I finished Sam Shepard's latest book this weekend and started Consequential Strangers
this morning before getting out of bed. I came downstairs into the
kitchen, where I've had these comments about snow and beer posted for a
couple of months on my freshly-painted blackboard wall. And what do I
notice but a new comment ("Think Spring!") posted by Matt, our dog
walker. A consequential stranger whom I have met in person, but mostly
who I know via notes and checks made out in his name left on the
counter, mostly correspondence between him and my husband, Will. And
sometimes, via short text messages between him and me now and then. 

Anyway, this whole urban informatics/Urban User Interface™/consequential stranger thing is getting more and more interesting. For me, this is how urban informatics will enrich our lives: i.e., it will increase our consequential stranger quotient.

That's part of what makes Twitter so compelling. I've "met" people on Twitter initially, then actually met them in person. I now have several consequential strangers in New York, even though I'm only there every few months. Without urban informatics (isn't that basically what Twitter really is?) and other social technological platforms, I wouldn't have these contacts in a city that far away. One would have to live there to make those kinds of connections. Well, actually, you may not even make them even if you did live there. Because online taxonomies and frameworks for meeting people are less intimidating than face-to-face ones. I'm gregarious and don't generally have qualms about walking up to someone I don't know to say hi, but I still find it easier to do this via an electronic platform.

So now I'm thinking about interaction design and its role in facilitating these types of relationships. I'm also thinking about the aesthetics of interaction design; i.e., what makes interaction design beautiful since it's not strictly a visual design discipline? If you could define and condense interaction design elements in the same way design elements have been defined for graphic design or architecture, quality of interactions would be among them. Interaction design that leads to consequential relationships is beautiful indeed.

Next door is ATM. Dmitri's. You get cash. I give you two-dollar discount. 

Thick, Russian accent. Twinkle in his eye. He fixes shoes on Falls Road. A real Baltimore fixture for sure. Dark blue overalls half sticky with dried glue, half slippery with wax and oil. White beard like a tired Christmas decoration. 

I dropped this bag of shoes off three months ago in the warm autumn sun. The day I almost got backed over while waiting to cross the street, remember? 

Hey. HEY! Banging 

on the window pounding 

on the window but the car kept moving. 

Angry mad tall fiery 

redhead, cursing. 

Kicking epithets into silver metal. 

What the fuck are you doing? Didn't you see me standing there? I was standing there. You didn't see me standing there.

I'm sorry, so sorry, Sparks. I feel terrible.

I walk next door to Dmitri's, thinking the ATM is just inside the door. Instead, I walk smack into a dive bar right in the middle of a video game and a few dejected conversations. There are more than half a dozen riff-raff and two sorry looking women. 

White trash. Mullets. 

Fifty-year old pot bellies and 

crinkled, sagging 

breasts 

watching a Ravens game. 

Cheap beer everywhere and it's not even noon. 

Who the hell drinks before noon, anyway?

Some young, some old. Some white, some brown. But all looking like they'd seen better days. Days when they weren't compelled to drink before noon.

The potbellies light up when I walk in. It's not like that. Sorry. No, you can't buy me a drink. I just need some cash for the cobbler.

Is there an ATM in here? 

Around the corner in the back. 

Thanksomuch. I get my cash and leave.

Let me tell you a little story about a Blackberry, bad design, a deaf man, and an airplane.

I was flying back from Savannah, Georgia (from, ironically, an interaction design conference) on a rescheduled flight after my original flight had been canceled due to the monster storms that hit the mid-Atlantic last month. I was on the second leg of my trip, sitting on the plane, waiting for departure out of Atlanta. I was in the middle of the plane, sandwiched between a young woman on my left and a deaf man on my right. It was a full flight and we were all a little weary and anxious due to the travel delays, but were relieved to be on the plane to Baltimore before another blizzard grounded flights again.

The obligatory safety video came on and, as usual, nobody paid much attention. Except for the guy sitting across the aisle from the deaf man. When it was over, he leaned across the aisle and pointed out to the deaf man that his Blackberry was still on. "You need to turn it off." he said.

