To celebrate a long week of Big Spaceship link-sharing, this round up is getting virtual. We’re talking Google Maps, Oculus Rift, and holograms.

1. UI of cards

Early this week, the rumor mill continued to churn around Apple’s move to flat design. It even spurred videos like this one that showcases one agency’s flat iOS 7 concepts. Also this week, Google I/O showcased Google+ and Google Maps makeovers that make ample use of cards. While cards are becoming a unifying element among Google’s products, whether they represent flat design or subconscious skeuomorphism is a point of debate among their developers.

2. Interactive journalism done right

Following their last Webby award-winning cover story, Pitchfork takes interactive journalism to the next level with a feature on Daft Punk. Beyond the writing (which is predictably top-notch), this article pushes the limits of design and coding with some seriously badass visual tricks. In our opinion, the coder on this page deserves full credit in-line with the author.

3. Honest cartography

Speaking of the new Google Maps, it’s beautiful and it’s “a billion maps, one for each user.” While this sounds physically impossible, Google Maps achieves a more personal map experience through data. Here’s why this makes it the most honest form of cartography – a valuable perspective on the creepy/useful dichotomy that arises around the use of personal data.

4. Immerse yourself… in terror

We’ve heard a lot of discussion around the possibilities of Oculus Rift. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s a virtual reality headset produced by Oculus VR that’s said to enhance the first person gaming experience. Based on this video demonstration of a terrifying (and entertaining) mini-game, its natural fit for the horror genre is becoming evident. A virtual execution has never been more realistic, but it is there any way to look less ridiculous while doing it?

5. It’s hologram season

Take off your Oculus Rifts. The sun is out, summer is upon us, and music festival season will soon reach fever pitch. These days, no music festival is complete without a hologram. This year, Rock the Bells is giving the treatment to hip-hop legends Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Eazy-E. It might not be clear based on their recent proliferation, but creating holograms is no easy task. If you recall, last year’s virtual performance by Tupac was several months in the making.

6. The 93 year-old neuroscientist

We saw this interview with a spry 93 year-old Brenda Milner, a neuroscientist who contributed a lifetime to memory science. Still researching and teaching, her work has helped make today’s memory research possible – maybe including this research on memory retrieval and these visualizations of the brain’s visual experiences.

7. Everthing else

• Watch this man who turns bicycles into time capsules
• Get nostalgic with the Itch A Skitch, an HTML take on a classic toy
• Listen to Space Oddity in space.
• Get even more excited about Arrested Development with Insert Me Anywhere.
• Never go anywhere else for response GIFs.
• See advertisements from an era that’s mesmerizing us all with its mythical opulence.

Backward Thinking

Forward Thinking, Vol. 124
What an Artist from Philadelphia Taught me about Social Media
The conventional approach to unconventional marketing – The Dollar Shave Club

If you couldn’t tell, we love sharing links. In this week’s round up, we found inspiration in customer empathy, the rise of the scroll, and the epic search for the best to-do list.

First, GI Joe tells it like it is… kind of.

1. One does not simply make a meme

The Verge provides a contextual history of the GI Joe PSAs that went viral in 2003 – a time when “viral” didn’t exist. These 25 weird, short, videos made from re-edited GI Joe cartoons represented a very specific Internet moment that is hard-sought nowadays. Here’s an article that tackles the question “how does one make a meme?”

2. You know, I don’t have the best … memory

After trying out five or ten, most of us realize that a good to-do list app is pretty tough to find. Nobody has quite nailed it yet, but we’re excited about the latest entry into the space, ThingList. If nothing else, the tool totally wins in terms of its promo video. Can we start making all startup videos to be more ridiculous? K thanks.

3. Approaching empathy

“Empathy” is a broad term that makes a big difference across channels of digital strategy, but what does it mean? Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia attributes his company’s success to building empathy with customers by storyboarding their experience “like crazy.” For Walmart, empathy means getting ahead of technology without getting ahead of the customer.

4. Meals with strangers

These days, it seems like there’s not much you can’t share. Services that enable peer-to-peer sharing have growing company in the community meal marketplace. Eatwith is a platform that allows people an intimate dining experience in homes around the world. Mealku is a homemade meal cooperative designed to reduce food waste. The best part of both: delicious, home-cooked food.

5. Life below the fold

Do you read below the fold? Probably. Nieman Journalism Lab discusses the rise of the scroll past 600 px via NPR’s new mobile site. Here’s an illustrator’s advice on how to get readers scrolling alway the way down.

6. Everything else

• Oak Studios showed everyone where the pizza is.
• Ryan Gosling will not eat his cereal. See?
• Finding a room in New York City is really hard. This hard.
• Celebrities will forever haunt our nightmares thanks to these GIFs.
• An exploded view of the brain is mind-blowing, indeed
• And, speaking of brains, here’s what the Internet is doing to them.

Backward Thinking

Forward Thinking, Vol. 123
What an Artist from Philadelphia Taught me about Social Media
The conventional approach to unconventional marketing – The Dollar Shave Club

Welcome to our weekly round up of digital findings. This week, we’re talking bionic ears, atomic cinema, and the Death Star’s HR challenge.

1. Printing the human body

Mobius bacon strips are cool and all, but this 3D-printed bionic ear is just one example of how tissue and electronics can combine to help us repair – or someday even replace – human body parts. The researchers involved hope to advance the seamless combination of sensors or other electronics with the human body – and to make this merger “less awkward.” By “less awkward,” they are almost certainly referencing this.

For more on advances in biotechnology, read about this prosthetic arm controlled by your thoughts and these printable organs.

2. Thank this man for Sriracha

Let’s take a moment to thank David Tran – the man responsible for bringing Sriracha to the U.S. Once an ethnic Chinese Vietnamese farmer, Tran fled Vietnam in 1980 and, just months later, founded Huy Fong Foods in Los Angeles’s Chinatown. Here’s how this spicy condiment hit it big.

3. Nanophysicists just want to have fun

Physicists at IBM made the world’s smallest movie to help share their research in atomic memory and data storage. It’s about a boy and his atom, but don’t fault it for lack of character development without first seeing how it was made.

4. A lesson in storytelling

The story of IBM’s atomic memory research is rich and dense with grand implications. In fact, it’s so dense that its explanation serves as a case study in storytelling: how to simply convey the significance of something highly technical without losing meaning. Here’s how IBM tells its story through messaging and infographics.

5. The New York Yankees of design teams

Alexis Madrigal explains how Facebook’s design team works toward “the perfect empty vessel” in which users can pour their own stories. Described as the New York Yankees of design teams, their primary objective in creating a medium for a billion people to experience the world is to enable, not distract. According to designer Russ Maschmeyer, “the box is a vehicle to allow one person to communicate with other. It’s entirely about who’s on the other end of that box, not really the box itself.”

6. An alternative to lorem ipsum

There’s more to mock-ups than lorem ipsum. BLOKK Font “helps you create good looking mock-ups and wireframes, where layout is more important than latin words.” It replaces words with blocks that suggest generic text. Also try Redacted Font, which comes in script, script light, and script bold.

7. Everything else

• An article on how to staff Death Star
• An illustrated tribute to Star Wars
• A video of infinite screen grabs
• “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” – an infographic inspired by Hunter S. Thompson

Backward Thinking

Forward Thinking, Vol. 122
What an Artist from Philadelphia Taught me about Social Media
The conventional approach to unconventional marketing – The Dollar Shave Club

It’s a proud moment in Burger/Internet history! The Webby Awards have selected ShakeShack.com as this year’s winner for Best Food & Drink Website. In 2012, Big Spaceship teamed up with Shake Shack to re-imagine their website in a way that brought their thoughtfulness online. The result is a deliberately simple user and admin experience with lots of small touches – just like the restaurants themselves.

The team is honored and humbled by this achievement and will be proudly adding this to our list of Webby Awards past including HBO Voyeur, Adobe Flash On, and MoMa Contemporary Voices.

Welcome to our weekly round up of goings-on in media, technology, and animal GIFs. This week, we’re getting sci-fi with beep-boop machines, UFOs, and matching onesies. Let’s get started with some big news from the Kepler mission:

1. What makes another Earth

Last week, NASA announced the discovery of three planets close to Earth’s size orbiting far-off, sun-like stars. They’re thought to lie in the so-called “Goldilocks zone” – a galactic sweet spot where it’s not too hot or too cold for liquid water. Although size and location of these planets boost scientists’ hope for life out there, the news broke without much fanfare. Understandably, it got lost in last week’s media chaos. Here’s a humbling and fabulously written article tying the two events together.

