Figure/Ground Ambiguities Contemplated

What is it about grain elevators? I can’t pass by one without taking a picture or wanting to take a picture. They’re always surrounded by the most wonderful conglomeration of random industrial stuff and railroad cars. Maybe it was all those drives across the country when I was a kid…Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, North Dakota…Saskatchewan. And that nice one in Alton, Illinois near where I went to college. Grain elevators. The skyscrapers of the plains.

New cool site to check out, Odosketch, (thanks to Julie) that allows you to sketch online and then see the results played back. The tools aren’t as good as they could be, colors are muted and limited, and so far I’ve only done it with a trackpad. In spite of those limitations or perhaps due to them, it’s still intriguing to experiment and to check out what others have done.

I’m riding around with two sets of tires mounted on rims in my back seat. Why? Because they’re not just tires to be disposed of. They’re really table parts. But until they become part of an actual table I don’t really have another good place to put them. Since I’m very tired of these four noisy passengers, I’m more inclined to actually make the table than if the tires were stashed away in a storage facility. Just have to find the right glass top. Something a little battered would be nice.

I’m thinking of painting my car just to give it a combo retro-tuner BMW art car look. I’m inspired by a few examples I’ve seen from the BMW “art cars” to ones like this WWII fighter-look or this extreme, rusty one by Mike Burroughs. Been thinking of doing this for a few years. Maybe now is the time? Why wait? Why not consider the car a canvas? This scheme is my leading choice. Notice the imitation two-color BBS wheels.

See, the thing is, the car is old (24 years soon) and rusty, with a whole list of things to replace, and 287,000 miles (the last 110,000 of them by me). I’m looking for a replacement actually, sadly. One like it only less rusty/broken/driven. Or perhaps something newer, though, to me, there’s nothing more desirable than a nice BMW E28 — like THIS one.

Only thing is, the paint is, amazingly, still in great condition. It still cleans up well. So it’s kind of sad to “ruin” it. Also, do I want to stand out so much, driving around in an oddly-painted car? Still…if its days are few, and its fully depreciated, let’s go out in style.

I was at the San Francisco airport, confused, staring at a BART ticket machine. I was on my way to a User Experience conference. So it should come as no surprise that User Experience was top-of-mind (well, it’s always top-of-mind). It strikes me as tragic that one of the first User Experiences you’re likely to encounter upon arrival at a new destination is the purchase of some kind of public transportation ticket. Tragic because it could be a delightfully seamless transition to your final destination, and yet is so often poorly done. And the challenges are amplified by unfamiliar surroundings, commotion, baggage, fatigue, and time pressure.

The BART ticket machine User Experience was not horrible, but it did take a few mistakes to get over the initial hurdle of how to pay with a credit card, which is not clear on the little 123 diagram (but who reads diagrams anyway)? The diagram shows money going in as step one. Apparently the diagram is to be taken literally and does not refer broadly to any form of payment, but only cash. The credit card actually goes into a slot in 2. But look at the order of the functional areas of the machine. From right to left, 2 appears first. Why? This causes perceptual friction as you try to fit the elements into a coherent mental model. 1 and 3 are indicated by green and red shaded areas, respectively. 2 is indicated by a blue tape outline that looks like it was added as an afterthought, since there is a green shaded area for credit card swiping inside the blue outline.

Another challenge was that I had no idea what dollar-value ticket to purchase to travel from SFO to the Montgomery station near my hotel. And it was not clear how I might find that information. So, I bought a $20.00 ticket, figuring that should be more than enough. It was, though the cost one-way was a surprising (to me) $8.00, which left me more than enough to return to the airport a few days later. Still, I would have liked to have the information readily available.

This post would normally end here, except for a happy occurrence at the conference. During a break between sessions, a design student was presenting a model for an improved BART ticket-purchase process (above) that he and fellow classmates had developed. It actually addressed the two issues I mention above. It was fluid, intelligent, delightful, and intuitive to use. If only it could see the light of day (or dark of tunnel), but he says it’s a challenge getting through the BART bureaucracy. In any case, good job.

I recently took the T (MBTA subway in Boston) to and from Logan airport. On the other end of my journey I took BART to and from the airport in San Francisco. How can it be that it’s a half-hour trip from San Francisco to SFO airport which is many miles south of the city, yet it’s an hour trip from Boston to Logan airport which is maybe a couple miles? And don’t even get me started on the smooth and quiet BART with train arrival times compared to the agonizing screeches and rattles with jarring arrival and door-closing tones of the MBTA. Oh, and don’t forget the T’s meat-slicer entry/exit gates.

OK, I know the T in Boston was the first underground subway and it’s more than 100 years old and has evolved organically, while the BART system had the advantage of being designed all at once. The T for all it’s quirks, is endearing and quaint if you look at it right. That still does not excuse the fact that there is no rapid transit link directly into Logan. The Blue line requires you to wait for a shuttle to and from the T station. The Silver line…well it does go right into the airport, but is essentially itself a shuttle (getting real here) from the Red line’s South Station stop. If you’ve ever sat through stops at terminals A and B while needing to get to D or E, you know what I mean.

