Disease Control Priorites (2nd Ed.)

On a recent trip to Vietnam, I came across a printed copy of the Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries (2nd Ed.) first published by the World Bank in 2006. This is quite a significant book in that it provides governments of developing nations a set of tools to help them decide how to allocate their limited resources for public health.

Prior to this book, mortality was one of the key indicators that governments would look at, and resource were put toward tackling diseases that would lowering mortality rates. However this book advoated the use of DALY (Disability Adjusted Life Years), a more objective way to determine the effects of disease. To put it bluntly, this unit shows a person who dies of a disease is less a burden on a country’s economy than a person who is bedridden for the rest of their life as a result of disease (since someone has to take care of that sick person in addition). This book provided a way to weigh and compare the economic impact of each disease common in developing nations and hence provides the ability to “prioritize” the government’s response.

It is said that Bill Gates read the first edition of this book, which was published as part of the World Bank’s World Develop Report 1993: investing In Health (pdf | 6.1MB), and it influenced his decision to take on Global Health as one of the key directives of his influential (and massively endowed) Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Why do I know so much about this book?

When I was working at Forum One Communications, I was responsible for creating the information architecture and user experience of the web-enable version of the book. We created a flexible architecture for users (academics, students, practitioner and gov officials) to browse, download the whole book or create their own book by selecting chapters that are relevant for their country. I interviewed many of the authors and potential users over a couple of week and spent many hours struggling to put together a structure and design that made sense for the users. I can safely say that it was the most rewarding project in my 6 years at Forum One. Seeing the printed version of the book for the first time, in a developing country, almost brought a tear to my eye.

They were selling the book for $35, the subsidized price for developing nations (it’s $125 on Amazon), and I was sorely tempted to purchase it, but it was too heavy to lug around. Definitely on my next trip…

Central Library, Seattle, USA (Rem Koolhaas, OMA)

How does a public library cope in a digital age? How does a physical space handle a virtual classification system such as the Dewey Decimal system, and continuously changing needs?

In the Seattle Public Library’s Central Library, designed by Rem Koolhaas / OMA, books stacks run in a spiral space AKA The Book Spiral (very cool diagram), with removable numbers in the floor so that the library is flexible enough to “learn” and adapt to new needs.

The library embodies many other noteworthy principles that you can find in OMA’s original 1999 concept book for the library.

It’s a space that exemplifies Stewart Brand’s notion of “How Buildings Learn”.

More photos.

I’ve been struggling to define exactly what “convergence” means in today’s wired world. I think I’ve found the best definition yet.

Convergence is sometimes viewed as the consolidation of multiple technologies towards a singular uber-device. I prefer to define convergence as the tendency of technologies, as they grow in complexity and scope, to overlap (and consolidate) functions. Convergence therefore refers to a trend wherein devices and functions take on commonly shared traits, but this doesn’t mean that this trend ultimately ends with a single multifunctional mega-device, no matter how cool and ‘mad scientist’ that might sound.

The article goes on to describe “7 considerations for convergence”. An excellent read.

Custom wood case for iPhone by Miniot

Mobile phones and most personal electronics devices have been made for durability. My Samsung phone is finished in stainless steel, plastic and glass. It is black and shiny. My iPod Nano is aluminum.

My wallet is made of leather. When I first bought by wallet, it was stiff, and uncomfortable. But at some point in time, it yielded and started to conform to the curve of my posterior. Same thing happened to my watch strap, also made of leather. It is has morphed to the size of my wrist. Shoes, jackets, baseball caps.. I can name numerous examples.

In the flood of hyper-niched marketing world, I am still surprised that very little effort is made in the personal electronics space to take advantage of this property of personal artifacts: that it registers the physical interaction between the artifact and user. Guitar frets have show well-worn usage by its owner. Yet phones resist this natural aging process.

Most aspects of our environment can be better personalized than our electronics. We can choose wallpaper or paint color for our apartments, adorn it with our personality over time. Personalization to mobile users usually means changing the background or ringtone or those little dangley phone accessories that you see all over Korea and Japan. Nothing that registers gradually over time. Why not a mobile phone made with leather or wood. Why not a iPod where a friend can scratch their message into the surface instead of having it laser engraved.

Bamboo, the degradable phone (via core77)

“The Chute Smartphone (via Yanko Design)

It was refreshing to see a couple of example recently. Here are two concept phone examples, The Chute Smartphone and Bamboo phone, and iWood handcrafted iPhone case by Miniot made from high quality wood (commercially available).

