One of the ongoing goals for interactive designers, coders, social media strategist, and all those other professionals involved with acronyms like UX and UI, is to make digital products with a lasting emotional effect on its users. A digital experience is successful when the user completely gets the product and feels as though the product gets them. The user begins to empathize with the product.

But, obviously, all of our digital creations don’t actual have feelings. They’re computers programmed to follow a set of rules. (We aren’t at the HAL 9000 or GLaDOSarea of the technological timeline.) So, how then can people empathize with computers? Well, I suppose it’s the same as any AI programming. We give the user a sense that the digital product is alive or feels the same as its real life companion.

For instance, when you turn a page in an iBook there is that animated interaction so it looks like your turning a piece of paper. But iPads obviously don’t have pages made of paper and don’t programmed feel like that. So why are they? To create a sense of reliability like a book. Turning a page of a book brings the reader that great feeling of, well, reading a book. It’s that sense of adventure to find what’s on the next page or maybe its the sense of accomplishment.

We also give a sense of empathy by creating human elements in a digital space. Remember that annoying talking paperclipin the early versions of Microsoft Word? It would say things like, “it looks like your writing a letter!” Well, as awful as that paper clip was, it tried to make how-to aspect of Word a little more enjoyable than reading an instruction booklet. The paperclip is a digital creation to represent a human emotions, but we also stick real humans into digital space.

There is a micro-site built by the people of Pentagram. It is an older site built for the holidays, where people could answer a series of questions and figure out what typeface they are. As a type nut, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Well, to ease you through a series of questions, there are videos involving a nameless and faceless psychiatrist. Does it feel like I’m talking to a real person? No. But it does feel like I’m having a conversation and like this product is helping me understand something about myself. (Even if it is just helping me find my inner typeface.)

There are little things to make digital experience feel more organic and real. It is a simple gesture that makes you feel as though your turning a real page in a digital book. But it is also a creating human-like digital characters (the paperclip) who can share our experiences. Whether it’s creating artificial conversations or faux organic interactions, no matter how believable these empathy-tactics may be, they are still digital recreations of actual real like things.

The question that I’m trying to figure out now is: when will stop basing technology off or physical objects? What will our digital interfaces look like when we don’t need real life cues to understand and empathize?

This is my first experiment with tilt shift. I shot with a Canon t3i and used the built-in creative filters to add the effect to all 403 photos. iStopMotion turned the photos into video at 10 photos a second. Then I did some touch-up editing in Final Cut Pro (color correction, smooth cam, titling).

For my next tilt shift project I’m going to head up to PDX. This video was a good start, but there are lots of things I learned as well.

• Always use a tripod.
• Take the longest photo burst possible (50+ photos)
• The higher you can get above the subject, the better

A digital interface changes this ideology. An iPad, for example, tells nothing about what it does by its shape. The way a user interacts with that iPad is almost completely in that digital space: swipe, tap, tilt. The digital interface has to be designed so the user knows what to tap and swipe.

We are getting to that point in digital design where users of all things digital know what they can click on or scroll through. This makes the life of a designer much easier because they don’t need to explain to their user how to use the device. However, I worry that we are creating a digital design paradigm in which digital designers are using as a crutch instead of guidelines.

When I first started to use Google+, like many users, I quickly noticed how similar it was to Facebook; not only in concept, but in design. I knew how to navigate the new social platform pretty quickly and easily because it looked so much like Facebook (then it was trying to figure out who belongs in what circle).

But here lies my problem. Does the profile picture need to be in the top left corner because it was like that on Facebook and MySpace before that? A user needs to know how to navigate a site, just like an app, and a way to do that is base the interface design around something they already know. It works. It makes sense. But does this mean we’re getting stuck into a interface just because it is familiar?

The visual design of Google+ is a little saddening. Google+ did a wonderful job rethinking social media and what it offers to its users is very exciting. However, they rethought the platform without rethinking the interface. There is a parallel here for users. My first impression of Google+ came from its look and feel. The same went for a lot of my friends using the new Google service. It’s the classic “don’t judge a book by its cover.” Well, we do judge things by their cover. So let’s start rethinking these ‘digital covers.’

A fun little example of a new interface that still provides an old service is Planetary, a music library app for the iPad. It re-imagines the data and system of iTunes and turns it into a personalized universe. Hands-down more beautiful than iTunes.

Though it may seem gimmicky to some, it expresses my point. Just because there is a music software with a digital interface that everyone knows, iTunes, doesn’t mean the next music software needs to have a similar interface. Design doesn’t need to be familiar. It just needs to be understandable.

So my question really is: why not? Why can’t Google+ re-image the social media interface? I’m sure now, with decades of digital design behind us and a generation able to learn new digital interfaces quickly, we can rethink the old visual communication thinking behind these new media platforms.

If it ain’t broke, build it better.

Pompadour is a numeral typeface quickly creeping into print, logo, and web design since its release in December of 2010. I’ve seen it used in ways that look ‘cheeky new web 2.0′ to ‘classic letterpress.’ Though a stylized typeface, it appears to be multifaceted. The best thing about this number set is that it is free to download under a creative commons license.

Download here.

I’ve decided to create a list of things I never got a chance to learn in college. And now with all my free time, schooling won’t get in the way of my education (I think that’s a Mark Twain quote).

The best way for me to stay on top of this list is to go public with it. Sure, I doubt many people will read this list and keep me actively working on it, but that’s what blogs are for right? To be worried that a lot of people will read it then you’ll have to be made accountable.

So here is the list. I’m sure I will be adding to it, but expect blog post to come on these adventures.

• Buy DSLR
• Make a tilt shift video: PDX Airport, People playing soccer
• Blog
• Work on Portfolio/website
• Take a photo a day
• Learn HDR and other photo post processing techniques
• Make OR Magazine demo video
• Compose some music
• Read Chuck Klosterman
• Read the Tipping Point
• Visit the team at Uncorked Studios
• Design a typeface
• Program a synth
• Learn about coding and javascript frameworks

Hey look! I’ve started blogging. Looks like that’s one down.