frontstepdesign

Bjarke Ingels - listening to the client is the way to good design

Terrific TED Talks video by star-chitect Bjarke Ingels.  

I'm very encouraged (and jealous! I want to learn how to make movies, too!) to see this sort of presentation.  I don't think that the conventional magazine can really do the job, in comparison to a good video.  And now that we have the web - it's really easy to share.

Some outtakes I really like:

"Yes is More" - that solutions come more usefully from listening and brainstorming and 'breeding' of different good ideas, than by establishing rules to exclude solutions.

"Sustainability seems to be this neo-Protestant idea that it has to hurt to do good" - what about examples that improve quality of life?

I also like his humility...

"we didn't think that (our proposal) looked like anything in the north of Sweden...the Swedish jury didn't think so either, so we lost."  But they recycled the idea for China, given the resemblance to the Chinese character meaning 'people', which came from a Chinese businessman who saw the scheme.  So after "scaling the building up three times to Chinese proportions"...

Shanghai mayor Chen Liangyu called the scheme "a way to bridge the gap between the ancient wisdom of China" (as symbolized by the broad connection at base) and its high-reaching future.  "We obviously profoundly agree with him..."

See, listening to how people interpret your work is really important.  What you intend is not as important as what they experience.

Management challenge - A long letter to an enthusiastic new designer

Once again, my SCA involvement is providing some nice practice for the business world.

I've been asked by a young person to help him learn about graphic design, for the local chapter's website.

For some reason, the website changed, after the previous webmaster left.  I'm not sure why it was felt necessary - but what needs to be an informative, easy-to-use, attractive web presence now looks like an 80's metal band tee shirt.  Nothing wrong with that per se...but the SCA is about historic recreation, of the pre-1700 kind.  (Not so much the late-twentieth century.)

I don't want to discourage him, and I don't want to do the work for him - but I do want to show him how to find some examples of excellence, and I want him to understand:

• how strongly design work communicates.
• what the group is about to the larger organization, which has to coordinate future events with group members and needs information; 
• what the group is about to the public from whom it recruits and to which it represents the larger organization, so it has a duty to be fairly serious; 
• what the group is about to its own members, who would like a place to have group photos and history recorded, so they can brag on the group.

I've written up the last three points, with suggestions on how that might be done, but for the first one, I need to collect an updated list of websites.  When I was first figuring out how to think about unattended web communications (which is of course what a site or a blog is), I spent a lot of time reading the pros and just surfing around, collecting good ideas, developing an eye.  Of course that list will be very different, and again, I don't have to do the work for him...but he needs to be shown, "this here?  This is very good.  So is this.  Not so much this other."

After sending him a short email asking essentially, "how serious about help are you?" and getting back a "give me everything!" enthusiastic response, I dumped the following on him.  We shall see how what he does with it.

First - I can see that you have lots of ideas, and you like being creative.  That's fantastic! Consider this:

 

1. It is great to find your passion and work towards learning everything about it, but practicing your passion indiscriminately is not a stepping stone to success.
2. One really good idea is always better than six.  Always see if you can accomplish what you need with one creative idea.

 

General advice for you:

Establish your own website, and try things out there.  Keep everything, so you can see how you've grown.  Test things.  This is a good place for your phoenix.  This site will become your portfolio, with time.

 

Spend as much time looking at other people's work as you do playing on your own.  Look at all the other Shire sites in our kingdom.  Look at ones from other kingdoms.  Join a "webmasters" list, if it exists, and ask what sites are really good.  (If it doesn't exist, consider starting one!)

 

Look at non-SCA sites, thinking about how they work - not from a code perspective…you'll learn code and tricks as you go.  From an organizational viewpoint.  This is much harder to be good at, and is truly ARCHITECTURAL.  I have several architecture school classmates who do information architecture now - the skills are quite transferable.

 

Criticisms of the website as it stands today:

 

It is busy - too many ideas going on at once.  You have a fire.  And you have a fantasy phoenix.  And you have a shire device.  And you have a lot of text.  And pictures of people, or book images…you get it now.  Too much competing with each other.  First, cut down the types of content to the absolute bare essentials, then add ONE pretty thing.  For example: Greet's Middle Ages has just the brooch on the top - which I chose carefully to represent my persona focus, and that's why it has that blurb describing it.  I chose the title font to support that persona.  I chose the color to support it - woad is navy blue.  One idea: 6thc Kent.  What is the one idea for the PG website:?  I'd suggest: PG has interesting people.

