tag:domleca.com,2014:/feedDom Leca2014-02-28T14:08:22-08:00Dom Lecahttps://domleca.comdom.leca@gmail.comSvbtle.comtag:domleca.com,2014:Post/poetics-of-music2014-02-28T14:08:22-08:002014-02-28T14:08:22-08:00Poetics of Music<p>Below are excerpts of <em>Poetics of Music in the form of 6 lessons</em> by Igor Stravinsky, delivered as lectures at Harvard University between 1939 and 1940. </p>
<p>The quality of being revolutionary is generally attributed to artists in our day with laudatory intent, undoubtedly because we are living in a period when revolution enjoys a kind of prestige among yesterday’s elite. Let us understand each other: I am the first to recognize that daring is the motive force of the finest and greatest acts; which is all the more reason for not putting it unthinkingly at the service of disorder and base cravings in a desire to cause sensation at any price. I approve of daring; I set no limits to it.<br>
To enjoy to the full the conquest of daring, we must demand that it operates in a pitiless light. </p>
<p>Gratuitous excess spoils every substance, every form it touches. In its blundering it impairs the effectiveness of most valuable discoveries and at the same time corrupts the taste of its devotees.<br>
<strong>A musical complex, however harsh it may be, is legitimate to the extent to which it is genuine</strong>.<br>
I am completely insensitive to the prestige of revolution. All the noise it may make will not call forth the slightest echo in me. For revolution is one thing, innovation another.</p>
<h1 id="the-phenomenon-of-music_1">The phenomenon of music <a class="head_anchor" href="#the-phenomenon-of-music_1">#</a>
</h1>
<p><strong>Sounds of nature are promises of music, it takes a human being to keep them</strong>: a human being who is sensible to nature many voices, of course, but who in addition feels the need of putting them in order and who is gifted for that task with a special attitude. Tonal elements become music only by virtue of their being organized, and that such organization presupposes a conscious human act. So that to the gift of nature are added the benefits of artifice - such is the general significance of art.</p>
<p><strong>The phenomenon of music is nothing else than a phenomenon of speculation</strong>. The basis of musical creation is a preliminary feeling out, a will moving first in an abstract realm with the object of giving shape to something concrete. The elements at which this speculation necessarily aims are those of sound and time.</p>
<p>Music is a chronologic art as painting is a spatial art. It is an organisation in time: a <strong>chronomy</strong>.</p>
<p>Contrast produces an immediate effect. Similarity satisfies us only in the long run. Contrast is an element of variety, but it divides our attention. Similarity is born of a striving for unity. The need to seek variety is perfectly legitimate, but we should not forget that the One precedes the Many.<br>
Variety is valid only as a means of attaining similarity. Variety surrounds me on every hand. So I need not fear that I shall be lacking in it, since I am constantly confronted by it. Contrast is everywhere. One has only to take note of it. Similarity is hidden; it must be sought out, and it is found only after the most exhaustive efforts.</p>
<p>The function of tonality is completely subordinated to the force of attraction of the pole of sonority. All music is nothing more than a succession of impulses that converge towards a definite point of repose. The general law of attraction is satisfied in only a limited way by the traditional diatonic system, for that system possesses no absolute value.</p>
<p>The fact remains that it is still impossible to lay down the rules that govern a new technique. <strong>Harmony as it is taught today dictates rules that were not fixed until long after the publication of the works upon which they are based, rules which were unknown to the composer of these works</strong>. <br>
In this manner, our harmonic treatises take as their point of departure Mozart and Haydn, neither of whom ever heard of harmonic treaties.</p>
<p>Our pole of attraction are no longer within the closed system which was the diatonic system, we can bring the poles together without being compelled to conform to the exigencies of tonality. For we no longer believe in the absolute value of the major-minor system based on the entity which musicologists call the C-scale.</p>
<p>Composing is putting sounds in order according to certain interval relationships. This activity leads to a search for a center. The discovery of this center suggests to me the solution of my problem. <strong>It’s musical topography.</strong></p>
