Apr 14, 2012
Apr 6, 2012
what is design?
design is not about making things pretty, nor is it all about problem-solving (though some people think so).
- design is problem-finding first, and only then problem-solving.
- if design is problem-finding first, then "designer" isn't necessarily a specific role played by specific people on a team. design thinking (see below) is a way to approach the world that every constituency and individual should possess, so that they can figure out the right problems to solve.
- sometimes, finding the right problem requires lots of search and research. but this isn't just reading papers and essays. research is also (maybe more about) being in the world, exploring it, and understanding it.
- most importantly, if design thinking is deciding what the right problems are to solve, then design at base is an issue of figuring out what values we have, what makes a problem the right one to put effort behind. values aren't objectively evaluatable, they cannot be commensurated. all you can do with values is state what values you have and be open to changing your mind.
Though it's tempting to think of design in terms of final output, say a chair or piece of software, it is more useful to think of design as a process that leads to an outcome intended to solve a problem. The kinds of problems to be solved can be in nearly any domain—physical objects, processes, interactions, foods, intangible systems, data representations, institutions, organizations, public policy all can be developed using a design process, though the concrete details of the design process will vary depending on the domain.
Design as a process
While it is possible for, say, the design of a more efficient dialysis pump or a better system for mobilizing non-voters during an election year to materialize fully-formed from a designer's head, this is a rare occurrence. More often, the design process iterates through several stages. You can begin this process at any one of the stages (and go in any direction). The process ends when the designer is satisfied with the outcome (or loses patience).
Defining the need (or problem-finding) often involves identifying problems to solve, problems to not solve, and criteria for judging solutions. Problems can be defined at many levels of abstraction and frequently interact with each other; the outcome of a design process reflects the constellation of problems driving the process. For example, Gmail (the webmail service) resulted from a process driven by numerous problems ranging from relatively abstract ones like "How can email service be improved?" to concrete ones like "How can webpage programming languages like HTML and Javascript be modified to make a web application feel like a client application to the user?" or "Folders are silly. What do we replace them with?" Often, research, prototyping, and testing will indicate either that that the problem needs to be redefined, or that solutions to the original problems posed generate new problems.
For the designer trying to solve a given set of problems, the universe of possible solutions to a given set of problems is infinitely large and insufficiently understood. Research helps begin the process of increasing knowledge of possible solutions while also eliminating impossible, unfeasible, inelegant, or problematic solutions. Conducting research takes different forms depending on the kinds of problems faced and the degree of design iteration that has already occurred. Some examples of research include market studies, patent searches, product testing, conference attendance, and field studies. The objective of research in the design process is to leave the designer with a smaller, more probably viable, set of possible solutions to dissect, recombine, and evaluate.
Often, evaluation is easier and more effective when possible solutions are given a more concrete form that designers and testers can interact with—a prototype. Prototyping can range from developing a policy proposal, to making wireframes (mockups of how webpages or software applications will look and the order in which users will encounter them), to 3D and physical models of varying degrees of precision. Prototypes made early in the iteration process tend to be simpler, faster, and cheaper than those made later in the process. Building prototypes used to be expensive and slow, and required extensive equipment and/or specialized knowledge (hence the proliferation of proof printers, model shops, one-off precision milling shops, and the like). Fortunately, fast, inexpensive prototyping software, hardware, and facilities are becoming increasingly available. Fast, inexpensive prototyping accelerates the design iteration process significantly, since prototypes are frequently the source of rich insights for designers, particularly in fine-tuning elements of the product and in recognizing new problems that must be resolved.
Design prototypes are evaluated against the solution criteria established in the design process's problem-definition stage. Designers collect information about the design's performance and use this to evaluate the design; in other words, they try to understand if and how the design should be modified in the next iteration of the design process. Particularly in the case of software applications, it is becoming increasingly clear that designs cannot be considered complete or effective if they do not include methods for collecting information needed to evaluate the application's effectiveness in solving the design problem. As with prototyping, gathering information about design performance has become easier, less expensive, faster, and more comprehensive for many categories of products.
