Art of Making I caught up the making virus from our engineers, and, jointly with a fellow parent, volunteered to teach an “Art of Making” seminar at my daughter’s school (my friend’s son came up with the title). Our hope was to bring STEM, art, and design thinking together. (I am supposed to represent art… Read More
Author: Julia Blyumen
For the last 6 years, each Friday, I have been bringing a mobile painting studio to my kids’ school. Among other things, we work on what I call “color studies” – a set of formal exercises aimed to sharpen one’s sense of color and develop painting skill, just like musical scales, chords and arrpedgios sharpen… Read More
Last week my kids’ school went on a field trip to the University of Santa Cruz to observe a black hole multimedia exhibition. We were invited there by Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz, the astrophysicist and the fellow parent at the school. When Enrico is not busy pushing the frontiers of science (he is partial to violent explosions),… Read More
From BI to AI: Whose Intelligence is Better?
Numbers are a property of the universe. Once Earthians figured that out, there was no stopping them. They went as far as the Moon. We use numbers in business and life. We measure, we look for oddities, we plan. We think of ourselves as rational. I, for one, like to look at the thermometer before deciding… Read More
Usability of Text Analytics
User experience design as a career fell largely on the era of GUI. Thus most people in my profession are visual thinkers if not by birth than by experience. When it comes to presenting information, we think visualization. Times are changing, and with that we are challenged to present information verbally. This is where text… Read More
Drone, Data X Conference – Trip Report
Let me start by saying that there were kids in the audience of the Drones, Data X Conference held this past weekend in Santa Cruz, something I have not seen at any other tech conference. I thought it was pretty cool. At the end, I found there was a reason for kids to be there.… Read More
When Less Is More
Editor’s note: Let’s take a break from all the Apple Watch frenzy. Breathe. And now enjoy a post from Julia, interaction designer extraordinaire, about her favorite wearable. She knows her stuff, having lived with a couple of the early smartwatches for long more than a year. Among all the smart watch hype, one smart watch stays on… Read More
An Interaction Designer’s Perspective: Samsung Gear vs. Samsung Gear Live
Editor’s note: In January of 2014, our team held a wearables summit of sorts, test-driving five popular watches, fitness bands and head-mounted displays to collect experiential evidence of each form factor, initial experience, device software and ecosystem and development capabilities. Julia drew the original Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch, and she’s been using it ever since. A few… Read More
About Proofs and Stories, in 4 Parts
Editor’s note: Here’s another new post from a new team member. Shortly after the ‘Lab expanded to include research and design, I attended a workshop on visualizations hosted by a couple of our new team members, Joyce, John and Julia. The event was excellent. John and Julia have done an enormous amount of critical thinking… Read More