<p>The system of classic tonality which has served as the basis for musical constructions of compelling interest, has had authority of law among musicians for only a short period of time (XVII-XIXth century). From the moment when chords no longer serve to fulfill merely the function assigned to them by the interplay of tones but, instead, throw off all constraints to become new entities free of all ties - from that moment on, one may say that the process is completed: the diatonic system has lived out his lifecycle.</p>
<p><strong>Modality, tonality, polarity are merely provisional means that are passing by, and will even pass away. What survives every change of system is melody: the intonation of the <em>melos</em>, a part of a phrase. Melody is the musical singing of a cadenced phrase.</strong> The example of Beethoven would suffice to convince us that, of all the elements of music, melody is the most accessible to the ear and the least capable of acquisition.</p>
<p>Song, more and more bound to words, has finally become a kind of filler, thereby evidencing its decadence. From the moment song assumes as its calling the expression of the meaning of discourse, it leaves the realm of music and has nothing more in common with it.<br>
<em>“Let us return to old times, and that will be progress”</em> - Verdi</p>
<h1 id="the-composition-of-music_1">The composition of music <a class="head_anchor" href="#the-composition-of-music_1">#</a>
</h1>
<p>All creation presupposes at its origin a sort of appetite that is brought on by the foretaste of discovery. This foretaste of the creative act accompanies the intuitive grasp of the unknown entity already possessed but not yet intelligible, an entity that will not take definite shape except by the action of constantly vigilant technique.<br>
This appetite that is aroused in me at the mere thought of putting in order musical elements that have attracted my attention is not at all a fortuitous thing like inspiration, but as habitual and periodic as a natural need.</p>
<p><strong>The word artist bestows on its bearer the highest intellectual prestige, the privilege of being accepted as a pure mind - is in my view entirely incompatible with the role of the homo faber.</strong><br>
If it is true that we are intellectuals, we are called upon not to cogitate but to perform. The Renaissance invented the artist, distinguished him from the artisan and began to exalt the former at the expense of the latter.</p>
<p>Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it. For the act of invention implies the necessity of a lucky find and achieving full-realization of this find. What we imagine does not necessarily take on a concrete form and remain in a state of virtuality, whereas invention is not conceivable apart from its actual being worked out.</p>
<p>In the course of my labours, I stumble upon something unexpected. It strikes me. I make note of it. At the proper time, I put it to profitable use. Fancy implies a will to abandon one’s self to caprice. The assistance of the unexpected is quite different, it is a collaboration immanently bound up with the inertia of the creative process, heavy with possibilities which are unsolicited and come most appositely to temper the inevitable over-rigorousness of the naked-will.<br>
<em>“In everything that yields gracefully, there must be resistance”</em>. - G.K Chesterton.</p>
<p>An accident is perhaps the only thing that really inspires us. A composer improvises aimlessly the way the animal grubs about, seek things out. What urges of the composer is satisfied by this investigation? The rules with which, like a penitent, he is burdened? No: he is in quest if pleasure. He seeks satisfaction that he fully knows he will not find without first striving for it.</p>
<p><strong>A mode of composition that does not assign itself limits becomes pure fantasy.</strong> The effects it produces may accidentally amuse but are not capable of being repeated.<br>
Fantasy being the acceptation which presupposes an abandonment of one’s self to the caprices of imagination. And this presupposes that the composer’s will is voluntarily paralyzed. <br>
The creator’s function is to sift elements he receives from her, for human activity must impose limit upon itself. <strong>The more art is controlled, the more it is free</strong>.</p>
<p><strong>If everything is permissible to me, if nothing offers me any resistance, then any effort is inconceivable, and consequently every undertaking becomes futile.</strong></p>
