
Web Design Pioneer Hillman Curtis passed away - turingbook
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/21/technology/hillman-curtis-a-pioneer-in-web-design-dies-at-51.html?_r=1
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palish
What breaks my heart is that this kind of tragedy is avoidable. He was only
51; died of colon cancer. All we need is to design a wearable device which
continuously monitors your body for changes that correlate with "might be
developing cancer". (An undershirt, for example.)

This is a solvable problem. Cancer causes measurable (but typically unnoticed)
changes to the rest of your body. If it can be measured, it can be monitored;
and when that change is detected, a quick trip to the doctor's office would
likely save the next 30 years of your life (if it was indeed the very early
stages of cancer).

Cancer is beatable; we simply need to beat it before it has the chance to
incubate.

This is a problem that I would like to personally work on, but unfortunately
it would take at least a year to arrive at a feasible design. It'd need only a
small investment (~$1M) but I doubt any investor would be interested in "zero
profitability for at least 12 months".

~~~
nopinsight
I'd say this is a good project to get funding via kickstarter.com. Have you
checked it out?

It will be risky for the funders, but the risk is small compared to potential
benefits for each individual. Several much less useful projects garnered
higher funding than the amount you mentioned.

~~~
palish
Using Kickstarter is a good idea, but I'm struggling with the moral
implications of it. The chance that I'll succeed is inherently small, and I'd
feel absolutely awful if that $1M wound up not resulting in some useful
contribution.

Still, I have ideas, along with the skill necessary to test them. And if I
were independently wealthy, then this is how I'd spend my time...

If I were to Kickstart this, then I'd keep a public daily journal of my
efforts and short-term goals. There would be a webpage showing exactly how the
money was being spent. I'd make everything as transparent as possible.

The thing is, most of my ideas will turn out to be impractical, but there's no
way to know _which_ until I test each of them. That process would require
money from people who are okay with gambling on the off-chance that one of my
ideas turn out to work. (Sidenote: if I happen to succeed, then I want to
repay the people who funded me, at the very least.)

Here is a glimpse into the future I envision:

\- A sensor in your bed scans for tumors as you sleep.

\- If you have a heart attack, a sensor in your clothing immediately detects
it and pushes an alert to your phone, which dispatches emergency services to
your exact GPS location. (Most people keep their phone in their pocket or
purse, so this seems doable.) A speaker embedded in your belt yells out step-
by-step CPR instructions to the people around you.

\- Your toothbrush takes your temperature and absorbs a sample of your saliva,
which it analyzes for deviations from your long-term norm. It uses wifi to
upload this data to your computer, along with a map of the surfaces of the
teeth you brushed. The next time you use your computer, you'll see a
visualization of your teeth; any surfaces which you missed when brushing are
highlighted in red. (e.g. if you aren't brushing behind your molars, then
those areas are highlighted.)

\- As you're driving, a sensor on your rearview mirror will detect if you fall
asleep at the wheel (your eyelids close for more than one second) which
triggers an audible alert to wake you.

I'd love to spend my life coming up with pragmatic ways to use technology to
benefit your health / monitor for emergency conditions. I'm just not sure it'd
be ethical to use Kickstarter to fund possibly-crazy endeavors like this. I
don't know.

~~~
JoshTriplett
It sounds to me like you have a pretty good idea of the technical details and
challenges in such a project. You'd need to find someone with medical
experience that you could work with to figure out the details, but you could
find quite a bit of that expertise just by chatting with your local medical
school. And at least in the short-term you won't have to worry about medical
device certification, since most of the ideas you've mentioned would not
directly get used for medical treatment; any actual diagnosis would still get
done by a physician.

If you're serious about being willing to work on this proportionally to how
much funding you get, then please by all means start a project. Pick a couple
of appropriate ambitious-but-likely-possible goals, set expectations very
clearly, and see if you get any takers.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Would this project need FDA approval? If so, the timeline would be quite long
and a million bucks would come nowhere near covering it...

~~~
JoshTriplett
Long-term, some of these devices would need FDA approval, but many of them
wouldn't.

Speaking as a non-expert (only familiar with FDA approval processes through
the experiences of friends and colleagues): none of these devices would
constitute a class II or III medical device, since they'd only act as an
early-warning system rather than as a primary diagnostic tool or direct
treatment system. Some of these devices might fall under class I (which also
includes things like tongue depressors), but meeting class I wouldn't
necessarily prove insanely onerous, and some care would likely allow avoiding
class I as well in some cases.

