Category: design-and-ideas

QS Metadating in Newcastle

Metadating

A few weeks ago I was accepted for Newcastle Culture Lab’s Metadating research trail.

The research was more about our attitudes to sharing personal data than dating. However they did invite singles and included a number of events which included speed dating. I guess also meta-dating would be factually correct as we were talking about dating while dating.

Metadating

There was homework which had to be done on the run up to the event. You were given a booklet which you could fill in as much as you were comfortable with. On top of that was some blank generic graphs which could be filled in with our own data. When I say our data, it could be any Quantified Self data, from how many coffee’s you had over the week to you’re more intimate data like you’re sleep cycle daily. Everything was up to you to declare, which gets around the problem of using Quantified Self data in research. But it also makes it difficult to compare. Luckily this wasn’t about the data metrics.

Once at the event (I rolled it into a wider visit to Newcastle’s Culture lab where I talked about ethics of data, a visit to Newcastle’s Makerspace and Campus North. Didn’t make it to the beach however). I was one of the  first to turn up as I was heading home to Manchester on the last train. It became clear the problems I had with thestarter, were pretty much reversed as very few women turned up. (this is a issue I’d love to spend some time sorting out one day)

The PhD students lead by Christopher had bought some nibbles (olives, cheese sticks, etc) and lots of Cava. By the time we done the icebreaker it was down to the group discussions about our data with a Cava in full swing.

Metadating

We were split into two groups and we started critiquing the anonymously data sheets. It was fascinating to hear other peoples views on data points, dread to think what people said about my sleep cycle and steps per day. It also became clear the data may have been fudged in parts by others. To be fair I did use real data but choose to leave off some of the measurements. Everything was recorded by camera and audio dictation, which I bet made for some very interesting insight into data sharing.

By the second half, the cava was certainly having a bit of an effect and peoples lips loosened. Just in time for the speed dating portion. Now to be fair Chris and the other students had never been speed dating, so it was a little odd but the imbalance in men, meant we had to do it in two parts. On the speed dating, we discussed each others data sheets and more (ooeerr!) We were given the opportunity to write something to each person later.

Metadating

Another eye opener for me was at the very end when we constructed the perfect and worst dating profile for set people from data we made up. The eye opener for me was building a dating profile for a women who was career driven. All the guys around me seemed to not like her, while I was asking if she was real and where can I meet her? (Cava had certainly kicked in by then)

The event ended about 8:45pm so quite a bit over time but as people started shifting to the local pub, I had enough time to quickly have a drink then head to Newcastle Station for my long train ride home.

The metadating event was fun and to be honest the culture lab students may have gained a ton of insight from the frank and slightly loose lipped participations on the night. I imagine the Cava was bought expecting the full board of people but with the smaller number and the stand ins, there was plenty to go around.

I am surprise I didn’t fall a sleep on the train. However to be honest it was so busy down to York, theres no way I could fall a sleep. I’ll save my journey for another day…

The metadating event was great fun and from a research point of view I’m very interested in what comes out of it. Its a shame a bunch of women didn’t turn up but the students did a good job thinking on their feet and making it work. I suggested to Chris and Bettina that if they did it in Manchester or London it would be packed out, and I would certainly support them in the research.

On the beat with the BBC

I had the pleasure of attending the BBC’s on the beat conference.

The conference was in beta state as LJ Rich announced at the very start. It is a example of the way the BBC is changing. More people within are able to push the organisation the way it needs to go. More risks taken, more gained for the general public.

Beta or not, it was a good afternoon with speakers from across the music industry. Each panel was backed up with somebody from the BBC.

The sessions were centered around the audiences, discovery and metadata. The keynote was given by Mark Mulligan, whom I gather is well known for his blog and writing about the future of music.

It was interesting to hear how the music industry has parallels with the film industry.

Artists need to ‘find their popcorn’

In the audiences panel it was interested to meet and hear from DJ Charlie Sloth and  Shazam. There was also a interesting reflection between the Charlie’s focus on the BBC Radio 1xtra audience who may not own a hifis and use their phones for music discovery. Against a talk by Jeff Smith from BBC Radio 2, with audiences who still buy CDs.

In the Metadata session which included Music Brainz, there was a debate about the lack of metadata  in music and they only scratched the surface. When it came out that theres not really a well used standard for music classification.

To which I tweeted…

In who’s your music dealer? with  Spotify, PingTune, BBC R1/1Xtra, the question of algorithms for discovery came into call. But even more interested was the power of the DJ to bring forward music unlike anything else. Something the music algorithms fail at.

The event was top and tailed with musical demos from many companies and our own BBC R&D UX team showing off the scalable documentary. However there  was also, LJ’s impromptu’s play on the piano.

…and live music which I thought was odd, however I really enjoyed the quite unique voice of Layla, one of the many artists who signed up with BBC Introducing.

All excellent stuff and ultimately reminded me that DJ Hackday needs to happen… Love to team up with BBC Music to consider the future of participation, remixing and music discovery from a slighly different standpoint.

Travelstarter: Nice mission terrible name

I first saw Travel starter via Cristiano Betta

A crowdfunding startup for travelers wanting to support the place they are visiting? Sounded too good to be true… But I was impressed with I saw.

TravelStarter is a new way to travel by supporting local tourism and saving money at the same time. It’s easy – you pick your next destination, select your favorite project or reward, and we take care of the rest.

Although I can’t really see it taking off, I think its a really nice idea. For example a friend of mine, went to Goa for a month. She loved it so much that the family she stayed with, she regularly still checks in on them and I think sends them small gifts every now and then. With something like travelstarter, she could help,  encourage others and work towards a better village as a whole.

It wouldn’t really work too well for myself because I tend to head to cities and places which are not really in dire need of external help. Then again it might be interesting to hear about some of the local projects and communities before and after I travel.

It feels like a good idea but not something which I expect VC’s will go for? Terrible name too…

Material Design in Android 5: Lollipop

Nice use of natural materials

All my Nexus devices have been updated to Android 5: Lollipop and I’m getting use to the changes.

My old 2012 Nexus 7 was first to be upgraded, about a week after the release of Lollipop. Then a week and half later my Nexus 5 was upgraded. I thought the Nexus 5 would be first honestly.

The Nexus 7 had problems, the upgrade was fine but it got really really slow afterwards.  I wiped the cache a few times and that helped but after a day of use, it would go back to super slow. In the end I had to wipe the whole device and just start a fresh. Luckily Google made the process much quicker and easier. Using NFC on my Nexus 5, it sets up an adhoc network and transfers most of the settings across. Only real issue is setting up all the individual apps.

Android 5 is actually really nice, its like the jump from Android 2: GIngerbread to Android 4: Icecream sandwich (we don’t talk about Android 3: Honeycomb). Icecream sandwich’s Halo interface was great and to be honest Material design is a little weird to get use to. But you get use to it and the way it works. In actual fact the interaction design of the interface is well thought out.

I basically think of everything being pieces which are viewed from a top down view. The shadows help with this and the motion makes things very clear. My own gripe is the flat colours but the edge to edge pictures help break things up quite a bit. I would say its not as revolutionary as the Windows Metro interface but its smarter and is a lot clearer.

Quite interesting when you look at the other human interfaces guidelines in software.

You can help us make it digital

BBC Sign - MediaCityUK

In 2015, the BBC’s Make it Digital initiative will shine a light on the world of digital creativity and coding. Why are we doing this? The BBC has already inspired a generation to get passionate about computing. Back in the Eighties the BBC broadcast hundreds of hours of TV, created a new coding language, and gave millions their first taste of computing with the BBC Micro.

As you may have heard, the BBC has finally decades after the BBC Micro phenomenon. To make 2015 the year of making it digital.