But the deaf man couldn't understand this guy, mainly because the guy made no attempts to modify his communication techniques for someone who couldn't hear. So when the stewardess walked by a few minutes later, in perfect third-grade tattle tale form, he said, "Miss, his phone isn't off. He was texting just a few minutes ago. He won't turn his phone off."

For the next five minutes, as the plane left the gate and moved onto the tarmac, the stewardess and I tried to help the deaf man turn off his phone. Meanwhile, the tattle tale across the aisle nagging us the entire time, reaching and pointing, "No, it's that button." " Hold that one down." "You need to hold it for several seconds." "You have to hold it down.", until finally, the deaf man reached over and hit him, saying "Be quiet! Leave me alone!", speaking with unprounounced consonants and warbled vowels, as deaf people often do.

At this point, I proceded to help the deaf man take the battery out of his phone, making sure I was enunciating very clearly so he could read my lips, explaining that the phone had to be completely off and that this appeared to be the only way to shut it down. 

The stewardess left to get help from another stewardess in turning the phone off. Or so I thought. The next thing I know, there's an announcement over the intercom: "Sorry, folks. We're going to have to turn back to the terminal. There's a problem with some passengers in the back of the plane." I turn around in my seat, looking toward the back, thinking maybe someone was sick. Like, choking-to-death or dying-of-a-heart-attack sick. Then the second stewardess comes to our row and says that they've called the police. "What?", I asked. "Why??" "Because this was an assault. He hit this man and that's assault." 

"Are you fucking kidding me?" was all I could say. And a little too loudly, at that, as I am sometimes wont to do. 

The Deaf Man could sense that something was wrong, asking me to explain. Given the complexity of the situation, I took out my Moleskin and laid it out in writing. 

Meanwhile, the pilot turns the plane back to the terminal after which each man is called off the plane to speak with the police, one at a time. First Tattletale, then the Deaf Man. As the Deaf Man comes back to his seat, he's signing "I'm sorry" all the way down the aisle. Most of the passengers were in a surprisingly jovial mood (except for a woman in the seat behind me who'd given me the evil eye after I blurted out the "f" word) and cheered and clapped as he took his seat. I have no idea what happened to Tatttletale. He must've switched seats because his original seat was empty the entire way home.

Deaf Man sat down next to me, apologizing profusely with his hands. Then he reached for my notebook, where we had this exchange (of note are his comment blaming himself for the whole commotion "The burden was on me!" and my response, "No, the burden was on bad phone design.": 

And this, my friends, is why I will never buy a Blackberry.

I recently had a blog post published on NPR's The Picture Show. Does this mean I'm officially published now? I'm not sure….

Anyway, you can read it here.

Today I received an email asking for a letter of recommendation for someone in a not so far gone past life. This someone was nominated for an award, and a mutual contact asked me to write a kind word. "But don't mention this," she implored. "He doesn't know he's been nominated."

And so my thoughts turned to this person in particular, and others in general who are worthy of this type of award because they inspire. And then I thought about that word and the verb it represents. I thought about my role as a teacher and how "inspire" is part of my job description. I thought about people in my own life who have inspired and those who have not. I thought about how I've told more than one person who's crossed my path that if I do nothing else in this world, let me first and foremost inspire. Were my legacy to be synonymous with one word, let that word be "inspire." If there is room for only one phrase in my epitaph, let it be "She was an inspiration."

But what does it mean to truly inspire? What qualities must one possess to be an inspiration? Will and I discussed this in depth on our evening walk with the dogs, ruminating philosophically under the silhouette of Baltimore's Washington Monument. Here are our collective thoughts on the matter.

In order to be an inspiration, one must:

1 Be passionate. About something. Anything. Just be passionate. Openly. With abandon. Regardless of what others think.

2 Have self-respect. Know what you believe in. Know what you're good at. Then stand up for it and yourself. If you don't have a backbone, get one. Be selfish sometimes. That's what people with healthy doses of self-respect do.

