Two centuries of dirty dealings, death, and design all on your ATM card

Department of Almost Useful Information

I have my own business cards each with one of ten different ridiculous titles. One card simply lists my name and states “Department of Almost Useful Information.” You, dear reader, are about to learn why. And, be warned, I intend to do more of these posts in the future.

This is an actual business card of mine. Seriously. 

Since moving to New York City, I have come to see that this place is built as much of history as it is of steel and concrete. Very recently I came upon a narrative better found in a soap opera story arc than in a history book. It has it all: scheming characters, money, scandal, conspiracy, and death. And you may very well be carrying around in your wallet a piece of the story that all took place over two centuries just miles from where I now live.

So You Think You Know Logo Trivia

Sure. There’s the hidden arrow in the FedEx logo. Once you see it, you can never not see it again. And the “smile” in the Amazon.com logo is actually an arrow suggesting that they sell everything from ‘A’ to ‘Z’. But that’s kid stuff. We about to get all historical up in here.

Two Competing Visions for a Nation

Alexander Hamilton, first United States Secretary of the Treasury, as depicted on the $10 bill [image source].

Alexander Hamilton is generally recognized as the architect of the the U.S. financial system. We might argue that Hamilton is indirectly responsible for what is now thought of as the American way of life. Back in the 1700s, however, this idea was far from a settled matter. Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson represented two different views — very much in tension — as to the future of our fledgling nation. Hamilton envisioned the United States as an industrial and financial powerhouse. Jefferson saw a pastoral countryside dotted with self-sufficient farms. (This contention ultimately led to the U.S. capitol moving from New York City to the Virginia coast in a political negotiation. But that’s another story for another time.)

A Bank Charter That Never Quite Held Water

Aaron Burr, third Vice President of the United States [image source].

Out of his vision for the future of the U.S. (and in service to his own mighty ambitions) Hamilton founded the Bank of New York in Manhattan in 1784. To put this in historical perspective, the Bank of New York was founded before the modern United States. Recall that the Articles of Confederation were not replaced with the U.S. Constitution until 1789. In part because of his own policy making influence, Hamilton enjoyed a near monopoly on banking in Manhattan. However, Aaron Burr wanted in on the action. So Burr founded the Manhattan Company in 1799, ostensibly as a private water utility to supply clean water to the growing metropolis. Burr, being a rather cunning businessman, sneaked a clause into his water company’s charter allowing him to start a bank with excess water company capital.

Burr collected investment far exceeding that needed for a water company and was thus able to legally start a new and rival bank. Revealing his true intentions, Burr’s water company was largely a fraud. It never sourced a truly pure water supply and was assembled in shoddy fashion. The poor design of the system actually contributed to the diseases it might have otherwise alleviated. All the while, Burr’s bank continued to grow. (You won’t be surprised to learn that Burr’s Manhattan Company maneuver contributed to Burr and Hamilton’s increasingly bad blood and ultimately to the duel that took Hamilton’s life. But, again, that’s another story for another time.) Key to our present story is that the Manhattan Company’s water pipes were hollowed-out logs and wood planks—not at all uncommon for the time period.

Thanks to a number of mergers over many decades, Burr’s Manhattan Company became the direct forebear of today’s JP Morgan Chase. In fact, Burr’s bank kept up regular water committee meetings until at least 1899 (reportedly with a pitcher of their system’s water in the room). To maintain their good standing as a chartered water utility — lest their financial services be undone by legal action — the company continued pumping water from a well in lower Manhattan until the 1920s.

…Our Fathers Brought Forth… A New Logo

Two centuries of history in your ATM card logo (as of 2007) [image source]. See the logo inspiration.

In 1961, Chase Manhattan Bank contracted new branding and was presented with one of the very first abstract logos ever developed for such a prominent institution. You likely see that same mark every day as it is still in use by Chase Bank over forty years later. So what’s the story behind the logo? It’s a stylized version of a cross-section of the wooden water pipes originally used by the Manhattan Company over two hundred and ten years ago.

The logo on your Chase ATM card, then, represents the pipes of a two hundred year old swindling water utility that’s still in business today and long ago played some small role in Alexander Hamilton’s death. And yet every swipe of your ATM card is also the fruition of Alexander Hamilton’s grand vision for the United States of America.

Epilogue

In a twist of fate two hundred years in the making, in 2006 the modern day descendent of Burr’s bank purchased a portion of the modern day descendent of Hamilton’s bank.

Today, JP Morgan Chase owns the pistols used in Burr and Hamilton’s deadly duel! [photo]

In 2004, a backhoe came upon perhaps the finest specimens of wholly intact thirteen foot long hollowed out log pipes originally laid by the Manhattan Company [see article for photos].

Fidget Widgets: Twiddling your thumbs for fun and profit

[Cross posted at Note the Smile]

A Marginally Good Idea

Things to play with in our lab. For thinking.

