Ken Burn’s documentary on Frank Lloyd Wright shows Wright did the actual drawings for the famous Falling Water house in less than three hours! [via TSY] Related:Picasso, Paula Scher, and the lifetime behind every second [SvN]
User Interface
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Signal vs. Noise
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VIDEO: Ken Burn’s documentary on Frank Lloyd Wright s
6 Nov 2009 | 8:10 am -
INSIGHT: Designs take a leap forward when you kill
5 Nov 2009 | 12:20 pmDesigns take a leap forward when you kill the things you didn’t know you were holding on to. -
Haystack: Two Week Anniversary + Latest Updates
5 Nov 2009 | 10:43 amHaystack is off to a great start. We launched two weeks ago on October 21st, and so far over over 2,500 web designers have been listed. Lots are finding clients as well. That’s exciting. We’ve been hard at work improving Haystack. Here are some of the improvements we’ve made since launch: Call to action footer At the bottom of each company page, we’ve added a call to action after their portfolio shots. This way it’s easier to scroll through someone’s work and then get in touch with them. It says “Like what you see? Contact via email or web.”… -
New Car Camo
5 Nov 2009 | 7:01 amCar companies go to great lengths to hide new models from from the public (or car paparazzi) during road testing. They’ve gotta drive the cars, but they don’t want to give away their designs too early. Car camouflage used to be handled with wraps, fake bodies, or fake pieces attached to the actual body. Like: But lately I’ve noticed more companies using swirly decals or geometric stickers to mask the shape. Check these out: I would assume once cars get deeper into the testing phase, and aerodynamics, wind noise, and overall ride quality need to be fined tuned, the bulky camp… -
VIDEO: Jay Shafer of Tumbleweed Tiny House Company
4 Nov 2009 | 4:06 pmJay Shafer of Tumbleweed Tiny House Company designs and builds small houses ranging from 65 to 837 square feet. He’s spent the last 10 years living in his tiny houses. In this video he gives a tour of a 96 square foot house.
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456 Berea Street
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Authentic Jobs refreshed
4 Nov 2009 | 12:18 pmJob listing site Authentic Jobs has been redesigned, realigned, retooled and relaunched.Read full postPosted in Job openings. -
New accessibility overview on the W3C website
3 Nov 2009 | 11:07 amThe new W3C website has a new and very good summary of the why, what, and how of Web accessibility.Read full postPosted in Accessibility, Web Standards. -
Results from WebAIM’s screen October 2009 screen reader user survey
2 Nov 2009 | 9:22 amThe results from WebAIM's October 2009 screen reader user survey have been posted. Some results are expected while others can be a bit surprising.Read full postPosted in Accessibility. -
Use the th element to specify row and column headers in data tables
28 Oct 2009 | 10:58 amWhen creating data tables in HTML, make sure to mark up the table structure properly, using the relevant elements and attributes available in HTML.Read full postPosted in (X)HTML, Accessibility, Quick Tips. -
Design patterns and examples for colour blindness
26 Oct 2009 | 11:27 amWe are Colorblind contains good and bad examples of designing for people who are colourblind along with design patterns, tips and tricks, and colour checking tools.Read full postPosted in Accessibility, Graphic Design.