2. User interfaces of the future

VisualPunke’s Tumblr is your new hub for beep-boop machines. It has collected past visions of future interface designs from anime, blockbuster movies, and video games. For more on futuristic UI, watch this 1987 Buick Riviera demo or read Christian Brown’s article on how Minority Report trapped us in a world of bad interfaces.

3. Unidentified falling objects, part one

When a massive star goes supernova, it casts its parts and pieces into our nebular neighborhood. Sometimes, they hitch a ride to Earth on pieces of asteroid. That’s right, star guts in our own backyards. Read about them.

4. Unidentified falling objects, part two

Maybe the next time star dust sprinkles down upon us, we’ll be able to track it. Here’s an article on an emerging weather technology that can tell the difference between types of precipitation — rain, snow, hail – for the first time. It also lets scientists track flying debris from storms (or stars?), so folks living in at-risk areas can get advance warning.

5. Onesies, flying machines, and other visions of the future

We found this article published in the New York Times in 1982 on the transformative potential of “electronic information technology.” It summarizes a report commissioned by the National Science Foundation that “conjures a vision, at once appealing and threatening, of a style of life defined and controlled by videotex terminals.” For all it gets so, so wrong, it does speculate on social interaction, media, infrastructure, and privacy – relevant issues for today’s discourse on the Internet.

That’s more that we can say for some of these domed cities, matching onesies, and flying machines… and probably more than future folks will be able to say for this space news round up.

6. Everything else

• This clip of the new Arrested Development season
• All the pizza GIFS ever, conveniently located right here
• An existential reflection on selfies and selfhood
• A car leasing website that excites the senses
• This CSS homage to Zelda: A Link to the Past
• And a guide to colors on the web

This week, our digital happenings consider using the Internet to document and disseminate digital information with real world implications. First, let’s take a look at the blessings and curses of digital evidence.

1. Digital evidence: blessing

On Monday, we saw real-time footage of what transpired in Boston, all through an inundation of digital accounts. This week, investigators scoured the massive amount of photographic and video evidence collected by digital cameras and cellphones. The Verge takes us through the investigation process with forensic video analyst Grant Fredericks.

2. Digital evidence: curse

We’ve experienced the risk/benefit of following Twitter in disaster situations. However, along with breaking news, Twitter has been known to feed a deluge of bad information (recently Dshokhar Tsarnaev’s fake Twitter account). Unfortunately, misinformation is often contagious. Here’s Michael C. Moynihan’s take on media errors and Twitter product VP Michael Sippey’s on parsing good information from bad.

3. The geography of inequality

Take a virtual ride on an NYC subway line with this interactive infographic that maps the city’s income inequality. This infographic isn’t the first to link maps and inequality. Earlier this year, Emily Badger used the geography of inequality as an analogy to demonstrate how mapping digital information reinforces geographical inequality in the real world.

4. Probably the largest web page in the world

Ready to feel small? Here’s a visualization of all 7 billion of us human creatures currently inhabiting Earth. Once you’ve recovered from that head-spinning scroll, see live population statistics and find out how many people were born before you.

5. Everything else we shared

This week’s digital goings-on include cosmic photography, the Bitcoin roller coaster, and proof that coffee is a beautiful thing. First, let’s talk about how we look from space.

1. Say cheese, earthlings

Here’s an ethereal map of our planet from space, sort of. Technologist and creator of cool space things, Nathan Bergey pieced together the map using the latitude and longitude of over 1 million photographs taken by astronauts living in the International Space Station (ISS). These camera-happy ISS residents have taken about 30,000 images per expedition for the last 13 years. Nearly all of the images are available on NASA’s public servers – and they’re kind of extraordinary. Thank you, cosmic photographers.

2. The Bitcoin standard

This week, we witnessed the rise(s) and fall(s) of digital currency Bitcoin. It’s most recent fluctuation in value (-61%) has kicked off broader conversations about whether it could ever become a viable currency, whether it’s a currency at all, and if it’s not a currency, what kind of commodity is it? Here are a few points of view.

Despite it’s recent instability, Bitcoin is still seeing new adopters – including America’s third-largest political party.

4. The incredible journey (of a stolen laptop)

We learned where stolen laptops go (Iran), but we didn’t quite learn how they get there. When Dom del Toro’s laptop was stolen, he used Hidden App to snap pictures of its new owners (and subsequently posted them to Tumblr). Unfortunately, the people in the photos didn’t steal anything. As soon as they realized the problem, they offered to return the laptop – which Dom has let them keep. Lessons learned: (1) Don’t purchase a laptop that may have been stolen, and (2) your stolen laptop may change hands during its extraordinary journey around the world. Both good lessons on the efficacy and etiquette of justice-procurers like Hidden App.

5. What’s in a job title

This week, we had a conversation about job titles that concluded with the sentiment, “Can’t live with ‘em. Can’t live without ‘em.” This article questioning the need for job titles and this one calling them “toxic” are why we started talking.

6. There is more to Vine than porn

Vine update: Vine has grown since our last check-in. Movie makers and Roseanne Barr have joined in to delight us with their 6-second creations. The teaser-trailer for the upcoming The Wolverine marked Vine’s first official movie release promotion. Shortly after, trailer-editing house Tokyo released Vine versions of classic trailers to showcase their art. And, look, Roseanne is absolutely killing it.

7. And, finally, coffee is beautiful

Here’s what else we shared:

A Daft Punk song deconstructed in the ultimate infographic

This amazing hyperlapse tool created by Toronto-based agency Teehan + Lax

Your favorite Grand Theft Auto radio stations now on Spotify and iTunes

Coachella, streaming live on YouTube (feather headband not included)

And, finally, coffee is a beautiful thing. This video released by Stumptown Coffee Roasters proves it.

“Instagram has been really interesting for me. In the 3 months that I’ve been posting…I’ve learned what will move the needle with the internet. So as an artist I resist the temptation to give the people what they want, and I try to push different work to challenge them and myself.” - Steve ‘Espo’ Powers

We’ve been immersed in this whole ‘social media’ caper for a while now. We’ve got years of data, edgerank experience and analytics to tell us exactly where we’re at. Every day, week, month it gets easier to ‘game the system’; figure out what people seem to respond to and bait what, as an industry, we’ve kindly termed ‘engagement’ with inanities and generic social content.

Steven Powers, or as he’s known in graffiti / sign-writing circles, ‘Espo’ gave voice to a feeling I’ve had for awhile about social media.

That in creating content for social, we should stop giving people what they want.

Stop giving them the click/like-bait they desire.

That simply asking people how they like their product served, what elements of the product they like (see here for countless examples), or some ‘topical’ event; while a clever and safe way to talk to people already interested in the brand, lacks the imagination I believe people truly crave.

This is what has marked the notably successful social campaigns of the last few years and made them different; something quirky, unique, unexpected and completely imaginative. The right message to the right people before they even knew they wanted to hear it.

(Steve Espo’s ‘Daily Metaltations’)

In the same interview, Powers goes on to explain the difference between graffiti and street art:

“Graffiti is 30,000 years old, more or less, and it continues to relate a simple, eloquent message, ‘I was here’. Street art is peeling faded wallpaper advertising a product that’s on sale at urban outfitters.”

Espo clearly draws the line between cruder forms of tagging, commercialized street art and in doing so has elevated himself to the status he maintains today. An artist, a craftsman of a specific medium – writing monumental love letters to cities and people alike, beginning each mission from his studio in Brooklyn.

The same split can be considered for brand communications.

When brands simply tag up a social space with the equivalent of ‘i am here’ – vs. the artistry of quirkier or more grandiose productions – you create your own destiny, and determine immediately whether you’re challenging anyone – or merely serving them, and yourself, in the easiest way possible.

(from the ‘love letter to philadelphia’ series).

For more social chatter, have a read through How Warby Parker Straddles Polar-opposite Audiences and Frictionless Sharing 2.0.

Michael Dubin, CEO of Dollar Shave Club – he’s that guy in that YouTube video about getting “f&*king great” razors sent to your door every month.

When a start-up has what looks like bold and unorthodox marketing, it’s easy for marketers in more established and conservative companies to dismiss the start-up as being a different breed.

However, what this interview with Michael Dubin reveals is that his approach to marketing is very much the conventional approach – done with confidence.

This interview also appears in the new SoDA Report - find 234 pages of insights here.

What can a marketer who can’t change their business model and who doesn’t own the transaction the way the Dollar Shave Club does, learn from what you did in 2012?

