Ben And Travis Send The Nose In A Day
Meanwhile, all I’ve done this summer is fly over Yosemite.
In a jet.
Even from there, it looked pretty cool. I couldn’t see these guys from my vantage point 20,000 feet in the air, though, and since they did this a month ago and I flew over Yosemite this weekend and I cannot see back in time when I fly in a plane, we are fortunate that they brought a camera and filmed their exploits.
Yes. You should watch their videos. And probably start doing some pushups in the morning.
Bears! Part 1. Watch it all. Be patient. Don’t skip around.
Bears! Part 2. Ben and Travis recall the past few hours of their day.
El Capitan. “Aid climbing sucks. Aid climbing really sucks bad.”
The Nose In A Day. Travis talks, ten hours into the climb.
The Nose In A Day. Pitch 25. 1:00 in the morning. Spirits low.
The Nose In A Day. Summit. Daylight. Delirium.
Astroman. “That fall is terrifying. And I’ve taken it five times.”
Fairview Dome Attempt. “This is Kill-Ben-And-Travis Weather.”
“The Other Chris”
Huzzah! This morning I published my first post to the Adaptive Path weblog, and people have been stoked on it all day. I’ve been working on designing the iPhone application to go along with the smart.fm learning website, and a large part of my contribution to the project so far has been sketching. Sketching, sketching, sketching.
I talk about it all in the post, but I can summarize it here as well. Smart.fm has a series of awesome learning games, based on heavy research into human psychology, that are designed to help you learn and retain facts. They have totally hit a sweet spot with people trying to learn other languages, and with the iPhone app we wanted to help people continue their learning, any place, any time. Their existing web-based games feature a sort of “flash cards on steroids” rhythm, which turns out to be a great functional description, but a poor metaphor for their actual gamelike feel. Thus, our goal with the iPhone app is to design something that perhaps resembles index cards at its most basic level, but from an experiential standpoint is a hell of a lot more fun.
And so, we began exploring metaphors. What makes something fun? What makes something gamelike? Alexa and Dan turned me loose with my sketchbook, and I began brainstorming enormous lists around such concepts as the materiality of the gamespace, the movements people perform to interact with the artifacts in the game, and how to best represent time and progress. I generated dozens and dozens of ideas, drawing inspiration from dollar store games to radio dials to Wooly Willy. Throughout my thought process I roughed these guys out on paper, giving ourselves a constant stream of tangible artifacts to look at, reflect on, believe in, or challenge. I talk about this process a bit more in this video, where I walk through my sketchbook with Chris and John, my fellow summer associates.
From these explorations I brought a few ideas up into a bit more coherence, which I talk about here:
We shared all this work with the client, who is absolutely stoked with it. In their blog post regarding this project they speak of a “super-talented summer associate” who produced some pretty cool visual explorations, but when they say that I wonder if they have me confused with Dave Pederson (a.k.a. “The Other Chris”, a.k.a. “The Mysterious Fourth Intern”).
Again, the thread at the Adaptive Path blog can fill you in on all the details. Needless to day, it is an absolute delight working with the fine folks at Cerego, and it is all thanks to them that we can be so open about our process in designing their iPhone app.
Proof that the new iPhone has a secret front-facing camera!
That Apple can activate remotely!
…why else would they tell you to wave your phone around like an idiot?
Meanwhile, back at the farm…
I flew back to Minnesota for the weekend to catch Rock the Garden with Kate. We were too busy filling up on beer and wine to catch much of Solid Gold and Yeasayer, but Calexico was a sweet breath of hot desert air blown in from the Great American Southwest. Then, The Decemberists played The Hazards of Love in its entirety, rendering me a weeping ball of blubbery, emotional goo for sixty minutes. They followed it up with a killer encore, which had me trying to reel my jaw back up into my face.
Those cats can play, man. They’re the real deal. Kate proposed we move to Portland because, you know, The Decemberists are from Portland, and I believe she makes a sound argument. Moving to a particular town in order to be closer to your favorite band that otherwise tours nationally on a regular basis makes complete sense.
But.
Last night we (kinda, sorta) invited ourselves over to a dinner party at the Ingman Estate, where our tremendous peals of laughter dared set off car alarms in the street. We discussed such things as Super Fantastic tomatoes, sucker-popping, and a brilliant marketing campaign for propane.
We ate and drank and laughed and talked until the wee hours of the night, and this morning Kate and I woke up bright and early so we could get new iPhones. It’s a good thing we got a head start on the project, because we ended up traveling to three locations and spending four hours getting our plan in shape. Luckily we scored an incredibly helpful representative at the AT&T store, who got us all squared away after an hour of tireless effort.
Kate dropped me off at the Minneapolis airport where I spent a good half-hour going through security, and I made it to San Francisco just in time for a most-experiential ride on the BART. The doors didn’t work properly, the conductor spoke in an awkward and confusing cadence, they rebooted the train computer by shutting off power for a minute, and a homeless fellow panhandled us on the train. Which is mighty bold. Seriously, San Francisco has standards.
Fragment
Phew.
Long day. One last jam-packed ride on the 49 Muni to Japantown for Andrew Crow’s closing Interaction Design workshop for UX Intensive. An intense day of prototyping followed by a closing party, complete with an open bar and wonderful new friends with Minnesota and Bay Area connections alike. Then, a dash across town to the Adaptive Path office, for further drinks and entertaining in our inspiring design space.
Back to work tomorrow, with sketching on the menu. Sketching, sketching, sketching.
It is a good life.
Ghost-Riding The Whip
The other day I learned from one of my coworkers that Bay Area culture is deeper and more nuanced than I could possibly imagine. Heart-touching music videos such as this one from E-40, that detail the finer points of the Hyphy movement, apparently make many locals’ hearts quicken with pride.
Confused? Yeah, I am, too. This video helps me make a bit more sense of it all:
But not that much more sense.
