

Interface inspiration at the office - hawke
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3193-interface-inspiration-at-the-office

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gdubs
This is great. I used to be an avid reader of Amiga World, and this reminded
me of something in one of Mojo's columns. (Mojo was a VFX supervisor on
Babylon 5, which made heavy use of the Video Toaster, and LightWave – he wrote
a monthly Op-Ed for Amiga World.) I'm paraphrasing, but it was something like,
"If you go to film school, make sure you study things other than film.
Otherwise, when you get out of school, you'll have nothing to make films
about."

Edit: Ah, it was not Amiga World. It was 'New Tekniques'

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jwarzech
Really cool idea, however I'm wondering how necessary it was to hire an
outside group. Why not just dedicate a space and slowly fill it with items
that employees find interesting?

I do remember an article awhile ago about a company (perhaps 37signals) that
kept a collection of different textures/materials to use as inspiration. I
always thought this was a great idea.

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fiatpandas
A lot of times, creative processes are best fueled with unfamiliar or alien
sources of inspiration. If employees brought in objects they like, how much is
their decision influenced by how they already think about computer interfaces?
Adding an external group to the mix is healthy in my opinion.

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Qworg
Inventables used to provide monthly subscriptions to design teams of
"interesting stuff" - much like what was provided here.

They pivoted though - now they provide hardware to designers directly:
<https://www.inventables.com/>

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tgrass
For more reflections on physical design watch the documentary on Charles
Eames, trailer below.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YMzmuBBBzo>