Apr 3, 2012
les jardins
a box of macarons from pierre hermé landed, unexpectedly, in my hands last night.* macarons are a bubble which has not yet popped. a few years ago, most people wouldn't know them from a macaroon. today, many places with aspirations to quality (and some without those aspirations) manufacture and sell them. for a while, mcdonalds in france sold macarons.
macarons are little sandwiches with cookie shells made of ground and blanched almonds held in a flavoured meringue, filled with a flavoured ganache or cream. it is easy to make a mediocre macaron.
the shell is notoriously finicky. the meringue must be robust enough to support the almond flour during baking, requiring the maker to detect and respond to very small gradations in the texture of the uncooked meringue. this in turn responds to very small gradations in ambient temperature and humidity and the hydration of the meringue. macaron-making thus features many arcane directives. some recipes call for aged egg whites (which have lower water content due to evaporation). many formulations also call for uncooked macaron shells to be set out for a while to dry further and develop a skin on the top surface. this skin constrains the cookie as it rises during baking, producing the desired smooth, glossy top and rough-edged foot.
fillings should have flavours and textures that complement the shells. overly aggressive flavours are unfortunately common, but texture seems to be the bigger hurdle. many fillings in inferior macarons are poorly matched to the texture and robustness of their shells. biting into a robust shell causes a too-fluid filling to squeeze out of the sides. conversely, a delicate shell collapses too quickly around a too-rigid filling. both scenarios are untasty. (not incidentally, the same principle of textural harmony applies to sandwich construction and design.)
inevitably, average macaron quality declines as supply of macarons increases. i am happy to leave most macarons on the shelf, for those who would exchange their hard-earned doubloons for dense (or over-airy and/or sticky) shells and tasteless (or overly flavourful and/or overly avant-garde and/or poorly textured) fillings.
on the other hand, it is a good day when life hands you a box of macarons from pierre hermé. their shells have perfect texture, density, and surface, and just enough understated filling of precisely the right texture (some traditionally flavoured, others quite unusual). naturally, he is Big in Japan. confiserie sprüngli, conveniently close to the main train station in zurich, is another place to get very correct macarons of a different style. (and different name. these luxemburgerli are smaller, with a more fluid filling and a more delicate shell, and more traditional flavours.)
a great macaron is usually a rare and costly experience.
* thx journeyman; welcome home.
Apr 2, 2012
a prescription for a grand cuisine
A prescription for a grand cuisine: Take a vigorous people, give them an empire, let them get accustomed to the spoils, and then take it all away again ... bit by bit. Palates accustomed to good things will fight—hard, then harder still—to keep them, or to find replacements. Luxuries now rationed will become distilled. The ultimate cuisine may not be as luxurious as it was in its "glory," but it will be more inspired, more various, and more complexly realized. Roman cooking was lavish; Italian cooking is great.
john thorne and matt lewis thorne, "la cuisine creole," in serious pig.
Mar 31, 2012
Mar 29, 2012
you can't get there from here
and here we are, once more riding on the squeaky vinyl seats of the acela "express," mid-way between new york and boston. there's no easy and efficient way to get to princeton from boston. the least painful way is the most expensive (fortunately, today's travel was on someone else) and possibly the slowest: acela from south station to ny penn, transfer to nj transit for princeton junction, then transfer again to the appropriately named "dinky"* (filled with wearers of knit ties and blazers with elbow patches reading deleuze and lacan) which eventually deposits you at princeton station. there appears to be no unified booking system that will get you a routing across all service providers and allow you to purchase all the tickets you need. on the way to princeton this morning, total time door to door was 6 hours and 33 minutes. absolute serenity and lack of congestion in the streets did not quite compensate for waking up at 3.30am.
update: nothing like an account of an european train ride to put american rail service into perspective. thank you tyler brule.