One of the reasons I think we were successful isn’t necessarily because we own the transaction and not necessarily because we are disrupting an industry that has become very complacent but because the core business offering makes sense and the product is in demand. And the way we speak about the problem resonates very loudly with our target audience.

If you look at that and want to extend it to brands that have been around for fifty years or so, there’s almost been a de-evolution away from the question “What problem are you solving?”.

Having watched and read a few interviews with you, the way you use the word “problem” is obviously like a tech startup whereas I’ve found many marketers don’t often like the word. It has certain emotional baggage, which is very different to the startup scene where you latch onto a problem and try to solve it.

You don’t have to call it a problem but when you do it’s a more active indictment of a situation compared to calling it a need that you’re meeting. If you’re selling rental cars, you’re solving a problem, which is that someone who may not own a car needs to get from A to B. If you’re offering that car there’s a world of opportunity there to define that experience for your target and make solving that problem really stand for something larger – like discovery and adventure. And some rental car companies have taken that tack.

In another interview, you mentioned that Dollar Shave Club might not have been possible just a few years ago. Is that due to technological change or has there been a cultural change as well that’s helped you?

I think it’s three things. Number one, I think social media wasn’t what it is and people were much less comfortable with social media five years ago. I think the second thing is, while we Americans are very accustomed to getting a monthly bill for services that we use – cable, internet, cellphone, magazines, etc – I don’t think that five years ago America was ready to think about their whole life being serviceable by a membership or subscription model. The third thing is technology. Right now we’re trying to work out the right billing platform to use. You’d be surprised at how far the technology is yet to go – even today – to be able to offer these types of businesses in a very seamless, easy way. Five years ago, a startup integrating a warehouse in one place with your servers elsewhere was almost unthinkable.

Your products are split into three choices. Does that have anything to do with the science of choice and decision-making?

It absolutely does. Guys need things very easy and simple. You see a lot of ecommerce shops throwing tons and tons of options out there. You can’t be Bed, Bath and Beyond and not have a ton of items. But I think there’s beauty in simplicity and fewer options. For us, to have a thousand razors would have been a bad thing. We do see people gravitating toward the middle option, which is most popular.

Can you talk about your approach to planning campaigns?

The video I shot back in October 2011 and we didn’t launched it until March 2012, so I would say that for all the talk about being spur-of-the-moment, fast actors, this was a strategically planned, meticulously architected moment. We re-launched our site with the announcement of the million-dollar seed round with the video and with the new site design. It was all set to go at once. And all of our future campaigns – you’ll see a bunch of them this year – are going to have that same kind of strategic planning and thought behind them.

Can you talk about the thinking behind the Old Glory 2012 campaign?

Old Glory was our way of making a commentary on the election. When we create content at DSC we think about a couple of things. One is, is it relevant, timely? Does it have a strong reason or being? People have always asked us, Where’s the next video? But nothing states the case for Dollar Shave Club as clearly as that first video so launching anything else video-wise would be a big distraction so we’re not going to do it until we have something really important. So that’s the first requirement: does it have a strong reason for being?

The second is: is it timely, is it relevant? Our goal at DSC is that we want our members to feel they are part of a membership that is current and that has its finger on the pulse of American life. That was our way of celebrating the election and giving our members great content without asking for anything in return. We got these illustrators to create these very unique, original works of art and we shared them with our membership first, and give them a laugh. Give them another way to think about the election that isn’t a debate or campaigning.

What are your thoughts on the role of user-generated content for the brand? Currently, it’s mostly on the blog as opposed to front and center in a campaign.

I think UGC has a role. Frankly, we’re still figuring out what role it plays for us. I don’t necessarily think what our members want from our brand is endless photos of our membership. I think there’s a time and place for user-generated content. We want to celebrate our membership absolutely but Americans right now are hyper-sensitive to over-sharing – and that’s by brands and people. We’ve already seen user engagement in Facebook decline in favor of other media. Brands need to be careful about how much they talk to their audience. Once a day could be the right number – it’s different for every brand. People want different brands at different frequencies. It’s unique to each situation.

You’re pretty active on Google+ with a good following (over 350k at the time of the interview). How are you finding Google+ for the business?

Google+ has been great. We love those guys over at Google. You know, sometimes the engagement isn’t as high as you’d like. People are still discovering the tool. There’s also a lot of foreign users on our Google+ channels. It’s definitely on the up-tick and Google is doing a great job at building that tool, making it more relevant for brands and making it easier for people to connect to. We hope that it’s going to deliver for us.

Do you do multi-variate testing?

We just started. We use Optimize.ly. So far it’s been great. We’re learning a lot every day about which pages work. It’s a process that every e-commerce company needs to go through. We like to look at the backside of the funnel first. Meaning, if we can convert more people who are already at the checkout page that’s a big win. Then moving back through the funnel – getting people to the last step of the funnel is the way to go for us. It’s hugely valuable. You’re surprised every day by what you thought might work and what actually does work.

And how do the results of those tests get communicated through the organization? I’d imagine you’re pretty flat and sit next to each other.

Well, exactly. But if you’re a big brand and you’re trying to share that information you gotta have experiments where you come up with a theory and then create steps to test the theory and then look at the results. It’s not just a web thing, multi-variate testing. It’s what companies have been doing since companies have been around.

From a communications point of view, is there anything you would have done differently looking back at 2012?

We made a ton of mistakes so it’s not about finding one, it’s about finding which one. The three that come to mind are: create a separate Twitter handle for customer service, radio works and hire a Marketing Chief that understands brand.

For more verbage like this (including General Mills, Adobe and Nandos), get your mind computer over to the new SoDA Report.

Welcome to our weekly roundup of digital happenings. In this week’s edition of Forward Thinking, we answer questions like “How should we adjust our responsive design deliverables?” and “Where have all the wildlings gone?”

Now let’s get started with a birthday tribute to the cell phone:

1. 40 years of cell phone innovation. 1 (less) breakable screen.

This week, the cell phone turned 40. It’s evolved from clunkie walkie talkies to devices that are so much more than just a way to make a call away from home. To celebrate, here’s is some good news for the butter-fingered. 40 years of cellphone innovation will soon culminate in a less breakable screen. Screens may soon be made of a material called Sapphire, which “is harder than any other natural material except diamond” and 3 times harder than what’s currently used. Fancy.

2. How to respond to responsive design

Although responsive design has recently been cited as a “top industry trend of 2013” (here, here, and here for example), it’s not this year’s (or last year’s) trend. The term was coined a few years ago, and it’s not likely to go away anytime soon given our current and expanding repertoire of devices. Developer Dave Rupert explains the need for and the process of adjusting how we work to accomodate responsive deliverables.

3. Exciting news for your central nervous system.

The Obama administration officially announced a research project aimed at mapping the human brain. Although it’s the seat of our understanding, we’ve only scratched the surface of our understanding of the brain. To advance our knowledge of the ultimate human technology, the project will focus on disease research and new models of computing. For now, look at this (mouse) nerve cell!

4. How WrestleMania plans to chokeslam social

Emerging technologies and social channels have generated new possibilities and expectations for shared viewing. So it’s not unexpected that widely viewed events are getting more and more “social” or that each new event is being declared “the most social” of them all.

Six months after the most social presidential election and three months after the most social Super Bowl, the WWE has revealed its plan for the most social WrestleMania. It includes widely available pay-per-view streaming, a Twitter presence for WWE CEO, Facebook gaming, social-media “ambassadors,” an online-only pre-show, and this command center.

The social suplex has already begun in preparation for Sunday’s matches – so let the gratuitous wrestling references begin.

4. Get a date (or not) on Facebook

Facebook Graph Search was announced in January but has continued to buzz. To summarize, here’s some of the promise: friend filtering, employee recruiting, dating, wedding planning, small business development, and hilarious/humiliating search query screenshots. And some of the peril: privacy (see this article and this one), which may be a hurdle for Graph Search objective, online dating. Privacy – and the possibility that it might just get awkward.

Graph Search may also be in the future of the newly announced Facebook Home – or how to make your Android phone a Facebook phone.

5. And, finally, the distance to Mars

Here are a few other links we shared:

Serendipitous haikus, brought to you by the New York Times

Game of Thrones illustrations to get us through the long winter

Infomercial GIFs because nothing is easy

And, finally, here is the distance to Mars

Backward Thinking

Case Study: OneHP
The Period Store: How to Launch a Startup with Wings
Forward Thinking, Vol. 118

Let’s get down to lady business. from The Period Store on Vimeo.

