New York 2008 from Vicente Sahuc on Vimeo

This video is a beautiful, mesmerizing piece of work.  Objectively, it is little more than some candid, street footage (admittedly taken in Manhattan) spliced together and laced with a nice soundtrack. Tthose words technically do describe the video — which could easily instead have formed something banal and pedantic — but instead of a snore, the video is a work of art. The magic ingredient — the alchemy which transforms slo-mo candids of people walking down the street into a lush painting of a city in motion –  is the convergence of talent, determination, and vision. And the result is a work of art instead of 3rd-rate documentary filler.

The video is impressive not only as a piece of art, but as a vivid example of how an artist (or designer, or artisan) with vision can make great things with even a minimal amount of tools. Sahuc wasn’t using fancy, high-end equipment. He didn’t have a lighting crew or a budget. He took what he had and made it work.

In other words, as designers our work is not limited by our lack of a new G5 Mac, or CS4, or even our programmers’ (un)willingness to build AJAX interfaces with rounded corners. No. If we can mine our instincts and skills to hone a clear vision, even the crudest of tools can be used to create elegant, enchanting results.

It all starts here.

The eggheads over at User Centric published an academic analysis of the UI of the instrument panel and center stack on the new Mini Clubman. Despite in all their scientific vigor and application of UI expertise, though, they didn’t get it quite right. It all starts off on the wrong foot with the title of the post, “What’s Driving the Mini Cooper? Not the User Experience.” Oh really?

I don’t think User Experience means what they think it means.

The User Experience of driving a Mini is far more than the act of changing the radio station or customizing the tach’s digital display. It starts with the emotional appeal of the body design, the look of the oversize wheels and tires, and the diminutive dimensions of the car. It builds with the sporting mechanicals – the taut suspension tied to the thick, communicative steering wheel, the whir and throttle response of the high-tech 4-cylinder motor, and the snickety shifter. It settles in with the nostalgic dash design, the bucket seats, and the fine craftsmanship of the interior materials.

Speedometer. And Radio.

Then, we get to the dials and buttons. Are they important? Of course. Does their functionality play a role in the user experience? Absolutely. Are they faulty? Yeah. But taken as a whole, the dashboard buttons and readouts are a small fraction of the experience.

What about User Centric’s critique of those controls? They got a lot of it right, primarily the analysis of the radio’s relative disembodiment from it’s buttons, and the volume dial’s distant location. The radio’s dials – not just the buttons – though, are tiny. Why no remarks about that? Also not mentioned: the secondary controls at the bottom of the center stack – which are indistinguishable by touch, even though they perform a variety of tasks.

Speedometer over there, to your right.

One key interface design decision that seems to be an obvious UI element worth examining, and yet  here merits neither comment nor  question, is the placement of the speedometer. Arguably the most important dial for the driver, the Mini’s speedo is mounted in the middle of the dashboard, rather than it’s conventional location behind the steering wheel, directly in front of the driver’s line of sight. This unconventional design choice is exactly the type of thing usability studies like this are meant to evaluate.

The old switcheroo.

This study was worth doing. But based on the published report, it seems that the researchers got caught up in the details or their reportage and lost perspective on the bigger picture. Some important things were overlooked, while the relative significance of the UI is over emphasized. I think that’s too bad. I’m sure the researchers are capable fellas. But this piece doesn’t really do the field of user experience justice.

Kicker Studio designer and author Dan Saffer speaks about the designing and documenting for gestural interfaces. Kind of long, but worth a watch.

I guarantee that you will love this video. For a high-def, albeit briefer, version, visit Capacity’s site.

Although it is tons of fun and entertaining to watch, what is most compelling is the huge leap forward displayed here in the notion of what a logo and a brand can mean. Conventional ideas of brand identity, shaped by decades of emblems and tag lines, still seem to confine it to a word mark or a glyph. This campaign demonstrates how much more fertile ground there is (for the right brand, of course) to define and display the vibrancy of their identity.

The idea is that Cartoon Network is a palette of characters (the Noods) who interact – and not just a cable chanel with an animated bug in the corner of the screen. It is brought vividly to life by first showing us cute but featureless dolls who are then injected with personality by pops and bursts of color and motion. The brand is alive. It is interactive, fun, and playful. (Of course the phenomenal soundtrack plays a key role). Try and get that message across with a logo and a tag line.

For more background and analysis, a good write up from CartoonNothing:

The latest jewel in [LA-based Capacity's] crown is a massive rebrand for Cartoon Network built around Noods, blank Dunny-esque figures created by the crew at Kidrobot. Props to CN for dreaming up such a clever, collaborative concept.

Capacitys CN montage starts off in a minimal white space but builds in complexity and vibrancy as more characters, environments and seasons are introduced. [...] Yoda reducing General Grievous to a puddle of paint [is] a clever way to deconstruct the underlying concept of the rebrand.

The frenetic soundtrack (also created by Capacity) tinges the entire montage with a playful 8-bit tone and moves things forward with a cheery optimism befitting such a grand undertaking.

I might have to rip that soundtrack into an MP3.

Apple was, of course, the big news in the technology world today. Most inspiring of the product updates was iLife 09. Specifically, iPhoto has added some powerful new features to enable users to organize and find photos in their library. The new tools, Faces and Places (in addition to Events, from ‘08) bring new, better ways of organizing and finding your pictures.

The fact that they tie into your Facebook and Flickr accounts, and use built in geo-tagging to support these functions, is icing on the cake. But for a designer, these features are case studies in the profound impact of user-oriented information architecture (or Domain Language, as Paul describes it in his fantastic post over at 37signals). From the post:

A domain language is the set of words that reflect the way you cut up a domain. It consists of the pieces you sliced and the names you chose to give them. This language defines an application and makes it special.

Rather than stick with the old, tried and true – but ultimately dysfunctional – means of organizing pictures (roll and album) the new iPhoto app uses location, face recognition, and of course Events to cull together these artifacts in ways that are meaningful to people, rather than databases.

Each chance we have to examine and perhaps create IA (or domain language) for a new website or other app, we have the same chance to truly examine the way people think of the products or tools they’ll be using, and to ensure – or at least try – to make our language fit the way they think of things, and not the other way around.