My New Challenge

One of the smartest things that has ever been told to me was that it doesn't matter how cool or novel an organization system is. If it doesn't fit you, it's useless to you. I struggle to come to terms with that almost every day.

Now, for as long as I've been dating my boyfriend, his method of clothing organization has been what we might call...lazy. The important dress items got hung up promptly, but clean laundry tended to sit in a seemingly endless number of laundry baskets randomly littered around the the apartment. He didn't even have a dresser.

This was all well and good until we started living together and his room became my room. Thinking it would solve the problem, I made sure he finally got a dresser and closet space when we moved in. Six months into this whole cohabitation thing, the picture below is the after he cleaned picture (There's also one hamper in the foyer and one in our dining room), and his drawers are filled with the things he never wears.

So, being the enlightened designer I am attempting to be, I realized that what we have here is a user centered design problem. Clearly, traditional organization methods fall flat in this situation. Unfortunately, similar to the welders using Miller welders, he is perfectly happy with the system, and I want the change. So, I have started a side project to figure out how to solve this problem so we are both happy. My first step was to figure out why he does this even though he really does like a clean house (cognitive dissidence?). So I asked him about it.

Driving Factors of Current System for him:

1. Laziness upon coming back home with clean laundry. He doesn't want spend the time putting things in drawers.
2. Portability of wardrobe allows him to move his wardrobe out of the room so he can get dressed for work without waking me up.
3. Multiple hampers let him have "in" and "out" hampers so to speak which can adapt. A hamper can have clean clothes one day, and then change into a dirty clothes hamper with limited modification.
4. The laundry baskets are see-through. He can see all of the items and know what to choose.

So far my initial solution that he just put all of his hampers into the extra bedroom and give me his drawer space wasn't well received. I think I'll have to work a little bit harder.

Let me know if you guys have any insights, and I'll let you know when I make the next step!

Camera Phone Fail

Ok. I'm miffed. I was completely pumped when I got my HTC Pure. Sure..it was no cell phone super power, but it had a small form factor and had a 5 MP camera. My mind rejoiced at the thought of never having to worry about lugging around my camera (which I never used anyhow). Perhaps if the camera was always with me I would take more pictures!

Turns out that I was right about my behavior, but not the camera's...
I have taken some lackluster pictures....to put it lightly.

Given nice light, of course the phone takes pictures that are at least worthy of the internet. Below I've pasted in a great picture I took of the car in my booth at SEMA. The picture looks about how you think it would. Clearly, the cell phone isn't going to actually replace a real camera. I was just hoping for solid output like this.

I really noticed the problem with the camera when I tried to take pictures to post in my first blog entry about an elevator in my brother's building whose buttons always confuse me. Try as I might, there was no set of angles that would get the phone to take a reasonably clear picture in the moderately well lit elevator. Below is the best picture I could get. The elevator was by no means as dark as this photo came out. I got so upset that I ended up writing the post about the faulty camera and not the elevator. (It's time will come though, I'm sure) It's since occurred to me that I've had to delete most of the photos I actually would value because they were not clear It's almost like the camera knows when I would really like it to work...and then decides not to.

I think it's safe to say that HTC wanted the label of having a 5 MP camera in their phone but did not actually put in the time to make it work right. Perhaps having a flash would correct the problem.

It appears that the multitasking phone I've always dreamed of isn't here yet.

I haven't had a blog since Livejournal!

I think there is a very good reason I have not had a blog for the past 10 years.

Consider yourself lucky.

Get ready for some good times!