White on White


Brian Eno and Danny Hillis talk about their white period.

Here is my twist on the subject:



It dawned on me that 256 times 256 pixel at 8 bit gif color range all set to white – represent the total random access memory of my first computer, the Apple //e, with 64KB RAM – stunning!
You can also view it on deviantART

What about this white on white?



It is the Mandelbrot set rendered by frax at 2048 x 1536 pixels with the set set to white. It is also available on deviantART.

[Update] Albertina 2016: White on White


Malevich at Albertina, Vienna, 2016

à propros

uxHH Radio Pipeline

I have a bunch of recodings in the pipeline for the uxHH Radio. Maybe you can help me setting priorities for the next episodes to be published. Here’s the backlog:

  • Kira Krämer: List of Awesomeness – die wichtigsten Sahnehäubchen, um die user experience bei Workshops rund zu machen, DT Camp Hamburg
  • [Mediale 1] Matthias MP: Mit Interaktionsdesign zur User Experience, Mediale /anhören
  • [Mediale 2] Cedric Ebener: Raum als Interface, Mediale /anhören
  • [RFC13-1] Cornelia Funke: MirrorWorld, Reeperbahn Festival Campus Keynote /listen
  • [RFC13-2] Régine Debatty: Verborgen in klarer Sicht, Reeperbahn Festival Campus Symposium “The making of (digital) Urban Interventions” /listen
  • [RFC13-3] Christopher Dell: Tacit Urbanism, Reeperbahn Festival Campus Symposium “The making of (digital) Urban Interventions” /listen
  • [RFC13-4] Celine Lazorthes: Crowdfunding, A New Economy? Reeperbahn Festival Campus  /listen
  • [RFC13-5] Anette Novak: On the citizen’s side, Reeperbahn Festival Campus /listen
  • [RFC13-6] Anette Novak, Nathalie Sonne, Robert Drakogiannakis, Carolin Neumann (mod): Communities Revisited – Leaving the bubble behind, Reeperbahn Festival Campus Panel Discussion /listen
  • [RFC13-7] Jörg Jelden, Jeremy Tai Abbett, Susanne Lämmer, Svenja Teichmann (mod): Agenturen sind tot – Agenturen der Zukunft, Reeperbahn Festival Campus Panel Diskussion /anhören
  • [RFC13-8] Ken Doctor: Playing the Media Blur. Reeperbahn Festival Campus /listen
  • [RFC13-8b] Ken Doctor and Ulrike Langer: Content was never King. Reeperbahn Festival Campus /listen

The Future of Text 2013

  • 1a Frode Hegland // Intro 
  • 1b 9:40 Chris Stringer of The Natural History Museum // becoming human: how our evolution has framed humans’ physical and mental worlds. 
  • 1c 43:03 Jonathan Taylor of The British Museum // first writing: exploring some of the enduring mysteries clouding the origins of writing. 
  • 2a John Baines of Queen’s College Oxford // the origins of Egyptian Hieratic and Hieroglyphic and how it became our own alphabet. 
  • 2b 23:23 Ingrid Hage, London College of Communication alumna // a video link up from the home of the alphabet. 
  • 2c 34:22 Timothy Donaldson of Falmouth University // the shape of sound: the story of the changing shapes of our means of written communication. 
  • 3b Tom Standage of The Economist // social communication: argues that in the wider context of communications history, social media is nothing new. 
  • 4 Vint Cerf of Google // co-inventor of the internet talking about the shape of written communication in a connected future. 
  • 4b 20:54 Ted Nelson, creator of Hypertext // an alternative view of interactive text. /watch
  • 5b 26′ Keith Martin of London College of Communication // on the history of hypertext 
  • 6 Frode Hegland 
  • 6b 19’36” Frank Mehan of Spark Labs // talking about his rich history in the industry and future potential. 
  • 6b 43:25 David Jablonowski 
  • 6c 1:01’40” Finish

Just, let me know what you want to hear next.

Sound Design und Design Thinking



Und gleich noch ein weiterer Mitschnitt im uxHH Radio:  Hans Schüttler berichtete im Januar als Gast bei DT_HH aus seinem Beruf als Musiker und Sound-Designer.

