Designing Obama is a documentary book about the art and design created for this historical presidential campaign of USA. The author, Scott Thomas, has created a fund-raising project at http://www.kickstarter.com to draw attention and support.
I think this is a fun and inspiring project from both artistic and public-participation perspectives. During the campaign period, a tremendous number of artists and designers has invested their talent and passion into their works to support Obama. This book can be a good design reference for me.
Secondly, it is interesting to see how the general public/net-citizens discover and participate in such online creative projects. At the time I pledged, the project was already 91% funded with $58,875.31 USD pledged. It proves that with an interesting idea in your mind, and good use of Internet technology and social marketing, you can have a much further reach to the people in the community, and grab their attention and participation.
I have already submitted by pledge. Please show your support by visiting Designing Obama and pledge before the due date at Nov 5, 12:59am EST.
Donating a few cents while grocery shopping has never been easier.
The other day I went to a Safeway for some grocery shopping, and when I was checking out the cashier asked, “would you like to donate 73 cents to the Breast Cancer Research centre?” While puzzled for a moment why the odd amount of money, I nodded and immediately got the answer when the change was dropped from the auto change dispenser: my transaction was rounded up to the dollar and the cents were donated. Then I walked out of the store with a warm nice feeling.
From my usability observer’s point of view, this fund-raising method is clever in a few ways:
Since the donation happens during the check out process, there is no separate action for the consumer to give the money. Hence the low fraction of donation.
Small change is one thing that lots of people don’t really like to keep in their pocket nowadays. In a gas station you can often see a tray that reads “leave-a-penny” – spare a few pennies that you don’t wanna keep anyways to the next customer who might need them to make up the gas payment. So here Safeway is actually doing me a favour for keeping the change.
Just like me, I believe lots of people are willing to do something for a cause, but often not very motivated to do it. If you can design a way to do it with very low affordance (very easy to do) people will love to participate as well as loving your brand more. Should note that for brand loyalty development.
Although I’m determined to study for my Japanese class and do the home assignment, my another browser window with Google Reader displayed an attractive post from Core77, which ultimately sucked a whole hour from my precious Saturday night. It reads: Starck’s “Design for Life” now online. And let me say that, I’m absolutely *not* regret to have drained 60 minutes of my life watching this wonderful reality show from BBC.
Not that I’m particularly impressed by the reality show bit. However, I must admit that it’s the name “Philippe Starck” that caught my first attention when mindlessly skimming through the news feeds. Starck is a world famous designer who had created household products, electronics, hotel interior and a yacht. His projects are not limited to a particular specialty. But all the products have something in common: his design principles that focus on eco-friendliness, sustainability, practicability, and usability.
*spoiler alert*
An interesting bit in this episode is that, one of the contestants of the show presented “Joystick vs Power Sockets” as the metaphor of gender. The joystick represents the strength and focus of men in many aspects of life, but it lacks the freedom of movement. The power sockets, which has multiple flexible extension cords, represent the flexibility and balance that female has when connecting to different emotional and physical needs. Quite a nice thought – he is not telling you the obvious. He is telling a story.
*end of spoiler*
Moreover, Starck had presented at TED conference at 2007. You can see his talk “Philippe Starck thinks deep on design” on TED.com. If you’ve watched this talk, it is not difficult to find the coherent principles in this BBC “Design for Life” TV show.
It is not a full-colour store sign with attractive logo and exciting design. It is a mundane folding gate of an old corner store situated at an aging district in Hong Kong. The gate is made of metal with unique engraving of the store name. This kind of gate used to be very common in Hong Kong, but as technology advanced people chose to use other more attractive ways to promote their identity. To me, the engraved gate expresses the long term commitment of the business to the local market, which is no longer the key to success in a global oriented, fast-pace consumerism society. I sometimes wonder, that when we say the term “Corporate Identity / Identity Rebranding” does it always mean trashing the old, existing assets and introducing the new shiny techniques?
This is a couch made from bathtub. I really like this design of it. The shape of the bathtub is ergonomically designed such that a person can have a bath comfortably in it for a pretty long time, which can be conveniently translated into a cozy couch. Also the curve of the bathtub is visually soothing. I think having one of this in a minimal living room can really speak out your personality.
Hello there, I’m Calvin Chun-yu Chan. Grew up in Hong Kong, studied and worked in Canada as web engineer+designer, now designing mobile apps in Tokyo. On my blog I would like to share my opinions on design, usability, culture and creativity.
