February 11, 2012 by rrolfe
You know something is good when it looks easy. A number of years ago I walked into my state art museum and was captivated by this amazing piece in the foyer. It’s called ‘Rabble,’ appropriately named for the flock of 1,200 mylar butterflies that together form the shape of a F-35 fighter jet. The wings quietly click through electronic impluse, lending a feeling of life to the piece, and the faces of 50 some odd inovators of flight are printed on the wings, lending a feeling of history. It’s altogether quite terrific.
I should know better than to try to emulate such a thing. But while working in the 3-D software program Maya, I thought about how to best utilize a three dimensional landscape in such a way that Rabble did. The above is the finished result.
In short, I made a gun out of ships. Yeah.
Hear me out. For a long time I’ve been wanting to look at ocean piracy data. And in the workings of this project I was reminded of the stirring photography series ‘Stop the Violence’ by Francois Robert. I’m not saying this final piece comes all that close to the beauty and simplicity of STV and Rabble, but it’s a strong step forward for me to broach visualization of data beyond two dimensions and attempted impartiality. It’s heavy-handed, but it has heart.
Tags: 3d, visualization
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February 5, 2012 by rrolfe
A designer’s work is never done, especially when it comes to creating a personal portfolio site. I will spend hours upon hours debating color choices and type alignment, only to finally build it, get it live and decide I need to start over.
On this round I only had about a week to mock up and develop a redesign. It’s also my first attempt at HTML5 (don’t laugh – I know I’m late to the party) and thankfully it wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought. This approach tries out the big statements designers employ to explain what they do. Currently I have my work front and center but I’m thinking it might help to ground visitors with my interests and feelings toward it. Call it clarity of perspective. Or maybe they are just soundbites, but I hope it’s more than that. Future iterations will revisit the type and navigation, but I’m liking where this is going.
See the full site here.
Tags: html5, portfolio, redesign
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January 29, 2012 by rrolfe
One morning take a photo of the view outside your window. Then take a photo of that same view 12 hours later. Humans are smart enough to recognize that the photo is of the same thing, the same landscape, but how do you convey that to a computer? It has no knowledge of light nor foreground nor the cyclical movements of star systems.The first step in creating an artificial intelligence that is aware enough to recognize objects from picture to picture is to target what the computer does know: the value of its pixels. Image Analyzer is a tool that allows the user to select a point on one photograph and map the color and brightness thresholds between it and another picture. Through this it is possible to detect shapes of buildings – despite the time of day the photo was taken – or the shapes of human figures – despite the amount of art studio airbrushings.
Tags: artificial intelligence, coursework, photography
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January 21, 2012 by rrolfe
The CDC is dedicated to raising awareness and pursuing the prevention of the spread of the flu. It recently held a Flu App Challenge to continue those causes.
This (fake) app was created in the vein of those contest goals, but it isn’t for people with the flu. It’s for the healthy ones who are paranoid about getting it. FLUFIX utilizes call log history, GPS tracking, and personalized phone data to surface a randomized collection of activities that germaphobes can turn to to calm their mind after witnessing someone within their personal space do something kind of gross.
You may think you don’t do anything special to avoid getting ill but you probably pop a daily vitamin. Or wash your hands before eating. Or only drink green tea on cold weather days. Admit it, you have a routine. Now you can FLUFIX.
Tags: coursework, mobile
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January 14, 2012 by rrolfe
Computers have been ‘talking’ with us since Weizenbaum’s ELIZA in the 1960s. Humans by nature are quick to anthropomorphize even objects we clearly know to be plastic and wire; communication is so integral to daily lives. This is an experimentation in artificial intelligence. What if a computer can accurately guess things about you that you haven’t yet told it? What if it adapts its guesses based on how you respond to it? What if it even starts to predict your answers?
Why, that’s what we call artificial intelligence. Try it for yourself.
Tags: artificial intelligence, coursework, processing
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January 4, 2012 by rrolfe
This recipe is an experiment in options, about lifting the curtain and giving bakers quick access to customized and informed decision making. In that vein, the recipe itself was selected for its representation of culinary empowerment. It’s an old story circulated in chain letters, that of a mother and daughter eating at a high-end department store cafe. The mother is so delighted by the namesake cookie at the cafe that she buys the recipe. When she receives her credit card bill she realizes she was misled in the price, and in a fit of anger endeavors to distribute the cookie recipe far and wide. Whether true or not, cooking is not a copyright, and in this redesign the user is given full control and ownership in the crafting of their recipe.