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ZURBlog
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Crazy Go Nuts JavaScript Released by Google
5 Nov 2009 | 3:26 pmYesterday Google announced their Javascript Closure Library is available for public use. You may think you need another Javascript toolkit like you need another browser, but this library offers the experience of the Google collective which means speed, stability and cross browser support. It also means we now have access to the libraries used to implement all the nutty things Google does in their most popular apps. Take this toolbar for example, used in Gmail and Google Docs, now available for you to do even cooler things with. They also provide even higher level functionality, like this rich… -
Van Halen, Marriage and Crucial Mistakes
21 Oct 2009 | 1:35 pmWe had a rockin’ discussion with John Marshall last Friday at ZURBsoapbox. John discussed mistakes he’s made, as well as guidelines for success of product- vs. service-based companies. You can listen to the entire podcast below and read some great highlights from the event. Listen to John Marshall's Podcast Subscribe: iTunes RSS John starting out talking about his experiences at ClickTracks. Marry Someone Who Can Take Risk ClickTracks started from the idea that all John wanted to know was what people click on. No 3D pie graphs, no charts, no large tables, just tell me what people click… -
Behind the Scenes: Building the New Visual Annotations
15 Oct 2009 | 6:45 amIn part 1 of this post we talked about why we needed to redesign the Notable visual annotations, and how we went about framing the problem. Now we'll show how we actually implemented the design, including some cool CSS techniques we picked up along the way. Creating an Overlay with Layers The overlays comprise two objects: an overlay with the shine and a border with the transparency. Our solution was not technically too complex. With Notable (as well as most of our projects) we've embraced the concept of graceful degradation: we take advantage of new CSS techniques that degrade cleanly to… -
Easily Turn Your Images Into Polaroids with CSS3
14 Oct 2009 | 10:48 amYesterday, Jon and I were going back and forth about what to blog about next. Love of CSS and doing something cool with it is kind of our thing and we quickly jumped on a brand new idea: polaroid style images with just CSS. Holy super awesome, Batman! With our end goal in mind (polaroid style images), we needed to set a few ground rules: Has to work on a grid of linked images Images must be randomly rotated like a pile of images you're sifting through No actual text should be used on the images (only title and alt attributes) Has to be done with just CSS (no javascript) After establishing… -
How to Create Simple and Effective Sub Navs with Definition Lists
12 Oct 2009 | 9:15 am
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User Interface Trends
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Debit or… Debit?
4 Nov 2009 | 10:45 pmTrend: Self Checkout Interfaces – the “Cancel” Menu Here at UI Trends, we normally cover trends in Web UI’s and occasionally we’ll bring up desktop applications. But we wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t step outside of the box every once in a while. With that in mind, I couldn’t help but write about something that has been bugging me for years. I know you’ve seen it too and been annoyed. You’re at the grocery store, and you’re trying to “self checkout”. You swipe your bank card, then low and behold,… -
Interview with Eric Meyer: The Future of Web Design Part 2
29 Oct 2009 | 6:44 amRecently I was fortunate enough to interview Eric Meyer on the future of web design in what seems to be turning into an interesting series on this topic (See the first interview with Chris Coyier here). And for those of you that don’t know who Eric Meyer is, shame on you. Shame. Shame. Shame. I can’t write it any better than An Event Apart, “Eric Meyer has been working with the web since late 1993 and is an internationally recognized expert on the subjects of HTML, CSS, and web standards. Author of Eric Meyer on CSS and More Eric Meyer on CSS (New Riders), Cascading Style… -
Turn the Page
28 Oct 2009 | 9:18 amTrend: Page Curl Navigation submission from guest author John Talton The page curl has been a Photoshop trick for years now. As Kate wrote previously, the “page curl” or “earmark” is a UI style that can function as a metaphor, implying “turn the page for more”. Its expensive rendering and lack of dynamic-ability when applying it via a generic template has limited its wide spread use over the years. But as the web increases its bandwidth capabilities and the need for more unique and flashy graphics continues to rise, this cheep-trick is start showing up… -
Terrible Guesses at 3 Random CSS Properties
23 Oct 2009 | 8:45 amTrend: Seldom Used CSS Properties For a wacky experiment I picked three “random” CSS properties I had never heard of and tried to guess what they were. Why? Mainly because I’m a dork, but perhaps “why not?” is a better question. I later found out that these properties aren’t random at all and could be extremely useful additions to a website if utilized correctly. My guesses are really bad (shocking, I know) but it just goes to show you, regardless of what you think you know about web design or life in general (I pretend to know a lot) there is always room… -
Speak To Me!