* all-knowing max says: "'dinky' meaning small comes from the trains, not the other way around."
Mar 24, 2012
Mar 20, 2012
west coast weather report
i passed through san francisco this week on my way back east, causing two days of
nearly continuous mild drizzle across much of the bay area. weather notwithstanding, i walked through the mission as usual to inspect the latest crop of artisanal cafes and stores selling things that are nice but unnecessary, this time beginning at the blue bottle on mint street. by the time i got through soma, i had become most moist. this condition, for which tacos are
indicated, coincided with the close proximity of el norteno, a taco
truck in the parking lot on the corner of 6th and bryant. the carnitas
tacos did not disappoint, nor did the pickled carrots that came with.
aggressive weather promotes the development of moral fibre and philosophical thinking, for instance when you hole up in an ice cave with your sled dogs and reindeer carcase to ponder the transience of life while escaping a blizzard and polar bears. san francisco weather, in contrast, is much more like trying to fall asleep in an uncomfortably chilly room with a buggy thermostat, a too-thin blanket, and abundant finger foods.
Mar 17, 2012
galatoire's
after finishing late at stella! the night before, jake took one for the team and was in the line at 9am for the first seating at galatoire's. i got to a slower start and arrived around 10am after stopping for coffee (but not breakfast, for reasons that will soon become apparent).
ahead of us in the line were at least two people waiting to sell their seating options to fat-walleted diners for whom the allure of galatoire's does not extend to getting up early. for those seeking guidance: the hours before lunch can be profitably filled with the times-picayune (define: picayune) and pimm's cups imported from the bar around the corner. a folding chair may also be useful.
the doors opened at 11.30am and we moved upstairs to the bar, which was furnished with much in the way of wood and tradition. our request for dry vermouth on the rocks was misinterpreted. fortunately, as the bartender noted, "no one ever has trouble moving a couple shots of vodka." after milling about briefly, we were called to the dining room below.
jake and christina go often to new orleans, and are Known To The House. our lunch order was an ongoing conversation with their accustomed waiter, who vanished to put in for "some little bits to get you started." a sidecar soon arrived with robustly sugared rim and darkish aspect contributed by lemon juice of an antique variety. it tasted like no sidecar i'd ever had before but was perfect for those who enjoy dry, oxidative wines. not long after, plates of textbook soufflé potatoes and fried sticks of eggplant showed up. a small dish of powdered sugar came with, to be mixed with crystal hot sauce. i tried this combination to humour the table. everything became blurry after this first sortie, as careful accounting is neither possible nor desirable at galatoire's.
there were several plates of hot oysters, diverse gumbos, and stuffed eggplant (more accurately described as a large pile of crabmeat bound with cream and lightly garnished with eggplant). intermittently, tables of celebrants sang "happy birthday" and expected other diners to join them; this got old by the seventh or eighth rendition. if memory serves, other things that arrived were:
jake found bargains in the capacious wine list—a 2005 dry muscat from alsace from dirler-cadé and a 2001 alsace pinot gris from trimbach. the hard truth: i remember nothing more than that they were bone-dry with great acidity, great pairings for a long lunch light on meat and vegetables but heavy on cream and seafood.
dessert was unnecessary but arrived anyway: a perfect creme caramel (see more about gels here) and a sweet potato cheesecake. followed by a tureen of coffee dosed heavily with brandy, cloves, cinnamon, and orange peel, then set aflame.
certainly a nearly perfect meal, though perhaps not ideal for those with genetically high cholesterol levels.
we finished lunch at 5.45pm.
Mar 6, 2012
redmond, wa
there is nothing to eat here except teriyaki. last night, i went out and procured a large quantity of fruit and vegetables to accompany me during the long hours of writing, self-doubt, and evangelical television. a side effect of redmond's population of high tech workers is that grocery stores here sell decent wine. including a radikon 2002 tocai friulano mislabeled for an embarrassing price that did not prevent me from swooping down on it.
