experience

Kenka: spunky, tasty, awesome!

Posted by _tango! on June 19, 2006
Posted in: experience, food, me. Leave a Comment
kenka

While in nyc I went down to St. Marks street to grab some grub with some friends at Kenka, a spunky, fun, and wildly popular japanese restaurant streaming with a vibrant crowd of college students and visitors curious about the oddly colorful and punk like scene, though I think the whistling grandmother logo and beaver-like red eyed mascot really caught my curious attention. I’d been to a like place nearby, Yakitori Taisho, right down the street, but thought I’d give this find a try. The wait to get in took some time, but it was worth evey second.

As for the restaurant, the staff was jazzy, the environment was fun and spontaneous, the bizarre menu was full of delicious and surprising items, and the prices just rocked! A bowl of edamame for $1, Seaweed salad $2, japaneses pancake $4, smoked salmon $5, sapporo beer for $1.50!!! The best part was their dessert. Instead of the traditional mint, or chocolate candies, they give you a little bucket of red suger to toss into their cotton candy machine at their entrance. You toss it in, grab a chopstick, and spin it till you have a fluff of carnival like candy to munch on. Kenkas is a great place to kick it with friends and munch down on some fast, hot, and tasty japanese food. If your in nyc, give it a try!

Fuzzmail

Posted by _tango! on June 12, 2006
Posted in: experience, ideas, inspiration, thoughts. 1 comment

fuzzmailI recently had a conversation with a friend about the digital gap and how things seemed more authentic in the past. One such topic was e-mail. E-mails are easy to delete, easy to read, and easily copied, but real physical mail has a personal feel, an authentic touch, a ritualistic process, and at times a more meaningful if not more emotional experience. This can be due to simple crinkles in the paper, ones handwriting, a few scribbled out words, the stamps they used, color of paper, a coffee spill, or something that the digital world has not yet captured. An example I brought up was Fuzzmail, a great email tool that records the act of you writing and let’s you send it as an e-mail. You hit record, start typing, deleting, re-spelling, thinking, etc and finish recording. When your friend receives the fuzzmail, the message is played back as you wrote it, including your spelling errors, backspaces, and pauses. Now, I know this isn’t great for the fast paced digital revolution, but it is a bridge between the authentic years and the fast paced digital years. You really have to try it out to understand how it works. Rather than reading the email, the email reads to you. It’s almost like an IM conversation without the interactivity.
Fuzzmail was created by Hayes Raffle and Dan Maynes-Aminzade at the MIT Media Lab.
For an example fuzzmail, click here! Enjoy;)

iBar- interactive bar

Posted by _tango! on June 5, 2006
Posted in: art, entertainment, experience, ideas, tech, thoughts. Leave a Comment
ibar

“iBar is a system for the interactive design of any bar-counter. Integrated video-projectors can project any content on the milky bar-surface. The intelligent tracking system of iBar detects all objects touching the surface. This input is used to let the projected content interact dynamically with the movements on the counter. Objects can be illuminated at their position or virtual objects can be “touched” with the fingers.”

I’m not sure what to think here, but I guess it would be fun while I was a bit loopy or really bored. I go to bars to socialize with people and feel this is more of a distraction than an enhancement. Otherwise, it has a settle way of connecting strangers to one another, but it’s not quite there yet. I love the idea of interactive tables in bars, but it comes down to meaningful and smart applications. Be cool if it somehow connected lines to people that were attracted to each other. Otherwise, it looks super cool! Watch the video on their website or watch a YouTube Video.

The Paradox of Choice – Why More Is Less

Posted by _tango! on June 5, 2006
Posted in: experience, ideas, information, me, thoughts. 2 comments

barry schwartzI first heard Barry Schwartz speak at the GEL conference about his book, “The Paradox of Choice – Why More Is Less“. He talks about how freedom is better, but also worse. How the more options we have the better the final outcome, but the worse the experience. How 175 different types of salad dressings is ridiculous. Is too much choice bad? Does it really numb our thinking and decision making? Does variety mean quality? What’s better, Capability vs Usability. Anyhow, his incredible 1 hour Google lecture can be viewed here. For any of you out there that create consumer products, this is a must watch!

