For the arts no doubt

My friend pointed my in the direction of Ben Zander, who is a very exuberant advocate for the Fine Arts. Check it out.



The Art of Possibility, by Ben Zander and his wife Roz Zander is definitely on my reading list, if even a portion of his energy is reflected in the book, it should be a great read.

Oh my look at those Feature Sets!

I love TED presentations, they’re great! I was watching a TED talk by Barry Schwartz, and he gave a very intriguing presentation on the effect of choices. I believe it is a great talk for anyone who has influence on UI, in any product or service, since we have to make decisions as to creating a feature (setting) rich environment or a simplistic subset, and the associated opportunity costs.


I really enjoy the points which he makes as to with more options you have more expectations, and are less, if not impossible, to satisfy. No excuse for failure, with choices you do better but feel worse. And while this presentation mostly focuses on consumer choices, such as the quantity of different salad dressings at a super market I believe the basic concept can be applied to most user interactions, from software UI to marketing. To often we provide the user more options than they ever would desire, with the excuse of providing options, when in reality we’re just creating disappointment. This presentation just reenforces my belief that less is more, when considering options.