Here is a little Twitter usage info graphic i made as part of some documentation… If you wanna use it, go ahead.

Unstuck

Unstuck is an interactive application version of the 2004 book, Unstuck: A Tool for Yourself, Your Team, and Your World by Keith Yamashita and Sandra Spataro.

This is App is interesting, because it isn’t just shifting from print media to a digital, for example an ebook. It is actually utilizing the change-over to a tablet device, there is a reason behind it and a solid use for the new format.

Put simply (in print format) they identified the symptoms of being stuck, introduced readers to the Serious Seven states of “stuck”—from “Overwhelmed” to “Exhausted” to “Alone”—and offered dozens of in-the-moment tools, techniques, and examples to generate immediate ideas, whether you needed to back up in order to move forward, motivate a struggling team, change your goals, or inspire yourself with a clearer picture of where you’re headed.

The app in the same way as the book, takes this same process and uses prompts in a digital format to guide the user to become “unstuck”. A nice, clean, understandable reason to actually use the new format of a tablet device.

The core idea of the app is: Why do the most brilliant people get stuck? How do they identify that they’ve hit a roadblock–personal or professional?

After 18years of business consultancy, Keith Yamashita co-founder of the successful firm SYPartners aims to help people find clarification and become unstuck. Using the tools he has developed over this time, havingworked with business giants such as IBM, Sony, Disney, HP, and Nike.

 

 

 

 

 

 

From this perspective, being stuck isn’t a pejorative term, but rather means that what you’re trying to achieve is working out in a different, unexpected way. The app SYPartners is developing visualizes the decision-making process for getting yourself unstuck, and exposes intuitive actionable knowledge that can unlock new behavior.

 

• If you can focus on how you got stuck, it is easier to identify in other areas in your life what’s blocking you.
• Really brilliant people can find and know what is getting them stuck clearly and without negativity.
• The ‘Unstuck’ app will lift people up and inspire them to adopt creative behaviors.
• It identifies which archetype of ‘stuck’ you are in that moment, and suggests a specific tool per type.
• The app is a part of a community of experts who will lend advice to help people get unstuck.

The application for ipad will be released soon, and more information is available at unstuck.com

IL FAIT LUNE

The Blackbird

 

Electric Car Design – Previously mad, made possible.

Electric vehicles are exciting. Not just from an engineering perspective, but also how it affects the overall design of a large-scale production road vehicle.

The way in which a gas fueled vehicle has been designed over the years has been completely affected by the way in which the classic engine must be considered by those creating the overall shape, and design of an automobile.

This is so exciting when i think about attending auto shows as a kid, and staring at futuristic concept vehicles in complete awe.

A simplification of the overall design of a mass-production car is possible. Concepts which seemed like fantasy, are now a lot more viable and workable ideas. 

• Working cycles 
• Cylinder arrangement 
• Cooling 
• Compression ratio 
• Ignition

Cars are becoming a lot more focused on their CPU and ECU unit than ever before. And like with many other technologies, this will open up a whole new realm for integration of innovative ideas.

Different EV’s could in theory have a “shell” which may be removable, and easily replaceable. There are a lot of different variations and concepts, ranging from the completely hideous Nissan Pivo 2. To current designs that are really cars designed for the traditional petrol engine and have an electric engine under the hood, like the Nissan Leaf. Which to a certain extent seems like an exercise in bridging between petrol and electric.  Here are some examples of workable EV’s which, although at first seem very strange, make complete sense. The Renault Twizy (a little bit smart car), and the Volkswagen Nils, which is very efficient, numbers based and weirdly practical.

Renault Twizy Volkswagen Nils

Digital Sweater Creations

In preparation for the winter.

Much more elegantly put together:

Alba Prat: Digitalized

Found over at designboom

Scott Snibbe @ The Science Gallery

Scott Snibbe @ The Science Gallery

September 20^th 2011

Scott Snibbe’s talk at the Science Gallery was fantastic. Opening the talk he spoke about his inspirations and what exactly drives his thinking. Creating interactive experiences is what Snibbe is best known for. Looking at how both people interact with each other, with creative digital media and interactive media itself.

The talk included insights into Biophilia. Biophilia, is free to download from the App Store, and has been dubbed as “an extraordinary and innovative multimedia exploration of music, nature and technology.” Biophilia is released as ten in-app downloads that are accessed through a three-dimensional galaxy, the album’s theme song Cosmogony.

Created in collaboration with Scott Snibbe and her longtime design collaborators M/M Paris, the app takes a new approach to the traditional music release. Lyrics, animation, and music scores with karaoke playback are also included.

By tapping on stars within the constellations you can access each in-app purchase which includes a combination of album art, games, interactive music notation which you can pan through in realtime, lyrics, and essays that explore Björk’s inspirations for the track.

Björk has worked with artists, designers, scientists, instrument makers, writers and software developers to create an extraordinary multimedia exploration of the universe and its physical forces, processes and structures – of which music is a strong part.

Each in-app experience is inspired by and explores the relationships between musical structures and natural phenomena, from the atomic to the cosmic. You can use Biophilia to make and learn about music, to find out about natural phenomena, or to just enjoy Björk’s music.

Here is a 2009 talk by Snibbe which features a lot of the content of the talk, excluding the parts about Biophilia.  

The Pinboard: An open letter.

This blog started back in August of 2009. I’ve tried to post as much as possible, sometimes it has been quite tough to find the time to keep it going. This is because either the work doesn’t feel up to suited to this space.

Over the next year, I’m considering the addition of pieces of writing. This was never the original intention of this blog. Really it was here as a “Pinboard”, to store and display bits and pieces which i have lying around. More and more as I see the quality of content on other blogs, I’m finding that the quality and content of this space needs to be bumped up quite a lot.

I’ve decided to begin trying to add some sort of context to pieces I create by adding text, or a general log of where I am at. The challenge here is as a non-writer, keeping it within the grey area of personal and public. I want to communicate more with the glancers of this space, while making sure that it doesn’t become word-weighted. Or heavy. As this tiny project moves along, I hope to incorporate new forms of media that I work with. Not only still pieces of work, but animation, video, and audio work.

Different pieces of work over the past year have been created in a variety of disciplines. The Pinboard will hopefully be more exciting, posted to more frequently, and inspire more often.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. – Samuel Beckett

Digital Landscape

Rare Birds

A small sample from the Paul Rand animation that is currently in production. Atrament Font is used here. It is beautiful, and simple.

“You know, typographers are practically extinct, like rare birds.” – Paul Rand Mead Generations 1994