Hasta La Ideas

Last week, Lifehacker jumped on the spring cleaning bandwagon and published a series of posts dedicated to uncluttering in “Lifehacker’s Ultimate Clutter Cleanout“:

All week at Lifehacker we’re putting extra focus on uncluttering your world, ranging from your home, your personal finances, your workspace, your digital world, and more. So sit back, relax, and let the clutter rinse right off.

I particularly enjoyed Kevin Purdy’s roundup of home design tools in “The Best Design Tools for Improving Your Home” and his “Top 10 Ways to Declutter Your Digital Life, 2010 Edition.” Implementing his tips on creating Gmail filters has already improved the way I process my e-mail.

I was honored to be included in the uncluttering series, and my post “Why You Hold On to Clutter” explores the science of irrationally buying (and keeping) unnecessary objects:

In “The power of touch: An examination of the effect of duration of physical contact on the valuation of objects“, researcher James Wolf reported that the longer a person touches an object, the greater the value assigned to that item. These conclusions were derived from two studies where people attended an auction and were told that they would be bidding on coffee cups. Before bidding on the items, subjects went around a room inspecting the average, nothing-special-about-them, coffee cups that were going to be put up for sale. Observers found that “examining an item for longer periods of time resulted in greater attachment to the item and thus higher valuations.” Meaning that the longer a subject touched and observed a coffee cup during the inspection period, the more likely he was to buy the cup and pay even more for it than its sticker price.

Be sure to check out “Lifehacker’s Ultimate Clutter Cleanout” for more great spring cleaning advice.

Also on the topic of spring cleaning, the May issue of Real Simple is also dedicated to the topic. It is already on newsstands, and some of the articles are online. ‘Tis the season to unclutter!

pimg alt=”sva_highline_lead.jpg” src=”http://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/sva_highline_lead.jpg” width=”468″ height=”263″ class=”mt-image-none” style=”” //p

pemGuest post by a href=”http://twitter.com/StrangeNative”Russ Maschmeyer/a/em/p

pThe High Line, once an abandoned, elevated train platform, has quickly become one of New York’s most celebrated public parks. It opened in June 2009, but I hadn’t seen it for myself until this February when I climbed the stairs at Gansevoort Street for a class project. I know it’s difficult#151;now that we’re in a great rush of spring warmth and all#151;but try and remember what it was like only a few short weeks ago. It was cold. Painfully cold. An elevated, wind-scraped platform was the last place you wanted to be that day. But scholastic duty called, so my fellow SVA Interaction Design MFA students and I trudged out, ready to jump-start the research for our five week emDesign for Public Spaces/em class project./p

pOur instructor, Jill Nussbaum (Executive Creative Director, R/GA), had tasked each of five teams with examining the rise of ubiquitous technology and how it might alter our everyday experiences with and relationships to place. Each team would spend the next few weeks imagining some variety of technological/ wearable/ networked/ immersive/ social experience for the High Line, to augment its already impeccably carved public architecture. Her brief insisted “interaction designers are critical to crafting these location-aware experiences.” /p

pOur projects moved swiftly: from research synthesis to ideation, through user journey roughs to final presentations with esteemed (and cold-sweat inducing) guests Peter Mullan (VP of Planning and Design, Friends of the High Line), Ian Spaltar (Executive Creative Director of Mobile and Emerging Media, R/GA), and Margot Jacobs (Interaction Design Researcher, MA Student, UC Berkeley Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning), not to mention our very own department chair, Liz Danzico. Five weeks seemed to vaporize as we poured through storyboards, concept ideas, interface iterations, and#151;for some#151;Arduino based prototypes./p

pHere are the results, re-presented in the same arbitrary order in which they were delivered just a few weeks ago. (Descriptions, photos and videos provided by their respective teams.)/p

pbStory View/bbr /
Jeff Kirsch, Colleen Miller, Evinn Quinn,/p

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pBorrowing a nostalgic and easily recognizable form, Story View updates the idea of a traditional coin operated binocular viewer to provide visitors access to short spoken-word stories and historical facts about the High Line and the surrounding city as they look through the viewfinder. As a visitor pans and tilts the viewer, they are able to listen to snippets of audio (either programmed by the High Line or left by other visitors) about the places and things the viewer is pointed at. By aiming the viewer at a location and holding down the record button, the visitor is also able to leave a story tied to that place for others to discover./pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/technology/sva_graduate_interaction_design_students_eye_the_high_line_16367.asp”(more…)/a
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Reader Volker submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

I have all my papers (bills, documents etc.) digital, so its no physical clutter. But I’m not sure how long to keep digital files like itemized bills, phone bills, electricity bills, etc.?

