Prof. Dipl.-Des. Oliver Wrede

Author: Oliver Wrede

  • Fast Company: Is Information Visualization the Next Frontier for Design?

    This article asks wether or not Information Visualization is a field on its own in Information Design:

    If we’re going to live in a world driven by data, the thinking goes, we need a simple means of digesting it all. We are increasingly a visual society, and our understanding of the world is increasingly made possible by this new visual language.

    … and …

    Designers have historically excelled at finding insightful ways of looking at complex problems. Visualization will likely play a prominent role as design evolves beyond the consumer economy (selling $2,000 poufs and other high-end furnishings) and helps create efficient new forms of buildings, food distribution and transportation.

  • Copenhagen UI concept

    Via blogblog: Here is a user experience concept study that is a mockup of a new Windows UI – and it is not designed by Microsoft but by a guy named Cullen Dudas.

    Looks good. Would love to see more. I hope Microsoft comes up with some UI innovations in Windows 7 that really serve the user.

  • Future of Interfaces

    DesignReviver (via @blogblog) has compiled a categorial list of aspects that drive future UI development:

    • Better and more intuitive devices interaction
    • Everyday devices connected to the Internet
    • Multi-touch, without touching the screen
    • Interactive and intuitive user interfaces for better browsing
    • Gesture based interfaces
    • Interfaces aware of context
    • New materials that will influence UI

    While I agree with the list in general there is something I do not like about it: this list is purely determined by technological advances.

    We will see changes in almost all areas of society: how we shop, how we love, how we go about politics, what we regard as value, etc.

    So I add some other (very speculative and spontaneous) ideas that are not so much based of the hardware innovation:

    • Laws that require users have ideal control over privacy issues (hopefully!)
    • Programmable operating systems on any device with good scurity
    • Redundant storage on different locations that “logically cloud together” in a personal and searchable environment
    • Working culture that permits more work “on the road” as before (specifically regarding the social aspects involved in this)
    • Affordable plans for wireless connectivy and low-priced roaming
    • Architectural advances that integrate media and new display/projection technologies into the interior environments

  • Quorum sensing bacterial communication

    Bonnie Bassler discovered that bacteria “talk” to each other, using a chemical language that lets them coordinate defense and mount attacks. The find has stunning implications for medicine, industry — and our understanding of ourselves.

  • Thinking alternatives: From “Mobile” to “Mobility”

    Shai Agassi is the CEO of The Better Place to get rid of oil dependency (especially for running vehicles). The idea: Give away electric cars for free (like mobile phones) and make the batteries part of the electric grid system (instead of a costly component of the car). You basically pay for miles, thus the service of mobility – not for the hardware.

    Here is an interesting interview with him:


  • 100 months to desaster

    Scientists and celebrities raise the alarm regard global warming. Prince Charles for example claims that there’re only 100 months left to act. On the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit 2009 the economist Nicholas Stern confronts politicians and scientists with a dire outlook of the future if politicians fail to act swiftly on carbondioxide emissions.

    Obviously there is a strong consensus among scientists, that politicians haven’t taken the issue serious enough in the last years. The Bush administration did not only oppose the Kyoto Protocol – it failed to raise the public awareness about the issue, even negated that global warming is a problem at all. As a result 66% of Republican voters think the global warming issue is “exaggregated” (44% of all Americans). Only 41% of the Republicans admit that global warming has started to show effects in nature (76% Democrats). There is even a documentary claiming the whole thing is a swindle to allocate research funds.

    The mere difference in these numbers of the Republicans and Democrats show that politicians are responsible! They set the agenda, they rally their voters, they need to act – it is not enough to hope that the market will act upon their behalf. This is not going to happen – or: It will happen too late. The reason for this is that clime change is too slow to be anticipated by individuals or corporations.

    Nicholas Stern has estimated two years ago that countries have to invest 1 percent of the GDP to address the climate change issue. If they don’t do that, the cost will consume up two 20 percent of the GDP. And these figures may even be too optimistic.

  • Lovelock: One last chance to save mankind

    James Lovelock in The NewScientist about the ecology and global warming today:

    I don’t think humans react fast enough or are clever enough to handle what’s coming up. Kyoto was 11 years ago. Virtually nothing’s been done except endless talk and meetings.

  • NSA wiretaps like crazy?

    Former NSA analysr Russel Tice talks publicly about the wiretapping of the National Security Agency. Obviously the NSA patched into backbones of national telecommunication providers and scanned ALL communications. Complete organisations had their communication secretly copied and backed up for investigative purposes.

