Most of us would have seen and used one of these before.

From what I have been able to gather, it is intended to function like a small bowl. You sip the liquid (or semi liquid) contents from the side of the “spoon”. But you don’t put the whole thing in your mouth – because you bleeding well can’t!

Even if you do manage to get a smaller one into your mouth, the weird rhomboid box-like cavity is decidedly not tongue-friendly.

Why you would want a small bowl with a handle to sip from, when you already have perfectly serviceable small bowls on the table, is a mystery. Especially at the expense of a real and actually functional spoon.

Would this be yet another “bit it’s traditional” excuse to persist with something crappy?

The day we are born is the last day we are truly free.
Before you know it, we are boxed in, held back, constrained;
facing a lifetime of walls…

You get the drift.

Lovely sentiment. Great setup. To sell… a %#$@&% television!

What a let down. What a sham. How dreadfully insipid.

This is authenticity-washing, meaningfulness-washing, as in green-washing, where marketers jump on bandwagons and turn worthwhile causes into shallow puke-inducing patsies.

And as for the unique value proposition of “borderless” – unless you are joining multiple screens to make a larger screen, who gives a toss about the border? How can that actually affect the watchable-ness of a TV?

Is the Office 2007 ribbon interface yet another way to hide stuff from me? And steal my screen real estate at the same time?

I totally appreciate the effort it would have require to group the controls just-so; the groupings are about as sensible as anyone can make it I think. The major issue I have is that more often than not, it is impossible to represent concepts like “mail merge” with a small, static icon. Ambiguous icons plus stacked text labels are just harder to read, and takes up a lot of room.

The ribbon has also debilitated our innate ability to remember the location of things (ie menu items). I can’t tell you where exactly a particular command is from conscious memory, but my finger can always remember the location of that menu item. This requires that menu items stay in their allotted positions – which is why the hide-unused-menu-items function was so appallingly crappy. Because the ribbon replaces the whole area with new buttons every time I select a tab, this destroys that spatial memory. So I waste a lot of time repeatedly looking for common things. Imagine if all the clothes in your drawers move around depending on the direction you are facing when you open them!

Microsoft’s developers must also all work on wall-sized monitors. The ribbon takes up a lot of vertical space, space that is already under severe threat from the prevalence of widescreen monitors. I cannot make the ribbon vertical – which I can do in “normal” Word to give me the maximum screen height when working on documents.

Yes there is an auto-hide function, which then slows me down because I need to first reveal the hidden ribbon before I can then see where I need to click next. Yes I can double-click a ribbon tab to hide it (found this tip on the web). But now I have to do way more clicking to choose a “menu item” than before. Instead of scanning a single list in a traditional menu item, I now have to scan a matrix of icons and text. Do I need to point out that we are better at scanning vertical, single-column lists than horizontal multi-column matrices?

I am exploring OpenOffice.org now as a permanent replacement. Office 2003 will remain as my mainstay in the meantime.

(The one good thing about Office 2007 is the in-built design and layout shortcuts. For the first time ever, these predefined styles are actually worth using. This is not enough however.)

Elevator access infographics in the Tokyo Metropolitan Government buildings. The slightly retro look is especially appealing.

Which tied in nicely with the recent comments on one of my older blog posts Toilet designed by a fashion designer.

I thought this quote neatly summed up the challenge to the next generation of fashion designers to redefine their industry.

This statement leapt out at me when reading this article. Virgin Blue has finally lost its desire to innovate. Being all things to all people is a terribly anaemic vision, if we could even call it that! What a dreadfully boring, uninspiring and naive claim to make.

I guess since they are already in a highly commoditised industry, and engaged in a price war, why not go the whole hog and be like everyone else, and do what everyone else is doing. It is the safest route to go.

This just makes the happy-chappy greetings, the faux-personality, even creepier. Because we now now it is only a veneer, shallow marketing exercise. So how is Virgin Blue actually different now?

I guess innovation does die over time as management becomes mired in the day to day operations. When the immediate extremely-short term goals gets confused with long term vision and strategy.

I wonder how much longer they will be around for?

Changi Airport Terminal 3, Singapore. 2009.

[In] a classic psychological study on group norms … students assigned [randomly] to … liberal dormitories became less conservative as the group’s norms seeped into their consciousness, [and vice versa.] …

Participants [in another study] equated creativity with following the group norm… The unwritten rules of the group … determined what its members considered creative. In effect groups had redefined creativity as conformity. …

When people’s individuality rather than their group membership was emphasised, creativity became all about being different from others and being inconsistent with group norms. … people suddenly remembered the dictionary definition of creativity: to transcend the orthodox. …

Coming up with something truly new often means having to steer a path away from the herd, towards new horizons. …

There’s one rule you’d be well advised to follow: go it alone.

Read the full article on PsyBlog.

Hat off to Debra for the link!

Someone in one of my MBA classes (years ago now) once asked me if I freely give away all my ideas and thoughts to each client, suggesting thus that holding back may be more beneficial financially in the long run.

I said yes. Every idea that comes is shared. He was not convinced of the prudence of that action. That question was raised again recently in Singapore. My answer remained the same.

Holding back from sharing ideas openly and freely is not giving my all to the relationship with the client. Holding back is being mean. It removes any opportunity for others to add to the idea, to participate in its blossoming. Holding back diminishes me and the relationship.

There is also a more insidious assumption behind not sharing. It is founded on fear – the fear that the client may steal my idea and make something out of it, thereby causing mew to “lose out” on something. The reality is, it is not that easy to just take a vague idea and turn it into some amazing runaway business success overnight. The advantages of open sharing – building trust and loyalty – is by far more rewarding than the fear.

I believe ideas are meant to be shared. That’s the only way they will thrive and make an impact. It dovetails with the giving a damn philosophy. If I am truly “for” my clients, I need to act accordingly. It dovetails with generosity. There is an unlimited supply of ideas and thoughts anyway. I can choose to send these out to the world, or forget them (space in my head and hard disks are finite!)

Of course, having a transparent attitude to sharing ideas does not extend to indiscriminately sharing confidential discussions with all and sundry.