links for 2008-04-25
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Google may be a database of intentions; ‘desire paths’ are the record of user intentions which in some way conflict with what the designers intended…
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…whereas Carleton University’s Brian Burns, in ‘From Newness to Useness
and Back Again’, looks at how wear-and-tear ‘use marks’ can reveal the life story of products, and how modern throwaway, non-maintainable design detaches us from this rich interaction history. Presentation is 9.9 Mb PDF; fantastic collection of use-mark photos starts on page 29.
[...] Dennoch halte ich diese Bilder für ein anschauliches visuell-räumliches Pendant zu Folksonomies, also den emergenten Wissensordnungen die sich aus der individuellen Vergabe von Schlagwörten (Tags) entwickeln. (via) [...]
I used to be amused by the disrespect shown to Sir Basil Spence’s ‘aesthetically’ laid out pathways on the Sussex University campus that he architected. ‘Cattle paths’ would appear as students disobediently took energy (and decision cost) efficient deviations across grassed areas. Inevitably, protective fences were reluctantly erected (and removed at such times as the fenceless aesthetic needed to be restored for visiting dignitaries).
Apologies for probably taking ‘paths’ and ‘university’ a tad too literally.
User-generated paths
from Berkeley
http://fury.com/berkeleypaths/index.htm
This one is particularly brilliant:
http://fury.com/berkeleypaths/pages/09.htm