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everyone's blog posts
Packaging Surprise
Daisy Sour Cream has supposedly been offering Fresh Thinking on their foil seals for several years, but I just noticed it, and was pleasantly surprised. They took an opportunity to create a front-of-ho... [read more]
ChittahChattah Quickies
Scopophilia - Literally, the love of looking. The term refers to the predominantly male gaze of Hollywood cinema, which enjoys objectifying women into mere objects to be looked at (rather than subjects... [read more]
Candy-coated history
The other day I saw some unfamiliar M&Ms packaging in a local drugstore. The Retro Tube! I wondered whether this was truly a reissue of an old packaging style or just a marketing ploy—a &... [read more]
Local Starbucks exhibits passion for their customers
Recently I was in the Starbucks in the Lucasfilm Letterman Digital Arts Center and was surprised to see what was written on the chalkboard Starbucks is the same EVERYWHERE. What makes us different is o... [read more]
ChittahChattah Quickies
On the Trail of an Annoying Announcement - Travel writer Joe Sharkey on the irritation and ineffectiveness of repeated airport announcements Advertising in context - HBO is putting audio-enabled billbo... [read more]
Street sign information hierarchy
In San Francisco’s Presidio, all the streets are named after historic military figures. Note how the sign designers added a biography line to provide additional context. The sign serves the tradi... [read more]
Ask for our latest article: Poets, Priests, and Politicians
My latest interactions column, Poets, Priests, and Politicians has just been published. [W]e’re increasingly exposed to rhetoric in the arenas of marketing and politics. It’s easy to be cynical and dis... [read more]
ChittahChattah Quickies
the semiotics of toilet signs | sensemaya - Really nice gathering/analysis of different ways to indicate which bathroom is for women and which is for men
Change of plans
This is what AT&T tells you - using a Windows error dialog - about your rollover minutes when you try to change your mobile plan: NOTE: By requesting a new rate plan with rollover, your accumulat... [read more]
ChittahChattah Quickies
Toilet seat covers, upgraded - Dora Cardenas, Toletta's cofounder and VP of communications, explains: “The product concept came to me and my husband while we were trying to find small travel pack... [read more]
Affordance Control
Affordances for hanging clothes suggested by the fire prevention sprinklers in this Iowa City hotel led to the creation and posting of “no hanging” signs. Nicolas Nova discussed similar t... [read more]
ChittahChattah Quickies
Bangkok police wearing smiley masks to make delivery of the requisite Thai smile that much easier - " The new cloth masks, which hook behind the ears and cover the mouth and nose, will help “redu... [read more]
ChittahChattah Quickies
Slightly silly analysis of the emergence of salted caramel as a mass-market flavor - "Like grief, American food trends go through five stages, said Kara Nielsen, a trend analyst at the Center for Culin... [read more]
ChittahChattah Quickies
Poets, Priests, and Politicians - my latest column for interactions magazine - In which I address the power of language in many types of interactions Mafia Finds Fans on Facebook - Thousands of users h... [read more]
ChittahChattah Quickies
The Best of Core77: Our Favorites from 2008! - Amazing year-end roundup. Nice to see a couple of my posts (including the bathroom video I included in the All This ChittahChattah year-end roundup) as we... [read more]
ChittahChattah Quickies
interactions magazine summarizes their highlights from 2008 Including: A column by Steve Portigal that completely shredded our understanding of the “persona” tool in design
ChittahChattah Quickies
Chirag Mehta of SAP reviews my recent interactions column And adds his own thoughts: Look beyond the problem space and preserve ambiguity Scouting NY - a blog about noticing “I work as a film l... [read more]
User Research for Belkin’s GoStudio
We were excited recently to see the New York Times review of Belkin’s GoStudio portable audio recorder. We led some early user research with target customers that informed Belkin’s overall ... [read more]
All This ChittahChattah 2008, a look back
In 2008 All This ChittahChattah hit our seventh anniversary. Here are some highlights from the past year. We found a toilet flusher that comes with a memo, I investigate the bathroom for Core77, and D... [read more]
24 Hour Philanthroparty People
At Hot Studio, we very much like to have our fun. But just like everyone else at this time, we realize that suspenders attached to a roomy barrel will soon be in fashion. This can only be good if you’re…
Hot Studio quoted in the New York Times
“In 2000, it was like ‘cut the heads,’ ” she said of the ethos of the era. This time, she says, it feels different. “Our No. 1 priority is to keep people employed and to do that we’re going to bank the... [read more]
ChittahChattah Quickies
Philip Seymour Hoffman on the creative process “It’s a cliché thing to say, but every time you start a job, you just don’t know anything. I mean, I can break something down, but ultimately I don’... [read more]
ChittahChattah Quickies
giving away time - conceptual IDEO prototyping experiment Great example of using an intervention to study an issue. IDEO mocks up a machine that prints up “free time” stickers and gives the... [read more]
Eat a good breakfast
Hot has grown from about 10 employees to more than 40 in the last few years. It’s forced me, as the practice lead for the user experience group, to think about how to codify some of the things we do.…
ChittahChattah Quickies
More than 1/6 of households have only cell phones The portion of homes with cell phones but no landlines has grown to 18 percent, led by adults living with unrelated roommates, renters and young people... [read more]
The new FindLaw.com: Redesigning the web’s number one online legal directory