<p>Will I then have to lose myself in the abyss of freedom? To what shall I cling in order to escape the dizziness that seizes me before the virtuality of this infinitude? However, I shall not succumb. I shall overcome my terror and be re-assured by the thought that I have the 7 notes of the scale and its chromatic intervals at my disposal, that weak and strong accent are within my reach, and that in all of these I possess solid and concrete elements which offer me a field of experience just as vast as the upsetting and dizzy infinitude that had just frightened me.<br>
It is into this field that I shall sink my roots, full convinced that combinations which have at their disposal 12 sounds in each octave and all possible rhythmic varieties promise me riches that all the activity of human genius will never exhaust.</p>
<p>So here we are, in the <strong>realm of necessity</strong>.<br>
<strong>Talking about art as the realm of freedom is an uniformly widespread because it is imagined that art is outsides the bound of ordinary activity</strong>.<br>
My freedom consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself. I shall go even further: my freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint, diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit.</p>
<p><em>“It is evident”</em> writes Baudelaire, <em>“that rhetorics and prosodies are not arbitrarily invented tyrannies, but a collection of rules demanded by the very organization of the spiritual being, and never have prosodies and rhetorics kept originality from fully manifesting itself. The contrary, that is to say, that they have aided the flowering of originality, would be infinitely more true”</em>.</p>
<h1 id="musical-typology_1">Musical typology <a class="head_anchor" href="#musical-typology_1">#</a>
</h1>
<p>All art presupposes a work of selection. To proceed by elimination is the great technique of selection. And here again we find the search of the <em>One</em> out of the <em>Many</em>.<br>
Style is the particular way a composer organizes his conception and speaks the langage of his craft.<br>
The style of an epoch results from a combination of individual styles dominated by the methods of the composers who have exerted a preponderant influence on their time.<br>
<strong>One may say that the masters send out the rays of their genius well beyond their own day. In this way, they appear as beacons by whose light and warmth is developed a sum of tendencies that will be shared by most of their successors and that contributes to form a parcel of traditions which make up culture</strong>.</p>
<p>This beacons never flare up without causing profound disturbances in the world of music. Once stabilized, the fire’s radiation become more and more attenuated until the moment comes when it warms none but the pedagogues. <strong>At that point academicism is born</strong>. But a new beacon-fire appears, and the story goes on.<br>
It just so happens that our contemporary epoch offers us the example of a musical culture that is day by day losing the sense of continuity and the taste for a common langage. <br>
The universality whose benefits we are gradually losing is an entirely different thing from the cosmopolitanism that is beginning to take hold of us. <strong>Universality presupposes the fecundity of a culture that is spread and communicated everywhere, whereas cosmopolitanism provides for neither action nor doctrine and induces the indifferent passivity of a sterile eclecticism</strong>.</p>
<p>What is most irritating about artistic rebels is the spirit of systemization which under the guise of doing away with conventions, establishes a new set, quite as arbitrary and cumbersome than the old.<br>
<strong>That is what André Gide so well expressed in saying that classical works are beautiful by virtue of their subjugated romanticism</strong>.</p>
<h1 id="the-performance-of-music_1">The performance of music. <a class="head_anchor" href="#the-performance-of-music_1">#</a>
</h1>
<p>The listener is in a way called upon to become the composer’s partner. This presupposes that the listener’s instruction and education are sufficiently extensive that he may not only grasp the main features of the work as they emerge, but that he may even follow to some degree the changing aspects of its unfolding. This exceptional participation gives the partner such lively pleasure that it unites him in a certain measure with the mind that conceived and realized the work to which he is listening, giving him the illusion if identifying himself with the creator. That is the meaning of Raphael’s famous adage: <strong><em>“To understand is to equate”</em></strong>.</p>
