Kevin Ashton is calling bullshit on brainstorming:

Claims about the success of brainstorming rest on easily tested assumptions. One assumption is that groups produce more ideas than individuals. Researchers in Minnesota tested this with scientists and advertising executives from the 3M Company. Half the subjects worked in groups of four. The other half worked alone, and then their results were randomly combined as if they had worked in a group, with duplicate ideas counted only once. In every case, four people working individually generated between 30 to 40 percent more ideas than four people working in a group. Their results were of a higher quality, too: independent judges assessed the work and found that the individuals produced better ideas than the groups.

Follow-up research tested whether larger groups performed any better. In one study, 168 people were either divided into teams of five, seven, or nine or asked to work individually. The research confirmed that working individually is more productive than working in groups. It also showed that productivity decreases as group size increases. The conclusion: “Group brainstorming, over a wide range of group sizes, inhibits rather than facilitates creative thinking.” The groups produced fewer and worse results because they were more likely to get fixated on one idea and because, despite all exhortations to the contrary, some members felt inhibited and refrained from full participation.

I concur with this based on 15 years in the design and advertising industries.

In brainstorming sesssions—as in life—there’s a couple of winners and a whole lot of losers.

Art director Matilda Kahl wears the same thing to work every day:

To state the obvious, a work uniform is not an original idea. There’s a group of people that have embraced this way of dressing for years—they call it a suit. For men, it’s a very common approach, even mandatory in most professions. Nevertheless, I received a lot of mixed reactions for usurping this idea for myself. Immediately, people started asking for a motive behind my new look: “Why do you do this? Is it a bet?” When I get those questions I can’t help but retort, “Have you ever set up a bill for online auto-pay? Did it feel good to have one less thing to deal with every month?”

I’ve started on this path too.

I creative direct and art direct all day. When I get up in the morning the less I have to think creatively about what I wear, the better for my brain.

McSweeney’s gives us sexual euphemisms that won’t catch on.

What makes these so funny for me is that my brain tries to figure out what each phrase could describe.

The reader becomes an active participant in the joke-making process.

via Coudal

via John Siricusa

Remember when everyone was making fun of Apple for making a gold version of the iPhone?

Good times.

One reason we easily dismiss the astonishing things computers can do is that we know that they don’t carry around a narrative, a play by play, the noise in their head that’s actually (in our view) ‘intelligence.’

It turns out, though, that the narrative is a bug, not a feature. That narrative doesn’t help us perform better, it actually makes us less intelligent. Any athlete or world-class performer (in debate, dance or dungeonmastering) will tell you that they do their best work when they are so engaged that the narrative disappears.

—Seth Godin

Good to see Mcconaughey and I are on the same page with the new Star Wars trailer.

via ParisLemon

Frank Zappa asked if humor belonged in music.

Dudley Moore thinks so.

I had no idea Dudley Moore was so amazing on piano.

I’m trying to enjoy my new Apple Watch Edition but Evelyn, my so-called fiancée, keeps buzzing me with Facebook messages. Something about Terry Richardson.

I focus on the black leather, the 18-carat yellow gold, the way it looks on my tanned wrist. I appreciate that it is wipe clean. I ask Siri to dictate a message: Paul Allen is out of town for a few days. Siri, I say, play Sussudio.

I live in New York by Gehry on 8 Spruce Street on the 35th floor. My name is Patrick Bateman. I’m 27 years old. I believe in taking care of myself, a balanced diet and a rigorous exercise routine.

–Mic Wright channeling Patrick Bateman

I don’t understand how the fuck people think it’s ok to release smart watches with cut off screens?

First was the Moto 360 (aka the Moto “270”).

Now the Alcatel OneTouch:

The chopped screen ruins an otherwise (seemingly) solid hardware design.

And don’t give me the bullshit excuse that they did that to “make room for hardware components.”

It’s pedantic, sure. Isn’t 1.16180 close enough? Yes, it probably would be, if there were anything to scientifically support the notion that the golden ratio had any bearing on why we find certain objects like the Parthenon or the Mona Lisa aesthetically pleasing.

But there isn’t. Devlin says the idea that the golden ratio has any relationship to aesthetics at all comes primarily from two people, one of whom was misquoted, and the other of whom was just making shit up.

—John Brownlee, Co.Design

I agree with the author. The golden rectangle is not some silver bullet for design.

I’m guilty of using the golden ratio into my work:

To my defense, though, I use it pretty damn well.

This has more to do with working within a design “system” with constraints than blindly looking to the golden rectangle for a solution.

Sports brand Adidas has accused fashion designer Marc Jacobs of producing “confusingly similar imitations” of its iconic three-stripe motif with sweatshirts bearing four stripes down each sleeve.

Adidas filed a lawsuit against Marc Jacobs International with the District of Oregon court earlier this week, claiming the American designer’s company used a four-stripe accent similar to its registered Three-Stripe Mark to intentionally “mislead and deceive consumers” into thinking the garments were Adidas designs.

— Dezeen

The world of stripes is cut throat.

John Gruber on the WWDC15 announcement:

I usually don’t play the “let’s read into the design of the Apple event announcement” game, but damned if the center of this doesn’t look like an Apple TV. And the slogan — “The Epicenter of Change” — would fit with an expanded HomeKit role for Apple TV.

June 8-12, San Francisco.

Formula E is an interesting beast.

So what does it sound like when vehicles have no exhaust:

There’s even a live DJ during each race — or “EJ,” as he’s called — who pumps music into speakers around the venue to help make up for the lack of engine noise.

And:

While the racing has been great, the most common complaint about Formula E was lodged well before the series even debuted: its sound, or the perceived lack of it. Traditional race fans love (or love to hate) the sound of combustion engines, and a series that lacks the rumbles and roars usually found in other motorsports is fighting an uphill battle.

“There’s always going to be standard combustion [engine] series out there, and we’re not trying to get rid of them,” Bird says. “There’s no reason why a fan can’t appreciate and love the so-called ‘normal’ concept of racing but at the same time appreciate and love what we’re doing here with our machines.”

But let’s be clear: these cars aren’t silent. The electric motors produce a sound that is somewhere between that of a giant RC car and something out of The Jetsons. They might be whisper-quiet from few hundred yards away, but they register about 80 decibels when they zip by. That’s plenty of noise to get your heart pounding.

I get sad thinking about combustion engines going away, but like most things, we adapt quickly to the new and forget about the old: cigarettes in bars, new operating systems, pagers.