3 Be intellectually curious. Explore, question, research, challenge. Know what you're talking about. Know what others are talking about. Which is directly tied to number four.

4 Be engaging. Read interesting things so you'll have interesting things to say. Go to fascinating places so you'll have compelling stories to tell. Make yourself uncomfortable so you'll always be challenged. Surround yourself with people of other cultures, disciplines, and perspectives so you'll cultivate varying viewpoints yourself. Never stop learning.

5 Stand for something. Ideally, it will be for the right thing. But even if you're unsure, stand up for something. Tall. Strong. Head up, shoulders back. Don't flinch. People will respect you for it.

6 Possess integrity. If you adhere to number five with sincerity, you will have achieved number six. Have you ever watched The Wire? Even though many of  the show's characters are involved in all manner of questionable, illegal activities, we like them. Omar? My favorite. Stringer Bell? I cried when he died. Bodie? Unequivocably moral.

And yet, they're all drug dealers; how can this be? Because on a certain, unmistakable level, they are true to their own set of morals and values, defined by the culture they inhabit. They have integrity.

7 Persist. To put it simply, in the words of Winston Churchill, never, ever, ever give up. Someone is always watching, and they will notice when you don't. Give up, that is.

8 Model. Be the change you wish to see, embody the values you seek to have emulated. Be honest with and challenge yourself, so you may challenge and be honest with others.

9 Produce. Either alone or by proxy. You can't expect a leader of a large team to have an omnipotent skillset. For example, Steve Jobs probably doesn't have the design skills that Jonathan Ive has. But, by opening doors, removing obstacles, dreaming and articulating lofty visions and creating an environment conducive to innovation and creativity, he creates by proxy through those he leads. 

10 Be optimistic. Make lemonade out of lemons. And when you pour it in a glass to find that it's not as much as you thought, remember, the glass if half-full, not half-empty.

I heard a piece on WYPR the other day on consequential strangers and how important they are in our daily lives. I then found this article in Time Magazine:

If you look at the relationship continuum from stranger to soul mate, consequential strangers fall in that vast territory just beyond strangers and just short of friends. When people say they have 765 friends on Facebook, most of them are consequential strangers.

It made me wonder: what can designers and urban planners do to facilitate the cultivation of consequential strangers? How can social media, design, and interactive technologies meld with architecture and the urban space to makes cities more habitable and enjoyable?

I was coming out of a restaurant in DC the other day and stopped for a moment to check-in via the Gowalla app on my iPhone. I asked the person next to me if she was on Gowalla and wanted to check in, too. Gowalla, by the way, is a social media platform that basically turns whole cities into a game board. Not a virtual one, either. Participation is based on your physical GPS location at any given moment. You have to be there to play. Out in the real world.

She said no, she didn't really engage with Twitter and other social media technologies because she was "out in the real world, actually doing stuff with real people." I didn't respond, but I've thought about it a lot since. Thought a lot about how some people don't get social media. How it's not something that takes the place of your physical interactions with other people, but rather, enhances and enriches those interactions. I've known this for a long time, based on my own personal experiences, but research is now starting to bear this out.

What does the future hold for us as more of the physical environments we inhabit become interactive? What will it mean, for real, when buildings and streets and lights and cars evolve in their ability to communicate and interact with us, when physical objects and buildings and environments actually become actors with us on the stage, rather than just the stage itself?

My circle of consequential strangers is much richer and more engaging due to my participation in social media, my most socially lucrative thus far being Flickr, where I met Michael Surtees, based on our shared interests of design and Weimaraners, and one of my colleagues at NPR, another Flickr contact who has a Weimaraner and read via a link back to my blog while I was still in Seattle that I was moving to DC. And, before either of us were employed at NPR. Our employment within months of each other was totally unrelated and quite the surprise. Ask me more sometime. It's a very interesting story.

