Infocult: Information, Culture, Policy, Education

Shaker drawings as alternate universe modernism

This article on Shaker drawings offers astonishing images.  They look like modernist printing, like  Russian Constructivist posters, or pages from Blast.  But they are instead from the early 19th century.

...the gift drawings often include titles, captions, inscriptions, and extended texts, in English as well as in scripts written in indecipherable tongues, that place them on an uninterrupted continuum with other manifestations of belief, such as inspired writing, ecstatic movement, and spontaneous speech...

(thanks to Jesse Walker)

Theater of remembered virtues: a Reformation-era virtual space

There are centuries of virtual worlds in texts before the advent of digital spaces.  Today's case is a Counterreformation* document, a late 16th-century manuscript called Theatrum virtutum divi Stanislai Hosii (The Theatre of the Virtues of the Venerable Stanislaus Hosius).  It's a tribute collection to Stanislaus Hosius, a ardent antiprotestant cleric.  Notice that each poem, each image fits into a larger scheme of a virtual space, a palace of virtues.

Compare with the long theater of memory/art of memory tradition.  Interesting to think about great memory master Giordano Bruno, active, then burned at the stake, around the same time as this book's assemblage.

Compare, too, with the Hypnerotomachia Poliphilii, which creates an elaborately realized virtual space.

*How important is the Reformation in the history of information?  The printing press revolution opens it up.  Strategies responding to early modern information overload, such as the cyclopedia, exit from the other side.

(via BibliOdyssey)

Staples.com: that was a pain

Staples.com offers several bad design features for users, which I just discovered in spending 30 minutes trying, and failing, to buy stuff there.

One feature is punishing users for their own inventory choices.  If you search for an item which Staples no longer carries, the site simply claims that there is no such widget.  A "we no longer carry widget X" response, along with "here are some related widgets" would likely draw the customer into another purchase.  Instead the user is thrown back on their original search.

"related widgets" - there is no such function.  Each item exists in isolation, knitted to the rest of Staples' inventory only by a bread crumb trail leading to broad categories.  One should not be surprised to not find a "customers who bough Z also bought Y" function.  And no recommendation network.

Better still, Staples.com hides some restrictions on your purchases.  When you begin a session, you're required to enter a zip code.  According to a Staples service rep, who I reached by phone, if your location has shipping limitations, subsequent search results are limited.  For example, heavier items can't be delivered by UPS to some parts of central Vermont... so they simply don't appear on searches.  There's no warning on the site ("widget C cannot be shipped to your location..."), no nudge to another location ("...but can be purchased from stores in zip code ZZZZZ, click here").  Some results simply don't appear, and the casual user has no idea that they've been blocked.  Are there other such restrictions on Staples.com?  Who knows, since we aren't told?

On top of that, the site uses scripts to render each hyperlink, disabling many right-click menu options.  So no tabbed browsing, no saving or sharing links from a page.  It's a forced linearity, keeping the user along certain aisles, er, paths.  And adds time to rendering each new page, when clicked. 

Treating customers without transparency, not designing a site to make more purchases attractive - it's almost as if the intention was to reproduce the physical experience of walking through a large store, rather than taking advantage of what the Web can offer. 

There are, unfortunately, many sites like this, demonstrating distrust for customers, and assuming we users cut them large amounts of slack. 

Dramatic visualizations: emotions, media

This TED talk by Jonathan Harris shows some spectacular visualization projects.

Universe is fascinating.

(via oook)

Doublequote connection

Charles Cameron, master of the Hipbone Game, responded to my challenge and created a fine doublequote image, revealing to the world the mysterious Nixon-Castaneda link:

User versus interface

This video is harsh, making fun of the design problems is using a library catalog application.  Funny, and very precise:

(via Shifted Librarian)

The latest tactile screens from Jefferson Han

This interface demo amazes.  It's the latest tangible screen desktop from Jefferson Han:

Sequential tag clouds

The Amsterdam-based Masters of Media blog points out a new approach to tag clouds: tag clouds over time.  For example, check out this sampling of Microsoft statements over the past generation.  Drag the slider bar back and forth to move across decades, then watch how terms appear, disappear, or persist.  Or consider this sequential cloud of US presidential speeches.  The designer of the latter has one for her own blog, representing a nifty (auto)biographical approach.

Information design through periodic table

This is a very nifty project, organizing information design patterns along familiar lines.  Be sure to explore the mouseovers in A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods:

(thanks to Hugh Blackmer)

More on infinite zoom

There's a fine meditation on Steven Johnson's October infinite zoom and digital design note, over at the Leo Bernett blog.  Jason Oke connects Johnson's insight to transmedia storytelling, gaming, contextual design, and chaos theory.  I'm glad someone is running with this - it's a fascinating way to rethink an awful lot of recent history.

NB: I'm now reminded of this infinite zoom image project.