    See yourself:

    Update: There is a second interview with Mr. Tice the day after:

  • Competing with the iPhone

    Ingo Hinterding wants to have a Plam Pre. The multi-touch, turning UI is clearly attacking the iPhone market share. I think the Palm Pre will not succeed as an “iPhone killer”.

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  • Seminar on »Slowness«

    Here is a teaser for a seminar next semester:

    Read a more detailed (german) description here.

    Also: Overview about my teaching activities with links to other seminar weblogs.

  • Fans on Technorati? How could I have missed that…

    I just noticed that there is a “fan”-feature on Technorati. It may be on for years but it never really drew my attention. I have four fans!

    Beside of Marian Steinbach (whom I know, “Hello!”) I see three other people that I do not know:

    • Tom Roper who is a Information Resources Development Coordinator for the Brighton & Sussex Medical School in England.
    • Alwin Hawkins who seems to have added me years ago and seems to have kept me for my interest in Tinderbox (don’t know…).
    • Mark Blair who is a Website architect, Internet strategist and techno-sociologist.

    Hello guys!

    It’s odd how people get to appreciate things from authors that don’t know about it. I think this is fundamental that the Internet changes the relationship between authors and readers – more than it has already.

    I’d love to see who are those 500+ people that have subscribed to this blog, but I fear I will never really know….

  • I finally switched to WordPress

    wordpress_logoAfter a long time of consideration I turned over to WordPress for this weblog and I will not be using Tinderbox to blog here anymore. Tinderbox is a great software for thinking and writing – and I love to have a more graphical/visual note taking approach to weblogging. But it was getting too clumsy to update my weblog or simply correct a typo. It also is a client side application – thus requiring me to use Tinderbox to blog (so it didn’t work with other clients or other computers).

    feed-icon32x32  RSS Feed

    Now I just need a slick design for this site.

  • 3 components of good web design

    Actually the site PSDTUTS has great tutorials for Web Designers. But one of the recent articles about what design roles that constitute a good web design discipline did not convince me.

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  • US officials flunk test of American history, economics, civics

    Yahoo News reports: “US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday.”

    You can take the 33-question quiz here.

    I couriously tried the test and scored a 60.61% as a non-US citizen. Doesn’t this qualify me for US congress?

  • Fundamental changes ahead: petaflop barrier broken

    According to this WIRED blog entry IBM and Cray have both cracked the petaflop barrier.

    Computer scientist Mark Seager of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory claims that this will change the scientific method for the first time since Galileo invented the telescope (in 1509)”.

    The reason for that is that simulation and approximation can be used to come to acurate models of complex phenomena instead of just reasoning about formula by theory and experimenting to prove those.

    With 362 terabytes of memory and 1.059 quadrillion floating-point calculations per second the Jaguar of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is tuned for scientific calculations like climate and energy models, drug discovery, new materials, etc.

    The question arises if these amounts of speed and data processing could one day break one fundamental rule: that some problems will always be beyond discovery through calculation. Neurology, psychology, sociology, economy and cultural studies are scientific areas that haven’t really started yet. Large scale simulation can be the one scientific method that is missing for those (implied that the methods of observation deliver enough data to model upon).

    And if so, there is a danger that even governmental policies may one day be driven by probability and not ethics.

  • Zeitgeist: Addendum

    Here is a two hour documentary by Peter Joseph from July 2008 explains so much of the backgrounds of a “corporatocracy” today, an unsustainable “monetary-ism” and religious deception that causes social and economic distress.

    »Zeitgeist: Addendum« is a sequel to the documentary »Zeitgeist« from 2007:

    Zeitgeist: Addendum, attempts to locate the root causes of this pervasive social corruption, while offering a solution. This solution is not based on politics, morality, laws, or any other “establishment” notions of human affairs, but rather on a modern, non-superstitious based understanding of what we are and how we align with nature, to which we are a part

    The movie portraits the Venus Project – a life long futuristic vision of Jaques Fresco of a sustainable society. Unfortunatly the site looks like a study site for futuristic industrial design and technology and thus fails to generate interest for the socio-political subtext of Frescos work.

    Unfortunatly, while the movie does extensively talk about a global vision, it remains a US centric view as the critisism is focusing on the US agenda. And thus it falls short in the ideas of how to initiate change in the system.

    But much of the movie very well explains the problem of the current monetary system and how it came into being.