Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Wild Nothing, Navigation & Tiffany Silver

Weekly Update 2017-45: Soothing sounds from Wild Nothing, Google's changing navigation elements, and Tiffany's new line of faux trash items (otherwise known as Everyday Objects).

Music: Wild Nothing
Wild Nothing is a pleasant, easy-listening shoegaze piece out of Virginia. I think I first heard of the band on Starbucks radio (surprisingly good for finding interesting indie musicians), and they popped back up on Spotify lately. Sometimes you just need some music to be calm with and drink some tea. This music is definitely that.

Check out To Know You, Nocturne and Whenever I.




Accomplishment:
I started my post on taking stock on the evolution of my Jewish identity, but I realized it's actually a challenging post to tackle, so I've only got an outline done at this point. I'm a little stagnated because I'm not entirely sure where I want to take this learning next, so I realized I'm putting it off a little. More on that soon.

On a whim I went to Yorkville last Saturday to check out a visual art exhibit run by OCAD students. I had never been to Yorkville Village (Hazelton Lanes) before, and it was almost as interesting to walk around as the art itself.

An art piece made of block sculptures, reminiscent of children's toys.

There were some interesting food choices since the mall is somewhat upscale, including Palm Lane (a vegan salad bar by Planta), and a HUGE hot table at Whole Foods. I really tried to restrain myself and ended up spending ~$15 on bulk food (that's how they get you) but it was so extremely good - it was like the type of food that warms your heart. 100% worth it.

I hadn't been into an interesting gift store called Rolo in many years, so I decided to go check it out and see if there was anything good to give my secret santa assignee for the Holidays. I got chatting with the owner, and we both realized we had been chatting on Bunz as well, trying to set up a trade! He was such a lovely guy. He also showed me some crazy art made out of vintage IV tubes:


At the behest of my friend Sasha, he and I entered into a month-long remote hackathon with FriendCanoe, in the hopes of finally getting an MVP to market. I think I've been the blocker since my life has been going crazy lately. Hopefully this will be the motivation we(I) need to keep working on it.

Goal:
This week I'd like to keep working on the Jewish Identity reflection. I'd like to finish it between Thursday evening and Saturday late afternoon, so that I can start thinking about next steps.

I'd also like to make time for the hackathon. So some deft scheduling of my month will need to happen this weekend as well.

Random Thought: Changing Navigation Systems
I'm finishing up a user experience audit at work, of a real estate website that is in large need of revamp. Our client agrees, so that's all well and good, but it makes me wonder how their navigation even got to the state it's in now. Among other factors, various elements of the navigation change location, appear or disappear depending on which page the user is on. It may go without saying that general rules of navigation dictate that it should be consistent so that a user can become comfortable in the locations of all elements (for easier access to the information they need).

This rules does make sense for most websites. But have you ever noticed that Google, one of the most commonly visited websites...ever(?) does not follow this rule on mobile? Check out what I mean below:

A screenshot of me searching for "apple" and "joe fresh slip on sneaker" on Google.

Not only does the navigation order change to better suit what Google thinks I want to know (such as moving "Shopping" to the top of the list when I search for a shoe, but it also flickers quite a bit (note the quick change of navigation order after I search for "apple".

The former could be a winning case in that Google updates to help you find what you need, but the flicker is just messy. Its original state appears for long enough that I begin to organize and memorize the order of elements in my mind, just to have it change again.

I don't think I can use any of this in my current dilemma, but it's all interesting.

Inspiration: Tiffany Everyday Objects
They've done it again. Yet another haute couture trend I don't understand. I'm talking about Tiffany, the company with its own shade of greeny-blue and products so popular that you can find any number in a range of knockoffs (you haven't really made it until someone plagiarizes your style). They've just launched a collection of beautiful silver-and-blue items that are all replicas of cheap everyday objects like a paper plate, a crazy straw, a tin can (seriously) and lots more. Of course, the kicker is that these replicas are worth much, much more than their original counterparts, which I find slightly cheeky if nothing else.


This sterling replica of a paper plate is being sold for the price of 130,000 regular paper plates.

After all, this is a website that includes two separate navigational items for "jewelry" and "high jewelry" aka "you can't afford this".

I'm not really sure what to make of this line of items, but it feels as though the rich (or at least Tiffany designers) think that it's a novelty to experience life with the sorts of items a less fortunate person knows well, and not by choice. I can't put my finger on it, but something here feels a bit classist to me.

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