42 posts tagged “qotd” (page 2)
Congrats - TIME Magazine voted you "Person of the Year"! What's your acceptance speech?
"This is all Carl's fault."
What's on your Top 5 video games list?
Submitted by mileena.
1) Tempest: all time favorite. When I'm rich and famous I'm going to buy a Tempest arcade machine, since having the wheel is really the only way to play it.
2) That cartridge that Anil stuck in my GameBoy Micro and made me lose three months of my commute. The one with all those little micro three second games that come one after the other? It was awesome.
3) Riven! Grad school was all about Riven. (Is that what it was called? It was the one that was after Myst and had like four-hundred CDs.) It was more engaging than finance and macro.
4) Ms. Pac-Man. The place where my kids get their hair cut has a Ms. Pac-Man game. I catch up on my waka-waka when we're there.
5) The blogosphere! It's a game, right?
Do you listen to podcasts? Are there any you'd recommend?
Inspired by Alex.
Of course I'm sure everyone here listens to the podcasts that I've been making with authors who blog on TypePad. I don't listen to a ton, but do catch Wait Wait Don't Tell Me (The NPR News Quiz) via podcast since I can't catch it on the weekends, and last season I was listening to the Lost podcast from ABC on a regular basis... I'll listen to Merlin Mann because he talks so damn fast... I gave up on the Engadget podcast because I care less and less about gadgets (except for phones, I love phones), and there. That's enough about podcasts. You're already bored, I can tell.
What are some of your favorite, forgotten albums that have stood the test of time?
Submitted by PeterGibbons.
Call me picky, but albums from the mid-nineties do not count as ones that "have stood the test of time." And although my pick has by no means been forgotten, to this day whenever I put it on, or one of its songs comes through on the shuffle, The King just kills.
If you don't own the Sun Sessions record, you need to. "Train I ride, sixteen coaches long..."
What's the last thing you crafted, constructed or created yourself?
I'm actually not that crafty, but I'm not bad at following instructions. And this past weekend (in between soccer and birthday parties and Trina's opening) I assembled a big dresser from Ikea.
I've been meaning to write about this for a while, but Ikea product design is amazing. I'm not talking about the finished product -- the finished product is Good Enough, especially considering the price. But the overall product design -- taking into account the parts, the packaging, the instructions and assembly process -- is really astounding.
The dresser I assembled came in two flat pack boxes; total weight was like 250 pounds. The boxes contained approximately 75 unique pieces, plus all the screws, connectors, etc. The instructions were well designed, clear and easy to follow, and there wasn't one part missing, nor was there one part wasted.
You think your Web 2.0 job design job is tough? Imagine being a product designer at Ikea. Not only do you have to build a reasonably good looking end product, but efficiently design the parts that its built from, the instructions for assembly, and the packaging approach (there wasn't a cubic inch of space wasted in the flat packs.) And as if that weren't enough, you need to do it within the constraints of the broader product line. I've put enough Ikea stuff together over the years that I've kind of "learned their system," and they (obviously) reuse parts across SKUs, as well as assembly methodologies. Those constraints can be good things -- part reuse, process reuse, easier product extensions, etc. -- but it also means that product design is subject to the evolutionary rate of change of the rest of Ikea. Such is life.
And it's not just about design, there must also be rigorous QA. It's not just about product testing once it's assembled...but testing the assembly process itself. They can't rely solely on a group of dedicated QA engineers (though they probably do use that expertise), like in software usability testing they probably bring in ordinary folks to test assembly procedures. (Where do they find people in Sweden to do this? Doesn't Ikea basically own Sweden the way Nokia owns Finland?)
Oh, and pricing? Don't even bother thinking about what goes into pricing these items. (Ikea must be seriously worried about the price of oil.)
Now, multiply each of these design constraints, bills of materials, testing, pricing, marketing and distribution factors by the sheer scale of Ikea -- both in geographical reach but also in the absolutely overwhelming number of SKUs they produce. Is your head exploding yet? The only thing that kept mine from exploding on Saturday was the mind-numbing yet entirely satisfying 3.5 hour task of assembling the 8 drawer Hemnes chest in white (63" wide, 20" deep, 38" tall) that retails for a mere $249.
What is your browser's default home page set to?
Submitted by Kelev T. Cat.
About:blank, of course! The world's best website, it's remarkably feature-free.
Who's your favorite movie villain?
Keyser Soze. Because the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. (And just like that, he's gone.)
(Oh, and Spacey played John Doe in Se7en in the same year. Best year of his career.)
What books are on your nightstand?
This one rocks:
This one rocks in another way, plus was a Ted book-of-the-month hand-me-down from Mena! Thanks, Mena!
What was your favorite candy when you were a kid? How does that compare to now?
Um, am I in some kind of time warp?
What's one thing that you hope to do or accomplish before the end of this year?
Understand Merlin's obsession with YouTube. That is all.