Mar 4, 2012
in seattle
right after i landed, i made sure the two bottles of wine in the duffle bag had survived unscathed, then to fox rent-a-car which stretches the definition of "airport car rental" to the breaking point in two of three possible ways. straight in to seattle to pick up some keys from way up north, then back down for a much delayed dinner at ba bar: big, hot bowls of pho, a pâté chaud to share (crisp, freshly baked puff pastry wrapped around a meat filling and topped with a fried egg), accompanied by a shot of clear creek kirschwasser.
now after a full-day coffee crawl (with one truly outstanding espresso from vivace and a nice siphon gedeo at seattle coffee works), i am sitting facing a wall of books, the largest home library about wine and food i have ever seen. and they're really good books.
could get used to this.
Mar 2, 2012
kastanienbusch
a month ago, i was lucky to drink a glass of birkweiler kastanienbusch riesling from oekonomierat rebholz. the wine smelt of a first-brew high-grown oolong tea (white flowers, green tannins, leaves) and was evanescent but not transient. it stayed around for a while, like a white stone unfolding slowly in many directions. there was too much talking around the table; this wine requires silence and a notebook.
some wines have a power and presence that derives from no apparent source, magical stuff of a lightness that constantly evades capture.
it is true, what they say, that civilization is weightless.
Mar 1, 2012
Feb 25, 2012
fencing
Over the years I've probably put up two dozen fences of one sort or another. And since I started from a state of ignorance which farmers' sons usually pass beyond between the ages of five and six, I have made every mistake but one that it's possible to make. I've put up a fence without bracing the corners. Strung barbwire from the bottom strand up instead of the top strand down. Put the small end of a post in the ground instead of the large. The one thing I haven't done is to use white or gray birch for posts. And there it was poetry that saved me, not common sense. Long before I thought of being a farmer, I had read most of Robert Frost, and could quote from 'Home Burial': Three foggy mornings and one rainy day / Will rot the best birch fence a man can build. It's not even much of an exaggeration.
noel perrin, first person rural
Feb 24, 2012
on wagashi
"the wagashi was an exquisitely beautiful miniature persimmon but ultimately forgettable, as all wagashi are." i wrote that years ago, and it is not less true today.
newsflash: pbarry, investigating the minamoto kitchoan in san francisco, reports on wagashi: "if I went the rest of my life without another one, I would not pine."
wagashi: what it is.
Feb 21, 2012
kodawari
more writing on craft and care in work here.
the new york times may have figured it out: instead of short, unpolished articles, how about some quality journalism? today's nyt contains two good reads about quality. the first one was about timothy barrett, the second was about not mocking the artisanal pickle-maker.
corky introduced me to a great japanese word: kodawari (こだわり). the word is now often used to describe cafes in japan where the baristi pay uncompromising attention to detail and quality in the preparation of coffee. (from darryl, other source of information about japan-related esoterica: "kodawari = unrelenting, exhaustive devotion to a chosen small area of expertise.") those interested in kodawari may also enjoy the wall street journal's report on how things are made better in japan.
i get flak all the time about buying into the single-origin, time-temp control, calibrated grind size, ritual of coffee (or chocolate, or wine, or cheese, or whatever). does this kind of nearly fetish-level obsessiveness always translate to a better cup of coffee? and, more important, can you tell even if it did? i lack the discernment necessary to distinguish reliably between the aromas of beans grown in different countries. the real reason i buy into this kind of thing is because it increases my expectation of getting a decent to excellent cup of coffee.
too many times, i've had junk coffee drinks. these are always made by someone whose mind was elsewhere, or who wasn't trained to notice the details that good craftspeople notice. nothing induces more of a sinking feeling in me than ordering a latte and seeing the characteristic greyish tinge of what will inevitably be a bitter yet tasteless brew. this is invariably accompanied by the barista spooning froth onto the top of the drink to imitate the microfoamed texture of correctly-steamed milk. the final insult is to be asked to pay an enormous sum for this junk beverage (i always do, filled with resentment).
