Among other things

In Spring 2009 I co-taught the Urban Play and Recreation studio. THe course was documented in the form of a book, embedded below, and on the Designing W/ website along with other courses that focused their activities on work with external partners.

Urban Play and Recreation from Samuel Lee C on Vimeo.

Presentation to a panel of investors, including New York Parks and Recreation, Hester Street Collaborative and additional organizations. Parsons School of Design, School of Design Strategies. Created and presented in participation with Naomi Otsu, Christina D and Katherine O.

Special thanks to Naomi Otsu for the amazing illustrations.

This is one of the projects from the Urban Play and Recreation Studio (Spring 2009). The course was co-taught with Professors Miodrag Mitrasinovic and Eduardo Stazsowski in the Integrated Design Curriculum. I have the pleasure of teaching the next course to be taught in this context this term (Spring 2010). A course description is below (after the jump). More information on the upcoming course will be posted soon.

» » Read More

"Its the perfect ad spot. We've got a prime location on 13th and University. Every single student returning from vacation will be PRIMED to buy some new tech and Sprint will be there for them..."

But it won't because your ad spot was only programmed in flash and there was no fallback script for swapping the program out.

C'MON! PEOPLE! Standards are good things. They help you avoid embarrassing problems like these. I can imagine that the window interactive is going to continue its mighty swing upward even after the glut of empties becomes a feeding frenzy for available commercial space.

A good first step? I'd recommend clients have a discussion with the script kiddies making these ads and explain that a flash movie is NOT an complete application and this is not a product worth paying for.

The answer is remarkably simple - start here.

"Madison FAIL and a super-duper TFA for the super-duper planning job."

I just took the "What Kind of Tech User Are You?" survey deployed by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and I am a "Digital Collaborator" (I had no doubt). This is their definition of the typology -

"If you are a Digital Collaborator, you use information technology to work with and share your creations with others. You are enthusiastic about how ICTs help you connect with others and confident in your ability to manage digital devices and information. For you, the digital commons can be a camp, a lab, or a theater group – places to gather with others to develop something new."

These are the possible types you might be. I think that they are interesting personae titles.

• Digital Collaborator


• Ambivalent Networker


• Media Mover


• Roving Node


• Desktop Veterans


• Drifting Surfer


• Information Encumbered


• Mobile Newbie


• Technology Indifferent

I would like to see some more depth in defining these typologies but for the purposes of the survey it is probably important not to. But for someone in my field it could be a really interesting project! What do these people look like? Are there icons, images, even cartoons that might be representative of them? Maybe this is a project for a class?

For now - take the survey, find out what you are - does it fit your vision of yourself?

The matrix, the terminator, skynet, nano-bot swarms, predators, carnivore - Asimov was wrong - robots hurt people directly and indirectly, in the movies and in real life. But do we conform and 'welcome our new <something, something> overlords'?! Heck NO!

The intrepid designers at Maya are working on a top-secret project to protect our future from the 'copper-top' scenario that government officials developed into a strategic contingency by homeland security after Lawrence Fishburne gave us the redpill.

Maya design has taken on the no-bid contract to defend us from Judgement Day and built an amazing team around this highly secure project.

Find out the details after the jump...

» » Read More

I just been reading about Google's new Wave product on Mashable. Is this an opportunity to break the email kludge? That massive pile of fleeting thoughts, file-attachments, meeting confirmations, and meeting re-confirmations is the digital manifestation of my own anxiety. Some people saunter their cursors over to peek inside the good 'ole inbox for just a sec but its an involuntary reflex of drag and click for me (for so many of us). I feel a combination of fear and anticipation every time - not unlike that split-second before the roller-coaster tips over the edge.

My name is Scott and I am an email addict.

Once I click that innocuous looking postage stamp I cringe as I await the deluge of new messages (66% of which are spam). But when it doesn't come, when I don't receive that pavlovian signifier of novelty, I feel frustration - like the let-down that accompanies an anti-climactic coaster ride. And then I am disgusted with myself for letting my guard down, allowing myself to be distracted from productive single-tasking, to the null-comfort that *might* lie 'inside' the good 'ole inbox.

So like any overindulgent person (eater, shopper, worker), I feel a little sick. I have to push the inbox out of sight – but not before one click of the 'check mail' button. I think to myself, "What if I just missed something?! Maybe I will check again to be sure... and again to be really positive..." - "the click" is such a seductive doorknob. Who knows what lies just across that hyperlink-threshold?

I have an obsessive complex with email, but I am surely not alone. Even if it is an implausibly convoluted message from some bot who wants to sell me v!4gr4 or cxialixs, the immediate satisfaction derived from communication is very hard to ignore. Think about the last time you heard someone call "your" name on the street.

C'mon John, you know you look; expecting to see an old forgotten friend only to find yourself in that embarrassing half-turn that signifies your humanity and shows off that wonderful bipedal flexibility that makes humans the darling of the evolutionary world. - At least you were standing - stretching in fact - I just 'click'.

So fellow evolutionary darlings I hope for all our sakes that Google has invented some secret sauce (it's not just thousand island dressing?) for communication. The video below is compelling but I am not holding my breath. I hope above all hopes that we can escape email-chat-skype cycle, let's see what happens in September - and I certainly hope they figure out a way to integrate the 27,000 messages I already have stored.

Crackberry users - you are not alone, support groups are out there and I've heard that Google is working on a crackberry patch. But you have to want to get healthy. (Hint: Start by looking up when you walk)