Unless the acronym spells out something easily recalled AND directly related to the topic at hand – even if the acronym spells a commonly-used (but unrelated) word – it will likely be viewed as jargon.

As an example, a database containing information about marine organisms

• can be found at http://www.marinespecies.org/
• the “name” appears to be “WoRMS”
• the full title is the “World Register of Marine Species” (not all of which, by the way, are nemotodes, pognophorans, or other organisms that would commonly be referred to as worms that live underwater).

What problems does this lead to? Labeling the site with a term which really has a divergent meaning from the content of the site:

1. Requires more cognitive effort on the part of the user to perceive and understand why the site .
2. Decreases the user’s ability to directly relate the url to the site’s identity, making it more difficult for them to return later or refer others to the site.
3. Distracts the user from their intent: they must process a name which diverges from the url they have just entered or selected, determine if they have really reached the right place, then process why the site is called “Worms” when they think it’s ’supposed’ to be about fish, corals, octopi, etc.

This is particularly true when all three terms are used interchangeably throughout the site – especially when the multiple terms are incorporated in the copy.

In toto, when these web-accessible ‘databases’ are in the early stages of development, every effort should be made to make the information not simply accessible to the public, but the information should be comprehensible by the public as well. Ideally, applications for funding used to develop databases which could be used by the public should consider including resources for consulting with an interaction/user experience designer to ensure that the resource is made as useful and accessible to as wide an audience as possible.

Why care about making your resources accessible to a wider audience? Nah, there’s no need to make your bioinformatics database to third graders… but there is a need to make the landing page useful. The website is one place where you control your message – no peer review, no words twisted by the media. A carefully crafted message will get across exactly what you want to say. And to understand what you do, the public needs to know not simply what you do, but why you do it. Your website is where you can tell them.

Science doesn’t exist in a vacuum – and if it continues to be practiced in a vacuum outside the reach of society, it will continue to diminish in relevance to the lives of those who ultimately foot the bill.

But the more people understand about science, the more they care. And the more they care, the more likely they are to support the sciences. Increased public support means more funding… and we all know that more funding means more knowledge you can derive… and the more good you can do.

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About 45 minutes after enquiring as to what we had put in the bowl, our green monster cake came out of the oven.  She had magically turned it into a verdant, yet quite tasty spice cake  (a miracle, quite possibly, as the two items I recall within reaching distance from our fridge in those days were anchovy paste and Aquavit).

Why is that memorable?  It taught me creativity and ingenuity in the kitchen can sometimes lead to fantastic, although slightly bizzare results.  Thanks to that fantastic experience, to this day I’m hard pressed to follow a recipe to the letter.  I have an appreciation for all types of cuisine, and I’m open to the bizzare.

And I really like green food.

But now I have a problem. I’m addicted to books full of fantastic diy projects – various forms of knitting, electronics, sewing, glasswork, cookbooks… but I never seem to actually MAKE anything from those shelves full of books, taking up so much valuable space and collecting dust in my tiny San Francisco apartment.

I justify my addiction by claiming I use the books as reference material, as inspiration, as a resource for acquiring new techniques… but still, I never use them as originally intended.  Even if I do try my hand at a pattern, a recipe, or a circuit from the pages of those books, the original intent of the author gets lost somewhere along the way, subverted in favor of my own ideas.  Sometimes they work… and sometimes they don’t (as evidenced by my large storage container full of unfinished circuits, my drawers of partially completed mutant sweaters).  I want to make it my own, fulfilling my own vision.  As my mom likes to remind me, my favorite phrase until the age of 5 was “me do my myself,” when it was replaced with other various phrases as I became a bit more grammatically adept.

Regardless, it’s the process of creation that I enjoy.  I don’t want to blindly follow directions, I want to engage the ideas of the author, collaborating in the creation of something new, something novel.

For this reason, I instantly fell in love with Fashioning Technology, a book from the makers of Craft and Make Zines.  Not only does it integrate my two great loves (crafting and geekery), it’s beautifully laid out, and chock-full of useful information for integrating electronics into wearable, huggable designs.

It has enough information for the budding SmartCrafter to grasp a basic understanding of the science behind circuit design, but focuses on the “how” rather than the “why.” And for those of us that learn better through example than explication, that’s a good thing.  You’ll have to find another reference if you want to move on to more complex projects, but this is a great place to start.