Tags: coursework, redesign
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November 7, 2011 by rrolfe
Contests are awesome. (And not because I never win them. Cough cough.) They provide this great source of creative thinking. How else – outside of a classroom – can you convince a group of people to think critically about a topic and generate a massive variety of ideas of how to present information related to it?
For a recent project I made an interactive based on data available through Information is Beautiful’s inaugural awards challenge. My personal requirement was to make this thing work in Processing. It gets close and I’m happy with the first round, but there’s nothing like motivation created by seeing the entries to the challenge. Sure it’s nice to design something and love it and not share it because you know the first person who sees it will have some “suggestions” to make it better. But if you really want it to be better, and to grow as a designer, you have to be able to see beyond your own work and recognize and appreciate the value of peers in your field. So yeah, sure I’d love to be just a top-listed entrant in one of these things just to prove to myself I just might possibly know what I am doing, but at the same time every instance that doesn’t happen is the chance for me to see the billion different (and usually better) ways I could have approached the same problem.
Here’s to keeping at it.
Tags: competition, coursework, interactive
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October 29, 2011 by rrolfe
Imagine walking through the grocery store and finally knowing for sure whether that ‘Made with whole grains!’ label is accurate, if your breakfast cereal includes a surprising amount of sodium, or what might be the next best option if you’re ready to start making small improvements for your health. This food label attempts to answer these needs. The user points an equipped device at food item in a grocery store, and the screen immediately lists how the food item contributes to that user’s daily nutrition requirements. Scrolling and selected the highlighted nutrition information categories (i.e. calories, fat, carbs) allows for details to surface as well as options to tailor the device’s back-end algorithm to your personal diet needs (i.e. diabetic, vegetarian.)
In this redesign of the food label, the base understanding is that the ingredients don’t matter. If they mattered, we wouldn’t eat burritos stuffed with ‘taco meat filling.’ We wouldn’t drink orange juice made from 100% corn syrup concentrate. We certainly wouldn’t mix brightly dyed, cheese-flavored powder with water, microwave it and call the result mac & ‘cheese.’ We’re human after all, and the immediate gratification of making choices based on taste and price far outweighs that of a celery and beet salad. To make better food choices, we must be nudged in the right direction.
Tags: coursework, infographic, mobile, user experience
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September 30, 2011 by rrolfe
Sometimes all graphics need is a little space. No flash, no razzmatazz. Just breathing room.
In print, infographics are often confined to narrow, pre-determined columns and inches. It works great when you just need to show the minimum. But it can be limiting for depicting large amounts of data.
Unfortunately with the web comes an tantalizing incentive to push graphics further, to give them rollovers and fade outs and flicker effects. But maybe you don’t need to to that. Maybe you can simply lay out out the information, just like you would on paper, but utilizing the infinite space of the web.
Here’s an example of a static graphic we worked on and published earlier this year. It was one of the first full-page static graphics the site has ever launched. And it worked pretty well. For an example of when interactivity is totally appropriate (and very cool), take a look at USAToday’s generation quiz.
There’s the rule of white space in design, and there’s also the concept of ‘right space.’ Taking the time to think critically about what the graphic needs to accomplish means also being smart about presentation.
Tags: infographic, web vs. print
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September 25, 2011 by rrolfe
On my way to class I pass by fraternity row. I can’t help but think — as I gingerly patter across desolate lawns strewn with empty beer cans, the contents of which were copiously consumed at the bid day mixer/volleyball fundraiser/wet t-shirt contest night before — whether the people that lived in these houses marked with strange symbols were actually intelligent enough to pass their classes. Or, for that matter, remember which house with strange symbols was theirs.
But how terrible of me to think that. It’s a total stereotype. I just so happened to be working on my first project in Processing and made a little model (extensively trying the patience of the TA – thanks, Sam) that deals with the idea of stereotypes. Much in the vein of the Harvard Implicit Association Test, clicking and dragging across squares to reveal new images may remind us (me) that our (my) judgments about the world are never the full story. I approached the code with an ActionScript 2.0 background and quickly learned Processing’s forte is not overlapping squares, but for all its quirks, it didn’t turn out too bad.
It’s a very, very subtle interactive but, for a little perspective adjusting, sometimes that’s all we (I) need.
Tags: coursework, processing
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