Yet another argument for the use of natural materials in personal electronics is environmental. Massive amounts of mobile phones are consumed each year. The rates of mobile phone penetration is close to saturation in the US, Korea and in most developed countries. It’s rare that we find any recycling of mobile phones. Most people just throw away their phones when it is broken or when they switch carriers. Here’s where the mobile telecom industry can learn from the automotive industry. There is a whole secondary industry build around reclaiming, reusing, and recycling used car parts on one front, on another front there are movements to make more efficient cars. Why are there so few examples of environmental friendliness in the mobile phone industry? I think this is a marketing opportunity that begs to be tapped for both the consumer’s and industry’s benefit.

TED conference

I’ve been systematically going through the TED video podcasts ever since I got my iPod Nano in late October, 2007. I’ve finally achieved my goal of being up-to-date with the podcast, sitting through some 180 episodes.

TED for those who are unfamiliar, is handful of annual events, the heart of which is a conference hosted in Monterey, California. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, and the events brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

The next TED conference is Feb 27 - March 1, 2008 and is completely sold out, except for a few tickets that show up on eBay for $33,000

Most of the presentation are amazing, but a couple really stand out for me. Here’s my personal top 10 list and my reasons why. They are listed in order of ones that have inspired me and I find myself recalling most often.

1. Ken Robinson Humor aside (this is one of the funniest presentations), Ken Robinson makes a compelling case for creativity in education. He makes the point that current education has a strong bias towards the languages and math (which is good for training college professors) whereas in order to tackle the complexity of the problems facing us today and in the future, we’ll need to educate the next generation to be more creative than we’ve ever been.
2. Evelyn Glennie is world-renowed, and incidentally, the first ever professional percussion soloist. She is also deaf. This provides her with a whole new perspective that most of us miss: Music as experience, and not just a series of notes to be played.
3. Cameron Sinclair is one of the founders of Architecture for Humanity, which explores sustainable housing solutions for impoverished nations. It’s action-oriented mottos is “Design like you give a damn”. In his talk, he advocates an open-sourcing of design ideas where local solutions can be shared and refined globally, while being protected through a Creative Commons Developing Nations License.
4. Malcolm Gladwell is just an amazing storyteller. He takes the example of the common pasta sauce to illustrate that often in marketing there is no platonic idea of perfection, but many points of perfection. “There is no perfect Pepsi; There are only perfect Pepsis.” Different people will be drawn to different ideas of perfection, though the may never admit it overtly. Hence the creation of the “Extra Chunky” pasta sauce. A perfect example of uncommon wisdom.
5. Barry Schwartz is the author of “The Paradox of Choice” and explains that we often confuse freedom with limitless choices. More choice can often be paralyzing and leads to misery.
6. Vilayanur Ramachandran’s presentation show how parts of the brain are linked and function in a integrated manner, and how emotion plays an important part of how we process information.
7. Hans Rosling analyzes global health data, but uses a tool to adds the dimension of time which illuminates trends and relationships that are harder to grasp as static charts. He takes what seems to be boring statistics and animates them not only through software but through his humorous commentary. He goes even a step further by swallowing a sword in his sequel presentation.
8. Charles Leadbeater advocates an approach to design that takes it outside corpoarte walls and start harnassing and incorporating the power of passionate non-professionals and communities into the design process.
9. Janine Benyus Biomimicry is something we all need to know more about. Period.
10. Thomas Barnett outlines a post-Cold War solution for the foundering US military. Dead serious pill, dispensed with a healthy dose of humor.

There were also some close runners-up:

• John Meada talks about, you guessed it, Simplicity
• William Macdonough is working with cities in China to create sustainable urban planning solutions. He explains his philosophy of “cradle to cradle” design, which bridge the needs of ecology and economics.
• Jimmy Wales is the founder and the philopher king of Wikipedia. He explains how Wikipedia is not an idealized democratic society where everyone contributes anything but one that has formed an aristocracy out of social necessity for maintaining quality of content.
• Chris Bangle provides a rare inside look at how BMW designs its cars.
• Stefan Sagmeister talks about what makes for happy design :-)
• Jonathan Harris is the creator of the We Feel Fine project, the epitome of Web 2.0 atomization and regrouping of information.
• Stephen Petranek talks about 10 way the world could end and what we can do about it. Amusing in a morbid kind of way.
• Larry Lessig is the founder of Creative Commons and a board memeber of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He makes us think about digital rights in an age where lines are increasingly being blurred.
• Vik Muniz How can you resist an artist that makes art from spaghetti on plate?

After all those podcasts, I’ve found that the teeny screen Nano isn’t really sufficient or satisfying, user experience-wise. The iPod Touch looks so much more appealing now.