Remember when you didn’t have to leave your house when you were sick because your doctor made house calls? Yea, well I don’t either, but I saw it in a movie once. However, getting to a doctor is a routine part of many individuals lives, especially the elderly. Many need to have weekly tests performed to manage health conditions. Beyond the inconvenience of constantly needing to visit your doctor and adhering to their appointment hours, many who experience severe difficulties with their mobility simply cannot make these trips without help and/or more suffering. Beyond the burden on the patient, this routine visits incur financial and administrative strains on doctors and hospitals, raising health care costs and delaying service for everyone. As a solution Denmark is pioneering in “telemedicine”. The NY Times recently ran an article in regards to the evolution of electronic medical records into home medical tests. Through the use of technologies and a few computer accessories individuals can take certain exams in the privacy of their own home and electronically submit the information gathered to their physician. Prescriptions can even be electronically sent to pharmacies to be filled, and if that pharmacy delivers, well you get the point about how these technologies can be a great benefit for all. Be sure to read The New York Times article after the jump for a personal take on this emerging technology.

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Finnish fashion house Ivana Helsinki partnered up with Love Contemporary to jointly open a pop-up store here is NYC. Located at 238 Mulberry St. the space is billed as both a store and an art factory. Living up to the latter part of it’s title the store will be hosting the Graffiti Galore show, curated by participants COPE2 and RUBIN, this Friday. Starting at 7pm the show will feature works by COPE2, RUBIN, INDIE, SEN2, FLITE TDS, BATES, Ellis Gallagher, KONGO, LAZOO and THEMO.

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Users. Kind of an ugly euphemism for the people who depend on your product or services. It is an ambiguous term for actual individuals with whom you may have a surprisingly intimate relationship. One of interdependence and hopefully affection. In short, you need them – to buy your software, to use your service, to patronize your website.

But the relationship goes two ways. They need you, too. They need your software to help them get their work done every day. Or your website to help them get the best price on insurance. Or, in the case of one of our clients, they use it to save people’s lives. Heady stuff. And, while the term “user” is usefully generic in all sorts of situations when discussing system design, it can be the death of real goal-focused decision-making. How cleverly it hides:

• The guy who is baffled an annoyed that clicking on a product on your website adds it to the cart automatically, rather than showing him the details he needs to make an informed buying decision.
• The woman who uses your software to do one task every day and can’t stand how the button she needs is hidden under an avalanche of cascading menus.
•  The salesman who just plain hates computers and doesn’t understand why his company won’t send him his weekly reports by mail anymore.

These are people with potentially solvable problems who can be your antagonists or your evangelists.

Much digital ink has been spilled debating the appellation “user”, and this isn’t meant as a screed. It is just a friendly reminder: people aren’t using your software as a favor to you. For the time that they engage with your product they are as engaged with it as you ever are. They may not be thinking about it consciously, but every mouse-click is a commitment to use your tool to accomplish something that’s important to them. It may be because they want to, it may be because the IT guy at work insists on it, but either way you have created a cog in the wheel of their day.

So, let’s find out who they are. They’re names, their needs. Let’s find out how they do their jobs (and how they wish they could) so that we are empowering them to do excellent work. Or let’s simply get the tools out of their way so that they can get their information and move on to the things that are more important to them. They’ll thank you for it. Or not. But some percentage will act out their gratitude by buying your products or recommending your services. Or wanting to join your team to help make your products even better.  We see it happening all the time.

 Your users are your people. And, speaking from experience, they are waiting for someone to engage with them, to watch them work and understand their challenges. It is simple enough to find out what they need.

 Let’s learn their names. And then let’s delight them. 

Adam Lerner is an Information Architect and User Experience Designer. He has been on the ASD Labs team since 2008. 

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Referred to as “war paint” (think Mel Gibson in Braveheart) racing cars of the 1970’s were decorated in an array of colors and complex graphic patterns. Author Sven Völker dives into the graphic design behind these machines in the book “Go Faster: The Graphic Design of Racing Cars“, a first of it’s kind to focus on the creative element of race cars. In addition to the book, Sven Völker also brings us into this world of driving Skittles in a short film available on gestalten.com.

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(image source | Geek and Hype)

Unveiled at the Geneva Auto Show, the Porsche 918 Spyder is not only a high-performance, sexy sports car, but a planet loving hybrid too - so suck it hippies! Click here for the official Porsche press release and be sure to check out this video for the behind the story behind the making of this dream machine.

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EDIMS approached ASD Labs looking to refresh their brand and better reflect where they have developed to as a company since we worked on their last site design, oh and to do it all before the HIMSS 2010 conference and exhibition. After extensive competitor research, brainstorming and sleepless nights we not only met the deadlines but provided the client with a fresh new site that exceeds the competition!

View Project | edims.net

Additional Projects | Identity Project

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Albany’s The Marketplace Gallery is showcasing works by the always amazing CAKE, along with RADICAL! and Travis W Simon. The show opens tomorrow evening and runs only through Sunday, so you better move fast if you want to see this show before it disappears like a NY governor.

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Curated by the LA based Carmichael Gallery, Re-Creation II opens tomorrow night at Ogilvey & Maher. The exhibit will feature works from Will Barras, Simon Birch, Boxi, Ethos, Mark Jenkins, Labrona, Aakash Nihalani, Nina Pandolfo (and one of my favorite artist out) WK Interact.

Ogilvy & Mather
636 11th Avenue
New York, NY

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The iPhone is so cool that you’d wait in line for three days to get the latest version, only to drop it and crack the screen within a week. Why not protect your investment with the iPhone case equivalent of Prez Obama’s armored Cadillac One? Check out Brooklyn’s own EXOvault’s line of hardcore protective metal cases and get rid of that cheap plastic case that is so 2009.

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This week, Lee Quiñones, an artist who emerged from the subway art movement of the 1970s, will be responding to readers’ questions about his life, work and the evolution of graffiti as art in New York City.

“To ask Mr. Quiñones a question, please use the comments box [on the City Room site]. His first set of answers will appear in City Room on Wednesday [03.12.2010].

Mr. Quiñones painted his first subway piece in 1974. Inspired by the leading figures of subway lore, including Cliff 159 of the 3-Yard Boys, and Blade One of the Crazy 5, Lee began creating 40-foot subway car murals in late 1975. Over the next decade, he painted an estimated 115 whole subway cars throughout the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s system. In late 1975, Lee was asked to join the Fabulous Five, an elite quintet of seemingly mythic graffiti writers. The Fabulous Five’s greatest feat — the only running 10-car train painted from top to bottom, end to end — made its journey in November 1976.

As his work gained widespread exposure, Mr. Quiñones found himself at the cross-section of two movements in their infancy: hip-hop and punk rock, which provided context for the direction of his work. During the early 1980s, Mr. Quiñones starred in “Wild Style,” a film directed by Charlie Ahearn that premiered in 1983. His work also appeared in Tony Silver’s and Henry Chalfant’s 1983 documentary film “Style Wars.”

Mr. Quiñones’s body of work extends across a huge scope — from canvas to large murals and installation to elaborate commissions. His paintings are housed in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of the City of New York, the Groninger Museum in Groningen, the Netherlands, and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and have been exhibited at the New Museum Of Contemporary Art in New York City and museums in Paris and Germany.

Mr. Quiñones was born in Ponce, P.R., in 1960 and raised in New York’s Lower East Side.”

Source | NY Times City Room

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