John Kestner

MIT Media Lab, physical/digital designer. I hate computers.

[supermechanical]

Range Dial. Better looking, smarter cooking thermometer

Range Dial is the handsome, steel-capped evolution of our first smart thermometer, Range. We’ve learned a lot from how our customers use Range, and added the top requests: Bluetooth for wireless monitoring, and a second probe for ambient temperature. But we also thought carefully about how to make it work with as little fussing as possible.

Range Dial works with or without a smartphone. Having a connected device shouldn’t mean you have to mess with an app for the most basic functions. Just plug in the probe and turn the dial to a preset—Range Dial will beep at you, and you’ll also get a push notification on your phone when your food is done. Or open the app to have full control. It’s the best of both worlds.

Learn more on Kickstarter.

[jkestner]

This is one of the things I’ve been working hard on over the last year. We’d appreciate your support! Got big things planned for cooks and nerds and cooking nerds.

[supermechanical]

Range Dial. Better looking, smarter cooking thermometer

Range Dial is the handsome, steel-capped evolution of our first smart thermometer, Range. We’ve learned a lot from how our customers use Range, and added the top requests: Bluetooth for wireless monitoring, and a second probe for ambient temperature. But we also thought carefully about how to make it work with as little fussing as possible.

Range Dial works with or without a smartphone. Having a connected device shouldn’t mean you have to mess with an app for the most basic functions. Just plug in the probe and turn the dial to a preset—Range Dial will beep at you, and you’ll also get a push notification on your phone when your food is done. Or open the app to have full control. It’s the best of both worlds.

Learn more on Kickstarter.

[jkestner]

To paraphrase Michael Pollan: Write Javascript. Not too much. Mostly frameworkless.

I sympathize with those trying to keep up with tools. I sympathize more with users who don't care about novel interfaces nearly as much as they care about the information they're looking for. Load times and sluggish UI are killing the web relative to native mobile apps. We're offloading too much of the time-cost to users.

I won't make web apps any more. I use Javascript to add a little bit of ease to website functions, and I can do that with raw Javascript or if I’m lazy, jQuery. Anything else, I’ll spend time thinking about what the user wants and how to give it to them directly, rather than driving them away 500 milliseconds at a time.

[craightonberman]

Manual Coffeemaker: funding now on Kickstarter. Photo courtesy Michael of Good Beer Hunting.

[jkestner]

Does not come with glazed pork chops, but you should still get one. Functional sculpture!

[jkestner]

Don't doubt. Choose. And then after having chosen, really take care of whether you made the right choice. But make a choice. Don't wait.

Marcel Wanders

[jkestner]

I have always loved RSS because it gave me just the slightest bit of control and measure of accountability for the sites and blogs I read. I was able to sit back and opt out of most of the chatter, receiving only the important stuff without the risk of falling for false controversies and inaccurate news. I could spot editorial trends, identify site-biases, develop affinities for particular writers or aversions to others, and generally get the news on my terms. When a site stopped delivering a quality product, I had the satisfying ability to withdraw my subscription. Apparently that power was threatening.

Our Regressive Web. Full-content feeds are like instant Instapaper.

[craightonberman]

Read more: “Stretching the numbers with new success metrics” on Kickstarter

[jkestner]

Quantify your creative output (reblogging doesn't count). Note: the metal ruler itself does not stretch.

[jkestner]

To an outside observer, it looks like we're, like, the least disciplined people in the world (and, you know, in a way we are), but it's the unpredictability that keeps everything fun. When the guys decide it's too dang sunny to work and pile into a car and go to the mountains, nobody says, "Hey, we've got to work." Because we do work, all the freaking time. What we have to do is play.

Wil Shipley. Life is hard if you can't embrace unpredictability.

[jkestner]

Humans are incredibly good at trying new and random things when they get instant feedback.

Wil Shipley. That's the great thing about the physical world.

[supermechanical]

[jkestner]

supermechanical:

We tend to elevate artisanal, individually made objects for the exceptional care put into their creation. But as much human effort goes into making a great machine-made object. Mass production is itself an artform, and a modern miracle.

Friends, I can attest to this. We see the light at the end of the tunnel for Twine (which of course then leads to a narrow bridge over a canyon), and now I hope to find a bit more time to share this and other miracles I've experienced in the last several months.