<p>The time is no more when Bach gladly traveled a long way to hear Buxterhude. <strong>Today radio brings music into the home at all hours of the day and night. It relieves the listener of all effort except that of turning of a dial. Now the musical sense cannot be acquired or developed without exercise. In music, as everything else, inactivity leads gradually to paralysis, to the atrophying of faculties. Understood in this way, music becomes a sort of drug which, far from stimulating the mind paralyzes and stultifies it. So it comes about that the very undertaking which seeks to make people like music by giving it a wider and wider diffusion, very often only achieves the result of making the very people lose their appetite for music whose interest was to be aroused and whose taste was to be developed</strong>.</p>
<p><strong>Music is what unifies. This bond of unity is never achieved without searching and hardship. But the need to create must clear away all obstacles</strong>.<br>
For the unity of the work has a resonance all its own. Its echo, caught by our soul, sounds nearer and nearer. Thus the consummated work spreads abroad to be communicated and finally flows back to its source. The cycle then is closed. And this is how music comes to reveal itself as a form of communion with our fellow man - and with the Supreme Being.</p>
tag:domleca.com,2014:Post/when-everything-happens-now2013-05-20T08:22:00-07:002013-05-20T08:22:00-07:00When everything happens now<p>I recently read Douglas Rushkoff’s latest book: <a href="http://www.rushkoff.com/present-shock/"><em>Present Shock</em></a>.<br><br>
I found it enlightening and thought I could share a brief summary of it below. </p>
<p>What is Present Shock?<br><br>
There are many sides to it but Rushkoff sums it up pretty well in the following conflict: </p>
<blockquote class="short">
<p>The faux present of digital bombardment<br><br>
vs.<br><br>
The true now of a coherently living human </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The first manifestation of Present Shock identified by Rushkoff is the <strong>narrative collapse</strong>.<br><br>
Reality TV, Lost, Friends, Seinfeld, action movies, extreme sports, news, video games are all symptomatic of the disappearance of the story.<br>
It has been replaced by a meta-narrative creating a sustained tension with little expectation of final resolution. There is no journey through evidence anymore but a ‘making sense’ of the moment.<br><br>
Who could seriously expect a ‘real’ ending to Lost after a few episodes or a anything else than a preposterous screenplay when watching Star Trek or Iron Man? <br>
J.J Abrams and his <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpjVgF5JDq8"><em>mystery box</em></a> are the perfect embodiment of this trend.<br>
<em>Intentionally withholding information</em> is much more engaging for the viewer. It doesn’t require a story to work. It’s <a href="http://vimeo.com/28016047">chaos cinema</a>. </p>
<p>Extreme sports and video games are not about a story leading to a victory anymore, there are about the play itself. No fixed rules or seriousness, improvisation is what matters. </p>
<p>The disappearance of story incites sensationalism. We try to recreate the exhilaration of traditional narrative with provocation and humiliating imagery: present shock. </p>
<p>Closer to technology itself, <strong>digiphrenia</strong> is another face of Present Shock. <br>
We want all access, to everything, all the time and be capable of matching this intensity and availability ourselves. Instead of demanding that tech conforms to ourselves, we strive to be more compatible with it. </p>
<p>But the quest for digital omniscience is self defeating. We are chasing after what has already happened and ignoring whatever is going on now.<br><br>
We’re submitting ourselves to the computer clock: <em>Chronos</em>, when we should in reality leverage technology to be in touch with <em>Kairos</em>: the right or opportune moment aka timing. </p>
<p>The biggest sham Rushkoff uncovers is how we inaccurately describe our own technology. Digital time does not flow, it flicks. Our choices are dictated by a pulse, not a stream. It’s not a Twitter or a Facebook stream we’re showering ourselves with all day long. Let’s call it what it is: a Twitter flicker or a Facebook pulse.<br><br>
<strong>We always talk about synchronization. The reality is we have never been so far from being in sync with our own human pace</strong>. </p>
<p>We’re frantically syncing with machines, alienating ourselves because we hop from choice to choice (should you get out your vibrating phone or ignore it?) but we forget the obligation to choose is no choice at all.<br><br>
We’re just digging our own grave.<br><br>
We’re mistaking sync with <em>digiphrenia</em>, a disordered condition of mental activity. We are not intellectually and emotionally equipped to be on <em>Chronos</em> clock. We are altering ourselves in a bad and mad way. </p>
