July 2007

We’re currently researching and reviewing how people use news sites for a client – so we thought we might ask some questions here too to see if we can get some further insight from our blog readers.

The basic question is this:

How do you use the articles you read on news sites?

We’re interested in the questions from both a practical and conceptual angle. Some practical examples: do you bookmark articles (your browser bookmarks, delicious etc.), share them via social networking sites(Digg, seed to Newsvine etc.), print, email to friend or save copies? And conceptually, do you use news articles with your work, study or as talking points at the pub or “over the watercooler” at work?

While we’re on the topic, have you come across any news sites recently that really raise the bar? Or even news sites that just have a cool feature or two that you find useful/fun/interesting?

If so, leave a comment and let us know what you think…

I am working through a backlog of blog reading today and spotted Seth Godin’s post Bobcasting (and Google Reader).

In the post he covers a few points, but specifically related to “Bobcasting” he writes:

I want to suggest something that takes no new technology but could have a big impact on the way you do business: Bobcasting.

I call it that because instead of reaching the masses, it’s just about reaching Bob. Or Tiasha. Or any individual or small group.

The future of online communication is micro-pockets of people getting RSS feeds in their Google Reader or on their Google home page. Amazon updates? Bobcast em to me. Fogbugz summaries for the customer service manager? Bobcast her three times a day.

I’m not sure if Seth knows, but the “Bobcast” already exists…

About a year ago Digital Eskimo ran an ‘Innovation Workshop’ with the Greens political party about ways that Bob Brown, the party’s leader, could use technology to better communicate with his supporters.

The result was ‘BobCasts‘ – a podcast enabled by Bob using his mobile phone to leave a message, that was then distributed using podcasting technology (RSS in particular – you can subscribe using your RSS reader or “podcatcher” using this RSS feed).

One of the things that worked well was the personal nature of the approach – it was like Bob was leaving a message specifically to each supporter.

As far as we know, Bob was the first politician to podcast in this way (in fact, I’m not aware of any politician podcasting here in Australia).

So Seth’s “Bobcasts” are already a reality Of course, that’s not quite the point of his post, but I just had a chuckle and thought I’d pass it on…

Been seeing lots about Blackle in blog-land. The basic premise is that black on screen uses less energy than white, so if Google turned black, voila! Energy saving… (of course – this only works because Google get’s soooooo much traffic – it certainly isn’t worth us all going out to design black websites).

Google hasn’t gone black, but Blackle implements a custom search so both the homepage (search box) and results are white text on black.

I use the Google search box built into my browser, so the homepage wouldn’t save me much energy, but the results might. I’d like to get a search provider for Firefox to use Blackle as my default – anyone know of one?

Our latest project has just launched for the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. The site features a powerful cross linking sub system for related information and promo modules, donation promotion capacity and a comprehensive, well considered information architecture providing an easy to navigate structure for the significant amount of content the institute must provide its various stakeholders.

Importantly there’s inspirational imagery throughout and a range of features that ensure the communications goals of the organisation are squarely met by this first phase of the project. Exciting new features were devised in our brainstorms with the Garvan and will be implemented in the next Phase .. meanwhile take a look and donate to help the institute in its vital work.

We were walking back from lunch the other day when I spotted this car wedged into it’s spot. I really hope they didn’t need to get out in a hurry!

Apart from the obvious curiosity that it is, it did get me thinking about the sustainability of cars in the CBD. I ride to work (as do a number of the Eskimos) and when I don’t, I catch public transport.

When I saw this, I thought about how frustratingly annoying it would be to be parking and driving in the city on a daily basis (or worse – living in the city and having to find a park on a Surry Hills street).

There’s a lot been written about how cars and road-based transport have transformed how cities are designed. This is especially true of Sydney, which begins to sprawl into semi-suburban areas very rapidly. To date there appears to have been very little thought given to bikes in the city (although a recent Sydney City Council announcement of a bunch more bike lanes is a good start).

Anyways – interesting how something as trivial as a tight park can get you thinking about sustainability…

I just reported on the Future is man made, after a long delay Apple Australia have finally launched a recycling program – albeit fairly limited at this stage.

Find out more at Apple’s website.

Recently we produced some banners for WWF International in support of their Climate Witness initiative.

WWF’s aim was to make an impact on delegates as they entered a G8 symposium on climate change, and for future events the Climate Witness team may attend. They came to us to help work out an effective communications tool to achieve their goals.

We developed a series of 2 metre high banners (pictured above posing with the d.eskimo team) that each tell an individual climate witness story through a number of means:

• Powerful singular words – Hot, Warnings, Impact, etc. – run down the side of each banner;
• Each of the images depicting the climate witness is made up of the words “here” and “now” to highlight that this is an issue that requires urgent action;
• When you get closer to each banner you can read the climate witness’ story;
• They work as a series ranging in colour from yellow to deep orange, which, as you can see in the photo, represents a form of heat reading – from warm to hot.

Visit the WWF International Climate Witness page for more information about the initiative.

We did consider a number of different approaches to the banners in terms of their environmental footprint, but unfortunately there were none that we could find that were particularly friendly. We did choose durable and long-lasting materials in the hope that the banners will see a lot of use before reaching their used-by date. But if anyone knows of any enviro-friendly options for banners and the like, please let us know!

Phil points to Josh’s big idea: Solar in a box.

What a top idea. I was thinking – what if someone invested in Josh for a year to make it a reality? I wonder if he’s heard of Zopa – they’re about to kick off in the US.

I’d personally put $$ into the mix – not even for the finished product, but just so that he’s got the time to actualise his idea – get it to prototype phase or even towards production. I’m sure there are a lot of people that would like to chip in – a little bit at a time adding up to Josh’s target.

I mean if Jason Kottke can raise enough funds to blog for a year, surely we can raise funds for this using the interweb?

So I am on a sort of mini research sabbatical this month which means I finally get a moment to think about sharing some of the exciting work we’ve been doing in articulating our design research. As a Considered Design agency design research is a critical part of our scoping phase. It’s how we really get to immerse and learn about clients and their stakeholders, the world they live in now, and the world they hope to live in 3, 6, 9 12, 24 months time. We consider the opportunities and options, and pick out a path (or let one emerge) that is most applicable to the specificities of each situation and context. It’s an incredibly exciting part of the process as each client and project is different. We have a range of methods that we employ (e.g naked personas, imaginary scenarios and mobile diaries) to reveal these things and I am planning to post some more detailed writing on how these work and why we use them in the near future. In the meantime, I wanted to share this representation of our process, developed for us by lovely friend and artist Emma Magenta, as it really is the best depiction of the Digital Eskimo design research process we’ve managed to date.

So we’ve joined the Sustainable-CHI (Computer Human Interaction) group which grew out of CHI 07. As I said on our intro post to the group wiki its easy to think about how to be sustainable in design when we talking about things like print (ink, paper stock, off cuts etc) but what is a sustainable website? Obviously online technology offers us a lot of potential to reduce waste in many ways, but theres more to it than that. Looking forward to the discussion the group generates about how HCI (Human Computer Interaction) methods, and Interaction Design more generally can play an active role in encouraging and supporting positive change in peoples lives, and also examining the role technology designers like ourselves play in determining that. In the meantime enjoying revisiting lovely related design/sustainability/HCI resources such as Sustainable
Everday by Ezio Manzini and Francois Jegou and the inspiring Urban Probe Jetsam project by Eric Paulos and Tom Jenkins (the project not the website )