FindLaw.com, a Thomson Reuters business, quickly became the world’s leading provider of legal information after its launch in 1996. Each month, over 4,000,000 legal and business professionals, law stud... [read more]
Once Upon a School 2.0
Earlier this year, we partnered with Dave Eggers and TED and launched Once Upon a School. The initial release of the site was done completely in-house –- UX, design, development — in just SIX WEEKS! It was a pretty hefty task, but…
ChittahChattah Quickies
Nine women can’t have a baby in one month A great collection of so-called project management lingo; it’s the phrases you hear from businesspeople Airlines Use ‘Black Boxes’ to Improve Service I... [read more]
Brand design for a pharmaceutical industry game changer
Jae Chung came to Hot Studio this Fall with a bold new business idea for changing the way pharmaceutical companies find, evaluate, and collaborate with qualified partners. Jae’s vision was base... [read more]
Hot will track you down … but only if you ask us to
It’s official. We at Hot have decided that if you give us your e-mail address we’ll send you a lovely-to-look-at and pleasant-to-read newsletter. Starting in early January, Hot Flash will a... [read more]
ChittahChattah Quickies
Black dog bias? Shelter officials have dubbed it black dog syndrome — the propensity of dark-coated animals to be passed over for adoption in favor of their lighter counterparts. Zappos Launche... [read more]
Hot Studio is on the air, and in print
There are a lot of good ideas bubbling around the office at Second and Howard, and I don’t just mean my brain-child to knock out a fridge-sized hole in the brick wall separating us from Kate O’Brien’s. I would hang…
IxDA Rocks the Hotel Utah
After a year of focus on the deep and ponderous topics that are important to all interaction and user-experience designers, the local chapter of IxDA decided it was time to turn it’s organizing efforts on a slightly more visceral topic…
Mixtape Friday: Holiday Edition
We’re kicking off the holiday season with our office party tonight and our own Josh Damon Williams, aka DJ 8-Ball of the Space Cowboys, set us up with a sweet mix. Enjoy!
Turn It On Again
Stephen Anderson’s musings on collaboration and attribution reminded me that a project we were worked on for BIC has gone live: From Business Week [BIC is] designing disposable cartridges for fue... [read more]
ChittahChattah Quickies
Alternate designs for telephone keypad From a report issued in 1960 by The American Telephone and Telegraph Company, just before pushbutton phones went mainstream. In addition to key arrangements, othe... [read more]
ChittahChattah Quickies
The 57 Watt Bulb: Trimming the standards Our grocery store has no 60 or 75 watt bulbs, well establish standards. Instead, they have 57 and 71 watt bulbs. GE is productizing the “turn the thermost... [read more]
ChittahChattah Quickies
How do you design: a massive collection of process diagrams assembled by Hugh Dubberly and co. In my User Research Friday talk I pointed to this; you can download it from the above link.
Staying On Message
I ordered some tripods from REI and in the package was a nice bonus: a mini Clif Mojo bar. Although my purchase was not outdoor recreation related, REI reminded me of their positioning with an appropr... [read more]
Power To The People
The trailer mashup may have hit its peak a couple of years ago (hey, there’s at least one blog devoted solely to examples of the genre) with my favorites Shining and Toy Story Requiem. I’ve... [read more]
Do We Really Need Associations, Anyway? Do They Need Us?
Within the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a lot of things happening around me that have made me wonder about the validity of professional associations of sorts, and if we really need them. In gener... [read more]
Friendship is Dead - See You at SXSW! (Core Conversation)
Way back in May I started noodling with the notion of a panel for SXSW in 2009. I’d say a few thousand people started noodling with the same notion, and then about 1300 of us took the plunge and ... [read more]
Today We Are Seven
Today marks the seventh (lucky seven!) anniversary of All This ChittahChattah! Photos courtesy of flickr users rgusick, _Harry Lime_, Leo Reynolds, rehuxley, skeeter torino, Ju?iette, korrey
What are your brand attributes?
I received this promotion from a local plumber. In addition to the more typical description of services offered, he provides a striking summary of his personal brand attributes: insightful, mature, cou... [read more]
ChittahChattah Quickies
Statue Folklore It seems to be a widespread instinct for passers-by to touch statues, in greeting or for luck, if they represent a popular personality, as when Tory Members of Parliament rub the toe of... [read more]
Spammers as culture watchers
Just got this bit of sp@m with the subject line: Make Money with Google Bailout Plan I love how they evoke the government bailouts as something now available to you, potential customer mark, and tie i... [read more]
Speed of Innovation: Steve Portigal featured in Lunar Design podcast
Steve was interviewed for a Lunar Design podcast about the balance between speed, creativity and innovation in the design process.
Speed of Innovation: Steve Portigal featured in Lunar Design podcast
Inspired by my interactions column Hold Your Horses, I was interviewed for a Lunar Design podcast. How do speed, creativity and innovation intertwine in the design process? In this Connections episod... [read more]
ChittahChattah Quickies
Ben Allen on the failure of attention to detail A chocolate company designs the outside of their package but not the rubber-meets-the-road inside. Diego Rodriguez on the power of details Even the scr... [read more]
ChittahChattah Quickies
From 2007, what would I do if appointed “Innovation Czar” (as they were calling it at the time) … I would introduce empathy processes into government, especially departments that inte... [read more]