 

It doesn't look "historical" - "metal band t-shirt" comes to mind.  Nothing wrong with that in itself, but it's not useful for someone's first view of the SCA.  Remember, every little design choice you make communicates - help yourself by reducing the number of choices, and then you reduce the opportunities for MIS-communication.

 

Many links don't work - Google "Firefox link checker", this will help you find broken links to fix.

 

Remember to keep your screen image size/resolution to 800x600 - this will help download time and many people are limited to smaller screens - laptops, etc.  Reduce photos to jpgs of a size that will allow them to load fast.

 

Choose clear fonts over fancy fonts - what you're doing with one fancy initial is a good approach to a fancy fonts, but you could get away with one per page.  It's period!  The study of fonts is one worth doing, by the way, and there's links below that will help you.

 

My own approach would be, take it or leave it:

Theme: Phoenix Glade has interesting people.

Collect a lot of photographs of PG people doing stuff.  If they're old, that's okay, though of course keep an eye out for new photo opps.  Match a photo to each topic of information: fighter practice, project night, events, demos, etc.  Stick all of those photos in one montage, and put that on the splash page.  That and the shire arms would be the only graphics on the first page - do everything else with LIMITED color and LIMITED fonts.  Make the montage an image map, with popup captions sending people to other pages: a fighter practice page, etc.  Duplicate these links on the basic page, so that people who can't see an image map can still use them.

 

On the second level, decorate each page with the SAME photo from the first page.  Repetition  helps people see things they might have missed, and be sure they're in the place they meant to go.  You could add some explanatory things here - like for fighting, a sidebar blurb(like on my Kentish brooch) about knights wearing white belts, if your picture has a knight fighting.  Something that makes the picture more understandable and interesting to people who don't know what's happening in it.  For project night, you could have a cropped picture of an illuminated scroll, together with people working on that, or maybe the people picture is of people casting, then a picture of the museum piece they were working towards.  Add a blurb to explain, and then have text about project night, where/when it is, maybe a list of things that people have made there.  The top ten things, with lots of variety.  Also you could list the people who have done those things.

 

Do not make people hunt for stuff in ordinary problem-solving tasks-they get annoyed.  Make a list for yourself of what the problem-solving tasks are, and try to minimize the hunting.  Ask for help with this - it's very hard to design something entirely from one point of view - boy, do I know this!

 

I've thrown a lot at you, and I don't expect you to understand it all right away, or make changes right away.  Please don't be discouraged.  You're making all the common beginner mistakes, which means you're progressing along the path, which is good.  Keep your eyes open, and try to maintain a beginner's mind - imagine how things look to people who don't know the things that you know.

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Some pro websites, which will help you with content as well as design:

 

http://www.alistapart.com/

http://www.webmonkey.com/

http://www.w3schools.com/

http://typedia.com/

 

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Some SCA-functional things to think about - this is where the ARCHITECTURE  comes back in.  (I know corpora has a bunch of web-specific requirements to incorporate, too - nobody said this'd be easy.  :D)  Writing this framework gave me the idea for the photos-of-people-based approach described above.  You may want to write your own, but you're free to use this.

 

Things an SCA group's website needs to accomplish:

 

MOST IMPORTANT - Serve the kingdom/populace about the group.

NEXT MOST IMPORTANT - Serve the public about the group.

LAST MOST IMPORTANT - Serve the group about the group.

 

Serve the kingdom/populace about the group:

 - because the group holds events, and outside people rely on the website to get information, and to get there.  The Shire isn't a shire if events aren't supported by attendance, and attending SCAdians are a lot less work than newbies at an event.  Right now, especially, PG is getting kingdom/populace support, so as a designer, give that interest what it needs to support PG.

--Event information and contact info for that event.

--Contact information about group officers, for future planning.

 

Serve the public about the group:

 - Recruiting.  Let's examine this further - if I were completely ignorant, what are the fewest and most basic things I need to know:

--Funny clothes and strange activities are cool.  (Need compelling pictures of this, without digging.)

--What events there are to do, when are they, and how to get there: Fighter practice/demos/project night/events.

--Contact information for further questions.  Reference to Yahoo! List.

 

Serve the group about the group:

-Recordkeeping: business meeting minutes, historian stuff (newspaper clippings, photo archive,etc.)

-Contact info - this is already covered by the above.

-Maybe other things?  Not sure, this is just a first pass in my own thinking.