<p><strong>Overwinding</strong> is another manifestation of Present Shock.<br><br>
It is time compression: the ability to squish really big timescale in smaller ones.<br><br>
Hedge Funds with their complex derivatives have become overwinding masters, as reality TV with its instant catharsis. <br>
But closer to our tech concerns, let’s take the common case of 15 minutes spent on Facebook.<br><br>
Your friends from elementary school, your family, your ex-girl friends, your current friends, your future relationships, past and future parties are all mashed-up there, squished on your 13" screen.<br><br>
Everything you have lived, everyone you have met is compressed in a virtual now. This shift from a historical sensibility to a presentist one is like being asked to shift our awareness away from the hard drive to the RAM. </p>
<p>We end up in a <em>short forever</em>, paralyzed by the weight of indelible history and the anticipation of a pre-orientated fate.<br>
Facebook knows you so well that you’ve turned into an insignificant and highly predictable part of the machinery. </p>
<p>The same process is at work in the way we approach culture. When everything is instantly accessible, the entirety of culture becomes a layer deep. All knowledge is brought to the present tense. There is no cultural explores, no time for artists or genres to develop because there is no time to develop the layers and experiences. </p>
<p>Finally, Rushkoff writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The hardest part of living in present shock is that there is no end. It is a chronic plateau of interminable stress that seem to have always been there. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The logical consequence of this short forever with no end is we return to the simplicity offered by extreme scenarios: <strong>Apocalypto</strong>.<br>
It relieves us from our responsibility by granting not only aspiration to technology but superiority.<br>
Remember Ray Kurzweil’s singularity? It simply is another way to give in. Technology will end up making choices for us and move forward. Why bother? <br>
The steady avalanche of disaster movies Hollywood is feeding us is yet another testimony of Apocalypto. </p>
<p>So how do you escape Present Shock? In the words of Rushkoff, you have to:</p>
<blockquote class="short">
<p>Accept responsibility and dominion over the moment in which you are living right now. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>For technology, it means building a service which is not only in tune with our organic pace but helps us sync with it as much as possible, that cares more about timing than eyeballs.<br><br>
In short, something making us more human.</p>
tag:domleca.com,2014:Post/genius-of-our-time2013-05-16T05:11:39-07:002013-05-16T05:11:39-07:00Genius of our time<p>Bret Victor’s latest presentations <a href="http://worrydream.com/#!/StopDrawingDeadFish"><em>Stop Drawing Dead Fish</em></a> and <a href="http://worrydream.com/#!/DrawingDynamicVisualizationsTalk"><em>Drawing Dynamic Visualizations</em></a> are breathtaking to say the least. </p>
<p>At a macro level, a prototyping tool like the one Bret Victor demoes is a game changer for 2 reasons: </p>
<ul>
<li>It dramatically shortens development time<br>
</li>
<li>It allows to reach the <em>overview stage</em> faster<br>
</li>
</ul>
<p>When building software, you usually spend (waste) a lot of time iterating. Designing and coding the very same screen again and again until you reach a point where it is satisfying.<br><br>
When you get there, you usually realize that all this cascading views you created need some additional work for your application to be consistent as a whole.<br><br>
It’s a painful process because it doesn’t matter how good you are, it remains sequential: design / code / test / iterate. </p>
<p>That’s why companies like Facebook extensively use Quartz Composer. Getting as close as possible to the first version of an application in the design phase lets you minimize engineering time, iterations and balance the workload between engineers and designers. </p>
<p>However, be it Quartz Composer, After Effect, web technologies, the hundreds of web-based prototyping tools available or even Keynote, they’re all inappropriate.<br><br>
They only partially solve the problem because they only allow partial prototyping. You can flesh out a few transitions and animations but you can’t see the whole picture and reach the point where you realize there is an <em>obvious</em> simpler solution. <br>
The <em>obvious</em> simpler solution can only occur to you when you reached what I would call the <em>overview stage</em>.<br><br>
