bugbears that refuse to acknowledge existing taxonomies.

It’s a much more natural human instinct to create a pile and name it later once we have a better idea about the pile’s boundaries. People prefer traversing the territory before drawing the map. If the map really came first, Lewis and Clarke would never have found the Northwest passage because Columbus would never have found America.

- thinking and making.com

User-centric doesn't mean that design disapears or is replaced by a blank slate on which the users collectively write their preferences. It means the needs of the user and their preferences are worked into the design and given equal consideration alongside the end-goals of the site manufacterer or the limitations of the technology.

Reflections on what background philosophic or social positions a design manifests phycially through it's user interface.

Power distance : How much can a user do, how much security does that site display directly, what are the directives for the first tme user, how clear is the help are their roles displayed next to a users name. Is there a recognizable leadership structure ( site moderator site admin) within the sites visible framework, can you tell how many people are online with you? can you hide or the fact that you are online or not

May 27, 2006

Oh jeez, I totally have the fear smell. I have the fear smell mixed with the Euraka driving schools student driver car smell.

To divert from the smell issue, the driving school car looks like it has been rolled in a bag of week-old french-fries. I am no stranger to dirt. I live with two animals and I am not really a shelf-lining, bleach under the sink at all times having, girl. But still, I have standards, however low, and that car did not in any way, shape or form live up to them.

On top of the fear smell, and the memory of car-dirt on my legs. There is the equally problematic memory of Claude, my genial if grubby driving instructors BO smell. A BO smell which quickly turned into fear smell as he realized that I am going to drive like a bat-shit-crazy old lady probably forever and there is nothing he nor anyone else can do about it.

HOLY CRAP DRIVING IS SCARY. How are any of us safe out there? Driving a car is like trying to negotiate the world with a 100-foot wide piece of metal strapped to your waist. Oh no wait, that 's exactly what it is. Only the damn thing has an engine.

Areas which need improvement:

Accelerating
Stopping
Turning
Going straight
Slowing down
Speeding up

The only thing which needs no improvement is my capacity to imagine terrible accidents where everyone involved ends up horribly disfigured and angry and the accident scene is a towering inferno of auto-damage. And of course, it's all my fault.

Question:

- How do you pay attention to all that crap, kids on bikes, pregnant ladies, flowers, dogs, ice-cream trucks, fucking a-hole montreal drivers who swerve around you just because you happen to be coming to a kinda slow stop on a four way stop sign with no oncoming traffic from any direction..

Okay, the real reason I should just turn in my learners permit right now and resign my self to a life of public transportation and passenger seats...

I wore flip-flops to my lesson.