Back in 2010, Ashley and Rubi imagined a museum-store dedicated to periods. It would be a magical palace of chocolate and puppies dressed as kittens – a safe place for women to ditch the euphemisms and creepy Aunt Flo references for real talk. It was the menstruation museum-store we deserve… but not the one we need right now.

We’re welcoming the weekend with Big Data and video games, obviously. Hey, remember Math Blaster?

1. Not the Math Blaster of yesteryear
This week, we kicked off a series of workshops on HTML and CSS for non-programmers. They have very little to do with videogames, but apparently learning code and virtual battle arenas are not mutually exclusive.

Now it’s possible to learn basic Javascript while fighting robots for glory. Learning startup Kuato Studios took the gamefication of Codeacademy to the next level when it created an iPad based game that uses game mechanics as instructional tools. See?

2. Video games = art
OK, more video games for a second.

Back in November, MoMA curator Paola Antonelli announced the museum’s video game wishlist, scored in interaction design criteria. Since then, the news has fueled ongoing arguments over questions like “Are video games art?” and “What is art, even?”

The fallout from the art vs. game vs. both and more has produced some strong opinions, as well as a rich and frustrating discussion on the role of personal experience in design and the value of quality in any craft.

Artist and President of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) John Maeda sees the contention as an issue of defining quality in a space where this definition is unclear – digital and, in particular, digital art.

There aren’t qualitative guidelines for quality, but this doesn’t mean quality is lost to uncertainty. As Maeda wrote in Wired: “I’m thrilled that we’re ready to open this new chapter in the debate on what constitutes quality art and design in the digital era.”

For further reading, Andrew Sullivan rounds up point of views here and here.

3. Good work with “Big Data”
“Big Data” is a Big Term with applications from health to urban planning to e-commerce. It generally refers to big sets of data collected – a lot of it available through social channels and consumer transactions. These days, we hear a lot about Big Data as it applies to social marketing.

In social marketing, it’s used to spot trends that might make campaigns more targeted and efficient. But the thing about Big Data is that it’s a lot of data. The challenge is learning how to identify and tap into what’s available and transform it into convincing stories. Here are case studies on five brands who’ve found Big Data success here.

4. How to talk to your developer
Developers are the hard-working, magic-making craftsmen that power everything we make. Here’s an article on how to talk to them. More specifically, it’s about setting expectations, building trust, and negotiating the language and knowledge barriers that often arise between those in technical and nontechnical positions.

5. A new source of Facebook inspiration
Need Facebook post inspiration?

No worries, The One Club partnered with Facebook Studio to make Newsfeeder for us all. It’s a roundup of creative posts. Best of all, it’s sortable. See anything you recognize?

According to the WSJ, top names in social marketing are also joining in as contributors. They’ll help curate favorites and provide feedback on individual posts.

5. Actresses without teeth
And here are some of the Tumblrs that made us LOL this week:
Actresses Without Teeth - It’s just actresses without teeth. And it’s magical.
Archive of signs from Springfield - Simpsons nostalgia
Thug Kitchen - Really aggressive health tips for your health

Backward Thinking:

Case Study: OneHP
Web Font Viewer
Design Studio in Practice

Oh hello! Here we’ve collected some things that we find interesting on the web. Join us every week for a roundup of inspiring ideas, products, and designs. Let’s begin…

1. A market for ladies
It’s been a good few weeks for businesses and products devoted to women. A video game designer hacked Donkey Kong so his daughter could play as a female character and The Period Store joined the ranks of subscription services for women. Just a guess, but it seems like both were created with better intentions than The ePad Femme, the first tablet just for women. Yeah, that’s actually what they called it.

2. It’s a small world after all
The Internet often turns out to be a smaller than we expect. We feel the closeness when masses of strangers come together to donate towards a good cause, especially if the goal is to bring happiness to a wronged individual. And it turns out that any 2 pages on the web are connected by 19 clicks or less, so we really aren’t separated by much.

3. National Geographic joins the cool kids
The magazine celebrates it’s massive collection of awe-inspiring photos (and 125 years) with an epic photo Tumblr. We followed immediately.

4. Interaction made simple
We have a soft spot for nostalgia-triggering web design. Browse through some excellent 90s-inspired and interactive one-pagers here.

5. Facebook? Fo’get about it.
We’ve been hearing more and more that teens just aren’t feeling Facebook. Maybe it’s because the platform is too focused on users’ real identities? Or maybe it has something to do with having so little control of your content that a complete stranger can pay to sponsor what you post.

6. Wordsmith envy
Isn’t it wonderful when a piece of writing takes a surprising twist? Or blends fiction and whimsy with journalism? Our favorite examples of creativity in writing this week: a satirical merger announcement from the Founder and CEO of World Wide Web, Inc. and a seriously awesome obituary.

7. Glass in the wild
Now that Google’s Glass is starting to make appearances in public, more people are questioning its general acceptance in society. We’re thrilled at the individual implications of this new technology, but also not blind to the fact that it will have a huge influence on the public experience – the experience of everyone other than the user. A huge factor of Glass’ success relies on non-users’ comfort with the device.

8. When I grow up…
Your dreams of becoming an astronaut are about to be realized … sort of. Space Hack (totally unrelated to Big Spaceship Hack Day) helps you find ways to participate in space exploration. Next stop: Mars!

Backward Thinking:

Case Study: OneHP
Web Font Viewer
Design Studio in Practice

It features:

• The findings of Econsultancy research with 814 senior digital practitioners
• How to make your agency ecosystem work
• How data analytics is sexier than some think

Then there’s the section we helped make – a look at the issues facing the Modern Marketer. Articles include:

• How to do agile marketing
• The top 7 marks of a great client
• General Mills’ Head of Digital on getting new thinking made in large organizations
• QSR restaurants and their digital marketing pitfalls
• An interview with the Dollar Shave Club CEO
• Interviews with Contagious Magazine, The Guardian, Marketing Week, Adobe and more

Read it below and please share it with your friends.

For more information about the report, venture yourself over to SoDA.

Last Thursday was the official 2013 Big Spaceship Hack Day. We spent a whole day working on internal projects with one mission: make Big Spaceship a better place for everyone. We’ll share more details soon, but for now, here’s a taste of the articles and products that inspired our Hack Day projects:

1. Facial tracking and masking
Digital face tracking and substitution can be used to protect your identity over Skype or just allow you to try on Obama’s face for a few minutes. The technology is really fascinating (even if the demo videos are slightly creepy). Definitely worth a look.

2. The history of moving pictures
In essence, a movie is just a series of still pictures. Eadweard Muybridge pioneered the motion picture with his photography experiment Sallie Gardner in a Gallop. Look and sound familiar? Maybe because it is the ancestor of our beloved gif.

3. Well designed conversations
When we engage in dialogue, research demonstrates that we are more likely to learn and retain information about our topic of conversation. Online, our conversations can get lost in the clutter of emails, IMs, and tweet exchanges. Enter Branch, a beautifully designed place for thoughtful conversation.

4. Visual networks of data
Data visualization is not new, but it remains revolutionary, helping us streamline and understand everything from simple data sets to complex networks. A few of our favorite examples are Linked Jazz and REI’s 1440 Project.

5. Internal communication
Especially within large organizations, internal dialogue can be disjointed and impersonal. From our work on internal communication platforms, we’ve learned a bit about how the Intranets of the world can address business needs while also keeping users more engaged.

6. Buttons are cool
With big red buttons, the possibilities are truly endless.

7. Training / orientation videos
When it comes to training new team members, you really have to take lessons from the original experts. And by experts, we mean anyone in the early 90’s. Time for Blockbuster University and Mastering the Internet.

8. Friendly reminders
Remembering to drink water or check items off your to-do list (much less make one in the first place) is difficult. Drink! and Clear both offer solutions to remembering the small things that keep us productive and happy.

9. Company culture for beginners
Getting acquainted with the existing culture of a new workplace is usually a daunting experience. We love how Valve’s company handbook approaches the assimilation process head on, while making it feel like a fun adventure.

10. Breaks are fun (and important)
Mountains of research show that taking breaks throughout the day make us more productive. It’s that simple.

Stay tuned to hear more about our Hack Day fun.

