Back in March, a driver drove into a crowd in San Francisco, hitting 5 people and killing one. I was absolutely sick reading about it, and frustrated, and saw those same feelings emerging in reactions online. One of them stood out to me, from Wired’s Kevin Kelly:

While I recognized his point and the place from which it came, the tone struck me as a slightly backwards way of thinking about it. In my role within Ford’s Greenfield Labs I think about these issues a lot, but our focus on human-centered design means I try to keep the human…

Remember that scene in Forrest Gump where Forrest is running with those horrible metal leg braces, and suddenly they break free and he can run at his full, beautiful, graceful gait? You’re Forrest Gump. Running is a metaphor for Design. And those leg braces? They’re mood boards.

I recently found myself sitting behind the wheel of a brand-new Volvo SUV. Beautiful thing. I haven’t driven a brand new car in ages, and experiencing an interior that was 20 years more advanced than my own truck’s interior helped crystallize a concept about Interactive Design I’ve been thinking about for some time:

As designers, we want to be novel in our work — our nature is to think we can solve a problem in a way that is wholly better than those that have solved it before us. This is why we do what we do. …

WANTED: Ambitious, world-changing, idealistic rock-star ninjas to come crush it and disrupt the education space.

We’re looking to fill a leadership position, but little to no experience teaching is required. In fact, you’ll be encouraged to learn as you go! Do you want to change lives? Do you want to sacrifice your own time and livelihood in a profession that’s every bit as important as medicine or architecture, but with far, far less of the public’s respect and admiration? LET’S DO THIS.

ALL ABOUT YOU:

You’re a Self-Starter Like being independent? We need you to be able to dive right into the job with almost no formal training, and expect you to rise to the…

Believe it or not, some New Yorkers actually drive. And for those of us who park on the street, keeping track of whether the city’s draconian Alternate Side Parking rules are in effect is an everyday annoyance.

As with all great inventions, that annoyance spurred us here at Hard Candy Shell to create Parkside, a simple iOS app that lets you know about both scheduled and emergency suspensions of the ASP rules. Parkside will let you know if Alternate Side is in effect both today and tomorrow, as well as what parking holidays are coming up. It’s got smart night-before notifications, and even an Apple Watch app for quick checks.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about road trips. I can’t describe with true accuracy how important they were to my youth, how those hours spent behind the wheel on some stretch of highway shaped me. I used to look forward to them weeks in advance, and the thing I looked forward to most was the music.

I’d work for hours putting together different mix tapes (and later CDs), some for day driving, some for night. The night tapes tended to fall into two categories: those you needed to listen to stay awake, and those you listened to when you…

“Why can’t I be loved as what I am? A wolf among wolves, and not as a man among men.” -Will Oldham

My uncle died this morning.

As a human society, we trend towards a winnowing domesticity, a smoothing of the rough. The nail that sticks out gets hammered down. Childhood processes us towards these ends — adulthood is about responsibility, about conforming to a model. This is rational, sensible — to survive, we need to move as a pack.

Jim was the proud nail. He was the first adult I met who stood in an almost…