Oh, not to mention the fact that Will and I met in June 2001 on the now defunct kiss.com.

Anyway, these and other interactive technologies keep me in the loop with people thousands of miles away. So that every time I do go back to Seattle, I'm up-to-date not just on my friends lives, but also on what's new in the city. When I get off the plane, it's as if I never left. That's a nice feeling.

My sister Megan, 1970-something. Purgatory ski resort, just north of Durango, CO.

This morning, when I liberally applied my new Lush conditioner, the smell reminded me of my sister, Megan.

I don’t know what it was. Maybe the chalky orangeness of it. Maybe the woodsy sweetness in it. Whatever it was, it was as if she’d walked past the room and I could smell her.
My sister Megan, for those who don’t know, is really the closest thing I ever had to a mother. She’s thirteen and a half years older than me and took care of me when I was little, both before and after my mother died.
If I could paint a picture of Megan with words, first I would brush her face with a stroke of dignity, followed by a sigh of stately grace. For her hair, I would layer burnt umber with a swash of heated passion. Her skin with muted eggshells and her eyes, mossy olive and emerald.
I remember these things when I think of my sister:

Snow
Mountains
Colorado
Cold
Sun
Skiing
Durango
Orange Volkswagen Beetle
Siberian husky
Norwegian meatballs
Nutmeg
Macaroni and cheese
Auburn
Royal Albert teacups
Madame Alexander dolls
Margaret
Stern
Strong
Integrity
Respect
Peanut Butter
Sewing machine
Yarn needle
Cowboy hats boots shirts western
The Bar-D Ranch

I am inspired by Orangette. I want to write. I really do. And what this means is that I need to start writing every day. Even if it’s just a paragraph. But speaking of paragraphs, I now hate how the ones on this blog look. Thanks to Ellen Lupton, who gave a type workshop to our design group at NPR last week. She mentioned things like paragraph, white space, and ugly. She made us notice things we hadn’t noticed before, at least not in a web context. We were fascinated and then ashamed. We all vowed to be better designers, especially of paragraphs.

Now, onto the serious writing. Today was a warm one in the mid-Atlantic. For January at least. It was 60-degrees in Baltimore and I had the day off, so I took the dogs for a run on Poplar Hill Road. As we were walking through the lovely poplar groves, I wondered if the forests of Germany are like the woods of Baltimore. Because these beautiful German hounds of mine blended in, chameleon-like.

They blend into the woods of the Pacific Northwest, too. But not as seemlessly as they do here. It made me think of softness, and ethereal, and emphemeral, and gray. It made me want to write a poem.

Branches bare
Breath skims the surface
Powdered hush

Last semester, I taught a course on visualizing information at MICA. I used Tufte's first book, The Visual Display of Quantitative information. I love Tufte. I love his simple, Swiss modern approach to design. His strict belief in form following function. His unwavering defense of content and firm assertion that data presented must be understandable above all else.

However, not all my students agreed with his principles. Many of them were enthralled by all the infographics that GOOD magazine produces. Because face it, they're visually beautiful, right? I mean, the colors, the typography, the eye candy. To me, however, most infographics that fit into that genre are more art than design. Why? Because through superfluous ornamentation, they dumb the data down. And because they don't function well. Functionality is the single most important thing separating design from art. 

Good design must function and function well. These criteria do not apply to art.

One student even went so far as to say that "Tufte is anti-design." I couldn't disagree more, and here are my reasons, cloaked in Dieter Rams 10 principles for good design:

Good design is innovative

Maybe you couldn't really call an infographic innovative in and of itself, but you definitely could if the information was tied to a database and represented digitally. iPhone apps, anyone?

Good design makes a product useful

There's that function requirement again. Good design functions. If it doesn't, it's bad design. Or maybe good art. 

Good design is aesthetic

Anyone who's studied the International Typographic Style and the Bauhaus knows that good aesthetics in design don't mean loud and meaningless and flashy. White space is a beautiful thing and God/Allah/Yoda/insert-your-diety-here knows the world needs more of it.