Backward Thinking:

Case Study: OneHP
Web Font Viewer
Design Studio in Practice

Welcome to our weekly roundup of forward thinking in the brand / digital media / technology / whatever industries. We’ve been passing lots of link goodness around the office this week – here’s a little taste:

1. The future of your face
Google has been teasing their Glass project for some time now, but they finally announced a way to actually get your grubby hands on the device. #ifihadglass is how you apply to become one of the elite class of “Glass Explorers.” But don’t forget the fine print – being on the cutting edge comes with a $1500 price tag.

2. Con los terroristas
Last week was all about the Harlem Shake, the video meme that spread like wildfire across YouTube. The song itself was catapulted to the top of the charts, thanks to Billboard’s revamped Top 100 formula. The participants’ videos also made their way to actual people who live in Harlem, who were not impressed … to say the least.

3. Just a $2 bill
We like digital art. We like when it can be plastered across every single one of our gadgets. And we especially like when it comes from our very own designer, Able Parris. We like analog = heavy.

4. Trends! Trends! Get yer trends!
Have some hunches about the future of interaction design? We’ve been noticing some trends, too. Good design can be a unique selling property. Simplicity should be embraced and trusted. Services > gadgets. Thank you to Petra Sell of Prophecy, for lovingly compiling all of these (and many more!) trends in interactive design for 2013.

5. LOL break
You won’t be able to keep from laughing at this supercut of goats yelling like humans.

6. Color scheming
Wouldn’t it be cool if choosing a color scheme was fun, interactive, and maybe even a bit impulsive? Enter Hailpixel with some serious awesomeness.

7. Teen + Arduino
Kids have the darndest imaginations. Until they make a prosthetic hand with Arduino and 3D printing that beats out the market price by thousands of dollars. That’s serious stuff. Not only is 17-year-old Easton LaChappelle’s creation inspiring, it also shows the radical difference that new technology can make in the health industry.

8. It’s like Uber, but for ____
Uber, Taskrabbit, and Airbnb are all hot service companies with one thing in common: they facilitate marketplaces. This area – resource allocation, if you will – is a huge opportunity in startup-land. Read here for the how to’s of building your own connected marketplace.

Backward Thinking:

Case Study: OneHP
Web Font Viewer
Design Studio in Practice

This week in the awesome department, we find everything from the battle for gender equality in tech, pretty illustrations of windows, and community management survival stories. Thanks for joining us!

1. To a future woman in tech
The current state of women in technology leaves a lot to be desired. Despite the forward-thinking nature of the field, many age old traditions (and gender barriers) still remain. Upon hearing that her niece “wants to make video games,” our very own technologist Stacey Mulcahy wrote an open letter to the 8 year old, detailing the progress and barriers for women in tech today. The letter is this week’s “must read.” Do it here: To a Future Woman in Tech.

2. #multitasking
Did you know many members of Congress were tweeting during Obama’s State of the Union address this week? For your browsing pleasure, Tweet of the Union collected and organized all of it. We’re guessing the totally unrelated tweets are due to tweet schedulers – posting about totally unrelated things. So much for social media savviness, huh?

3. An ode to the city
Windows of New York is a beautiful design project that showcases the breadth of architectural styles our city has to offer. We’re rooting for a Dumbo window soon!

4. “@Everyone, I’m buying something expensive!”
American Express and Twitter are collaborating to help you make purchases while tweeting. Now you can kill two birds with one stone: buy your new Kindle Fire AND let the whole world know you did it. While thousands of people attaching a credit card number to their Twitter account may seem like a disaster waiting to happen, Amex already has a similar partnership with Foursquare.

5. The British Flip-Flop
Britain is hanging out their dirty laundry in Romania and Bulgaria in a bid to discourage potential immigrants from coming to the UK. The forthcoming campaign will focus on Britain’s terrible weather and poor job prospects to correct the image of British life as all golden paved streets. This will come as awfully confusing for Romanians, who last month were subject to the British Embassy’s GREAT campaign, which told Romanians what a fantastic place its rain-soaked archipelago is to live, work and invest in.

6. Not for your iPad
We love this simple flash website. You’d never think helping a cartoon woman eat apples would be fun, but …

7. “Are you a real person too?”
A somewhat dark and in-depth look into the world of community management, Four Million Followers illustrates the journey of the real person behind an international soda brand’s Twitter account. From talking shop with other real humans to a suicide threat, the writer’s experience is a doozy. See also: Old People Facebook, in which people hilariously misunderstand the function of restaurants’ facebook pages.

Thanks for tuning in this week! If you want more Big Spaceship reading, check out an e-book of our most popular blog posts.

Backward Thinking:

Case Study: OneHP
Web Font Viewer
Design Studio in Practice

Hello and welcome back to Forward Thinking. This week, we’re featuring the things outside of our “industry” that inspire us and make us think. Let’s begin with a flashback to the ‘60s.

1. “A telephone is this instrument here…”
As part of his series on the 21st Century, Walter Cronkite walks us through the home office of the future. He’s pretty close in predicting some of the things we use technology for (the news, weather, stocks, video calls), but a little off when it comes to how many screens it takes. As one YouTube commenter put it, “He’d crap his pants if you told him that actually all that stuff fits in your pocket … and we mainly use it to share pictures of cats.” 

2. Magic art
Silk is a beautiful (and magical) interactive artwork tool. Basically, you just create wisps of color with your cursor, but somehow everything you do looks phenomenal. Small warning: the site has audio. Go play!

3. AARP and still kicking
A surprising trend is emerging in the music industry: the top-grossing acts are largely people over 50 years old. From Madonna to Mick Jagger to Bruce Springsteen, does this mean we have a higher value for nostalgic entertainment than music on the cutting edge?

4. Beauty and the teeth
It’s always been true that standards for beauty vary across the globe, but we never realized how differently people think about their teeth. From crooked teeth, to sharpened ones, to no front teeth at all, the different takes on oral fashion are surprisingly diverse.

5. Merit or data?
Just how accurate is Spotify’s music recommendation algorithm? Based on user listener data Spotify is attempting to predict this Sunday’s Grammy Award winners from album and single track streams. Since the Grammy Awards are panel judged on merit, could copious amounts of data answer an equation that is largely unknown?

6. I’m a survivor, I’m not goin’ give up
Psychologists have uncovered a curious phenomenon that links serious brain injury with higher life satisfaction. The doctors found patients who suffered serious brain injury experienced a stronger sense of identity through seeing themselves as survivors, as well as stronger relationships from having to rely on others.

7. Miniature health
The “lab on a chip” diagnoses HIV with a single finger prick on the spot, in 15 minutes with almost 100% accuracy. The chip itself analyzes the blood sample, then sends the reading to medical records in the cloud. Another reason to bow down to the almighty cloud.

Backward Thinking:

Web Font Viewer
Most Interesting Web Experiments of 2012
Design Studio in Practice

Want a little more Big Spaceship goodness?  Browse our work or grab an e-book of our most popular blog posts.

Among the hustle and bustle of our routine work, everyone in the office is constantly sending around links – both to stay up on digital happenings, as well as to share LOLs (more of the second one). At the end of every week, we collect the best and write about them here for you.

We kick it off with a nod to the Roman Empire…

1. Apple, Amazon, Facebook, oh my!
Apparently they’re all going to crumble anyway, but Amazon looks good (even while its profits are falling). Then, Harvard Business Review takes a look at how Apple can stay at the top through the lens of strategy. 

2. Hacking your way to Happily Ever After
Figuring out how love works may be easier than ever. At least according to Amy Web, a digital strategist who gamed online dating to meet her match. Without relying on happenstance, Amy took a full out quantitative approach to finding the exact right person for her. Do, or don’t try this one at home. 

3. Chick lit has a new heroine (blogging)
From Carrie Bradshaw to ‘Shopaholic’, the glamorous trials and tribulations of the print media world have long been fodder for writers selecting an occupation for the female stars of their novels. Now, a New Media wave is here, with a new focus on the importance of the work, specifically blogging, at the centre of ‘chick lit’ books.  

4. Let there be porn
So, Vine happened this week. While many are focused on its not so PG-13 content, we are actually pretty impressed with the usability and implications for this unintentionally offensive app. It appears to have overcome many obstacles in social video sharing by simplifying the experience and syncing with Twitter.

5. Your website is fat
And it might be time to go on a diet. While many are aware that load time can affect SEO rankings, this thread explains why. It seems that Google is trying to provide its users with the best possible experience on the Internet, and we all know Internet folk hate waiting. Instead of adding that fancy addition to your site, consider trimming it down to under 3-seconds of waiting time for improved SEO.