if junk coffee (or food, or furniture, or software) is the price of spontaneity and openness to serendipity, sign me up for having the guy behind the counter calibrate his grind several times before pulling my espresso, time my pourover's extraction with a stopwatch, and measure his water temperature with a thermocouple. there is an element of showmanship and ritual here, but also the reasonable expectation that the coffee will, at very least, be made with an attempt at care.
and then, on the other hand, there's patience gray on winemakers:
In Apulia, the cultivation of the olive has always gone hand in hand with the vine. Planted together, the olive trees come into their own forty years later when the vines are in decline. It would be odd indeed to make your own oil without also making your own wine. For this an apprenticeship, not scholarship, is required, which the Sculptor served during the years we spent in the vineyards above Carrara. Everyone agrees that the magnificent wine he makes is better than the neighbours'. There are many reasons for this, one is that nothing is put in it, medicaments I mean. An artist who has taken risks all his life accepts the risk of his wine "going off" and only takes the more care of his barrels. The agriculturalist spoils his wine by "making sure."
from honey from a weed, which is certainly worth a read
a rectangle of radiant simplicity
The finished product was a rectangle of radiant simplicity, an unfancy, richly hued blank presence that was the predictable result, Barrett insisted, of selecting proper materials, preparing them in patient, time-honored ways and approaching their manufacture with a spirit of total dedication. “This is pretty much how it was done for 1,800 years,” he remarked. “By hand. One sheet at a time.”barrett worked at twinrocker paper for a while. the mark of the maker is a short documentary about them, and is worthwhile.
Feb 13, 2012
the sandwich report
yesterday, we went to canteen on mass ave for lunch. the BLT was a marvel. thoroughly browned and ultra-crisp hot bacon, decent tomato thinly sliced, snappy leaves of bright chilled romaine, avocado, red onion shavings, pepper mayo and a vinaigrette, on a warm, split-griddled iggy's focaccia roll. additional saucing in the form of a soft-yolked fried egg. $9.35 after tax: execution success.
getting off at the wrong stop meant a short walk through downtown boston. on a bright, warmish winter day, this was not a hardship. on the way, i passed by foumami ("the asian sandwich bar") and stopped for a sandwich made on shaobing, a variety of chinese pastry. freshly made, shaobing are marvelously flaky and tender. they become tough and untasty if allowed to cool or if reheated in anything but a quick, dry oven. so it was for foumami's shaobing, pulled from a holding oven set at 170F. the bread was not rescued by the filling, an uninteresting clump of thinly sliced chilled pork loin flavoured with cilantro sprigs and some shaved cucumber. $8.51 after tax: execution failure.
in the north end, galleria umberto was selling out of its last items. i missed the pizza (by one slice!), panzarotti, and the arancini but managed to snag the last ham, salami, and ricotta calzone. it was milky, faintly salty, richly savory. $4.25 after tax: execution success
and then i spent a lot of someone else's money at the store we all dream of working at, buying some rather interesting stuff.