That’s when the first fully working iteration of your software is in your hands. It is usually the moment where the magic happens in software, when you have a chance to go from good to great. Iterate one more time or leave it as it is because it is good enough.</p>
<p>By reaching the <em>overview stage</em> before any line of code is typed, the dynamic drawing app not only shortens development time thus engineering resources but also provides designers with an early global vision on their work and how all the piece fit together. It gives them a chance to iterate without code and keep control on the design. </p>
<p>From experience, my <em>real</em> work at Sparrow mainly consisted in optimizing engineering resources by making the good calls design-wise. Unfortunately, it means design always comes second and is highly dependent on the development’s pipeline. Not much room for experiments. </p>
<p>The true value of Victor’s tool is to be found at the micro level.<br><br>
<strong>The real waste when building software, apart from inevitable lost coding days, is aborted design ideas</strong>. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>As toolmakers, we have to do everything we can to get pictures out of people’s head and into the world […]. If people are thinking in picture, we can’t force them to take a detour through symbols to get to their picture </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Today, a designer in charge of making a software engaging, understandable, easy to use and pleasurable has no direct control over the implementation details and no precise knowledge of what’s really possible.<br><br>
Here, I am just talking the usual designer day-to-day routine of refining interactions and interface.<br><br>
Innovating when you have no control or deep understanding of how things work behind the scene is almost impossible. Imagine coming up with the pull-to-refresh idea with no programming background. </p>
<p>The only way for a designer to control the implementation details is to stand over the programmer’s shoulder and fine-tune what he’s building. This requires patience on both sides and time, a resource many small companies don’t have. Design remains mediated.<br><br>
The other way out is to be Loren Brichter and master both design and code. Unfortunately, this is pretty rare. This explains why most software usually end up being good enough or ok but not great despite considerable efforts. </p>
<p>The dynamic drawing tool transfers power (and responsibility) from the engineer (back) to the designer who is finally able to control all parameters and deliver a fully alive drawing of what he wants.<br>
He is not in a position where he’s stuck approximating anymore. He can flesh it out from the beginning to the end.<br><br>
This makes a huge difference. </p>
<p>From <em>blindly manipulating symbols = programming</em>, we’re on the verge of being able to draw the living picture in our heads.</p>
<p>Bret Victor is this close from offering designers the tool they’ve long stopped dreaming of. It is his revolution. </p>
<p>FYI: there is one last presentation to be released on May 28 <a href="http://worrydream.com/#!/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable"><em>Media for Thinking the Unthinkable</em></a>, be sure to watch it and get your mind blown.</p>
tag:domleca.com,2014:Post/rat-race2012-10-08T20:51:06-07:002012-10-08T20:51:06-07:00Rat race<blockquote>
<p>Here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. </p>
<p>If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables… </p>
<p>But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings. </p>
<p>They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing. </p>
<p>The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. </p>
<p>That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>David Foster Wallace 2005 Commencement speech at Kenyon College.</p>
tag:domleca.com,2014:Post/ux-metrics2012-05-07T09:39:00-07:002012-05-07T09:39:00-07:00Armors and bullet holes<p>In his recent <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/09/counterintuitive-world"><em>The Counterintuitive World</em></a> post, Kevin Drum tells the following story:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Back during World War II, the RAF lost a lot of planes to German anti-aircraft fire. So they decided to armor them up. But where to put the armor? The obvious answer was to look at planes that returned from missions, count up all the bullet holes in various places, and then put extra armor in the areas that attracted the most fire.</p>