6. Experiential ping pong balls
Our friends at Red Paper Heart are all about connecting people through physical experiences that draw on animation and technology. Their latest experiment came from this challenge: get fancy party goers (in fancy party clothing) to actually jump in a pool. The solution? 65,000 ping pong balls, of course.

7. Kitties.tumblr.com
Here’s just a taste of some of the awesome/silly Tumblrs that have been circulating IMs and emails this week: Swoosh Art, Patakk, and The Kitten Covers. 

8. Musicians as creative directors. It’s a thing.
Joining the likes of Lady Gaga (Polaroid) and Will.i.am (Intel), Alicia Keys is officially the new Global Creative Director for Blackberry. While we’re happy for Blackberry that they’re giving it another go, we have to wonder: does Alicia know what she’s doing? She’s pretty good at dropping buzzwords, at least. So that’s a good start.

Backward Thinking:

Web Font Viewer
Most Interesting Web Experiments of 2012
Design Studio in Practice

Looking for more inspiration? Grab an e-book of our first 100 Forward Thinking posts or look through our case studies.

We dive straight in this week with the latest internet news like: Facebook shaming, presidential hooplah, 404 page sacrifices, and the (post-) PSD era. Won’t you settle in and join us?

1. Conflicted souls
While the the amount of information Facebook knows about us is creepy enough, apparently so are the people using it. As we wrote last week, Facebook has been rolling out its newest big thing, Facebook Open Graph search, and here are some of the results.

2. UX, real simple.
This Onion article adds an interesting perspective to web design. While we might obsess over every detail of the UX, it’s simple and intuitive design that people want. So quit the nagging, Internet.

3. 404 page envy
We love a well-designed 404 page, but french designer Romain Brasier takes it to the next level. Check it out and #savethelemmings.

4. Are we in a Post-PSD Era? Nope.
Brad Frost’s “Are we in a Post-PSD Era?” caused a bit of stir in the web design community with many responses akin to “Ditch Photoship?! NEVER!”. Dan Mall’s response article is a nice buffer to the conversation, saying that the problem is not with photoshop, but in how we manage the design review process. It also includes this gif.

5. Advertising, in 2020.
What will advertising look like 7 years from now? Two folks from Hill Holiday share their thoughts on the rise of choice-based advertising. What does this mean? Survival of the fittest: brand edition.

6. Files rented, bought, and free.
While Amazon may be quietly launching rental options for Kindle, and the file-sharing service Mega Upload relaunches as Mega, we are reminded that the media distribution landscape is always in flux. Every new development comes with a set of questions: How different is digital rental than digital purchase when it comes to books? and … At what point do we consider illicit file sharing (and copyright infringement) to be a type of media dissemination worth our attention?

7. Reviews become a little less human
A lot of us have been wondering, “How will Yelp stay ahead as Foursquare bolsters functionality around customer reviews and Facebook builds out it’s Nearby feature?” By incorporating the cold hard health inspection data, that’s how. 

8. Anti-surveillance chic
Ever been worried that Big Brother is tracking you as you walk down the street? Now you can thwart the man with a facial recognition blocking visor (while also testing the limits of experimental fashion). But you’ll still have to stay alert because gait recognition is a thing, too. 

9. The internet takes Inauguration completely seriously.
This week, we commemorated the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr, the man famous for many things including sharing and helping to bring to life the dream of an equal and just America, beautifully brought to life by Monday’s second term inauguration of President Obama. But, as with all dreams, you eventually wake up and realize we live in a country that cares more about lip syncing than impending nuclear threat.

10. Dribbbling
Keeping up with their endearing basketball analogy, Dribbble’s freethroww freebies are some great design resources. Luckily no one has to get fouled to take advantage of these free icons, buttons, templates, and more!

If you want more, browse our work or grab an e-book of our most popular blog posts.
Notice any other trends this week? Hit us with the details below.

1. Online dating isn’t just for your divorced uncle anymore.
Digital is changing the way we date. We’ve seen it coming for years, especially as the online dating demographic gets younger and younger. We see dating platforms focusing more on fun (see: How About We). Some see services like OkCupid as the beginning of the end of courtship, while others throw all caution into the wind for the thrill of a Crazy Blind Date. Either way, as increasingly perfect algorithms put multiple suitable partners at our fingertips, will society’s value of permanent commitment take a beating?

2. The big cheese tease
Two of the Big Cheeses of the Internet have been teasing us for some time with new products and capabilities. Isn’t it about time Facebook lets us put the social graph to work? Luckily, they finally announced Graph Search. And haven’t we been hearing about Google Glass for long enough? Let’s get those babies into the hands of developers!

3. Operating on the edge of the law
For a large corner of the Internet, this was a week of mourning. The death of influential hacker and activist Aaron Schwartz brought great sadness to the programmer community, but sparked extensive mass media coverage of the causes Schwartz fought for. The 26-year-old’s legacy inspired countless discussions of Internet freedom, possible failures of the legal system, holes in the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the ethics of hacking. 

And a few more things:

4. How lost are you in the new Myspace? Make a tally for every time you see Justin.

5. The White House raised the minimum signature threshold for online petitions … because apparently, building a Death Star isn’t quite at the top of the POTUS’s agenda.

6. Put your browser resizing skills to the ultimate test – this game is surprisingly fun.

7. Is it even possible to update your app without pissing everyone off?

8. One of the essential components to making a regular ol’ blogpost go “viral”: FOMO.

9. Speaking of viral, #doprah #livewrong and #liestrong were all trending last night.

Want a little more Big Spaceship goodness?  Browse our work or grab an e-book of our most popular blog posts.

Hello and welcome to our weekly roundup of tech, design, and culture-y goodness. This week, we explore the hype behind tech conferences, wonder about the dangers of the future Internet, and get a little carried away with cheesy stock images. Thanks for joining us!

1.Because Maroon 5 is totally relevant to CES.
This week, the Internetz are all about CES. So far, the biggest news has been the conference’s insanely theatrical smorgasbord of an opening keynote (here’s the condensed version in pictures and tweets). Once you’ve quit chuckling, you can find real updates from the conference on Ogilvy and Mather’s handy recap blog.

2. Keynotes with promise
Speaking of conferences, did you hear that Tina Roth Eisenberg, a.k.a. famed blogger swissmiss is keynoting at SXSW Interactive?  Tina’s one of our favorite design bloggers/entrepreneurs/Brooklynites, so we couldn’t be more excited for her. And in case you haven’t been keeping up, the other keynoters are the brainiacs behind The Oatmeal, SpaceX and OUYA. Quite the lineup.

3. Lighting hit your car? So what.
Digital media consumption is changing our idea of extraordinary. At least according to Kevin Kelly, founder of WIRED magazine (and he knows a thing or two about digital media). His recent blogpost examines our increased exposure to extraordinary events (because anything is readily available on YouTube). “A steady diet of coincidences makes it easy to believe they are more than just coincidences, right?” Definitely worth a think/read

4. Could it be the next big “pull to refresh”?
Here’s a solid list of digital design trends that are likely to stick in 2013. Gesture-focused design with larger fonts and more colors than just blue? We can dig it

5. Death by Internet
A recent Internet ID report brought to light how truly scary the Internet could get by 2014, as the use of connected devices to carry out physical crimes becomes more plausible. According to the tech security firms that be, our future is ripe with military drone exploitations and murders by pacemaker hack, just to name a few.

6. [intermission]
Number 5 was pretty heavy, sorry. Why don’t you take a little break to scroll through the beauty of National Geographic’s photo contest winners?

7. The rise of the SPONSORED TWEET
While advertising workarounds aren’t new on the Twitter platform, Samsung and the Associated Press made headlines this week for bypassing the typical ad system and opting for in-tweet promotions. If this practice grows, could it be the demise of Twitter’s current advertising model? Probably not.

8. Wearable Tech is the new Livestrong bracelet
With Disney’s announcement of MyMagic this week, the popular adoption of wearable tech is barely a question now. Whether it’s for to help you find shorter lines at an amusement park or to keep track of your daily activity, technology-as-accessory is here to stay. (see also: Fitbit’s new Flex)

9. A little roundup of web font resources
Want a little web font inspiration? Look no further than this showcase of best Google Web Fonts, these typekit font pairings, and this tool for creating better designed web typography.

For more inspiration, grab an e-book of our first 100 Forward Thinking posts or look through our case studies.