Building things

I've comforted myself in the professional doldrums of the recession with a couple of small building projects, in support of my historic re-enactment hobby.  One is a chair, supposedly of 5thc Irish design, called a tuam, and the other is a tent called a geteld, based on drawings in 8th and 9thc manuscripts, of Anglo-Saxon encampments.

I hadn't done woodworking in a long while, and my enabler is usually a metalsmith, but we managed this little chair fairly well, and it was good to stretch those skills again.

Amazing what $15 can get you, with a bit of design.  More about the chair here.

Ditto the modeling of the tent - I'm going to be sewing this myself, and the structure is simply a pair of 2x3 9' uprights with a 12' 2x4 ridge.  Only 10' of the ridge actually spans; the rest supports a waterproofing detail; those little ears shelter the join of the triangular side "bells" to the basic A-frame wedge.  Here's what it should look like when done:

(One has the choice of lifting an entire side on more poles, as shown here, or opening one bell end, as I did on the graph paper model.)

More pics of the tent model here, with information about its historic precedents.

I am encouraged by more jobs being posted, and I am certainly applying...my friends want me employed, as I'm making intimidating progress with my camp home!

Bleh. I am skeered.

So the economy is improving, which I can tell by the number of job postings. In fact, I'm behind on the job postings I want to apply for.

But today I am scared to do so. What if I get nothing? That's depressing. On the other hand, what if I get somebody really interested in me, and I feel like I can't say no? What if the "first best thing" turns out to not be a great thing long term? Again? I'd really like to settle down now, and put down professional roots, and be part of something significant...gee, I sound like I'm talking about a relationship, don't I?

Okay, maybe the relationship stuff that I've learned over the past year could help. I don't have to stay in the first best thing that comes along. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it has to give me what I need ...which is...what, from a job?

- stability, aka, enough money to live alone, and assurance that support might continue. I know what this number is.
- an environment where I feel I'm able to keep up with the state of the art, so as to remain healthy in the job market in future, so I can respect myself. I know what these factors are, and have started working on my own, and even if I didn't get optimal job support with them, I could continue to work on them on my own.

Funny that I have no problem thinking, "well, I'll just see how it goes, and enjoy the ride," when it comes to dating, but for work I'm so desperate to have my experience conform to some mythical idea of how I think it ought to be, that I'm building terrifyingly hovering castles.  With dragons.

What are the names of the dragons?
 - Hobbling: who prevents me from trying things that I'm sure would help efficiency and quality.
 - Stretch: who dumps me into far more responsibility than I have any idea how to subdivide.
 - Miscalculation: who somehow sees something different in me than I am, and gives me jobs that I am not good at.
 - Loneliness.

What are my strategies and tactics?  What support do I need?

Tactics (always easier to see than strategy):
 - Honesty and divulgence and self-directed homework.  Joining groups.  Starting groups.

Support:
 - To take care of myself - thinking about all these changes makes me tired, so clearly I need to recharge.  Create some boredom that will want alleviating with job/location change excitement.  Back to P90X and the plodding sort of mood.  Reading fiction.  Lots of anti-oxidants.  Going to bed on time.  Hanging out with people who challenge me with space (for me to fill).

Strategy:
 - To try not to take each application so seriously.  I have been obsessing about sending the best possible response in, and clearly that has only brought me emotional wear.
 - To imagine how my well-rounded background as a community-based architect and significant side interests might translate into a lateral move.  Must brainstorm these, to get them out on the table.

Scope - what to design?

(note: this post is part of a series regarding an imaginary project that Sarah is designing.)

While judging student projects this spring, I found myself wondering, how do the instructors get inspiration for their imaginary client requirements.  I suppose ideas come from everywhere, as ideas will, but now I'm in a similar spot - I need to set up some client requirements for a project that will test me, as real projects do.

Let's go back to my Real World Issues (I'll discuss each of these at length as we go on, and I might find a couple more to add).

Density - Much of the world lives and works in an urban situation that's a few stories high - not the sky-high Futuristic utopias of the mid-20th century, but quite a bit denser than the standard one-story-because-elevators-are-too-expensive-but-cars-are-cheap American sprawl.  As density is frequently controlled by local zoning, I'll have to make something up...or research a particular place, perhaps.

Reduction of energy consumption - a no-brainer, as we go forward.  What's a good limit of energy consumption?  What does Europe use?