23 Oct 2009 | 8:42 amTrend: Disabled States Using disabled states for buttons, links and other ui components are an important way to provide feedback to the user. Think about a stop light for a minute; if it were always green then the driver would expect that they could drive through causing collisions with cars going the other way. To prevent this, the red light steps in to tell the driver they have to wait. Just like stoplights allow traffic to run more smoothly, the disabled state allow UI interactions to be more efficient—the user knows that they don’t need to waste their time trying to click anything…
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Accessites.org
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Law Office of Lainey Feingold
5 Nov 2009 | 11:45 am<a href="http://lflegal.com/" title="Law Office of Lainey Feingold site"><img class="right border" src="http://accessites.org/site/site-img/lflegal.png" alt="Visit Law Office of Lainey Feingold site" height="120" width="200" /></a> <a href="http://lflegal.com/">Law Office of Lainey Feingold</a>, the business site of disability rights lawyer Lainey Feingold, was designed by Mike Cherim specifically to conform to the level of AAA under the <a class="gloss"… -
Online Video Captioning
7 Sep 2009 | 3:53 am<img class="right" src="http://accessites.org/site/post-img/onlinevideocaptioning.jpg" width="250" height="200" alt="" /> Guest author, <a href="http://jenrweb.com/">Jen Rohrig</a>, looks at online video captioning on US TV networks. Although I am hard of hearing myself, there was a time when I didn't consider captions for online videos to be of great importance, since I rarely watched videos online. More recently, I've been watching some new online shows and would have been disappointed if captions hadn't been… -
Le Web Accessible
26 Aug 2009 | 7:44 am<a href="http://www.lewebaccessible.com/" title="Visit Le Web Accessible site"><img class="right border" src="http://accessites.org/site/site-img/lewebaccessible.png" width="200" height="120" alt="Visit Le Web Accessible site" /></a> <a href="http://www.lewebaccessible.com/" lang="fr">Le Web Accessible</a>, the web site of web accessibility consultant Jean-François Naud, offers numerous touches which demonstrate a solid accessible web site. The site exhibits… -
Don’t Just Tick Boxes
6 Jul 2009 | 9:10 am<img class="right" src="http://accessites.org/site/post-img/checkboxes.jpg" width="250" height="200" alt="" /> Meeting the diverse needs of your site's visitors is likely to mean a great deal more than ticking off individual accessibility checkpoints. You cannot just rely on an automated accessibility parser. As <a href="http://www.gawds.org/show.php?contentid=147">Grant Broome explained</a>, whilst automated testing is useful, it cannot replace a manual review or direct user testing. At Accessites, every site that… -
Refreshable Braille
9 Jun 2009 | 2:30 am<img class="right" src="http://accessites.org/site/post-img/braille-display.jpg" width="250" height="200" alt="" /> When guest author Roger Hudson presents accessibility seminars or workshops, he usually asks those attending to indicate if they have seen a screen reader being used. Several years ago, it was not uncommon for only about 10 percent of the audience to indicate that they had. Recently, often more than three quarters of the people attending say they have seen a screen reader in use. However, nearly all assume a screen reader…
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Architectures of Control | Design with Intent
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Thoughts on the ‘fun theory’
3 Nov 2009 | 7:57 amThe ‘Piano Staircase’ from Volkswagen’s thefuntheory.com The Fun Theory (Rolighetsteorin), a competition / campaign / initiative from Volkswagen Sweden – created by DDB Stockholm – has been getting a lot of attention in the last couple of weeks from both design-related people and other commentators with an interest in influencing behaviour: it presents a series of clever ‘design interventions’ aimed at influencing behaviour through making things “fun to do” – taking the stairs instead of the escalator, recycling glass via a bottle… -
What’s been going on recently
13 Oct 2009 | 5:00 amRSA Design Directions 2009/10 The RSA’s 2009/10 Design Directions competition has been launched, which means up and down the country there are design students and new graduates working on one of the pretty wide selection of briefs. Given the RSA’s aim of ‘removing barriers to social progress’ – with a significant commitment to using design to do this – the briefs are themed around design for social benefit, addressing issues ranging from helping an ageing workforce to helping new architecture graduates apply their skills in other contexts. A couple of the… -
Some interesting projects (Part 2)
10 Oct 2009 | 6:57 amFollowing on from Part 1, here are a couple more very interesting student projects linking design and behaviour. This time, both involve providing feedback on the impact or costs of everyday behaviours in order to get people to think. Tim Holley’s Tio project, developed in response to a brief by Onzo, and described as ‘A Light Switch to Help Children Save Energy’ – deservedly won the HSBC Sustainability Prize at the Made in Brunel show: “Children play a key role in reducing energy consumption due to the fact that they will be among the key decision-makers in the… -
Greengaged 2009
25 Sep 2009 | 9:09 amBeen a little busy round here, continuing for the next week or so, but in the meantime I thought I’d share a post I was invited to write for Greengaged, the fantastic programme of events at the Design Council on sustainability, which took place this week. Thanks to Kate Andrews for the opportunity. Next week: Design for Persuasion in Brussels; after that, I’ll be back on a schedule more suitable for blogging, for a while at least, and hope to get round to some of the great suggestions and ideas readers have sent in. Thanks for your patience! -
Design for Persuasion, 1st October, Brussels
15 Sep 2009 | 11:48 pmOn 1st October I’ll be talking about How to influence user behaviour: Design with Intent at the Design for Persuasion event in Brussels, alongside some great speakers including BJ Fogg, Richard Sedley and Christel De Maeyer. There are still some last-minute tickets available. Here’s a video from Christel and one from BJ about the event. I’m looking forward to it!