Ever have an idea come to you all in a flash? I had one of those thoughts two years ago, and it’s slowly grown from a handful of interesting observations and questions into an ongoing research project. A really cool research project: Fidget Widgets.

Let’s back up. Watching a student in one of my classes bounce the arrow keys on her laptop keyboard led me to think about “software with margins.” And this led to investigating doodling, fiddling, and fidgeting behaviors. Fast forward and Fidget Widgets were born.

So What’s a Fidget Widget?

A Fidget Widget is [see video below]:

• Tangential. One “mindlessly” engages a Fidget Widget while mulling an idea or paused in work.
• Playful. The goal is the experience of the interaction not achieving a goal with the interaction itself.
• Digital. To allow for more supple experiences than possible in physical objects (e.g. infinite resources, large virtual worlds in small spaces, etc.) Fidget Widgets are programmable. Interactions are reactive, though not necessarily predictably so.
• Tangible. Engaging the bodily movement of fidgeting and doodling inherent in our physical inspirations, Fidget Widgets embody physicality beyond only screen-based abstractions.

Ultimately, our goal is to allow our users to select an interaction to play with in order to temporarily but measurably improve creativity, focus, or calm while working. We have much more work ahead of us to get there.

What We’ve Published + Latest News

My advisor and I published a Work in Progress Fidget Widgets: Secondary Playful Interactions in Support of Primary Serious Tasks at CHI 2013 in Paris. If you’re interested in a brief introduction to all the fascinating background work, this paper has you covered.

We just recently learned that our full paper Designing for the Physical Margins of Digital Workspaces: Fidget Widgets in Support of Productivity and Creativity was accepted for publication at TEI 2014 in Munich. This is my first full paper publication as a graduate student (I could get used to this globetrotting).

In other news, I now have the good fortune to be working  on Fidget Widgets with Kacie Kinzer of tweenbots fame. We have good things in the works (more below).

Video!

Early prototypes of the Fidget Widget concept. These aren’t games; these are playful interactions. See one of our papers to learn more.

What We’ve Learned So Far

We’ve learned so much. Doodling, fiddling, and fidgeting behaviors are widespread and not much research has been done of them. There’s a strong link between brain mechanisms and the hand. Mind, affective state, and bodily motions are all interrelated. People have strong opinions about the items on their desk they reach for while working. In fact, despite being fun and engaging, the prototype interactions in the video below have generated considerable feedback about the form factor and materials. Nearly universal in what we’ve heard is a desire for highly tactile, satisfying, and pliable objects. Rigid boxes of electronics are not the way to move ahead.

What’s Next

The two most immediate challenges are both design related: research study design and product design.

Conducting experiments with users are easiest when they have a direct experience with a manipulable intervention. Here our Fidget Widgets complicate much of traditional research design because they are intentionally tangential, mindless, and goal-less. At present we're looking into some of the innovative research done in developing the concept of Flow that shared some of these same research challenges.

What we’ve heard from users is that they want highly tactile experiences. The feeling in the hand requires much stimulation and variation. This will require lots of work with materials and sensors and unconventional electronics design. First, however, we’re stepping back and launching into design research to look at what sorts of objects our user population is already interacting with at their desks.

My advisor recently connected me to Kacie Kinzer. She and I are cooking up something online that we hope will attract some good attention and collect a rich picture of the items and materials and behaviors people employ when they fiddle with things at their desks. When we launch that, I’ll write more about it all.

I hereby refuse to call your creative work “Content.”

 Image credit: Martin Stabe [via Creative Commons]

I love the good the web and the Internet bring. They have become an extension of my brain. I suspect there are neurons in the back of my head slowly forming into a port to directly jack into the network.

But no good thing comes without unintended consequences. I’ve observed a phenomenon I suspect has paralleled the growth of the web: the tyranny of “Content.” Content strategy. Content marketing. Content distribution. Content syndication. Content. Content. Content. Web and streaming companies seem to build their “platforms” with the assumption they just need to find “Content” (user generated or otherwise) to fill their “channels.”

So what? 

Do you think of a Van Gogh as content? Shakespeare? So how about that blog post you saw a few years ago that was so beautiful it moved you to tears? Good content? How about that YouTube video so funny you showed it to everyone you know? Just content? How about anything you, dear reader, have ever toiled over? Have you thought to yourself, “I’m so happy with this content I just produced.”?

The rise of “Content” has served to obscure and trivialize the creativity of an online generation whether or not that work is expressly online. The stories, the poems, the films, the photos, the songs, and even the remixes. However brief and however terrible, that “Content” took effort and vision and creativity and maybe even guts to put out into the world.

So please forgive me if I pause a moment when talking about any such work of creation — maybe yours — as I find the right word to credit its author, however anonymous, for the gift they have given us.

ca·reer /kəˈri(ə)r/ [noun]: A word invented chiefly to provide guidance counselors with careers.

[Embedded video: Monster.com “When I grow up…”] 

Words and ideas and culture are all tangled up with each other. The definition of a given word may be harmless enough, but its real meaning, with all its cultural baggage and unspoken connotations, can come to embody incredible influence.

