tbolt
The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food
Fascinating Article on How Junk Food is Engineered:
Their tools included a $40,000 device that simulated a chewing mouth to test and perfect the chips, discovering things like the perfect break point: people like a chip that snaps with about four pounds of pressure per square inch.
“It’s absurd, but explanatory”
In trying to explain this requirement for a visceral, gut-level understanding of the system, we came up with a metaphor that helps illustrate the point. It’s absurd, but explanatory.
Netflix’s technology team seems top-tier. Running a service that makes up over a 1/3rd of the downstream internet bandwidth can’t be too easy.
User Interface’s From The Martian
Territory Studio created hundreds of screen graphics for the motion picture The Martian and they’re great:
As a story that is mediated by technology, hundreds of screens are employed across eight key sets, forming the lens through which the drama unfolds.
Working closely with NASA, Territory developed a series of deft and elegant concepts that combine factual integrity and filmic narrative, yet are forward looking and pushing NASA’s current UI conventions as much as possible.
Awesome.
Light Stopped for 1 Minute
Back in 1999, scientists slowed light down to just 17 meters per second, and then two years later the same research group stopped light entirely — but only for a few fractions of a second. Earlier this year, the Georgia Institute of Technology stopped light for 16 seconds — and now, the University of Darmstadt has stopped light for a whole minute.
Baseball Advanced Media
Fascinating article by Ben Popper on MLB’s Advanced Media division:
The latest expression of this boundless initiative is Statcast, a big data approach to sports that only a major league nerd could love. High-speed cameras and radar installed in every stadium capture the game in three dimensions and allow for real-time tracking and tabulation of each motion a player makes on the field. Fans watching an amazing replay of a diving catch can learn exactly how fast that outfielder’s first step was, if he broke in the right direction, and how that compares to his historical average.
Baseball has always had a strong statistical element to it. This just takes it one step further.
The World Wide Advertising Web
Great excerpt from a LWN.com article:
Krekel quoted former Facebook researcher Jeff Hammerbacher, who said: “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That Sucks.” Instead of spending time on “getting us into space, flying cars, or whatever”, the best minds in IT are focused on how to get people to click more ads.
Web advertising has become invasive and hostile regardless of the platform. The advertising-driven business models have put reputable sites in a bad position, they either make less money or provide a better experience. This plus the above note make me think that this topic isn’t getting the attention it deserves.
Minimalism in Web Design
Unfortunately, some designers misinterpret minimalism as a purely visual-design strategy. They cut or hide important elements in pursuit of a minimalist design for its own sake—not for the benefits that strategy might have for users. They’re missing the core philosophy and the historical context of minimalism, and they risk increasing complexity rather than reducing it.
Great point. Minimalist strategy is one where you approach designing layouts and information architectures with the intent to reduce unnecessary cruft and focus on the user’s goals. It’s easy to get carried away and end up with something so spartan it’s barely usable.