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Good Experience
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New Gel Video: Steven Heller
5 Nov 2009 | 11:34 amBuilding a strong visual brand is not always good for the world. Exploring the themes in his book Iron Fists, graphic design legend Steven Heller shows how totalitarian regimes of the 20th century consolidated their power through strong visual imagery. -
New Gel Video: Zina Saunders
5 Nov 2009 | 11:20 amGreat art can come out of frustration, as Zina Saunders shows. Her portraits of overlooked New Yorkers, and American political figures, reflect Zina's passionate view of the world. See also: Zina's recent work on Drawger -
Why the shiny thing is everywhere
5 Nov 2009 | 11:09 amWhy do so many websites have the same shiny thing that users don't want? Company D saw something shiny on Company C's website, so they launched the same thing. Company C had the shiny thing because they had seen it on Company B's website, and so they copied it. Company B had the shiny thing because they had seen it on Company A's site. Company A did it because someone thought the shiny thing sounded cool. But no one had ever asked a user. -
Gootodo reviewed in TechRepublic
4 Nov 2009 | 2:01 pmThis review of Gootodo in TechRepublic nails it: By accepting items through email, Gootodo becomes an active partner in reducing the clutter in your inbox, which allows you to really focus your email activities separately from your time management activities. This lets you feel much less overwhelmed and stressed out, as well as making sure that you are able to find the information that you need and quickly respond to emails. The idea of day-based to do lists instead of a large list with due dates makes the day's work load feel much more manageable. Very well put. Try it here, free for one… -
How to halve your emissions
4 Nov 2009 | 1:56 pmHow to cut your emissions in half - good roundup from Treehugger of Graham Hill's Gel 2009 talk (including the video of the talk): According to Hill, by following his simple "weight loss" plan just one day a week, you can save $1000, lose 10 tons of carbon and be healthier. The tips offered are really fascinating such as how a NY-Bangkok trip generates half of your annual carbon emissions - in one trip! Yikes! So, choosing your plane and combining trips really does impact the emissions your generate. Essentially by becoming a smarter shopper, (food, flying, green power) you can at least cut…
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information aesthetics
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Hand-Cut Street Maps of World Cities
5 Nov 2009 | 1:21 amWe had maps in many forms and tastes: San Francisco in jell-o or New York in Lego or a Subway Map as Bathroom Tiling. Karen O'Leary has another take: cutting out streets out of large blank sheets of paper, or cutting out the streets from real street maps, all by hand. Maps already sold include Paris, London and New York. Conceptually, the unique maps remove the unnecessary, leaving valuable information to navigate the main defining paths of the city. All city blocks are cut by hand to reveal the paths, nodes, circles, boulevards, parks and streets of each of the cities. Via Paper Taste Buds. -
Nebul.us: Visualizing (and Sharing) your Online Activity
4 Nov 2009 | 9:47 pmNebul.us is a new startup focusing on revealing the online activities of users through the interactive visualization of Internet usage patterns in real-time. It aims to become a social site for sharing content with friends (or to the public at large), or a productivity enhancing site for figuring out how one is spending time online. After installing a browser plugin, the service will start monitoring the browsing history. Typical Web2.0 profiles like Facebook, Twitter, last.fm or YouTube can be added as well to complete the view of online activities (note that the initial setting is set to… -
Sound Sculptures: Rendering Sounds in Tangible Forms
4 Nov 2009 | 2:31 amCylinder [extraversion.co.uk] is a small collection of physical data sculptures based on STL file data captured by the analysis of sound samples from spaces, creating site specific sculptures reflecting the acoustic of an environment. A mapping of the frequency and time domains produced cylindrical forms that represent the specific spatial characteristics of the sound input. Physical versions of the digital 3D models were then "printed" in 3D using stereolithography. See also Sound Chair, Laser-Cut Sound Sculpture and Sound of Light Sculpture. Via Generator.x. -
