Marcie in Autumn

My first music video in about three years. Shot on my Canon Rebel EOS T2i. Song is "Walking the Dog" by fun. I made this without their permission but hopefully they realize I made it out of sheer love for this song.

Wall to Wall

The best and probably most overlooked feature on Facebook is the "Wall-to-Wall" link on the news feed. It takes you to all the wall postings you and one other person have ever had. It's really akin to a photo album but for me, it's actually more enjoyable. You can see exactly when comments were made and go back and, in a way, experience them again. I think they are somehow more vivid than photos because many times these wall postings are conversations. They might be short (between two and five threads long) but they're always funny or enjoyable with your closest friends.

In some cases, you can see how your relationships have evolved. You can explicitly see how you conversed with someone you've just met and after you've dated them for years. If you're like me, you definitely held your true personality back, just a little, in the beginning. And then three or six months in, you were able to let it all hang out. All the little idiosyncracies that make people beautiful or interesting. You can literal see it unfold. Some of my wall-to-walls are quite long, especially with close friends, and it's just amazing to back and read them.

If you haven't done this, and you have an hour to spare, do it with your closest three friends.

Wayfinding

This is a photo of an elevator in a parking garage in Bloomington, IN. Is this necessary? was the first thing that came to mind. Donald Norman talks a lot about "reminders" in The Design of Everyday Things. I have a post-it note on my computer at work to remind me to clock-in everyday. We leave ourselves reminders all the time. But I'd never seen a reminder for a reminder. If the word remember hadn't  been there, I would have seen the giant number 1 and thought Okay, I'm on the first floor. But would I have used that information in the same way when it came time to find my car? Probably not. Simply having the number 1 on the door tells me where I am in that moment. Which has value but not as much as when it comes time to leave and I forgot where I parked. There's a different context with the word remember. This elevator is now a wayfinding artifact, not a general informative artifact.

An offshoot of information architecture is a practice called wayfinding, or the systematic organization and labeling for the navigation of discrete physical structures. It's mostly used in the urban planning and architecture disciplines and they largely go unnoticed (until you find yourself lost).

For the parking garage at the mall in Towson, Maryland, images of imaginary creatures were used to help patrons remember where they parked. Instead of using alphanumeric designations (ex. 2B) which might be easily forgotten, there are creatures like squid-bunnies and lion-turtles to demarcate each parking section. Unfortunately, the novelty of that system doesn't contextualize the information. Knowing that I'm in the lion-turtle section doesn't tell me why I should know that. And because I don't know why, I completely forget it the second I enter the mall.

The photo is a great example of how contextual information is and how important it is to define that context for the user's sake.

The Paradox of Choice

click to enlarge

Here's an interesting idea that could, in theory, be applied to several disciplines. The Paradox of Choice is the idea that too much choice actually leads to indecision, anxiety, and well, not choosing anything. The term comes from the 2004 book of the same name by Barry Schwartz. The original context of the book was consumer products and shopping but I came across it in my information architecture readings.

Designing information spaces involves navigation and usability. The idea of Paradox of Choice comes into play when deciding what options to give users when they search for content. For large, complex sites, this is a huge undertaking. I remember my frustrations doing this while working at a city/regional magazine in Annapolis. I decided the website needed to be reworked, specifically the navigation. But because we supplied content from two monthly magazines, it was extremely difficult to provide enough options for users to find what they need but few enough so they don't get confused. It's a subtle give-and-take.

I've added an image of a visualization of this interesting paradox.

Terrible Credit Card Machine Design

Quick, do the exact opposite of what
you think you should do. 

If you've ever used a credit card at a store, you probably have run into this. After you slide your card, you are usually asked to choose debit or credit. I always use credit because my bank charges me fees for using debit. So after you choose credit, a curious thing happens (99 times out of a 100)—the credit card machine asks you to hit CANCEL to continue. What? Why? That makes no sense. Designers are supposed to anticipate the mental models of the users of their products. When I want to continue with a process, my first thought isn't to cancel the process. I want to continue. Yet 99% of credit card machines in stores require me to hit cancel.

The funny thing is, everyone knows this (or is used to it) but everyone still asks if they need to hit CANCEL. I've even been to a lot of stores where there is a piece of paper taped to the machine that says YES, PRESS CANCEL FOR CREDIT. If the users of your product have to tape a note to it to direct its operation, something is wrong.

A View of Understanding

I just started graduate school and this is one of my first assignments. I had to define data, information, and knowledge as I understand them. I think my approach is novel. I really enjoyed designing the representation of this view. Maybe there is a career for that kind of work in my future. Who knows. If you click on the image you can see it in a larger form.

Origins of Bow Chicka Wow Wow

The number one album on iTunes today is Mike Posner's 31 Minutes to Take Off and on this album is a song called "Bow Chicka Wow Wow". Now instead of listening to the preview like most normal people, I thought instead: Where in the hell did that come from and how do I know what it means?


Of course we associate the onomatopoeia Bow Chicka Wow Wow with kitschy porn music from the 70s. Yet I was born in the 80s and the only 70s-era porns I've seen are not porns at all but parodies of them. Yet I know instantly what is meant when someone says Bow Chicka Wow Wow, which is probably as well recognized as saying ouch or thwack.

Though in my research there are discrepancies in the spelling and pronunciation of Bow Chick Wow Wow. I've seen

• bow chicka wow wow
• bow chicka bow wow (this is actually my preferred version)
• bow chicka bow bow
• wow chicka wow wow

Finally after reading about this phrase I had to find an answer. Who started it and in what context? 

After a quick google search, I came across two promising leads but both left me utterly deflated in my quest. The first lead was that the phrase appears in the song "Brickhouse" by The Commodores. But it doesn't. The end bridge sounds like bow chicka wow wow but they're actually saying "Shake it down, shake it down now". Ow now brown cow. But even if they did say it, the song didn't give me the context. That's just part of the song—they're no 70s porno reference. And I have to stress the fact that it is 70s porno music. Not 80s (which would probably be hair metal) or 90s (which would probably be Spice Girls-esque). 

My next lead was a video of stand-up comedy by Jordan Brady. The video gives Brady credit and his wikipedia entry also states that he is the progenitor of the infamous phrase. 

But I still don't buy it. If you watch the video, he doesn't say bow chicka wow wow, or any of it's variations. Instead, he tries to actually make music with his mouth. Bow chicka wow wow is not a song or a melody or anything musical. It is a string of words. Sometimes it is said with a certain inflection but the phrase is in no way musical, despite it's contextual meaning. 

Now this is not to say that Brady did not create the phrase contextually. It's clear from the video he did but in it's current incarnation, I don't think he spread it. I mean, he doesn't even really say it. There's clearly a "dwown" and "boom" that he adds in to realistically imitate bass and drums. This is not the the intended use (or at least my perception of the intended use). If Jordan Brady is the creator of the meme, it has definitely had an evolution. And so for me, at least, the origins of bow chicka wow wow remains elusive. One day perhaps, her true beginnings will be revealed...