Career is a word that has quietly amassed untold power. Websites and conferences and books and entire industries are devoted to its realization. Its entry in the dictionary is unassuming: “An occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person's life and with opportunities for progress.” So why does career feel like such a heavy, imposing, stress-inducing, worrisome, self-worth destroying thing?

I’ve come to think this is because the idea of a career exists in a loveless marriage with another idea, the notion of security. If we have a good career — our thinking goes — we’ll have the good life. Our paycheck will cover our needs and wants. Our work will bring us satisfaction. We will attain status and influence. Our friends will respect us. Our family will be protected. And we have come to believe that each step along a proper career path should be a step up to greater income and more responsibility and further achievement with more satisfaction and security.

What utter nonsense. 

“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”

— Niels Bohr (disputed)

“Where do you see yourself in five years?” Don’t you just hate that question? If we were any good at answering this question, we might be better off picking lottery numbers or buying undervalued stock and then phoning in our answer via satellite from our own private island. Wait. Why would I even need to answer the question? I digress.

Wise decision making is virtuous, and I am not advocating for recklessness. However, I am arguing that any presupposition of security in life’s decision making is an illusion. Projects fail. Markets change. Economies rise and fall. Insurance plans get cut. Opportunities are missed. Scandals unfold. Life happens, and it’s messy. More often than not, following after the false god of security leads to a series of sacrifices where each compromise builds on the last until we find ourselves locked away in a comfortable jail cell of our own making.

I once had breakfast with someone who had an idea and opportunity for a new business. He was clearly enthused about it. I asked him what was holding him back from pursuing it. He replied that he could not jeopardize the security of his family. In one of the rare moments I had something sharp to say in response I asked, “Which does your family need more… the illusion of security or you fully alive?”. I think I’ve had a good retort like that maybe three times in my whole life.

Why not live as though my job is insecure and experience the freedom this provides? Why not spit in the eye of all the ways a career should go and set my sights on adventure or helping others or achieving the supposed impossible or creating beauty — something that matters more than the empty promise of job security? Taking chances means you are likely to work to make ends meet out of necessity. It is living in near complete dependence on a system that could lay you off on a moment’s notice that seems nuts to me. I’ll grant you that even being able to consider such questions is born of a privileged station. However, if we are so privileged, dear reader, I believe it is incumbent upon you and me to ask these questions and make the most of that privilege.

Morbid as it may be to imagine, if you could have a conversation with yourself on your own future deathbed, do you think a nice steady career development track would rank high in that conversation? Then why are you on that track — real, imagined, or put upon you?

Maybe career is best understood simply as our history and not our future. Perhaps a career is only the series of twists and turns that were the envelopes holding your paychecks before today. Tomorrow is tomorrow and not wholly determined by yesterday.

Am I suggesting this perspective is an easy one to embrace? Nope. But I am suggesting it is a good one to embrace, a freeing one to embrace. Am I advocating that everyone embark on adventure to start their own business? Certainly not. Maybe the most freeing thing you can do is work for less money in a different occupation. Maybe it’s to climb the ladder for a while so you can retire debt as quickly as possible and then move on unencumbered. Am I encouraging breadwinners to shirk responsibility in light of the needs of their family? Absolutely not. However, I am advocating a stare down with the ideas of need and security so as to watch them flinch and shrink away as their true nature is revealed.

In this particular season of my life where I have been blessed with the opportunity to struggle after something more than a nice safe career I can be cavalier about saying these things. I hope, though, that by having written these words down they will press against me when I inevitably stray over the border into the fiefdom ruled by the feudal lord of career.

Open Sesame — Using research to make security awesome and not just less sucky…

 Open Sesame is a current research project of mine. The name comes from medieval arabic literature (a phrase uttered to unlock a secret cave). The basic concept is explained in a TV commercial below. Say what? Look. In my opinion, good research simply does not involve enough fake TV commercials.

The motivations for this project are manifold. Briefly, some of these interrelated motivations include:

• Research shows that bodily motions can measurably improve our mood.  People do not generally enjoy security mechanisms, and so they circumvent them. Perhaps a gesture-based security system could be an enjoyable one that is not circumvented. 
• Biometric systems will some day become inexpensive enough as to replace other authentication mechanisms. But biometric systems simply cannot always perfectly recognize users. Might users still adopt biometric systems they truly enjoy using despite their failings? 
• Researchers in the area of usable security tend to assume that security and usability are in tension with one another. What if we scrap that assumption and shoot not just for usable security but pleasurable security?  Also. Silly gestures.

The technical work to implement this project is ongoing. However, we are beginning to publish our work. So far, we’ve published a Work in Progress entitled Open Sesame: Re-envisioning the Design of a Gesture-Based Access Control System at CHI 2013. 

A Usability + Security research project. Yes, presented as a commercial.

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All tripods all the time: My development space.

Three depth cameras, two web cams, and three computers.​