This is where the Web Font Viewer comes in. With very minimal setup you can have your fonts ready to view in a browser. In fact, the idea here is to view them in all browsers and operating systems. There’s nothing earth shattering here. It’s merely a small tool to help empower those who have little knowledge of CSS to look at fonts in the browser – setting rendering expectations right from the start. You’ll even be able to set up a fallback font set up so everyone can see what will happen if the browser isn’t able to load a specific font.

Features

After setup, you will be able to change all of these properties:

• Text
• Fonts
• Color
• Background color
• Size (font-size)
• Line height (line-height)
• Letter spacing (letter-spacing)
• Spacing of paragraphs (padding-bottom)
• Overall width of the text area (width)
• Rotation (-vendor-transform: rotate)
• Alignment (text-align)
• Text Transform (text-transform)
• Font Smoothing (-vendor-font-smoothing)

In addition to altering the properties you will also be able to save individual profiles to view later (localStorage) as well as sharing profiles to hand over to a developer via a simple JSON object that can be used to instantiate the GUI or used to create the initial CSS.

So head on over to the git repository and load up some fonts!

PS: Even your producer will love it.

Big Data is creeping up, on your computer, in the Cloud, even in outer space. Before we let Big Data loose in 2013, let’s not forget about the little guy, small data. While Big Data may have predicted Obama’s victory, small data relies on human reason, which we value at the Ship. Here are 6 insights and inventions that don’t come from monstrous amounts of data, because “humans are of a greater order than algorithms” (Huzzah!).

1. Nothing on the internet really dies

The rise of Snapchat, and its jealous sister Facebook Poke, show how we’re desperate to escape the permanence of the internet. Both of these apps allow us to communicate more trivial moments, and let us share in a non-permanent way.

2. Sneaky advertising

Google’s new mobile game, Ingress, not only adds a bit of freaky sci-fi to your daily life, but it also has some sneaky advertising opportunities. By weaving brand partnerships into the story, the game could lead you unknowingly to the nearest Zipcar station.

3. Organization made real simple

Scratch your organization itch in 2013 with the most intuitive productivity apps around. Designed by fellow humans, products like Dropmark and others make storing all your personal data (no matter how big or small) effortless.

4. Listen to your digital grandpa

Moving past the fact that grandparents use Quora, this thread reveals some valuable life-learnings from those with 60+ years to speak from. Who needs big data when you can find all of life’s secrets right here.

5. A Warby Parker for ____.

We love Warby Parker, and apparently so does the social interwebz. Through people tweeting, “ We need a Warby Parker for ____” this author explains the magic of the Warby Parker brand. If companies want to copy its success, they must cut out the middleman to offer a great product that isn’t overly expensive.

6. Technology, according to teenagers

Technology is not only for the virtuous and the geeks, but it’s also for the selfie-obsessed youth. Buzzfeed interviews a REAL LIVE teenager to discover that they not only flock to sharing platforms in masses, but they do so in a manner you might not expect.

Let’s be real, small data and human innovation are going to save us from big data fueling the robot apocalypse anyway.

If you’re curious,  browse our work or grab an e-book of our most popular blog posts.

It’s that special time of year where we all gather around the internet, exchange GIFs and reminisce about the year past. Since we’re constantly in the trenches of the internet, some of the folks Big Spaceship dug up the 18 weirdest, most innovative, least ordinary web experiments of 2012. Google led the way in web weirdness this year, enabling over 500 Chrome Experiments. Below we’ve divided our favorite experiments into 4 categories:

Distort

Particles morph – watch a particles morph into different object.
Infinite, 3D Head Scan - an infinite photo rendering of a head.
Ascii Street View - your street, Asciii style.
Chrome-atic – an experiment in responsive sound.
Floating Shiny Knot - a floating shiny knot anywhere in the world.

Collaborate

Jam with Chrome – collaborate with friends to make music online.
Stanley Piano – combining tweets, technology, and a piano to play music.
Exquisite Forest – draw multi-user art projects.

Play

Happiness Island – bringing Coke’s brand essence to an internet archipelago.
Typing Karaoke – race to type as fast as your favorite song lyrics.
HexGL – an HTML5 racing game.
LovePunks Game - Aboriginal 10-year-olds make a video game.
Staggering Beauty – shake it and see seiizure inducing colors.

Data

The xx – Coexist – tracking how The xx’s second album got shared around the world.
The Evolution of the Web  - an interactive history of the internet.
Wind Map – visualizing wind patterns on the web
One Hour per Second - visualizing the volume of YouTube videos.
100,000 Stars – an interactive visualization of the stellar neighborhood.

What’s next?

Gestures. While these experiments show off the power of the web, the challenge is how to integrate better with user behavior. The release of the Windows 8 touchscreen computer, launch of LeapMotion, and fast-paced development of Chrome are just three things changing the way we interact with our devices. Hopefully, we’ll see more web experiments in 2013 that play to gestures like touch and other body movements.

Looking for more Big Spaceship finds? Check out our Forward Thinking series.

So … the world is supposed to end sometime today, right? There’s nothing like the prospect of our planet’s demise to help put some things into perspective. Spending as much time as we do focused on digital and cultural trends, sometimes we forget to ask ourselves, which ones actually matter? What trends, products, or innovations would we actually miss if they were suddenly taken away? And which would we be grateful to see go?

Things we’ll miss if the world ends

1. The wired home.
For the most part, the first 12 years of the 2000s didn’t deliver on the predictions of the 20th century Space Age. We don’t have flying cars, moon colonies, or robot servants. But this year, a few inventions—specifically in the realm of home appliances—reignited our imaginations.

In some situations, established retailers went all-in on innovation and surprised everyone. For example: Philips Hue,  the iOS app-controlled LED lightbulb that gives you unprecedented control over shade and brightness level. In other cases, an outsider burst onto the scene and disrupted a dull, stagnant category. Case in point: Nest. When was the last time you were wowed by a thermostat?

2. Audio Recapitulations
What do the Hunger Games, the Higgs Boson, and Obama’s re-election have in common? They are 3 of the most popular podcasts featured on Stitcher Radio this year.

3. Ye old web
We’re already a bit nostalgic for the web of yesteryear, and if the world ends, we’ll miss it even more. Anil Dash’s widely shared post on The Web We Lost reminded us how much we miss a web where content control and monetization were not top priorities. And the good old days are especially missed in light of recent events uncovering Instagram’s potential ickiness.

4. The rest of winter
It’s still not snowy in many parts of the country. Here in New York, we’re holding out for January to bring us some of the white stuff. But what if January doesn’t come? Just in the nick of time, we found this awesome/conveniently named flash game, January. Go catch some snowflakes with your tongue, y’all. Before it’s too late.

5. Delayed Gratification
What happened to ‘good things come to those who wait’? It seems like waiting is going to become a relic of the past, like rotary phones and VCRs.

Collectively, we have the patience of a 3-year old in a grocery store, incapable of waiting for anything,  and it seems that certain heavy-hitting retailers are more than happy to play along. Amazon and Walmart are testing same-day delivery for online purchases, creating expectation around instant gratification. There are also new services popping up, like Shutl, a UK company that leverages existing couriers to deliver goods bought online within minutes. Makes us wonder, if we no longer know how to wait, will we also forget how to appreciate?

Things we won’t miss if the world ends

6. Friends live-tweeting TV shows … or live-tweeting anything, for that matter.
Now that Twitter has partnered with Nielsen to create a twitter-based TV rating, we know that our Twitter-addicted friends who watch Real Housewives of New York are only going to be encouraged. As annoying as this could become, we like that the partnership shows more mass-media acknowledgement of second screen experiences.

7. The Too Big to Fail Complex
2012 proved that some lessons are just hard to learn. A few of the biggest, most successful brands weren’t above making some pretty epic blunders, disregarding audience needs, opinions, and general moral standards. Those faux-pas certainly will not be missed.

Hours spent in line waiting to acquire the iPhone 5 were rewarded with the unceremonious removal of the beloved Google Maps app. What replaced it was an inaccurate, seemingly rushed Apple Maps that inspired this hilarious tumblr and this equally awesome twitter account. Google Maps finally released its iOS app this week and in under 48 hours, it was downloaded 10 million times.

Starbucks launched a UK Twitter campaign, asking fans to #SpreadTheCheer, which backfired as people used the platform to share their displeasure with the brand’s stingy tax-paying practices. And as the cherry on top, this year also saw the demise of a hero, a role model, an athletic icon – Lance Armstrong.

8. Blue-chip patent trolls.
Look, intellectual property is supposed to stimulate and defend creativity. But this year, it jumped the shark and descended into farce. Yahoo vs Facebook, Oracle vs Google, and worst of all, Apple vs Samsung. Claiming you own “rectangles with rounded corners”? Embarrassing.