Climate weirdness, particularly dealing with warm weather and water - As I've had most of my experience on a very warm coastline very close to sea level, dealing with existing buildings that were NOT taking their risks seriously...I'm sensitive to this.  Also, I've made a little collection of vernacular buildings from hot+humid places: Queensland, India, North Florida cracker houses, Italy, Auburn's Rural Studio.  I'd like to look at these as a group, and figure out how to spec what works, for a modern building delivery process.  Okay, so the particular place will have some warm weather.

Durability in both the everyday and the exceptional stress - Everyday = maintenance.  Exceptional = earthquake & hurricane.  Let's say we need to withstand both...I'll choose a position on each building code scale relative to structural resistance.  (Tornados and fire will just have to rely on insurance.)

Flexibility of use - I think buildings are too expensive, in consumed labor value and materials, to say permanently: "This is a commercial building, forever."  Many cities are discovering the value of multi-use, so site-specific zoning needn't limit a building's use.  What is involved in asking a building to be this flexible into the future?  How much more money does it cost to maintain that flexibility?

Demonstrability of value, in financial terms - Frankly, I have the least experience here, but I'm very interested in some new tools that are coming out to support LEED, etc. that promise to tell you how much money you save by having a white roof, etc.  I hope to at least construct some equations without too many variables about this project.

Materials sourcing (was resource maximization, but I think that term's too fuzzy) - As I'd like to use local materials, I'll need to choose a real location for the imaginary building.

Enchantment - I'm a lot happier when I'm in a pretty place, aren't you?  Christopher Alexander's book A Pattern Language and Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn are going to be helpful here - but honestly, any place that manages a tourist industry with a larger amount of non-tourist development will have lessons to share.

Starting a new project - for myself, this time

I'm planning a private study project, akin to another masters' level project.  Why?

• Unemployed, should take advantage of time to add skills and ponder big questions
• Need to practice LEED and Revit and hand drawing on something, so as to have proof of what my capabilities are now.

I'd like to address issues that I think the profession ought to be worrying about.

• Density - Urbanization will continue. 
• Reduction of energy consumption
• Climate weirdness, particularly dealing with warm weather and water
• Durability in both the everyday and the exceptional stress
• Flexibility of use
• Demonstrability of value, in financial terms
• Resource maximization
• Enchantment - so as to motivate reinvestment and maintenance, to not lose initial investment and continue to provide usefulness.

Precedents to use:

• Historic vernacular building - well tested.  

Can Revit/BIM make LEED affordable?

I'm not sure how apparent it's been from what makes it onto this blog...but I've been flailing around quite a bit, really, since its inception.  I'm a strong ox, I like to work hard on big projects...but it helps to know that the project will make a difference.

Sustainable building is a Big Project, for sure - the trick up till now has been, "how do you know you're making a difference?"  Up until now I had absolutely no idea how to get to that knowledge, let alone prove it to someone asking about investment.

I'm currently studying for my LEED-GA exam.  I like to write flashcards of material, not only because I really read something when I have to take condensed notes on it, but because then I can sort the data in different ways.  In piles on the floor.  Very satisfying.

The LEED Green Guide (primary source material for the exam) is helpfully cross-indexed for this.  I was about halfway through Indoor Environmental Quality, writing down standards for Entryway Particulate Control Systems (doormats!) when I realized..."can Revit count these?"

Which set me back on my heels.

There's a lot of counting and other metrics in LEED 3.0.  Many credits require the design team to prove that the building is really using fewer resources, and can be expected to continue using fewer resources.  This is great for the earth, and for the building's managers.  (also apparently great for lawyers.  apparently everything's always great for lawyers.)

But it seems expensive for designers.  Credit for construction is tough to get now, and I don't have a job.  I want some larger firm to hire me (I want access to more data than I can collect alone).  Might I be more marketable if I understood how to use the latest tools to satisfy the latest requirements as cheaply (i.e. easily) as possible?

Here be-eth a Seth Godin-style Dip.

It appears to have several parts:

1.  What is required?  (Learn LEED.  Check.)

2.  What sort of metrics will satisfy requirements?  (March through LEED and assign metrics to credits.)

2a.  Maybe I need to bone up on applied maths to satisfy requirements?  (Do more reading on "Turning Numbers Into Knowledge", recheck Tim Ferris' magical statistical testing skills, ask around for opinions)

3.  Which software tools can help?  (Have broad knowledge of various software capabilities - check.)

4.  Can this help be set up in such a way as to be useful on multiple projects with a minimum of retooling?  (Need some beta projects to run testing.)

I can, and will do this work on my own, because it plainly Needs To Be Done...but man, I'd like to do it for a company.  Anybody out there want to hire me for this work - do you see the competitive advantage?