Good design helps a product to be understood

See? It has to work! If those extra textures, lines, and 3-D effects don't help an infographic clearly explain the data, then LEAVE IT OUT.

Good design is unobtrusive

If those extra textures, lines, and 3-D effects overwhelm the data and impede the user's understanding, what you have is an illustration, not good information design. 

Good design is honest

Yes, honest. Which is especially tricky where data is considered. Who didn't learn in Statistics 101 that numbers lie? Well, they can be down right pathological about lying if visually interpreted in the hands of an incompetent designer. Or a very competent illustrator.

Good design is durable

Durable and classic. Like the infographic that is now synonymous with Tufte's name by Charles Joseph Minard: Napoleon's March. This piece, designed in 1869, is timeless. 

Good design is consistent to the last detail

I would say this is especially relevant to information design. When you're dealing with reams of data, you'd better be paying attention to detail.

Good design is concerned with the environment

In this regard, it seems to me that most information design these days is done digitally; large quantities of data lend themselves well to interactive technologies. So, not much paper is wasted. However, you can't forget about the server space it takes to host databases. Server farms are a huge energy suck. Then again, Tufte recommends using only as much ink is necessary to adequately interpret your data. Nothing more, nothing less. Which probably equates to fewer pixels, too.

Good design is as little design as possible

And this is why I love Tufte. This is exactly what he means when he damns things like chart junk and data ink.  If a large portion of the ink in your piece is used to create illustrations void of data, then it's bad design. 

Remember that article by Beatrice Ward, The Crystal Goblet? Well, it applies to information design, too. A crystal goblet exists to support its contents, not overpower them. Honestly, this is where I think much information design fails. The goblet isn't crystal, but more like opaque plastic.

Lastly, my own assertion: Good design is smart.

One of my students felt that Tufte's work was geared toward a highly educated audience, i.e., doctors and research scientists, and therefore, not practical for someone of average intelligence. But if you look through his books, you'll see lots of designs that are geared toward the average person. Like the train schedule (p 31). And Dr Snow's cholera map of central London (p 24). The New York City Weather Map (p 30), and the beautiful time-based relational graphics on pages 42-43. 

Designers should never dumb things down, but rather, challenge, inspire, and raise the bar a little higher. 

In the morning the city Spreads its wings Making a song In stone that sings. 

In the evening the city Goes to bed Hanging lights About its head. - Langston Hughes

 
How to navigate a city? Let me count the ways. In some cities, there are many more ways than others. Generally speaking, East Coast cities have more and better modes of transport than West Coast ones. 

In Baltimore, for example, city officials are getting ready for the inaugural run of the Charm City Circulator (see routes mapped above), modeled after DC's Circulator, which is mainly a way to get tourists around the city and locals out of their cars. I look at this as just another navigation system, in addition to Baltimore's light rail and subway systems (yes, Baltimore has a subway). Another affordance or control, if you will, that tells the urban user that this city can be navigated pretty easily without a car. Not as easy as DC or New York, but more readily than Seattle.

This is Sound Transit's proposed light rail system. The first segment started running this summer. As anyone who knows me even barely can attest, I love Seattle. To me, it's pretty much the perfect city in every aspect except for the weather. And, okay, and maybe the public transportation. 

Anyway, I look at these navigation systems and am fascinated, veiwing them through my interaction design lens. If the city is an interface the way we define digital ones, what are public transportation systems analogous to? Search engines? Global nav bars? They help us get around, and find the stuff we need. Which leads me to question, what is the pattern library of a city? Were I to develop an urban pattern library, what would it contain? How many distinct elements would there be? And how would these elements map to patterns we find in other design systems?

I would also point out the ways each system is presented in terms of information design. The Seattle map is much more clear in terms of really highlighting the routes from point A to point B. The context of the Baltimore version is helpful to a point, but overall, it's visually overwhelming and distinctions between land and water are hard to make. In short, it needs some Tufte and Swiss Modernism.