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Alex Jones

I lead teams at the intersection of strategy and design. Autodidact. Polymath. Barbecue acolyte. I start fires (the good kind).

architecture

Slanty Design in the Real World and on the Web

Architectures of Control, which provides some very interesting analysis of products that are “designed with features that intentionally restrict the way the user can behave” in order to encourage the user to follow certain practices and behaviors, has posted Slanty design, which is a great introduction to the concept and bridges design in the physical world and design for the Web. It’s a quick, well illustrated article that I encourage everyone, not just designers to read.

For non-designers, it may shed some light as to why some of yoru favorite products and services act as they do.

Architecture – Analog and Digital

Garrett Dimon’s review of For the People by the People, a book about architecture (buildings not pages) has prompted me to add it to my Amazon Wishlist. Sadly I missed the Campfire chat he had set up to discuss it, leaving me with just a small taste, and ultimately causing me to want to read it even more. It isn’t very often that you hear about online reading groups spontaneously occurring…

I’ll leave you with the quote that Garrett highlighted as that is what truly piqued my interest:

So it is inevitable that as the work of building passes into the hands of specialists, the patterns which they use become more and more banal, more willful, and less anchored in reality.

Christopher Alexander

Hidden

Creative Home Engineering integrates “silent, automated hidden passageways” into your home. How cool is that?! Beyond the standard “pull on a book” or twisting a candlestick, their custom switches give you the ability to activate the passage entries any way you want. The “triple-redundant safety features includ[e] optical sensor arrays, overtorque protection, thermal sensors, infrared sensors and mechanical obstruction detectors” as well as biometrics (fingerprints, optical and voice). They apparently have pre-fab kits ($150+) available for those who can’t afford a complete solution ($10,000). Link via one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman.