black and white.

I'm a little grey on the idea of design still. I understand it's purpose but I just read two web page articles on design which broke the standards of ... well design. I was very frightened without my top navigation bars and almost blinded by images that confused and perplexed me, luckily I was able to continue reading to glean some helpful information from these articles... I think. Actually while the second article i read (reading them in reverse order) was image less the author painted a much clearer image of what they were trying to explain. I now feel much less guilty about my use of piles. I have a pile for stuff that needs throwing out, a pile for reading, a pile for homework and a pile for laundry.. piles are very useful organizational tools. heck i wouldn't be able to go anywhere if it weren't for the useful pile of shoes at my front door. I would almost go so far as to say piles are the standard in my apartment. hah.

The idea that prototypes should always be rough is kind of an ah ha to me. sometimes i would think that if you make a finished as possible prototype then more people would support then vision, but I suppose in more thought about it, many may glean a different idea they support more from a rough model version of a toy or car or website that they approve more from the prototype being rough than finished because they use their own imaginations. One of the things I find interesting is the ambiguity of the design mentioned in both the readings. In my opinion the most important design aspect is the UI (user interface). The design can be all over the place as long as it is easy to use and doesn't distract the reader from the message/user from the goal. the design of the unified theory of design created a lot of noise for me when reading it. I found this normally what would be easy to read page, noisy and distracting because of the graphics placed all over the reading. As far as the writer I would like a citation on his definition of wisdom, I am a student of the Tao Te Qing and some things said in this article were very interesting but conflict with the nature of the words he was using, perhaps if he was less focused on flashy words and more intent on making his content easier to read it would have been less argumentative in my mind. the one part that spoke extremely clearly to me was the part on organization. after reading his input on organization it is entirely possible that organization may be the single most important feature, nay the pupose of the word design. i will have to think about that.

I have worked extensively in the web development industry and the issue of standardization is what makes it possible for people to easily share information and create new programs/websites/applications. Standards should be more widely embraced due to the fact that most of the time they only help make any situation easier for those who are involved in production. ex : web standards help web developers make only one version of website instead of multiple for each web browser. High defenition television has been mandated the broadcasting standard, not because people want to sell more televisions but because the spectrum tv operates on is the peoples spectrum and television companies must be responsible with it. the signal strength of hd tv is stronger and will help emergency broadcasting systems around the states further more with hd this will help broadcasters by making television more interesting and involving, this is a good thing for advertisments as well. a standard was mandated and while it may be a hassle for some stations set in their ways who didn't want to switch just yet ( as many stations were switching to hd already those who did not would be left behind as inferior shortly) it benefits all by accomplishing this task now instead of later. Standards help progress.


Wasn't planning on creating a website... so im not sure what to do about those two url's needed.

I think instant messaging is supperior to email, end. IM needs a standard set of code that can connect to others via something like email addresses instead of the 50million different versions of screen names IE: msn's email address VRS AIMs screen name. I am a user of msn and don't really feel like changing to another system I would not mind however if somehow I was allowed to chat with those on other systems. this would make communicating with others easier and effective.