<p>Obvious but wrong. As Hungarian-born mathematician Abraham Wald explained at the time, if a plane makes it back safely even though it has, say, a bunch of bullet holes in its wings, it means that bullet holes in the wings aren’t very dangerous. What you really want to do is armor up the areas that, on average, don’t have any bullet holes. Why? Because planes with bullet holes in those places never made it back. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Applying the above to UI/UX confirms a lingering feeling I have about software metrics and usage statistics. </p>
<p>Metrics are undeniably useful when designing sign up forms, improving conversion rate on merchant sites, increasing upload success rate… They’re essential to web design. But, to some extent, they do not make sense for apps.</p>
<p>Some users are dealing with your UI blunders but they keep using the app.<br><br>
Back home with bullet holes.<br><br>
Some just can’t cope with it.<br><br>
Shot down.<br><br>
Tweaking your design based on statistical usage <strong>is</strong> armoring up the plane that made it back. </p>
<p>Doing so is becoming blind to your interface real pain points and ending up strengthening your user deviations.<br><br>
You’re adding armors where it’s not needed.</p>
<p><em>Oh! 80% of our users click on this reply button rather than the other.</em><br><br>
You’ll make the other one disappear, make the 80% button more prominent. By getting along with the figures, you’ll only amplify the observed behavior. </p>
<p><em>Let’s cross reference all the data on all buttons, all actions and we’ll have a comprehensive map of our user’s interactions.</em><br><br>
Same thing. It’s like looking at a mouse in a labyrinth. The left/right decision at each corner doesn’t matter. It’s the labyrinth design that matters and affects the behavior. Not an isolated choice within the design.<br><br>
Of course, you can tweak it but it means entering in an infinite loop of modifications impacting each other.</p>
<p>Application UI/UX design does not obey the same rules than web design. <br>
Designing an app means selecting a few things and making them work as flawlessly as possible. </p>
<p>Application design is organic.<br><br>
An app is a whole, a living organism. You can’t subtract or add without hampering its core or killing it.<br>
The only way out if it doesn’t work out is to start from scratch. Not tweaking based on metrics and stats.</p>
<p>One of the best example I know of this is <a href="https://path.com/">Path</a>.<br>
Path, as we know it today, is not a 2.0. It’s not an iteration over a first version.<br><br>
It is a new app.</p>
tag:domleca.com,2014:Post/earthlings2012-03-23T10:27:00-07:002012-03-23T10:27:00-07:00Earthlings<p>Great documentary on how society treats animal narrated by J.Phoenix.<br><br>
<a href="http://www.earthlings.com/">Have a look</a>. It’s free. </p>
tag:domleca.com,2014:Post/proud-dad-of-one-generation2012-03-23T08:35:00-07:002012-03-23T08:35:00-07:00Proud dad of a generation<p>Great interview of <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/atebits">Loren Brichter</a> by Ellis Hamburger on <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/23/2893884/loren-brichter-interview-5-minutes-on-the-verge"><em>The Verge</em></a>. </p>
<p>From the widely adopted pull-to-refresh to the Tweetie sidebar and stacked panels, Loren Brichter has indeed given birth to a new generation of applications.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.sprw.me/company.php">Sparrow</a> would not exist if it wasn’t for him.<br><br>
We’re now lucky enough to have him as an advisor. </p>
<p>I can’t wait to see his secret projects.</p>
tag:domleca.com,2014:Post/but-does-it-float2012-03-23T04:12:00-07:002012-03-23T04:12:00-07:00But does it float<p>My favorite place on the Internet.<br><br>
Edited by <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/atleykins">@atleykins</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/folkertgorter">@folkertgorter</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/50wattsdotcom">@50wattsdotcom</a>.</p>
<p>The blog runs on <a href="http://cargocollective.com/">Cargo</a> which goal is to <em>dramatically increase the accessibility and exposure of creative individuals on the Internet</em>. </p>
<p>A job perfectly done.</p>
tag:domleca.com,2014:Post/bretvictor2012-03-22T04:16:00-07:002012-03-22T04:16:00-07:00Magic Ink<p>Bret Victor’s <em>Magic Ink</em> is without any doubt the best thing I have read on UI/UX design since I started designing applications.<br><br>
Do yourself a favor and read it (twice).</p>
<p>I also strongly recommend <a href="http://vimeo.com/36579366">Bret’s video presentation</a> at CUSEC 2012: <em>Inventing on Principle</em></p>