Tags have to be our best friends whether we like them or not.

Even though it is a bit of a pain, think of all the other media formats that have had to adapt in order to meet accessibility standards. DVDs, for instance, have to be accessible for people who speak/understand a different language than the one being used by the actors. They also have to be accessible for the deaf by having subtitles, but I don’t think there is a subtitle option for commentaries (surprised no one has sued about that). Some DVDs even have a special audio track that describes what is going on in the film, so even if you’re blind and the dialogue isn’t very descriptive, you still know what’s going on.

Flash seems to be a pain in other ways, besides being difficult to make accessible. Yahoo has recently gone ape with it to the point that it takes forever to even look at email because you’re waiting for ads to load.

That brings up a good question: do those pop up ads have to follow accessibility standards also?

On twitter, many people just follow celebrities, and friends that are known for making witty statements that get right to the point. There are also the infamous fake twitter accounts; my current favorite is @MayorEmanuel. Many are considering this account the first Twitter epic poem (Beowulf better watch its back). Many are following specific companies and brands in order to get special offers (saving money), give input (your product sucks), or further the advertising/branding experience (we know our product sucks but we’ll make you buy it anyway).

In class, we talked about HomeAway.com. Unless you were in an advertising class or like to search for unaired commercials on the internet (I draw the line at movie trailers, and that one commercial with a little kid being Darth Vader) you probably first saw it during the Super Bowl. It created some controversy/buzz with a dummy baby being thrown at a window, and through the website, you could impose your picture on the baby’s face and share it with your friends.

These gimmicks are relatively new, but very soon, if they aren’t already, they’re going to become old. Through new Facebook friend feed filter options, I can block applications or companies that have obnoxious stuff that my friends post when they think they’re being clever or cute or funny. On Twitter, when people think an account has gotten too dull or obnoxious, they unfollow.

So, even if social media is a good solution for the short term, it takes a skilled strategy to make it relevant for a brand in the long term.

It specializes in fried food, hence the name. Though other vendors on site have fried food, Fry Baby is the only vendor on site that specializes.

It is in an area that has many food vendors, including Hey Cupcake!, which is more of a tourist attraction than a vendor it seems at time. Since Hey Cupcake! doesn’t have much outdoor seating, its customers will often sit in front of adjacent vendors; Fry Baby is only two vendors over from Hey Cupcake!. Often customers of Hey Cupcake! will not buy beverages initially with their cupcake; when they are thirsty, they buy a beverage from the vendor they are sitting in front of. I saw two college-age girls do this.

Other vendors on site include The Mighty Cone, Wurst Tex, Coat and Thai, Bar-B-Que-T, Diner on Wheels, Mobile Coffeee House and Cafe, and Austin Frigid Frog Shaved Ice. A few sit down restaurants are also within easy walking distance, including Fran’s Hamburgers and Magnolia Cafe. Bar-B-Que-T does have an ATM, but its has a hefty surge charge. Fry Baby only accepts cash.

I ran into my friend Jackie who was out eating with her roommate, Ricki. They were eating food from Coat and Thai but were sitting in front of Bar-B-Que-T. They had planned to eat from Bar-B-Que-T but it was closed. Jackie said that this was the second time they had eaten at vendors this school year. They would eat at vendors more, but they don’t have the time to go where there are vendors. That day, they were on thier way to do stuff uptown, so eating at these vendors was on thier to doing something else. Jackie also said that she didn’t care where the food was from as long as it was good.

Fry Baby is run by a mother and daughter. The food is made on site. When I went early Friday afternoon, around 2 PM, there seemed to be tourists, workers on lunch breaks, and college students frequenting the vendors.

Th food is actually made when you order it, which is seen as an inconvenience to some customers. Considering that the food I got actually seemed to be properly fried, I think some people can afford to wait a couple of minutes; it beats food poisoning any day.

I was able to locate a Twitter account for Fry Baby, but no tweets have been sent from it. I could not find Fry Baby on Foursquare or Facebook.

With that all said, design does need a presence in the production of a good or service; the process of design can troubleshoot, define a market, and do countless other things. However, we seem to forget that designers aren’t the only people capable of “designing.”

Entrepeneurs are designers; they figure out a void in a business oriented part of society and fill it. Inventors are designers; they observe everyday life and invented things that are designed to make it better. Bloggers, in a sort of out there way, are designers of thought; they express their opinion in a way that aims to change the opinion of others, or unite with people of similar opinions to elevate that opinion. Everyone is capable of designing, its just that not all of them are good designs when compared to the criteria learned by trained designers.

I guess the vast majority of the population is just used to mediocre design; we’re surrounded with it from an early age, and only learn its bad when we read about some dead white guy’s opinion. Why exactly is Comic Sans so bad?

Well, it isn’t helping that its an overused, cutesy font.

Another thing that becomes annoying about designers are that there is a vocal few who believe designers should dress a certain way, act a certain way, and think a certain way. Some believe designers should be all about being open ended; if I did that, I’d go insane, or become a bum. To me, structure is a sign of self-discipline; some can operate on whims and chance, but I can’t operate like that; I’m Prussian like that.

My ancestors didn't do spontaneous.

When caught in a rut, we have to stop dreaming that bandaid fixes are enough to last until Oprah comes to the rescue (class discussions have meaningful tangents like that). Solutions are only as good as the system.

When problems seem overwhelming, we have to shrink them done to manageable size.

In my everyday life, risk consists of eating things that might make me sick due to countless neurotic reasons. In my design process, risk it characterized by realizing that I’ve been programmed to design for Chicagoland, but I live in Austin, my professors professionally design in Austin, my classmates do the “Austin design,” so I’m basically screwed. In other words, I have to take a gamble  between sticking to my guns or doing what my professors or classmates would do, even if I think its crap, but it will get me a good grade.

