In a previous post, I talked about my French press coffee maker which has no fill level marks to help me add water to the same place every time. This short video introduces that post, and shows you my current French press. It is for people who own French press coffee makers AS WELL AS designers and anyone interested in innovation and creativity. It also shows the mind map you can explore while learning some proximity thinking at the same time!
My French press coffee maker, by Bodum, could use some proximity thinking. More specifically, it has no fill level marks to help me add water to the same place every time, as you can see from the picture.
UPDATE: I made a short video intro to this post! You can watch it here.
The mind map below should be pretty self-explanatory. Click the image below to open it full-size. Once open, you can zoom it even larger.
NOTE — THE REST OF THIS PAGE IS BASICALLY JUST FOR SEARCH ENGINES.
Since search engines can’t index the text in an image, I’m including the text from the graphic below. However, I’d recommend only looking at the graphic, as it will make a lot more sense. Also, WordPress is adding some blank lines in the outline below, and I can’t fix it. So please imagine there are no blank lines!
• A proximity thinking example, including a few basic definitions. To learn more, visit proxthink.com.
• Situation – A “situation” is whatever you are dealing with or considering.
• Element – Loosely, an “element” can be anything. Any person, place, thing, idea, feeling, time, group, relationship, situation, proximity, etc.
• Proximity – The “proximity” consists of elements related or potentially related to a situation, in physical, mental and other ways.
• Questions? Contact us via proxthink.com.
• Created by David Loughry.
• As you find this rewarding, please proxri with the proximity in mind via proxthink.com.
About the user interface for iPhone folder icons …
With app icons on the iPhone, we have nice big visual cues. With folder icons, they all look the same, and they have one line of very small text at the bottom as the main thing that differentiates them.
Suggestions: It would be great if the text you chose for the folder filled the icon itself. Maybe we could even scale and crop the text, like we scale and crop a wallpaper image, so that just the letters we want fill the icon. And what if we could also choose a color for the icon, or even choose a photo or some clip art for the icon? The iPhone suggests categories when you make a folder, so maybe it could also suggest an image for the icon. Maybe the icon also gets bigger, so a folder icon takes the space of two or four app icons.
How would I describe these suggestions in some proximity thinking terms?
This hip sink is sort of like fashionable shoes that hurt.
I like being hip and cool as much as the next guy, but not so much in the bathroom.
I stayed at an Aloft Hotel in Dallas recently, and there it was, an uber-cool sink.
Cool, that is, until you try leaning on it when you’re shaving or brushing your teeth or rinsing your mouth.
That’s when the sink cuts into your hand or your arm.
That’s when you know the price of being cool.
I’d like designers to relate to a wider variety of constraints. Why can’t a sink have a cool shape AND be ergonomic? This sink is like a monoculture, being mainly a geometric design, but monocultures are not very sustainable.
Where’s the ProxAwareness? Did they test this on androids or people? Did they try it themselves? They needed to honor the integrity of the hands and arms that will interface with this sink.
They needed to use the Core Idea of proximity thinking: In a situation, change elements, relationships and the proximity to better relate to each other.
Next time, they might want to ProxThink that.
People need ProxSets to function and make sense of their worlds. That doesn’t mean their ProxSets can’t change. By the way, with proximity thinking, “their worlds” in the first sentence could have also been stated “their proximities.”
It’s both kind of an odd lesson, and obvious from the basics of ProxThink, but you probably need to be in a state of some difference and tension with pretty much everyone you meet. The word some here is important.
For more about differences in relationships, read the paragraph titled “Differences” on this advanced page about relationships.
For more about the importance of some, in contrast to none or all, see the Value of Some.
ProxThink River 