I love Craigslist. With a regional filter, it provides a window into the lives of the single, the unemployed, and the junk ridden people you never knew lived all around you. For me it is a constant source of entertainment. But more than entertainment, it has changed the way I think about buying the things I need, and how I think about product lifetimes.
Less than four miles from our office, McDonalds has built its first “earth-friendly” restaurant which opened on July 14th. I love everything this new place represents. I can charge my electric car at a charging station while I eat my burger at a table made from sunflower seed board. I’ll have the benefit of natural light provided by solatubes while I enjoy the educational video kiosk on the restaurant’s design features. The exterior materials are just as healthy as those used on the interior. For more details, check out http://www.mcnorthcarolina.com/7501/.
It’s great that McDonalds is taking this step. Now if they would just make the food as healthy for me as the table I’m eating on is healthy for the environment, they might see me swing by for lunch from time to time.
It’s no secret at HumanCentric that I love animals. I regularly bring in my own dog to hang out while I work, and I usually have a foster dog that tags along as well. Thank goodness HumanCentric is a dog-friendly workplace.
So given my love for animals and my love for beautifully-designed products, I was so excited to stumble upon this company: Wetnöz. They were featured in the summer 2009 issue of Innovation magazine. How great are their products? I completely agree with their company’s vision: that people spend lots of time selecting furniture and accessories to beautify their homes, and that should include pet products.
I don’t really collect anything. When I was a kid, I collected baseball cards, but so did everybody else. I do, however, have a growing stack of NYRB Classics at my house. What are NYRB Classics? They’re books. Specifically, they are “discoveries, the kind of books that people typically run into outside of the classroom and then remember for life.” Why do I have so many? In part, because the books are often fascinating reads. But mostly because I love their design.
As I was walking from my desk to the company break room, I noticed the variety of ways in which my colleagues and I have “annotated” computer equipment that we use. Here are a couple of examples:
When HumanCentric was asked to shoot video for a project, Alex and I got pretty excited. We set out to experiment, gathering materials for a video setup.
The project required footage of ice and water in motion. Our challenge (and the fun part) was filming in a way that reflected the product’s visual language.
Recently, I had a turning point in my realizations that important facts are accidentally getting tossed out with the daily brain spam. I recently gave a gentleman directions to a Sandwich shop 20 minutes away only to spot one just a few yards away on my drive home. This was the same Sandwich shop where I had met friends and family countless times over the past decade and it had magically evaporated from my recollection.
So what do I do now? I know for one thing that it’s absolutely crucial to personally forbid myself from giving anyone directions even if it’s to my own house. But what or who will be my overloaded brain’s next victim? I remember hearing on the radio about how people in the horse and buggy days usually only knew 50-70 people at best. I take comfort in knowing that this could be a viable excuse that I plug after telling people about the “Panera incident.” And just when I’ve started contemplating the impossible (canceling cable TV and the internet in order to free my mind of information spam), I find reassurance from some quick web-browsing. Apparently, Harvard Medical School has brought to light the American Journal of Public Health’s claims that “A rich social life may also be more emotionally and intellectually stimulating, exercising the brain and fostering better neuronal connections and even nerve cell growth” (“Social networks and memory”, Harvard Medical School). This is very a good thing. I keep searching as I’m sure I can feel my tattered memory repairing itself with each passing second. The most inspirational information I come across is an abstract for a book called “The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory”. The abstract states that “working memory capacity-long thought to be static and hardwired in the brain-can be improved by training, and that the increasing demands on working memory may actually have a constructive effect: as demands on the human brain increase, so does its capacity.” This is outstanding!
Now I can say that I’m feeling quite hopeful that although my brain might be lacking in long term memory recollection it is by no means “full.” I can continue my daily smorgasbord of brain spamming and feel reassured that I won’t permanently forget about my first car or last weeks trip to the museum. As for temporarily forgetting about who I was with, what was said, where it happened… that’s what friends are for. I’ll just have to start conversations with a pleasant disclaimer like “I don’t know if this was you, but do you remember when we…”.
When we built the HumanCentric website, we wanted to take advantage of Flash’s animation and drawing capabilities. However we didn’t want to alienate search engines (“Search Engine Optimization”, or “SEO”) and users who do not have Flash or JavaScript enabled. We took advantage of SWFObject, SWFAddress and PHP, and we devised a method for showing the same content regardless of browser capability.
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Being vertically challenged can pose a number of obstacles in my life. For instance, I can’t reach the top or the next to the top shelf in my kitchen cabinets. I can’t turn the fan on in the living room or my porch. I don’t hang pictures at the “appropriate” height for the general population and the list goes on.
One thing that was very important to me when purchasing a car last year was to find one that fit my needs:
All of the needs above were those I have never been able to find in a vehicle that was large enough to fit four family members and a good deal of luggage. Some of the various cars I test drove included:
HumanCentric provides design solutions with.a focus on products, users and goals. Our process brings designers and researchers together to implement a customized approach for user and business needs. These are our thoughts on process, practice and life.
200 MacKenan Drive
Cary, NC 27511
P 866.356.9023
F 919.481.0310
www.humancentric.com
info@humancentric.com