The answer to this question, unfortunately, can be found in your responses to a few more questions:

1. How much space do have available on a hard drive?
2. How often do you reference your paperwork after you have scanned it?
3. How distracting do you find digital files?

If you aren’t pressed for space on your hard drive and you aren’t distracted in any way by the digital files, I recommend keeping them. The act of sorting through each one and expending mental energy deciding which documents to save and which ones to delete can clutter up your time. Simply put, they may not be clutter.

However, if you need to free up some room on your hard drive, I’d take the following steps:

1. Keep all digital copies of bills from the past 13 months. When your new bills arrive, it’s always a good idea to check the new ones against the previous year to see if there are any strange fluctuations.
2. If the bill was used as a deduction for tax purposes, hold onto it for whatever amount of time your accountant recommends. This time period is usually however long a federal tax agent can go back in time for an audit. Based on the laws in your country, you may actually need these bills in physical form. Again, check with your accountant.
3. If the bill wasn’t used for a tax deduction, I recommend keeping all annual statements for as long as the account is open.
4. If you have closed an account, I recommend keeping the statement from the billing institution that says your account was closed in good standing. I actually recommend keeping this in physical form and not in digital form — but if you’ve already scanned it, the digital copy is better than nothing.

Unlike many of our readers, I don’t see digital data as really being clutter. At least for me, it doesn’t distract me from pursuing the life I desire or keep me from focusing on what matters most. I use Google Desktop to easily search my computer for any documents I’m seeking. Honestly, I have files on my computer from 1998 and have no plan to delete them. I also have an onsite backup and an online backup, so if my hard drive fails I won’t lose everything.

Thank you, Volker, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column. Good luck to you on your digital data project.

Do you have a question relating to organizing, cleaning, home and office projects, productivity, or any problems you think the Unclutterer team could help you solve? To submit your questions to Ask Unclutterer, go to our contact page and type your question in the content field. Please list the subject of your e-mail as “Ask Unclutterer.” If you feel comfortable sharing images of the spaces that trouble you, let us know about them. The more information we have about your specific issue, the better.

Une vidéo originale présentant l’idée de la marque IBM. L’innovation : un véritable système de tableau interactif personnalisé, permettant de détecter la teinte et la couleur des vêtements de chaque personne. A découvrir en vidéo dans la suite.

Previously on Fubiz

• IBM – Data Anthem
• The Art of the Billboard
• Noteput – Interactive Music Table

pUnless you work at one of those ID firms lucky or large enough to have an onsite modeling shop, the modelmaking step of the design process is typically where you catch your breath. After hours and days of sketching and drafting, you send the files off and wait for the magic craftsmen to send you back a foam/wood/clay rendition of your design(s)./p

pA new step that could potentially be introduced to this process is SATIN, a sort of robotic spline that “draws” a shape–primitive ones, at this stage–in 3D that a designer can actually feel, and even manipulate to directly alter the 3D file./p

blockquote[The] system consists of two FCS-HapticMASTER devices, in essence robotic arms more commonly used for remote welding or dental surgery, which position and rotate a robotic spline, an electronic version of the flexible strip of material, typically wood or metal, long used by designers to draw curves. Fitted with actuators and sensors, the spline automatically twists and bends to the shape of a digital representation of the product uploaded by the designer into the system.

pStanding in front of a workstation and wearing 3D glasses, the designer views, through a set of mirrors, a virtual 3D model of the product superimposed where the spline actually is. By pressing the centre or pushing or pulling the ends of the robotic spline with their hands, the designers can reshape and reform the 3D model. Models can be saved and compared, and any changes made much more quickly and simply than using traditional modelling methods./p

p…Additional information about the model that cannot be perceived tactilely on the spline, such as discontinuities of a curve or inflection points, is transmitted through audio signals as the designer runs a finger along it./p

p”Haptic technology is still not advanced enough to provide all of the information about a surface. The SATIN system, for example, can only represent curves. However, we expect improvements in materials and mechanics over the coming years to lead to systems that will allow designers to feel, handle and reshape any kind of object surface,” [says researcher Monica Bordegoni, a professor at Politecnico di Milano university in Italy]./blockquote/p

pBelow is a video of Bordegoni explaining the process, and a demonstration of the unit in action. (At an unedited 5:51 in length it’s a bit on the dry side; we normally tell you where to fast-forward to but this one’s got the good bits scattered throughout.)/p

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pvia A HREF=”http://www.physorg.com/news189751850.html” physorg/Abr /
/pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/technology/the_satin_system_for_haptic_id_modeling_16334.asp”(more…)/a
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