Public symbols and pictograms

Public signage/warnings and pictogram’s are a great sourse of inspiration. It’s a visual language that is meant to be understood by people all over the world. Take for instance these arrows, they communicate a direction without the need of language/words.

Toilet sign is a example of a sign/pictogram that is well known and comes in many variations. 

Other signs you might newer have seen before, but still you can understand them.

 

These are typical danger/warning pictogram’s telling you about various ways of dying or deforming your body. No language needed except for the visual.

You can get instructions by a series of pictogram’s, that for example enables you to operate this japanese fire extinguisher.

Most of the pictogram’s you See on a daily basis are usually simplistic. But sometimes you come across more advanced ones.

Speakers by Max & Truong

This is a pair of speakers that I and my friend Truong made. They are designed to go perfectly with your laptop. They enhance the sound from your laptops built in speakers, and give you mega surround from above. As a added bonus your screen goes from widescreen to not widescreen.

For the nice price of 890$ you can buy your own set.

Information Design and the Placebo Effect

On Maziar Zand’s blog you can read this nice text about imagined functions.

Information Design and the Placebo Effect

Click the link to read.

Som days with our new remote (Updated)

I’m not happy. So I had to hide some of the buttons just to see if it would help.

Our original TV remote now has these three functions left. ON/OFF, volume and signal-source.

I think this is a pretty odd situation, now I have to operate two remotes in order to watch TV. One for volume and ON/OFF, another to change the channel.

I think I will have to open the manual that came with the Get HD decoder in hope of a solution to this mess.

(Update)

And so after reading the manual it turns out that the top part of the Get remote is devoted to controlling the tv if you program it. (this kind of information is important and therefore it would have been nice if it where clearly advertised when you first resive this new remote) So now our dual wielding remote days are over? NO. They are not. Because our tv brand is not supported.

But the good thing is that the makers of this system did try to make it logical. Before I found this “program your remote” feature I were shoked by how badly this new HD tv system of the future were designed. But after this discovery it is slightly less bad.

But the menus and navigation between channels are still making me and my girlfriend mad. But this is for the next post.

Another interesting blog

Here is another interesting blog i did discover today.

Lots of nice thoughts and observations. Manny around the theme of “the web” and computer-program interfaces.

You find it here:

Useology

Høstutstillingen & my project

Today I went to the “høstutstillingen” (art exhibition) and I saw some artwork that made me think about my project.

They make me think about the times you meet machines that you have no idea about what their function is.

Today I found a interesting blog

Today i came over this interesting blog that is full of great thoughts, ideas and examples off god and bad designs. Manny funny things to.

You can find it here:

Commonsense Design

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You should also check out this blog, if you haven’t seen it before:

FailBlog

Lots of funny things.

A new remote in my home (Updated)

Today a new remote control did sneak into my home. Ai ai ai where do they all come form?

I can tell you where it came form, and that my friend is our new digital HD tv decoder from Get. (Witch I have been trying to escape from as long as I could) Nowadays you need a tv decoder to be able to see tv, because the old analog tv system is taken down.

So this means that to watch tv you now have to use two remotes instead of one. (and have an extra box under your tv) Twice the mess.

There is good intentions behind all of this I think. You get nice things like a guide where you can se what’s on the different channels right now, and what’s coming. And you get better video-quality and sound-quality. 

I just got it today but this is my first thoughts about this new stuff in my apartment:

1. The remote is crowded as usual. No surprises here.

2. The tv menus are a bit slow and unfamiliar.

3. I have to tiptoe around the channels I don’t have. Ai ai ai watch out.

4. I cant find a way to remove channels that are duplicated manny times. NRK for example has special versions for all the different parts in norway, really annoying when you try to zap trough the channels.

5. I like that i can make my own favorite list, but i can’t find a way to arrange them in the order I like. And I cant find a way to circle trough them without going into the menu. (So watch out for the channels you don’t own, or the duplicated ones.

(Update)

6. If you want to change the volume you have to use the tv remote. To change the channel you have to use the Get remote. Logical?

But this is just the first day. I will give it time and se what happens.

The remote controller experiment

The remote control is for me a mysterium. They often have so many buttons and functions that I get completely lost. It would be interesting to find out what other people think of this. Thats why I have started to make a user experiment.

Whit this experiment I want to find out if people would prefere manny buttons and functions, or a small amount of buttons and functions. Or perhaps something in between?

I’m still not sure about how this should be done, but I have an idea of masking all the buttons on a remote exept for the most important. (In varying degrees) This must be combined whit intervues and question forms before and after the masking of the remote.

This way of masking the remote controller have a problem, you often end up with an odd button placement. And what are the important buttons? Do you need symbols, text, both or nothing to communicate the different functions? This is just some of many unanswered questions.

If you have thoughts or ideas feel free to comment me, or maybe you would like to be part of the experiment when it´s ready?

Observation 13 Sep. // Apple TV

I and my girlfriend had a family birthday party in our apartment this saturday. We had familymembers in all ages. At he end of the party som of them wondered what our Apple TV could do. Then we showed them that we used it to rent movies, watch tv-shows and play music.

Suddenly smal children down to the age of 8 and adults were using it like they newer have don anything else in their life. It were surprising to se how quickly they had full control over the devise and browsed thousands of movies and tv-shows. I think that it’s fascinating how you can control so many features with such an simple remote.

Info:

Apple TV’s remotecontrol has six buttons, the menues ar on the tv screen so that you look at the tv and not the remote.