In my opinion, there are the services and products that that I love to have choice in, but then there are a ton of services I wished never had options. Airline tickets, phone plans, health plans, cameras, cars, and the everlasting ordeal of figuring out which movie to watch. A few years back, we’d just watch a movie that came out. Now we look at all the trailers, read a bunch of reviews, dive into their websites, ask friends that have seen it, look at their rankings, look at who’s in it, then finally deciding if the movie is worth watching even though we know everything about the movie now. After all that chaos, we have to figure out how to buy the ticket. Should we buy it early, online, offline, as a group, print the ticket, pick it up, matinée, which theater, etc. Many hours later, our choice is made, which is probably a great decision, but the experience to get there has become a job… So, is choice good? Is thinking about this good, bad? Well, enjoy the video which has several other examples of this paradox!

JetBlue Theatrical Terminal

Posted by _tango! on June 3, 2006
Posted in: design, experience, ideas, inspiration, thoughts. Leave a Comment
jet blue terminal

JetBlue is already one of the coolest airlines to experience with great service, prices, DirecTV in every seat, some yummy snacks, their shut-eye package, and their recently won wireless license, yipeee! So, what’s left you may ask..well, enhancing not only the on-flight experience, but also the off-flight experience by hiring design guru David Rockwell to design their busy interior terminal environment. In Mr. Rockwells well known odd collaborations, he hired Broadway colleague and dance choreographer Jerry Mitchell for the job. For some this may seem odd, but in truth, I love it when projects bring in new disciplines to solve problems. This collaboration uses movement, like in a dance, throughout the terminal as a central means to differentiate the user experience for arrival and departing customers. This interplay between architecture and choreography for a public space is brilliant. The terminal is not scheduled to be finished until 2008 at the Kennedy International Airport(which needs a GUI re-design), but I’m looking forward to checking it out then.
Read more via nytimes article.
Project PDF (more pictures)

Google Eats!

Posted by _tango! on May 18, 2006
Posted in: experience, food, fun. Leave a Comment

Google EatsI first experienced Googles awesome snack bar at TED2006, though the one at TED was twice as big as this image. Anyhow, that leads me to another reminder of how great Google is (Google life video). Besides their free laundry, shuttles, services, snacks, and fun environment is their cafeteria food. Yeah I know, cafeteria food can be pretty bad, especially at large companies but take a look at this google food blog and start to get jealous. (nothing fancy, but for a cafeteria, it seems like a visit to Wholefoods daily)

Apple underground nyc.

Posted by _tango! on May 18, 2006
Posted in: brand, experience. Leave a Comment

Apple Store nycApples mysterious nyc store is finally opening with word that it’ll be open 24 hours!!! Yes, 24 hrs of free WiFi and service. Reminds me of Seths Godins book the purple cow and how companies need to stop teasing customers and just go all out out like Ben and Jerrys Ice cream. Instead of having the yearly 30-40% sale, they said what the hell, lets have a free ice cream day!
Anyhow, I can’t wait to check out the store at 4am and see all the Wi-Fi junkies chillin up above their platform.

More pics via Gothamist

JetBlue Experience

Posted by _tango! on May 18, 2006
Posted in: brand, experience. Leave a Comment

JetBlue Bliss Shut Eye kitJetBlue has done it again, changing the in-flight experience into a more desirable experience for everyone. You know all those “red-eye” flights, we’ll jet-blue just started renaming that experience into the “shut-eye” experience which comes along with a little goody kit by Bliss which most passengers have not experienced unless flying international. Go Go JetBlue!

update: Seems Jetblue downgraded to a simple foil package with just the eye patch and ear plugs now. Sounds like Bliss pulled out or something. Picture of the new package after the jump.

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Black Toilet paper?!

Posted by _tango! on May 12, 2006
Posted in: brand, experience, ideas, thoughts. 1 comment

I’m not sure about black toilet paper for the trendy and stylish. From my design knowledge, people like to know, know how dirty they are. Admit it, you look!!..There’s a reason why toilet paper, towels, and tissue paper are white. You sneeze, and you look…you wipe and you look! Dyson revolutionized the vacuum by letting us know and see how much stuff we picked up. People enjoy the fact that they just vacuumed up a big ball of dirt.

via thecoolhunter