31–38 of 38 posts
Folks are apparently down on this. Why in the world? It's awesome! How cool to spend 50 days digging into people's problems, travelling, and putting it all out there. I'd bet anything that his 50 days of travel have led to more advancement, opportunity and insight than almost any other use of 50 days. Be happy and supportive for someone who is breaking convention and being prolific!
A puppet account on HN? Can't be, can it?
Is this a joke or something? Day 20: This padlock was too small for my locker. I'll wrap a metal cable around it and lock the cable. Day 24: Wet socks. I stuck a towel under the door. It failed. Is this really representative of what "designers" do? Just looks like jury-rigging to me. Slap some duct-tape on it and get on with your life.
- Day 1: Communicating with someone by voice is hard if you lack a shared languages. The proposed solution is "Integrating voice translation into Skype". This isn't a solution so much as it is a problem, with Voice Recognition and Machine Translation as sub-problems. But it is already done reasonably well by the Google Translate iOS app.
- Day 45: People forget PINs. There's been a lot of work on graphical/gestural passwords (see http://www.acsac.org/2005/papers/89.pdf), on the memorability and security of passwords in general (https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-500.pdf) and customer chosen PINs in particular (https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jcb82/doc/BPA12-FC-banking_pin_sec...), and on a physical device to replace all passwords/PINs (https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~fms27/papers/2011-Stajano-pico.pdf).
Others seem slightly odd:
- Day 39: Personalize post-card by covering up a large portion of the image with a scratch off map. Since the front of a post-card is exposed in transit, wouldn't more be scratched off? And is the recipient is expected to be able to interpret a small section of map for an area they may have never visited themselves? An alternative solution is to mount an integrated camera and printer at a scenic location, so users can easily print a postcard that includes them (Post-Me: http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/news/stories/2010/design_show/)
Folks are apparently down on this. Why in the world? It's awesome! How cool to spend 50 days digging into people's problems, travelling, and putting it all out there. I'd bet anything that his 50 days of travel have led to more advancement, opportunity and insight than almost any other use of 50 days. Be happy and supportive for someone who is breaking convention and being prolific!
A puppet account on HN? Can't be, can it?
People seem to be criticising it on UI terms (it's confusing/hard to use) but I think it works because the site isn't trying to market a product (like most HN sites) but tell a story, so it is not unreasonable to expect/encourage the user to explore.
Basically, I think it is more interesting even if it is harder to use.
My name is Peter Smart. I am the creator of this project. Thanks for all your constructive thoughts and comments so far. I am 23 and this was a university project that has generated a lot of interest. Apologies it's so slow right now - apparently that the HN effect. Thanks for your thoughts on the site design. The site has won Site of the Day at Design Taxi and Awwwards. This was really unexpected as I agree there is…