To know the place for the first time We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding The Dark Tower timecyclesendingexploration
Perilous to be sure It would not be clear where the boundary of sanctioned speech lay until an attempt had been made to cross it and that attempt had failed. Such efforts Wittgenstein regarded with benevolence. He treated them as reconnaissance expeditions, perilous to be sure, but well worth the effort expended on them. H. Stuart Hughes, The Sea Change wordsexplorationspeech
The vast open seas We didn't have Google in the early days. Other search engines like Lycos, Excite and Northern Lights did exist but were nowhere near as efficient as modern search engines. Finding something you were interested in was not as simple as typing a few words and getting to that information in one click. No, the web was much more of an adventure. It was a place that you wandered to discover new areas, like exploring the vast open seas. A new virtual space that lead to all kinds of strange, interesting, exciting places. This is what the web was like, at least, in our collective imagination. Parimal Satyal, Rediscovering the Small Web explorationwww
The Alchemist A Novel by Paulo Coelho en.wikipedia.org My own beauty reflectedThicker booksTo find God in the seminaryWhat others want them to beThe soul of the universe+25 More The alchemists in their mixings destinyloveadventureexploration
Don’t Play It Like the Flute An Article by Matthias Ott matthiasott.com Don’t play it like the flute. Play it as if it was the wind whistling through the desert dunes. No matter what you love to create, there is something to be learned from the way Hans Zimmer approached the Dune score. We are all striving to create work that is novel, innovative, memorable, and inspiring. To get there, however, we tend to focus on getting things right, on avoiding mistakes, on “being professional”. Yes, it is important to have the commitment, dedication, and attention to detail of a professional. But being right? That will only take you so far. What is much more important is to approach the problem in front of you with curiosity and an open mind. With an urge to explore what can be found beyond the ordinary, beyond the right way of doing things. If you want to create something that nobody has come up with yet, it is important that you try out all the crazy ideas others are afraid to try, that you build prototypes, improvise, and freely play with the materials and the technologies you have at hand. musiccreativitynoveltyexplorationcuriosity
Psychogeography A Definition by Guy Debord en.wikipedia.org Psychogeography is an exploration of urban environments that emphasizes playfulness and "drifting". It was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as: "The study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals." "A total dissolution of boundaries between art and life." "A whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities...just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape." Who the fuck is Guy Debord?20 Minutes in ManhattanThe driftRaindrops leaving an erratic trail walkingcitiesurbanismplayexploration
Weighing up UX An Article by Jeremy Keith adactio.com Metrics come up when we’re talking about A/B testing, growth design, and all of the practices that help designers get their seat at the table (to use the well-worn cliché). But while metrics are very useful for measuring design’s benefit to the business, they’re not really cut out for measuring user experience. Two levels of vetoOur obedience to the king metricsuxbusinessresearchethics
Two levels of veto At Clearleft, every staff member has two levels of veto on client work. You can say “I’m not comfortable working on this”, in which case, the work may still happen but we’ll make sure the resourcing works out so you don’t have anything to do with that project. Or you can say “I’m not comfortable with Clearleft working on this”, in which case the work won’t go ahead.
Our obedience to the king Going back to the question of whether it’s ever okay to use a deceptive dark pattern, here’s what I think… It makes no difference whether it’s implemented by ProPublica or Breitbart; using a deceptive dark pattern is wrong. But there is a world of difference in being a designer who works at ProPublica and being a designer who works at Breitbart. That’s what I’m getting at when I say there’s a danger to focusing purely on user experience. That focus can be used as a way of avoiding responsibility for the larger business goals. Then designers are like the soldiers on the eve of battle in Henry V: For we know enough, if we know we are the kings subjects: if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us.