Critiques are painful, for though you’d think the most vocal critics are in line with the professor on opinions, a lot of the time they’re just full of crap and are trying to instill their way of design on you. Professors are like clients; they’re the ones who matter in the end because they actually assign you the letter grade that could potentially destroy your grade point average, which could piss off your parents, and could cut down your post-undergrad options. Though I’d like my piece to be singled out because it is awesome, this has never, ever happened; its talked about because the professor makes someone share their opinion, and this is enough to make you go rock in a corner.

Designs, in essence, are answers to problems posed by a client or society at large. The most successful are the ones that think outside the box, but once in awhile, the answers are inside the box and overlooked.  This is why you have to look at a problem from all angles, all viewpoints; sometimes the obvious just isn’t enough.

In the real world, where worrying about being able to score tickets to the midnight showing of Harry Potter is replaced with paying off student loans on time, research is not this clear cut. Professors are replaced with clients who are paying you to do the research, to define the true parameters, and are often expecting you to create a magical solution to their problems (or shareholders’ problems if you want the gritty truth). Classmates are replaced by professionals that are looking for a competitive edge, though if you’re working together on a design team, they’ll still be competitive, but they’ll be less likely to screw you over.

But what about that academic research that only went beyond Wikipedia when that project or paper could make or break your grade?

In the real world, research methods can no longer be defined to linear processes; they need to be flexible, exploitative (in an ethical way), and innovative. Instead of asking,”What?”, you need to learn how to ask, “How?”

Research itself often will have its own parameters. Besides the target demographic, you have to consider all levels of culture overall. Language, gender roles, religion, politics, technical expertise, internet/mobile phone access, credit purchases vs. debit purchases….if you can think of it, it is there, and needs to be considered. Women in Saudi Arabia are subjected to different societal norms than women in the Jersey Shore; Victoria’s Secret can’t use the same means to sell sexy lingerie to women in a conservative Islamic country when compared to the place that Snooki calls home.

It is also important to research the history of the product you’re helping to design, redesign, or even sell. This happens a lot with brands, which were discussed in class. Some brands have been so static over time that a slight change will cause an uproar, while others have gone under so many alterations that it could be called a marketing gimmick. Some brands, like Coca Cola, have even learned to exploit their brand evolution; around Christmas, they resurrect their pre-1950′s image, and during events like the Olympics, they remind us how modern and “with it” they really are.

Moral of the Story: Your idea might seem awesome, but research may suggest that it is really crap.

For one, they let us know if our design has a chance in hell of working and getting the job done. Secondly, they let us know if the user will use them in the way that us designers initially intended.

Of course, prototypes are great for troubleshooting, as we read about in the antedote of a team trying to design a pacemaker. Products, in the hands of engineers, exist really on the standard of functionality; designers are often the ones who bring practicality into the picture.

Wirframes seem to be the prototype that graphic designers are given by a web engineer. Though functional, it is our job to make the site visually practical. As far as we know, our designs could help a user with limited internet browsing experience navigate the site.

I think IDEO’s approach, what they call design thinking, is very reflective of the reorganization that is occurring in various economic circles. Many companies/individuals are realizing that they can no longer be effective utilizing either a strictly rational/analytical approach, or a touchy-feely, artistic approach.

In Chicago, many ad agencies are hiring people with broad, interesting backgrounds. While visiting a top ad agency in high school, whose clients included Taco Bell, Boeing, Kraft, Johnson & Johnson, and  John Deer, we were introduced to much of the staff. The woman in charge of color correcting for various print campaigns had a degree in Political Science, and for a time travelled with a rock band. The guy who was giving us a tour told us how about a guy that started out lower than a mail clerk worked his way up to being a creative director at one of the most prestigious ad agencies in Chicago.

After discussion

I think designers, at some point in their process, have always had to get outside input, its just that IDEO is doing it sooner than most. For instance, take those cell phones that are aimed at senior citizens. The first one, The Jitterbug, kind of played into the stereotypes of old people have poor eye sight, old people hate technology. The newer phones aimed at senior citizens are more like normal phones and aren’t as condescending. Though I have no proof, I believe The Jitterbug was tested on the older demographic, but I believe they had no involvement in the pre-prototype phase. With the newer phones, it is obvious that right off the back, they involved senior citizens who used cell phones and asked how they could make a product better suited to them.

It is important to make a distinction between art and design.

Sir George Cox, former chairman of British Design Council

Personally, my feelings towards art is, “It is what it is.” An artist creates their piece, sends it into the world, and whatever happens, happens. There are of course motivations involved, but the beauty of the concept of art is that meaning, even purpose, can be manipulated in the eye of the beholder.

Design leaves less to chance. It is a series of calculations meant to evoke a certain response, a certain relationship, with either the consumer, user, or other type of beneficiary. Where artists can be experimental to the point to being compared to Jackson Pollack, designers have to be grounded in reality; someone, besides the designers, needs to be able to decipher the meaning, or use, of the design.

Pablo Picasso didn’t convene test groups to see how blue he could make The Old Guitarist and still be emotionally effective. If Leonardo da Vinci was working within a group of artists while painting Mona Lisa, you would think that someone would point out that the horizon is uneven.

Where artists can be mavericks, push forward without any outside input, designers live on input, research, prototypes, redos…

After discussion

I think it is important for designers to be able, and willing, to approach a problem from different directions. I think this is important to not only create an effective design, but to broaden the spectrum of a designer’s own capabilities.
Though it is good to have a style, designer’s need to be able to stretch it to accommodate the needs of the client. Style is often linked to how a designer solves a problem. The more tools a designer has at their disposal to problem solve, the more they will be able to satisfy the client.