[jkestner]

Given everything a phone can do, suggesting that the screen is the most important thing about it seems like a misunderstanding of what’s powerful in there. For me, the single most powerful aspect of the mobile phone is that it’s connected to other people and other things.

A conversation between Rob Walker and co-founder of Area/Code, Kevin Slavin : Observatory: Design Observer. Questioning the faith placed in AR (like QR, right?), but there’s a bigger philosophy here. My perfect phone is forgettable, saving my gaze for my environment. I don’t want to connect, I want to be connected.

[jkestner]

Your phone should know when you have a meeting across town and tell you to leave early because it's going to start raining. It should wake you up at 5AM because there's a fresh bed of snow on the hill and your better grab your sled before everyone else. It should tell you exactly when to leave the restaurant on your first date, timing it just perfectly so you both get stuck in a downpour trapped under that awning where you've planned the perfect first kiss.

Kickstarter blog, Featured Creator: Adam Grossman of Dark Sky. This is what even more data and context gets you. No comprehension, just the Right Thing happening. (But leave room for happenstance.) We backed Dark Sky.

[parislemon]

Remember when everyone was sure that Apple’s tablet was going to cost around $1,000? That was 18 months ago. We’re spoiled.

parislemon: Marco Arment Rips The Kindle Fire

[supermechanical]

We outsourced the future.

[jkestner]

supermechanical:

When we crystallize our manufacturing processes and ship them to the factory Over There, we lose the ability to improve them ourselves. This isn’t felt immediately, but outsourcing means you’re paying someone else to get better at it, and then they can use that expertise for their own benefit when new opportunities come along.

But you’ll just move on to the Next Big Thing, right? Unfortunately, you’re at a disadvantage there, because even new product categories are built on expertise in existing ones. Pisano and Shih offer the example of the rechargeable battery market, which is swelling to supply the most expensive component to tomorrow’s electric cars. U.S. companies can’t compete here because battery technology has grown by leaps and bounds in Asia, ever since we farmed it out along with the rest of our consumer electronics in previous decades.

[supermechanical]

[jkestner]

supermechanical:

We spent our weekend like Superman, bending steel. How was yours? What, it’s Thursday? Guess we took a long weekend.

[jkestner]

Products are props

Narrative seems to be required in products these days. Pornographic details of how this chair was assembled, where this jacket was discovered, the machines (not humans!) which carved my laptop out of metal. Lots of adjectives like 'hand-selected', 'rugged' and 'refined'.

It's because above a certain price point, consumers are buying authenticity that bolsters their own narratives. I didn't make this chair, but I support and am connected to the worker who did. I didn't find this jacket, but I'm the kind of person who could. Lord knows I didn't build this computer, but this is my digital canvas, not a digital grindstone. Even buying a generic brand becomes a conscious decision to say, I'm no-nonsense and unaffected.

Most product stories come frozen in a pre-purchase state. Shouldn't we get more in these malleable times? Designing for post-purchase wear is one branch—impose your own history on the object.

Another direction is to place the object in a fantasy. It acts as a portal to some other wonderful tale, in a very different way from a television. It might be a reminder of some past event.

Bye Bye Bird coffee table, Frøystad Klock. (via Pratt)

Or the object could be caught in the throes of the event.

Buffet Nouvelle Zeland Rencontre des Pôles (Meeting of the Poles), Vincent Dubourg. (via Core77)

Or to better incorporate it into your personal narrative, an object's state may be relevant to you right now, and hinting at some other story operating in parallel. Perhaps separation, love and loss?

Wherever dual time watch, Denis Guidone. (via Core77)

[jkestner]

...Sparks tries to deliver the kinds of thing you want to share with others, and Google hopes that its users do just that.

Inside Google+ — How the Search Giant Plans to Go Social | Epicenter | Wired.com

I don't mean to pick on Google. But this crystallizes the "memes as virus, humans as carrier" meme to me. Here Google+ claims to do even the work of curation for us, but it's on all social networks. We exist to pass others' content on, and pay the network for the privilege, in personal data. The medium is the message, but it's not our medium.

There's a whole generation of dumb ass kids who grew up convinced that they're creative in some way.

— The Atlantic, "The Secrets of Creative Success: An Interview With Rob Long"

I just worry that real creation will no longer be recognized as valuable. Are we creating real value when we retweet? Networks are encouraging us to invest in our "reputation," which ultimately is as ephemeral as derivatives. But the brokers always win.