Awesome Video Processing
Posted on Aug 15, 2008 Permalink
Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene from pro on Vimeo.
Life Matters - Media
Posted on Feb 19, 2008 Permalink
I've begun teaching a class at Gracepoint Fellowship Church called Life Matters. In particular, I'm teaching a section called "Are you there God? - Media." Honestly while preparing for the class, I wasn't sure there would be any clear answers. However, to my surprise, there are some solid books on this topic such as Catching Light: Looking For God In The Movies by Roy Anker. I structured the class similar to some movie commentaries that Pastor Ed Kang and Kelly Kang have done at Gracepoint Fellowship Church where we covered movies such as Lord of the Rings and Evan Almighty. However, in my class, I wanted to delve deeper into more thematic issues that weren't as clean cut. We went through The Day After Tomorrow and Superman (1978). Verdict is still out what I'm going to next, but it's quite a ride teaching this class.Small Groups
Posted on Aug 30, 2007 Permalink
Here's a video I spent a week and a half working on with the help of my buddies Abe, Paul, Richard, and Kevan. I posted hi-res versions as well as our project files on our Tech Arts page at Gracepoint Fellowship Church. I also explain some of the reasons why we used After Effects over Apple Motion, which is kinda interesting.The Art of Defaults
Posted on Feb 06, 2007 Permalink
Often, many designers approach interaction design as finding the perfect abstraction layer for a set of given tasks. I’m a big believer of metaphors, both semantic as well as interactive. A while ago, I designed an interaction that was loosely based on a retractable window shade. After, several rounds of usability tests and refinement, we got that down and moved on to bigger and better things. However, one of the things that I should’ve pushed for (and unfortunately didn’t) was to think about the “default” experience not just the “metaphorical” experience. Drawing from auto design, focusing on how the map light switch feels is one thing, but more importantly, is how that light switch comes out-of-the-box. By default, can it even be found? Mercedes thought about that and put some nice glow-in-the-dark paint on their switch, duh.
I guess what I’m saying is not that you have defaults, but the art is finding the right defaults. At GetActive, we use persona data and analytics to help give us direction, but still, there are no silver bullet solutions.
Going back to the web, how much do we devote to defaults as we do on functionality or feel? For me personally, I think I need to push beyond the typical default settings and sample data stuff, and really think out-of-the-box, and ask myself what the default experience is really like. Really. I heard from a colleague saying how many of our customers don’t really get CRM, it’s just not how they think. Is the solution to find a CRM-infused business workflow so they can somehow get it? I don’t really think so. CRM is just a buzz-word … get the default experience right and our customers will be cruising with CRM without even knowing it. Give them more than initial dummy data. Perhaps start off the experience with a story about John Constituent, and then lay out the pieces of how they can reach and engage John.
The lesson I learned: user experiences can be lost in translation if you don’t give respect to the art of defaults.