9. Everyone and their mother talking about the apocalypse … (whoops! guilty.)
We definitely will not miss everyone making stupid jokes about the Apocalypse (even though some are pretty funny). And just in case the Mayan Apocalypse is still in your “Read Later” folder, here’s Mother Jones with all the details.

Backward Thinking:

Design Studio in Practice
Douchebaggery in Marketing: How Words Get In the Way of Good Work
Case Study: What Do You Love?

If you want more, browse our work or grab an e-book of our most popular blog posts.
Notice any other trends this week? Hit us with the details below.

One more week at the ‘ship, one more week of reading the Internet so you don’t have to. Time to get learnin’!

1. Feeling hungry?
Remember the last time you were out with friends and couldn’t think anything else besides “Man, a burrito would be so good right now”? Or what about that time you were thinking “Man, we can’t keep letting those rhino poachers get away!” Lucky for you, there’s something that can help you in either situation. The drone. While conventionally associated with the military, drone technology is expanding into everyman’s land. As in, burrito delivery and poacher targeting.

And when the editor-in-chief of Wired leaves to run his own 3D robotics company, you know civil applications of drones are only going to increase.

2. Let’s review
Like we mentioned last week, it’s the time of the year for making lists – lists of gifts and lists about the year itself. This week, Facebook, Twitter, and Google all released their trend reports for 2012. No big shockers here, but interesting nonetheless.

3. Flash retail … gone in a flash?
We turn our heads for one second and suddenly Fab is shedding its flash retail identity. With their second major pivot, the king of all flash sales has us asking if timely retail services are on their way out or if the company just can’t make up their mind.

4. You’re never too young to learn to run a business, son.
From the sheer number of startup incubators (and corresponding ‘10 things I learned while building my startup’ blog posts), it’s pretty clear that building a product or business can require a lot of help. Especially when the founders are barely twenty years old. Boston undergrads can now break into the startup word with Rough Draft Ventures, which funds student tech entrepreneurs. And 8th graders? They are building awesome things too, like this app for the students of Dorseyville Middle School.

5. Why stop short?
What if everysinglething about your website was responsive? Yes, even the URL. (we’re mostly joking, but it’s still pretty awesome)

6. Unlikely brilliance
We love when innovation comes from uncommon places – it usually means the new product or service addresses a real need. Like did you know that the bulletproof vest was invented by a pizza delivery guy? The city of New York has put out a call for reinvention of an unlikely object – the payphone. We can’t wait to see what kinds of people and technology rise to the occasion.

7. Mobile photos are a big(ger) deal
Mobile photos are all the rage right now. Fact. But this week, a few things have gone down that show they’ll probably be the rage for a long time to come. Flickr’s app upgrade paired with the $10M raised by Snapchat are both big investments in what used to seem like a small technology. Oh and did you hear that ads are coming to Instagram?

8. We heard they’re killing off the penny anyways
Bitcoin, the most widely used peer-to-peer digital currency, is now the currency of a legitimate bank, Bitcoin Central. It may seem like a small change in a small community of alternative currency believers, but it really means that our money is closer than ever to being fully digitized. And while we’re on the topic of digital currency, why not send some $$ to a friend via Twitter?

9. Your life → data data data
What do the tiny pieces of your life add up to? Whether it’s videos from each day of your life or everything you listen to on Last.fm, when it’s all brought together, we can learn a lot.

10. #longreads
A lot of you are probably gearing up for some serious holiday reading. But before you impulse buy everything from the NYT 10 Best Books of 2012 list, take a look back at the “read later” pile that’s been stacking up in your Instapaper account. Wouldn’t it be nice if all of that was turned into a book? Blackstrap makes it possible.

Backward Thinking:

Design Studio in Practice
Douchebaggery in Marketing: How Words Get In the Way of Good Work
Case Study: Absolut Host

If you want more, browse our work or grab an e-book of our most popular blog posts.
Notice any other trends this week? Hit us with the details below.

Crain’s pointed to our supportive team structure, strong leadership, on-site meals/snacks, shared responsibility, creative spirit, and Foosball as the main reasoning behind our spot as the 49th Best Place to Work in NYC.

For more on our culture and how we work, check out:

Harvard Business School’s write up of our structure
How to structure your culture for innovation
NYTime’s interview on our CEO’s hiring strategy
The Great Sonos Wars of 2012

Through quick iteration of sketch, present, critique and refine, we arrived at a diverse set of possible solutions, all the while working through assumptions, user needs, feasibility and execution. Invigorated and exhausted, the participants came out of the session with a shared understanding about the best way forward to build a flushed-out feature set.

How Design Studio Works:

1. Research informs a well-defined design challenge – including a persona to be targeted when designing a solution. Background is presented at the beginning of the studio to define the problem space.
2. Participants break into teams of 4 or 5 for rapid rounds of sketching (we’re talking short bursts, eight minutes to generate eight solutions in the first round)
3. After each sketching session the participants present, critique and then refine ideas.
4. Take a break. Rinse. Repeat.
5. The whole group gathers together after the third round for a regroup and consensus building.

Some Background

Design studio is a methodology I learned from two dapper gentleman, Todd Zaki Warfel and Will Evans – thanks to their open sharing and mentorship I was presented with its benefits early and often. I saw the artifacts of immersive sessions strewn about their workspaces, and practiced their methods of presentation and critique through participation in collaborative community events such as UX Show And Tell and PhillyCHI Design Slams. It is this hands-on learning that enabled me to internalize the techniques into my own practice, especially:

• Sketching
• Open critique to share work
• Making a habit of getting eyes, opinions and new ideas on WIP challenges from people of diverse disciplines.

When faced with a new design challenge last week I was happy to hear from google that this practice has been canonized through a series of articles on UX Magazine. I recommend you read through these resources to discover the depth of the method, its design, and application.

Introduction to Design Studio Methodology
The Design of Design Studio
Design Studio and Agile UX Pitfalls

Takeaways

Rather than blowing out the method I will keep it brief and share my top three takeaways from the day below. But first a public service message – if you are developing a UX practice find a mentor! Join a community! It will pay off in ways you never imagine possible when the juicy design challenges come across your desk.

#1 Critique is HARD

Two big hurdles in running a design studio are comfort level with sketching and experience of participants in giving critique.  I was lucky to find my participants were willing to illustrate their thoughts and showed an amazing bit of resilience to the rapid ideation and pressure to produce sketches.  However, I found the rounds of presentation/critique to be more about show-n-tell and shared ideation rather than focused  critique.

These are both great things, but a key ingredient to the studio is strong critique – producing a thoughtful challenge to a collaborator’s design is a skill that I for one am still developing. It requires close attention, an unbiased look at the problem space and an ability to channel the persona to provide new insight into the challenge. A few great insights did come out of strong moments of critique, but this is certainly the place where I will focus my efforts before the next studio.

#2 The setup makes or breaks it

Big Spaceship’s master warroom/studio served as a most delightful environment for the studio, sunny and spacious, quiet and focused. I realized late that I had to setup an extra table to give all participants enough room to sketch, but resources were well at hand. Materials are key – a fat stack of 8-up and 1-up pads (you can find them here) tons of markers, pens, stickies, scrap paper, backboards, and perhaps the most important tool for the moderator – a stopwatch.

To add ambiance we topped it off with some spotify music specially selected by a colleague for the sketching rounds (MUSIC TO WORK TO: Chill & Ambient Instrumental Mix) and a stocked set of fuel for the participants – coffee, water, a healthy lunch and all-natural candy bars. The setup facilitated strong work, and a delightful bit of sunshine and fresh air made for a productive day.

#3 The work has just begun

I knew that the output of the design studio would be robust, but hadn’t explicitly thought through the process of synthesizing the work until the dust had settled. The depth and breadth of solutions we arrived at has given the team a huge head-start in building the end-product, but there is still much to be blown-out and implemented.

One huge advantage that came came out of the day is the client’s willingness to look at sketches as ‘deliverables’ as we continue on the way towards finished product. Since they have been introduced to the visual language and output, all agreed that the best way forward is to refine and define requirements through more detailed sketching.  Infact, they are so bought-in, the client is excited to sell our sketchy solutions up the food chain earlier in the process. Hooray for efficiency!

For more #UXOX Love:

Falling Into Empathy: A UX Love Story
9 Digital Storytelling Tips From Star Wars
Games Without Screens
On Emotional Interface Design