Fashioning Technology also includes descriptions of the components, including some topics I haven’t seen addressed in other diy circuitry books:

• solder leads onto solar cell fragments so that you can get them more cheaply
• how to hack into all of those old power adapters you still have from long-gone cell phones and other small appliances to provide power for your projects
• making your own resistors.
• making switches from snaps, zippers, magnets and grommets
• making momentary “soft” switches from conductive material
• etching your own circuitboards

Although I don’t envision myself making any projects directly from this book, it’s such a great reference that it’s retaining one of the few places of honor on my end table.

More about the book beyond the cut.

Topics covered in Fashioning Technology:

The Basics
Materials and Tools:

• Conductive and Smart Materials
• Industrial materials
• Overview of electronic components
• What you need in your toolbox

Why stuff works:

• LEDs
• Simple circuits
• Choosing and hacking into power supplies
• Soldering (and desoldering!)
• Screen printing (using photographic emulsion)
• Sewing soft circuits
• Troubleshooting

The Projects:

Things to wear:

• LED bracelet (or cuffs, for the gents)
• “Rock Star Headphones” a soft headband with built-in headphones
• Space Invaders tote bag  – lights up to let you know when your cell phone rings
• Aerial the Birdie Brooch – don’t fully understand this one, but it has the coolest circuit board design EVER!

Things for the house:

• Photochromic Blinds -  remember Hypercolors t-shirts?  Substitute UV-radiation for body heat and you’ll get the concept.
• Luminescent Tea Table – glow-in-the-dark screenprinting on a cardboard nightstand.
• LED Chandelier – a modern replacement for those of us without the original crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling of our Victorian flats.
• Rock ‘N’ Roll Speakers – powered by a 9-volt battery with an ingenious on-off mechanism

Things to play with:

• Emoting Electronic Finger Puppets – they blush (LEDs), tremble (vibrating motor), and spew fire (fiber optics).  If any of my friends ever have offspring, guess what they’re getting for their birthdays!
• Glam the Glo Bug – so much cooler than the GloWorm dolls of the 80s (was I the only one who thought those looked less like gloworms, and more like maggots?), Glam lights up when the lights go down.  On his own.
• A sonorous Solar Crawler – remember the toy kitchens and lawnmowers every church day care had to teach us how to fit into our gender roles?  The solar crawler is kind of the same as those lawnmowers, except instead of pushing this, you pull.  And instead of lawn-mower-y sounds, the built-in flexible solar panel translates solar energy into song.
• Hanging Mobile – kinetic sculpture using shape memory alloys to control the movement of the mobile.

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If Microsoft built your car, your car would crash randomly three times a day while you were driving down the road… and every time you made a left turn.
or
If Microsoft built your car, every few months you’d have to reinstall a new transmission, but you wouldn’t be able to figure out why.
or
If Microsoft built your car, all the warning lights are replaced with a single dashboard indicator which lights up to read ‘Your car has experienced an unexpected error” - but it is only after the engine is ‘unable to recover.’

Microsoft doesn’t immediately bring to mind stability, reliability, or even functionality.  If Ford’s main marketing pitch for the Focus is letting people know that they’re integrating Microsoft technology, they must really be in trouble.

Would anyone truly be motivated to purchase a car that was ‘powered by Microsoft,’ regardless if it is the automatic transmission or in-dash bluetooth stereo?    If that’s the main selling point, Ford has nothing else to say about the Focus. Sorry, Ford.  I’d trust my old ‘91 Escort (RIP) before picking up a new Focus that forced me to interact with highly cumbersome and wholly unreliable Microsoft technology.

But it’s not just that I wouldn’t buy a car powered by Microsoft: I’d prefer not to be driving down the interstate next to someone driving a new Focus when they’re trying to figure out how to use their new toy.

User failure is inevitable (particularly before coffee)… more so when it comes to Microsoft products.  And even with voice activated products, there’s room for distraction from the road, and there’s definitely room for error.

Some things just aren’t sexy.  And some cross-marketing initiatives just aren’t smart.

Sorry, Ford.  FAIL.

Related posts:

1. Me Do My Myself: renegade baking, creativity, and Fashioning Technology