Cameron Sinclair will be @ Town Hall tomorrow night (Wednesday 10/03) @ 7:30pm

Quoted: The greatest humanitarian challenge we face today is that of providing shelter. Currently one in seven people lives in a slum or refugee camp, and more than three billion people—nearly half the world's population—do not have access to clean water or adequate sanitation. The physical design of our homes, neighborhoods, and communities shapes every aspect of our lives. Yet too often architects are desperately needed in the places where they can least be afforded.

Edited by Architecture for Humanity, Design Like You Give a Damn is a compendium of innovative projects from around the world that demonstrate the power of design to improve lives.

Quoted: Somehow, products, services, and systems need to respond to stimuli created by human beings. Those responses, need to be meaningful, and clearly communicated and in many ways provoke a persuasive and semi-predictable response. They need to behave.

This basic definition of Interaction Design (IxD) illustrates the common threads between definitions crafted by esteemed designers Dan Saffer1 and Robert Reimann2 as well as the Interaction Design Association3.

Blasphemy!

Quoted: Don’t write a functional specifications document. Why? Well, there’s nothing functional about a functional specifications document.

Functional specifications documents lead to an illusion of agreement. A bunch of people agreeing on paragraphs of text is not real agreement. Everyone is reading the same thing, but they’re often thinking something different. This inevitably comes out in the future when it’s too late. “Wait, that’s not what I had in mind…” “Huh? That’s not how we described it.” “Yes it was and we all agreed on it — you even signed off on it.” You know the drill.

Functional specifications document are “yes documents.” They’re political. They’re all about getting to “yes” and we think the goal up front should be getting to “no.” Functional specs lead to scope creep from the very start. There’s very little cost in saying “yeah, ok, let’s add that” to a Word document.

Quoted: No object has had as dramatic an impact on our lives in the past decade as the cellphone. Only the computer comes close. But more of us use a cellphone, and our relationship with it is more intimate. The cellphone is one of the handful of personal objects - like a watch - that we take with us almost everywhere.

So why are they so badly designed? And we're not talking about dodgy network service here, but the phones themselves.

More and more I strongly see the distinction between school and education.

Quoted: Sooner or later you're going to realize that you've been cheated out of a real life by missing a real education--when that time comes Grace ...

I'm officially a writer for Worldchanging.

/sooooo excited!!!!

/me moved

Quoted: It will feature celebrities, upbeat cultural commentary, and an amazing display of commercials and history from the last century, including the ground-breaking work of Bill Bernbach (VW), David Ogilvy (Hathaway), Jay Chiat and many others. But this is not a historical documentary or a tribute, and it's not an analysis of the perils of consumerism and thought-control. It is a film about creative rebellion, and how all-powerful art springs forth from deeply personal, psychological sources and the need for change… even in advertising.

I first heard about this on NPR. She talks about how style adds competitive value, and these products give humans the intangible experience of using them.

Coming to you with flashy packaging, this is Nikki, signing off (thx NPR).

Quoted: In this penetrating, keenly observed book, Virginia Postrel shows that the “look and feel” of people, places, and things are more important than we think. Aesthetic pleasure taps deep human instincts and is essential for creativity and growth. Drawing from fields as diverse as fashion, real estate, politics, design, and economics, Postrel deftly chronicles our culture’s aesthetic imperative and argues persuasively that it is a vital component of a healthy, forward-looking society.