Managing scarcity

(warning: deep thoughts ahead, pull on those hip-waders)

I had an interesting talk with a friend about a book he's reading, on medieval food habits. He was telling us about how people would be fed according to the amount of work they did that day, not so much rank (if they were permanent residents of the place). Apparently food was dear enough that an early notion of calorie rationing was constantly in effect. 

Conjoined with judging a competition entry on Renaissance aprons that cited linen being allocated for them 4 times a year…this got me thinking about scarcity and abundance. 

We know we're heading into times where things that have been fairly abundant will be scarcer. Oil, water. Right now, credit and employment are scarce. I heard an economist arguing on Jon Stewart's Daily Show last night that true value is scarce, we just don't have a good way to measure that yet. (As this was somebody who predicted our current state, I'm concerned.) 

So I'm pondering scarcity - what else is scarce now? It isn't physical stuff. It isn't really energy, either…the market is solving that. It sure isn't information, or entertainment. Technology has solved all of these supply chains. What could technology not solve?

Attention, perhaps? Because we all have the same number of hours of awakeness, and yet the clamoring for that time is deafening…and that's just from people who think they can sell advertising to capitalize on those channels. The quiet options are what make me nervous…what am I missing that's wonderful out there, that could change my life, that will give me the solutions I want… 

Well, there's another one, then…emotional security is scarce, too. I think lots of people try to soothe their emotional discontent with online games, food, etc.

Love is scarce…I am so happy when I get to a gathering of friends, and so relaxed when I know I am a welcome part of a dinner conversation, or a puppy pile.

What to do about it all?**  Therapy strategies.

Devices for self-listening: 
- meditation
- journaling
- deep conversations
- education and experimentation opportunities

Activities to refine direction:
- editing intentions
- research

Interacting with others:
- kindness in thought
- volunteering

**which is supposing that one ought to try.  I don't see how I'd not try, that's my own morality.

Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn, in video

I had no idea this had been made!  Go now, and see why architects don't have the greatest reputations for being sensible thinkers...

Google video link here

Stewart Brand's book, "How Buildings Learn", would be on my required reading list, should I ever teach an architecture studio.  This video version is a great interpretation.

Eric Owen Moss gets caught up in information overload

I listened to Seth Godin's presentation on his book "Tribes" recently, and one of the many useful things I got out of it is that we are really in the post-advertising age.  The idea that throwing a branded message at a selected market over and over until it gives in and purchases, is dying, because we're all overloaded with channels and alternatives and avoidance technology like Tivo.  We just turn off.

So why is Eric Owen Moss proposing a new and improved billboard?

(Image from archdaily.com)

One of my student projects had to do with how television could affect our lives.  This looks like it could have been from our studio...and that was 1991.  We didn't even have YouTube.

I wonder what will happen in phase 3 of this creature's life?  Phase 1 will be what the poetic description says, a place for "artistic display" which we all know will be gradually taken over by Phase 2, corporate sponsorship.  So will anyone react against that, I wonder?  Does Culver City have Times Square-like ambitions for its "redeveloped zone"?  Their motto is "The Heart of Screen-Land."  Will the advertisers get measureable returns on the investment?

Perhaps another of Godin's messages from "Tribes" might apply here: You can build a tribe whose anthem is "we're so exclusive" or you can build one that feels "everyone can contribute".  This structure seems to have potential for either, just in its management.  I think there's a real opportunity in either direction, for a top-down beloved expression, or a bottom-up useful (if not profitable) landmark.

Top down: The city (who does this thing belong to, anyway?) or some other public institution designates someone to keep this thing full of wonderful content.  That person is an editor, and they gatekeep what goes on the media tower - it's exclusive, so everyone wants to make something that 'deserves' the exposure.  I daresay the higher the artistic standards, the more successful it will be.

Bottom up: Everybody gets to put something up, for a price.  Sometimes PDAs go up, sometimes inspirational messages, sometimes marriage proposals.  I don't think this could be profitable, because there's a lot to look at, and the challenge in designing billboards and signage is keeping the message simple enough to communicate to the speed of travel.  Even for pedestrians.

But if they try to straddle the fence with how it's run, it'll just be 'that weird 5 story billboard on the edge of downtown'.  We don't need Stewart Brand to tell us what happens to things that aren't loved.  They die wasteful and ugly deaths, until they're reincarnated by the market to be useful.  "Wasteful" is not what this high-performance phase of the Information Age needs to be encouraging.