Still, the T is the least overall cumbersome and expensive method of getting to the airport in Boston. It saves that messy problem of where to stash a car for a week or watching the meter in your cab as you sit in traffic in the tunnel.

And both BART and the T have at least one thing in common. Ticket vending machines that are completely mystifying to the first time user. More on that in another post.

Sometimes, typing notes into an iPhone draws the wrong kind of attention. Like in church (although this is not a rule…and it’s probably becoming more accepted—it’s more an issue of my feeling self-conscious). So…what’s the alternative? Well—In my case, it’s the palm of my hand, and if I run out of space, my fingers. Of course, I had to take a photo before the information was deleted (washed off). Sometimes I Xerox (yes, Xerox, not photocopy) the notes.

I do get strange looks from friends when they see me walking around with a hand full of notes. It’s actually probably weirder than just using the silly iPhone

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I was just reading about a road trip in the Christian Science Monitor, and it reminded me of the many road trips I’ve taken across the USA starting when I was about three, traveling every summer with my parents from the east coast to the west coast, and back. Above is a map of a trip I took in December 1989. Not strictly a road trip unless you count chemin de fer as road. Claremont, New Hampshire to Los Angeles, California by train (Amtrak) and then back to Baltimore, Maryland by car (an unglamourous Chevy Nova—the small, cheap kind from the 80s), then another train to Claremont, New Hampshire, just in time to save my car from being towed (due to a plow needing to clear fresh snowfall) from the lot where it had been parked for eight days.

Throughout the eight-day trip I was was armed at all times with two Nikons (one for black and white, one for color) and about 40 rolls of film (maybe 30 rolls of Tri-X and 10 rolls of Ektachrome). I felt outrageously wealthy allowing myself the extravagance of unrestrained shooting. But if you think about it, that’s, at most, 1,440 images. You could easily do that in a day or two now with a single digital SLR.

The train portion was with my friend Jeff. The car portion was with my sister-in-law Alison. Jeff and I didn’t have a nice sleeper compartment or anything. We just roughed-it on the standard recliners—snoring neighbors, crying babies and all. Alison and I pretty much drove early morning to late night and stayed in the cheapest, scariest motels possible. Since it was December, we took the most southerly route practical and had not a flake of snow or any precipitation the whole way.

Some random experiences:

Sitting in the entertainment car—the last car—of the Montrealer leaving Claremont, New Hampshire at 11 p.m. bound for Washington, D.C. (we were getting off in New York, though) listening to Kenny Holmes’s keyboard and vocals and wild stories. Sadly, the roll of film I shot of Kenny went into the trash with my breakfast leftovers hours later somewhere in Connecticut.

Trying to sleep with a very loud, clunking wheel under our seats between Philadelphia and Chicago. Waking up at about 3 a.m. to bright amber lights and a freight train blasting by and my face against the window.

Lordsburg, New Mexico: Train engineers having breakfast in the booth next to us. We finished eating and drove off in our car; they finished eating and drove off in a mile-long, three-Santa Fe-locomotive, 100-ton hopper-car freight train!

Odessa, Texas: Doing laundry at 6 a.m. in some no-name laundromat on the edge of town. Driving around taking early-morning photos while my clothes washed and dried and wondering if I’d find my way back to pick them up.

Driving past highway 1111 between El Paso and Pecos on US-180. Watching the moon rise huge over the dry land and wishing I had pliers so I could take the sign, and realizing it was just as well that I didn’t.

Big Spring, Texas: The owner of Cafe Frontera taking our photo to put in the local newspaper as happy patrons. He gave me a mirror with Metalica logo etched into it. I’m not a fan of Metalica, but I graciously accepted it.

Memphis, Tennessee: Paying for a motel room by passing cash through a slot under bulletproof glass. It was the only place we could find (the Royal Oaks Motel) at 2:00 a.m.

Does it get any better than that? Aren’t you due for a road trip?

I made this when I was about five years old. I think it was a school project for mother’s day. I was visiting my mom a few months ago and ran across it. I guess it was a paper weight. I like the color and pattern choices I made.

I would like to say I remember making it. Actually I DO have a vague memory of making it, but not a detailed enough memory to say I remember making the color choices. But, perhaps it’s safe to think it was intuitive and intentional (as opposed to random or chosen by the teacher). Even if it started with a few handfuls of little tiles out of a big bin, it undoubtedly required some intentional placement. In any case, I’m happy with the choices and take pretty much full credit.

One of my favorite places for breakfast is the City Room in Nashua, NH. And I can prove it. Pictured above are just a few of the many receipt tabs that I save every time I go there. It’s a place that still has actual written-out dining checks, so I always grab the little tab at the bottom and record anything notable. In fact I’m there right now. And Nashua has free wireless downtown! I almost always get the Mediterranean omlette.