Chris Johanesen

This is my tumble log. I do web stuff for BuzzFeed. My home page is here. Thanks for stopping by.

herbivorg:

A lot of Americans think they’re eating a healthy diet these days. But it’s easy to be fooled by our assumptions and the ways that food manufacturers play on them.

WSJ’s Melinda Beck sheds some light on shady food product labeling that’s been going on lately.

Off-topic — I found this particular bit really interesting:

Take chicken. The average American eats about 90 pounds of it a year, more than twice as much as in the 1970s.

Read the article in full for some important info about food labels such as salt substitute, trans fat, wheat bread, etc.

Joshua Porter asks “Is there a process that guarantees good design?” My response:

I think a lot of this type of discourse depends on the assumption that designs are finite, stand-alone products. If a designer works in a continuous and holistic manor, constantly refining and improving the product, it becomes much harder to count successes and failures.

I think that Apple sees not just each product as an evolving design with iterations, but rather their whole strategy for a particular problem is the product. For instance, you can look at iTunes, the iTunes Music Store, and each type of iPod as separate products, or you can look at Apple’s overall strategy (to profit from improving the user experience of finding and listening to music) as a product.

I believe Apple’s success is founded less on process and more on the fact that they take a holistic and iterative approach to “product” design that integrates everything and everyone involved from design to engineering to manufacturing to business strategy.