Damascity

Interactive audio timeline of Typography in the 20th Century.

A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

I attended my first eComExpo a couple of months ago. It’s an extremely innovative idea of having online tradeshow with ann online exhibition show. They focus on ecommerce marketing. The lastest one started yesterday and I’m currently listening to Chris Anderson’s talk on the Long Tail. I love eComExpo. They have some great speakers and you can visit booths and chat with service company reps and even win prizes at each booth. This seems to be where exhibitions need to go.

From SvN: A collection of documentaries on some of the great artists. So far I watched the ones on Mliton Glaser, Mark Romanek and Petnagram. Very intersting stuff here.

EDIT: I have to say the the Paula Scher documentary was inspiring. I also learned a new word: syncopate

EDIT #2:  I just watched all of the videos and they are all amazing. For some strange reason I just happened to pick up Step Inside Design magazine’s Sept/Oct 2005 issue and I had the serendipity to find that they had an article where Hillman Curtis provides his thoughts about the documentaries.

Checking their website I see they have a link to a Hillman Curtis giving a brief presentation of his setup and interview style. See: http://www.stepinsidedesign.com/STEPMagazine/Article/28498

NOTES FROM THE BARRY SCHWARTZ PRESENTATION

from The Paradox of Choice

Bad Effects of Too Many Choices:

1. Decision Paralysis
2. Increase of Bad Decisions (if they get over paralysis)
3. Satisfaction Decreases
   1. Regret and Anticipated Regret
   2. Opportunity Costs (you start to focus on opportunities that you didn’t choose)
   3. Escalations of Expectations (when there are more choices you start to expect excellence. Something that is very good isn’t good enough)
   4. Self-blame (”What went wrong? It must be my fault as there were plenty of options. I must have made the wrong choice”)

Good feelings satiate, bad feelings escalate

Choice Curve:

• No Choices: Always feel bad
• Some Choice: Positive feelings
• Excessive Choices: increasing regret. Reaches a point where Excessive is worse than no choice.

Notes:

Get agents to make decisions (who don’t have to live with feelings of regret over options)

Outsourcing choice - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)

Nice post about how reducing choices for customers makes things better. There is a link to a summary of Barry Schwartz’s book “The Paradox of Choice” and to a presentation he made at Google about this subject.

From the Signal vs. Noise blog is a link to:
Hans Rosling on TED Talks 

Wonderful, witty and eye-opening presentation about the change in the world in the past 4+ decades. Watch out for the China Ghost!