Feb 12, 2012
bondir
bondir was already confident, understated, unusual, coherent, and generous a few weeks after it opened in december 2010. i've been back many times since. always reluctant to write about it, i was hoping to keep it from being overrun by the hordes. we all know how well that works. we went back for dinner after a long break and bondir is better than ever. the highlights:
a warm, firm yet creamy sac of shad roe coated in bread crumbs then sautéed (possibly even shallow-fried) in butter, with a scattering of spinach leaves, bacon, red onion and kohlrabi batons dressed in a vinaigrette made with confit yuzu (which tasted like kumquats). the whole roe sac is presented, an approximately crescent-shaped mass about the length of a beer can. this can be intimidating to the diner expecting something like salmon or flying-fish roe. the first bite erases all trepidation: it has the crunch of a great japanese croquette, and a mild but permeating sea flavour. shad, as is common knowledge, is an anadromous fish and the subject of john mcphee's book the founding fish.bondir's idiom is confident simplicity, inside which many complex and comforting layers unfold. service is unassuming and unobtrusive, competent, warm, well-informed, and unpatronising: a balance that any good restaurant seeks and few achieve. exotics and foraged ingredients are used often but in small, almost unnoticeable ways. they are not referenced in the menus but contribute bursts of unfamiliar or vaguely familiar flavour: allusion rather than outright statement. the casual diner passes by noticing nothing and enjoys the dish regardless; the gastro-nerd notices and his enjoyment is different but not deeper. the flashy-flash way to do seasonal food is to renovate the menu wholesale each day; bondir adopts the quieter approach of gradually introducing new components to each dish while retiring others. continuity with change, evolution instead of revolution. as with another instant favourite in tokyo, going back to bondir is an occasion for both pleasant familiarity and delicious surprises.
butter-poached lobster was the perfect texture, a soft and yielding crunch. the "celerisotto" underneath was outstanding: celeriac pieces cut down to the size of rice grains and cooked the texture of lightly al dente rice, in a light but creamy binding. the whole dish was dressed with an oily salsa verde, and adorned with raw discs of yellow carrots, brussels sprout leaves, and a few splinters of caramel made with kalamata olive. the faint sweetness of celery without its pungency, the strong green flavour of the salsa, the sweet brine of the olive caramel and the lobster. a wondrous combination.
chocolate panna cotta, which was a solid trembling on the edge of deliquescence. this is a simple but not simplistic thing, and its simplicity leaves no room for execution failure. edward espe brown says: "Preparing things simply is deceptively difficult, since there is no way to cover up our mistakes." (on execution failure in panna cotta, also see this diatribe.)
confit sunchokes on a piece of warm gingerbread with strips of quince leather and a lemon mousseline. the slowly cooked sunchokes became a translucent deep brown with the same chocolate and caramel overtones as the quince leather. with the warm spices in the gingerbread and the cool, tart lemon cream, the ideal meal-ender on a cold night. everything about this is tradition, tradition, tradition, and yet it isn't traditional. it looks unassumingly simple and yet it isn't simple. among the desserts, people seem to love the the tangerine dream, which is on the menu a lot: toasted meringue on top of gènoise layered with vermouth-infused tangerine pieces, and thyme-buttermilk ice cream. good, complicated-looking, spectacular, but too obvious! the much simpler-seeming desserts are where its really at: the crostatas, the cakes, the panna cottas.
francois chidaine's clos habert, a demi-sec 2009 chenin blanc from montlouis-sur-loire which was at once brilliantly acid and full of subtle sweetness. while i usually go straight for the acid, this one was best—taut and unctuous, lightly vinous—a little bit off the ice.
Feb 11, 2012
everything is relative
A scale is meaningless when some days you feel light and some days you feel heavy.
jim harrison, then and now
Feb 8, 2012
Feb 7, 2012
the land breathing
Watching the animals come and go, and feeling the land swell up to meet them and then feeling it grow still at their departure, I came to think of the migrations as breath, as the land breathing. In spring a great inhalation of light and animals. The long-bated breath of summer. An exhalation that propelled them all south in the fall.
barry lopez, arctic dreams
Feb 5, 2012
yat ka mein
in lucky peach 1, yat ka mein was depicted as a restorative, like menudo or kimchi. it didn't sound appetising: scallions, spaghetti, and pick-your-protein, in a soup spiced with cayenne. we were on north broad street lagging behind the treme sidewalk steppers sunday second line when the man chu hut, a pink-painted yat ka mein institution, loomed on the left. fate, as we know, looks askance at those who turn opportunity away when it knocks with a quart of soup noodles in its other hand. the yat ka mein was surprisingly tasty. the jury is still out on the oddly red shrimp.
Feb 4, 2012
Feb 2, 2012
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