Since its 2008 launch, designer Brendan Dawes has been racking up arts awards for Doodlebuzz, an interactive news discovery application powered by the Daylife API. Describing how he built Doodlebuzz with Daylife, Brendan writes,
DayLife is creating a new architecture of news. They believe that reading the news should be more fun and less of a chore. So they’ve created a wonderfully powerful platform that allows designers, developers and artists to create new kinds of news applications using their DayPI
Below, find Doodlebuzz screenshots and Bren’s answers to our questions on Doodlebuzz, Daylife, and how using code in design is enabling a new generation of creation.
Who are you? How did you get to where you are now?
I’m a 43 year old designer and the creative director at magneticNorth, an interaction design company based in the city of Manchester in the UK. Though recently I’ve had people think I was only eighteen and lived in New York. I guess on the web you can be anyone or anything. Today I’d like to be Lavinia, a cute Pekinese constantly pampered by my obscenely rich, though lonely, widowed owner. Woof.
As to how I got here, I’m note really sure; I do know that nothing was planned as such. After leaving school with no qualifications I was a news photographer for while, following in my dad’s footsteps, then did some music stuff including releasing a few 12″ singles during the UK rave scene, after that I worked in a factory for eight years before discovering this web thing in 1995. I’d always been playing around with computers doing the odd bit of programming here and there and I think my natural curiosity for the new made me think that maybe this web stuff might be big.
How did Doodlebuzz come to be? What was the creative process or inspiration?
I was bored. Bored with what’s touted as great web design, thinking to myself surely this isn’t it, there must be more we can do? I love serendipity; chance occurences and discoveries that can take you to unexpected places. Yet most information is shown as a linear list which is fine for reading in a conventional manner but doesn’t allow for bumpng into things. So I started to think about designing an interface that celebrated chaos, but also removed the conventional idea of interface. What if you drew your interface, or at least the layout? Would that be a good thing? So I created doodlebuzz to explore that idea and to offer an alternative to the normal way we’ve become accustomed to navigating information.
How did you first discover Daylife?
I can’t remember to be honest, though it was probably just from following a found link here and there whilst looking at different APIs. Like most good things in life I just bumped into it by chance.
What did you see as the best benefit/value of using the Daylife API?
It does lovely things such as finding related topics to a particular news item, which meant I could use doodlebuzz to explore related stores which is where it got interesting. Using that you can find yourself in a place you never thought you would be, or get a bigger overview about a certain story. The API is an absolute joy to use with wonderful documentation and a stellar community and support team (thanks Vineet!). Response time to any technical queries was always quick, but more than that the Daylife team would go out of there to fix things or even add a new feature request. You really get the feeling that the guys and gals behind Daylife are super excited about the possibilities and are keen to help people make really cool stuff with the API.
What was the biggest obstacle in using the Daylife API?
I wish integrating images was somehow easier. Getting deals in place with people such as Getty just isn’t an option for lone developers, especially when you just want to play around with stuff, though as a company mN used Daylife with Getty Images and it worked really well. I’d just like to have a source of images to play with that wouldn’t require me to jump through hoops, but I totally understand why it is like it is.
What do you see as the most exciting thing happening in design right now?
Designers who use code as part of their design toolkit, or even at the heart of their approach, have now become, or are becoming transformers of the things we use everyday. The iPhone and devices like them are 98% software, which means as a designer using code I can mutate a device to be something other than a phone, which lets face it is only a very small part of what say for instance the iPhone can do or be. That’s incredibly exciting as designer and especially for me as someone who has an interest in interface design. Suddenly we have devices that are more fantastical that even the best sci-fi writers could imagine. On top of that societies relationship with technology is changing radically. The opportunities to interact everyday, in fact every second, with devices that are becoming invisible through their ubiquity and that of the networks that serve them have increased ten fold which opens up more possibilities but also greater responsibility to create better, more thoughtful design.
What are you working on now?
Lots of things including; a new iPhone app to follow my little playful Elena app, the official site for Visit Manchester (with the mN team) that is going to really alter what people perceive a tourist site can be, exploring a new identity system for mN alongside a further iteration of mnatwork.com, writing a load of lectures and presentations for the year ahead including SxSW, various interface explorations and a new Daylife app using the Wacom Bamboo Mini as a gestural interface.
What would you like to see next from Daylife?
Hmmm not sure. Just keep surprising me and I’ll be happy. Actually if you could knock out a time machine, that would be cool.
Thanks Brendan! Discover Doodlebuzz here, or look at Brendan Dawes’ portfolio site.
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