But the BBC can’t do this alone, we need partners…

As part of Make it Digital, we’d like to create a hands-on learning experience that allows any level of young coder from absolute beginner to advanced maker to get involved and be part of something exciting. We are looking for partners, large and small, who are both willing and able to contribute services and/or funding to the delivery of this project alongside the BBC. This initiative will involve the BBC working together with the market as a public value partnership…

Think this sounds like you?  Well time to get those expressions of interest emails in.

Please submit expressions of interest by email to learning.makeitdigital@bbc.co.uk at your earliest convenience and no later than 2pm 8th December 2014.

Cloud Appreciation to the Cloud Atlas

https://www.ted.com/talks/gavin_pretor_pinney_cloudy_with_a_chance_of_joy

You don’t need to plan an exotic trip to find creative inspiration. Just look up, says Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society. As he shares charming photos of nature’s finest aerial architecture, Pretor-Pinney calls for us all to take a step off the digital treadmill, lie back and admire the beauty in the sky above.

Lovely Ted talk and the interesting to hear the link to slowness, but watching the clouds makes me think about cloud atlas and the interconnectedness of life.

Visual Calendar for Tablets

visual calendar

I have been looking for a way to combine calendaring, tasks and mindmaps. It just happened that I was searching around and found visual calendar for tablets.

Visually link the things you plan to do, creating logical chains. Think Mind Map for your project turned into actual tasks and dates, or events and appointments from your organizer presented in an intuitive, task-oriented way.
You can easily see all your events arranged in time, prioritized with color and categorized with icons, linked together.
Events created in Visual Calendar appear instantly in your Google Calendar. If you already have something planned in Google Calendar, Visual Calendar will import that in on first launch.

Its £3.99 but the feedback isn’t too hot. And I’ve not even considered the lock-in and portability issues

I can only assume because its a new concept and the app isn’t too mature. But I was wondering if it would be possible to take Mindmup and combine it with Google Calendar or something else?

Storing Mindmaps by date

Tedxliverpool mindmap in google calendar

Been  looking for a way to store my mindmaps, connect them to calendar events/ meetings all with the minimum of stress. Then I happen to look through Calendar Labs and saw this…

Event attachments
By Sundaresan V and Oana F – Mar 2010

Attach a Google document, spreadsheet or presentation to your event or upload a file from your computer. Important: guests do not automatically have permission to view Google Docs attachments. You must share each attached document.

As Mindmup already stores the mindmaps on Google Drive, it should be easy enough to link them to calendar events. Therefore making it easy to find them and easily retrievable. I’m not sure if this is the case if its somebody elses calendar request but theres only one way to find out.

Well it certainly saves me building some custom solution with my own version control system (had thought about running a XMLDB or NoSQL db locally and creating Xlinks to the mindmaps. And this could be done because Mindmup is open, has a API and is using standard technologies.

Doesn’t quite solve my Evernote connection issue, plus its really a binary blob rather than a nice mindmap but alas its the best I can think. I was going to give Google Keep a try for storing notes, so maybe that might do something better with it.

Time for a rework

Rework in Bologna

Something caught my eye while reading about, The Five Trends Shaping the Future of Work.

This is a generation of employees with technological fluency that is willing to live at home longer until they find a company that they truly want to work for. In other words, organizations must shift from creating an environment where they assume that people NEED to work there to one where people WANT to work there.

Need and Want… I believe this to be true in the creative classes, but certainly not for many out there unfortunately. Now thats something we should be working to change…

Interestingly from Stowe Boyd,

A recent report published by TINYhr, based on over 200,000 anonymous employee responses to ongoing engagement surveys, paints a pretty bleak picture of employee happiness.

Some highlights from the report, if you want to call them that:

  • Only 21% feel valued at work.

  • 49% are not satisfied with their direct supervisor.

  • More than one in four do not think they have the tools to be successful.

  • 66% of all employees don’t feel they have strong opportunities for professional growth in their current organizations.

  • 64% do not feel they have a strong company culture.

Work is due a massive refresh, and I mean all types of work for all people.