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jongala
I'm so disconnected from Flash work now, that it's easy to almost forget about
the hundreds and hundreds of hours I spent doing it. But 10 or 12 years ago it
was a really exciting area, and Hillman Curtis was incredibly inspiring. His
stuff and Joshua Davis' Praystation were on another level. He left a real
mark. And he had the courage to walk away for something new when he needed to.
Sorry to hear about this.

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jordhy
I'm very saddened by two things: confirming that great artists usually die
young and by the ever-extending specialization of labor in our industry.
Generalists like Hillman Curtis, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are becoming more
and more uncommon.

Hillman was truly the "Michael Jordan of Flash", a great web designer without
parallel in our industry. Inspired by Hillman's books, I changed careers and
became a web architect (a mixture of programmer, designer and producer). What
inspired my about Hillman's work is that he wasn't afraid of going the
distance, and constantly pushed the envelop on the limits of technology, by
integrating design, development and architecture in a very cohesive theme. He
designed and developed websites in the old days of 14.4K modems!

David Hillman Curtis amassed dozens of important awards and wrote books that
were translated to 14 languages. His book MTIV (Making The Invisible Visible)
changed my life more than any other professional book I've ever read. I'm
saddened to see our field devoid of such visionaries, nobody's pushing the
envelop anymore. Most technicians and entrepreneurs are working for a quick
exit and are forgetting about having any sort of legacy.

If you are reading this, please try to become an ARTIST at your craft. Don't
just write C, C++, Node.js or Ruby. Push-the-envelop and write the most bad-
ass and revolutionary code you can, create a signature style (for Steve
Wozniak it was simplicity, for Walt Disney, imagination, etc).

Please enrich, enrich this industry, make no f'in compromises. Push the damn
envelop until you've made history. You know who you are, you have that fire
inside, you make no compromises, you want to make a difference, a real
difference. Like Curtis did.

On Hillman's words: “The reason for designing new media is simple — to subtly
and quietly change the world.” From music, to design, to web design and film
making, Hillman created a signature style that defined his career. His
obsession with animated portraits, simplistic and memorable animations made a
huge impression on all of us (the old new media designers that started in the
late 90s).

Even today, memorable design is an afterthought found only on a limited
collection of very distinguished websites and apps. When I browse from TC to
VentureBeat, for example, I feel like going from McDonald's to Burger King -
Nobody gives a damn anymore.

We respect SEO, we bow to latency and concurrency... yet nobody gives a damn
to art direction and interaction design. If Eric Ries talks to you about A/B
testing, you listen. But if Nathan Shedroff gives a lecture about "Experience
Design" half of the room is empty before his talk is over - nobody cares
anymore. Nobody.

The Web is chasing Hollywood. And we have no Scoreseses. I'm sorry to curse,
but I most: get a fuckin soul, make history in your work. Care, care about
every pixel, care about the theme of your work, care about your legacy.
Hillman taught us to care. He inspired us to be our best and to create a new
web.

Hillman will always live in the memory of all his book readers, associates and
fans. I know he will always be present in my work. I owe too much to him.
Especially, I owe to him the discipline to make zero compromises.

Please, if you're a generalist, become an artist. If you're a coder, learn
about design. Care about the final product, the whole product. Care about the
experience you're delivering. Feel your work, and raise to be a director of
experiences, not only a coder or corner-cutter.

Become the Steve or the Bill of our industry. Because nobody cares anymore.
And all the great generalists that used to care are dying.

More About Hillman Curtis

<https://vimeo.com/38130536>

<http://hillmancurtis.com/>

~~~
Alexandervn
"Generalists like Hillman Curtis, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are becoming more
and more uncommon." "Nobody cares anymore."

Where I am coming from this is certainly not true. At a small company I know
they (still, traditionally) hand out copies of MTIV if you succeed for your
internship. And I am coming from a school where you can also specialize in
Experience Branding and Nathan Shedroff. A lot of young people want to become
the next John Lasseter, _why or Kevin Kelly.

The names you are talking about are special though. They were pioneers, but
not only because of their own merits but also because it was just the right
time.

~~~
jordhy
As for the field, I'm referring to new media design for entrepreneurs invested
in high-growth ventures. As for luck or timing of Hillman's success, I think
that "Energy finds its way to the right time and place". These pioneers
created their opportunities. Specially in the case of Jobs and Curtis, because
they reinvented themselves a couple of times.

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culturestate
Sad. I really admired him - _MTIV: Process, Inspiration and Practice for the
New Media Designer_ was a huge influence for me when I was starting out.

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willlangford
RIP.

This was posted a few days ago and didn't get any votes.. glad it finally made
it.

