Post-It Art: Ms. Pacman

It started when I tried to accomplish something in a software 3 times in a row and failed. Out of frustration I went looking for a creative outlet.

Earlier on I had purchased some small square Post-It notes, so I thought maybe I can add to the wall that already has a giant thumbs up sign on it with some more Post-It art.

I did Ms. Pacman first.  I had a limited supply of colors and my initial idea of doing the Mario 1-Up Mushroom wasn't going to work since I had no black squares to work with.

One of my colleagues colored a white square in with a black sharpie to create the single black mole for Ms. Pacman.

After lunch and some meetings, I came up against another road block, so I went back to the wall and added the blue ghost and cherry with the little "white" dots.

White wasn't going to show up on the white wall so green was used instead. I also originally did the blue ghost when it's in "edible" mode, but it was a bit small and the resolution wasn't fine enough to reveal the squiggle of its mouth.

At the end of the day, I went back and replaced the blue ghost with a "normal" one that is bigger in dimension, so I could have the resolution I needed to give it a proper shape and also proper eyes.

With this version, I didn't need the mouth, which worked much better. Using the same technique as earlier, a colleague helped me color in a few white squares as black for the eyes.

Connecting the dots (literally) with the original thumbs up on the wall, that was done by my colleague many weeks before.

Finally, another colleague mentioned it might make sense for the ghost to be looking back at Ms. Pacman. I agreed and we went about moving the eyes so it looked to the upper left instead of the bottom right.  A master piece in 8-bit pixels, if I may say so myself. :)

Wally the Green Monster Pillow Pet

Is there really anything to say besides I'm envious of those who have the cool job of designing all the variations of pillow pets out there?  In this case, it's Wally the Green Monster - the Boston Red Sox mascot.

I happened to go on a tour of Fenway Park and we were told to wait in the team store before it started.  As soon as I saw this I knew I wanted it. After 20 min of roaming the store, I found myself circling the display, so I knew I needed to buy it.  It's fun, and it's functional (as a pillow)!  Form AND function! Imagine that! :)

M&M Merchandising

So I must admit that I'm an M&M character fan. I'm fairly sure, if I dig through my art portfolio, there's a blue M&M (maybe it's yellow) somewhere in there. Actually, thinking about it, it might even have been a middle school art poster (in which case it was most definitely yellow and not blue).

Anyway, I've always been a fan. I think things that are round with a face on it are cute, and they're even funnier when they talk and are personified.

This shouldn't be all that surprising, after all, the baby-face bias is a well known design principle (things that look like babies will naturally appeal to us - it's an evolutionary instinct - after all, if we found babies ugly, we wouldn't protect it, and the human race wouldn't be able to continue).

Therefore, when I walked into the M&M World store in Time Square and saw this giant Blue M&M dressed like Elvis rotating on a disco floor I couldn't pass up the chance to really act like a tourist and get my picture taken with it.

I have to bow to the absolute genius of the toy designers when I saw the Lady Liberty M&M dispensers in the store.

Of course it makes sense to have a Lady Liberty dispenser when you're in NY.  Integrating it with the Green M&M, which, up until the beginning of this year, was the only lady M&M, is pretty ingenious.

I actually saw this on a previous visit, but didn't buy it because (1) I had not seen the real Statue of Liberty yet (2) if I had an M&M dispenser, then I would be eating lots of M&Ms.

But since I made it to the real Statue of Liberty this time, I could justify the purchase.

This is the genius of M&M merchandising. I'm envious of the toy designers who were in the position to create such an ingenious product. If only I trained in industrial design, I might have had a shot at working as a toy designer for them! Oh well, I'll admire with my pocket book instead.

Tetris on the Green Building

One of the best MIT hacks in my lifetime (so far) is when MIT turned its Green Building into a live Tetris game.  I had the privilege of playing the game on the Green Building and it is by far one of the most memorable experiences I've ever had playing any game in my life.  

The action is all captured in this almost 4 minute video.  I would have lasted a lot longer if there weren't so many "dead pixels"! Some offices had their lights on, which interfered with where there might be blocks, while other offices were completely dark.  Those "dead pixels" interfered with providing feedback of where there is an existing block, which proved to be my downfall early on (around the 1 min mark).

It just goes to show how important providing feedback to the user is when it comes to interface design.

What to do with old business cards

Ever wonder what to do with old business cards? Back in the day, we didn't have the magic of Google to help us figure this out, but nowadays it's really as simple as typing in "what to do with old business cards" and voila! there are many answers to choose from.

One of the most fun ones I came across is to make cubes. It takes 6 cards each, and you make these "U" square brackets with each one. Then with some finagling they fit together without any tape or glue to form a cube! When you make enough of them you can stack them and do other fun things with them.

cubes pyramid!

The key is not to take them apart. I gave them to some engineers and the first thing they wanted to do was pull them apart to see how they were put together. But the card's fold elasticity gives out if you do that and it won't hold the shape anymore. So don't take it apart!

I made a whole bunch before hand to give to people, but still had a good third of the box left, so I was teaching everyone else how to do it too. We did this at the bar, and the bartender was very confused. At one point we made enough boxes to build a short wall, and I was trying to get to the menu beneath - I was boxed in, literally. =P

You can also make more intricate things like a frog, which if made correctly, can actually jump when pressed. At one point one of these little critters made it onto my shoulder.

Watch out for that frog!

But it's all good! I wouldn't be so calm if it were a real frog.

Teresa, Michelle, me, and Len

So all is well in the end. We tried to get a normal group photo but someone had to be super tall when they're already tall for some reason.

Katie, me, Teresa, Ksenia, Len, Craig

I think someone else must have a normal photo of us somewhere. But for now, this is the best I got. :)