Diesem Event habt Ihr den Impuls zu verdanken, dass das uxHH Radio nun auch mit einem Intro und Outro gesendet wird. Die Tropfen zu Beginn stammen aus One Drop von Helge Krabye. Das Outro ist mit IL Est Parti von Eric Wenger unterlegt.

Aber nun zum Podcast (1:47′)

Wim Wenders Bootleg



Eigentlich schleicht man sich ja mit einem  Tonbandgerät in Konzerte, um diese heimlich mitzuschneiden. Zumindest war das der Plot von Diva. 30 Jahre nach Diva hatte ich nun das Vergnügen eine Veranstaltung mit Wim Wenders zu erleben, der über seine zweite Profession – das Photographieren – philosophierte.
Mit freundlicher Genehmigung von wendersimages und der Deichtorhallen Hamburg veröffentliche ich die Aufzeichnung vom 30. Mai 2012 nun im uxHH Radio.

– enjoy

Radio Days Are Back

Dear User Experience Forum,

it has been quite a while since our last newsletter. Lot’s of things are happening around us, and we are one of the significant forces to shape the present and future. At least we should! User Experience matters. More than ever.

At interaction|12 I had a chat with a next gen PhD student. Well, “next gen” is of course relative to my point in life. He was very enthusiastic about the possibilities of all the new mobile devices. According to him, now is the time to apply design to technology, as opposed to the eighties of the previous century, when engineers built the desktop systems. – Hmm, he was right and wrong. Times are exciting. They have always been. But human factors, software ergonomics, human interface design, usability, information architecture, interaction design, design thinking, service design, user experience, …, are not new at all. It is no surprise that your products, sites, and services are much more successful once you start with the user in the center of the design considerations.

Oops, I wanted to write about something else. So please take my preaching above as a preface.

Radio days are back!

Should I tell the story chronologically, or are you already used to think backwards like in blogs, micro-blogs, and activity streams? All the reverse navigation structure really bothers me, because it is the only option. [at this point, imagine the results of a design workshop about alternative visualizations of time based content.] I will tell the story the old fashioned way.

Once upon a time… :o) I bought an mp3 player in the US; in fact I ordered it to be delivered to a friend in San Francisco. Later Jo told me the story how the FedEx guy presented the package to him, “Hello! Your new Apple iPod Nano has arrived!!” Isn’t it astounding that even unrelated employees spread the joy about certain products?

Years later, and a few months ago, Apple informed me that my Nano could catch fire, and they offered another Nano in exchange. This is bitter & sweet, because the product design of the first generation Nano, and the story how the device came into my possession made it so special that I did not want to send it back to Apple. – I did it anyway and received the latest model in return. I still do not like it very much. Though, I can listen to FM radio and connect it with my sneakers!? Just one new feature is the reason for me not to abandon the Nano and get an original Nano back from eBay: I discovered Voice Memo. But it I took me a while until I figured out that a microphone has to be connected to the jack for the ear phones to start recording.

I rarely talk to myself – and thinking-aloud should be reserved for other situations. Instead I record sessions from our local UX community in Hamburg with the intend to publish a podcast. Again, this sounds easier than it was. OK, a podcast is basically an RSS feed with links to the episodes. Now what? How to prepare the audio files in an appropriate quality? Where to store the files? How to create the feed?
I found a few good tutorials online, and looked behind the curtain of other podcasts like the BayCHI Podcasts, The LongNow Seminars, Jan ‘s IATV Radio, and Tobi’s Einschlafen Podcast.

And here it is [drum roll] the uxHH Radio at uxhh-radio.blogspot.de.

The recent three episodes happen to be English sessions. We have

  1. Karen MacGrane, Bond Art + Science, New York, about flexible content for mobile devices
  2. Josh Clark, Global Moxie, New York, about the 7 deadly myths of mobile, and
  3. Darius Kumana, ThoughtWorks, London, about Getting Beyond Good Enough – the marriage between agile and UX.

Previous episodes are taken from HyperKult in Lüneburg and my Raum Schiff Erde unconferences in Hamburg. I might add other (bootleg) recordings as well, but I will stick to UX in the Northern part of Germany.

I hope you tune in and find inspiration by one of the podcasts mentioned above.
Or let us know your favorite channel.

thanks for listening!
Matthias