Lying through Visualization: AT&T Sues Verizon over Coverage Maps
3 Nov 2009 | 5:43 pmThe popular electronic gadget blog Engadget reports that AT&T has sued Verizon over its "There's a Map for That" ads. The print and television commercial, which you watch here, centers around revealing how much more 3G coverage Verizon has, here through some hovering red versus blue colored maps of the US (which in effect look somehow similar to the colors used to distinguish Democratic and Republican states, but I guess that was not really intended) . The complaint seems to focus about the choice of the white or blank background in the two different 3G coverage maps, which should to be… -
New York City Subway Dynamic LED Signage
2 Nov 2009 | 6:53 pmThe New York City Subway seems to use a new LED signage system, according to this video page at Vimeo. Since I observed the first rows of huge, HD-resolution LCD screens showing the actual airline departure and arrival information at Chicago Airport, I started wondering how public signage will exploit upcoming display technologies like LED, LCD and OLED, and the high-resolution, full-color, fast-dynamic, high-contrast imagery they afford. So, is this the best way to show actual location-based subway information? The New York Subway signage is split into two halves: the left side of the panel…
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UXmatters
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Anonymous Cowards, Avatars, and the Zeitgeist: Personal Identity in Flux: Part I
2 Nov 2009 | 2:22 amBy Joe Lamantia Published: November 2, 2009 “We rely on our identity to make sense of almost all the experiences we have in life—digital and otherwise. And yet, experience designers rarely consider personal identity—either as an aspect of design or a factor affecting design.” Our identity—our sense of who we are, in all the various contexts we negotiate, from personal to professional, from public to private, from individual to collective—is one of the most fundamental elements of our experience and awareness. We rely on our identity to make sense of almost all the experiences we… -
Participate in the 2009 UXmatters Reader Survey
2 Nov 2009 | 2:18 amBy Pabini Gabriel-Petit, Publisher & Editor in Chief Published: November 2, 2009 To take the survey, please click this link now: 2009 UXmatters Reader Survey This month, we’re celebrating the fourth anniversary of UXmatters, which launched in November 2005. UXmatters is thriving. Since our launch we’ve published 290 articles on a great diversity of topics. Our community of readers is growing. Over the last year, almost 260,000 UX professionals have read UXmatters. Because our goal at UXmatters is to produce a Web magazine that fulfills the information needs of UX professionals… -
Make More Money: Best Practices for Ads in Search Results: Part 2
2 Nov 2009 | 2:13 amBy Greg Nudelman and Frank Guo Published: November 2, 2009 In this installment of Search Matters, we’ll continue our discussion of ads in search results. If you missed it, read Part 1, which covered these best practices: Integrate your ads’ appearance with the rest of your site. Make sure customers can easily distinguish ads from content. Keep ads relevant and appropriate. Understand how your customers interact with ads. In Part 2, we’ll discuss the following best practices: Understand what makes a good ad. Limit cannibalization. Provide ads for internal merchandise instead of… -
Using Expression Blend to Explore, Demonstrate, and Document Design Solutions
2 Nov 2009 | 2:06 amBy Kevin Silver Published: November 2, 2009 “As an interaction designer, I had to wonder, Do I really want to create production-ready code?” For the last 6 months, I have been using Microsoft Expression Blend as my primary design tool. Blend, shown in Figure 1, is quickly becoming a powerful product. Its new Sketchflow module had me at hello. Like any new tool, Blend requires some ramp up time. Plus, I had to consider how to use Blend within the design and development process where I work, because Blend is much more than a simple prototyping tool. Blend is a GUI development tool that can… -
Communities of Practice: Optimizing Internal Knowledge Sharing
2 Nov 2009 | 2:00 amBy Michael Hawley Published: November 2, 2009 “An intranet has the potential to unify a corporate culture, emphasize core company values, and develop a sense of community among employees.” An intranet has the potential to unify a corporate culture, emphasize core company values, and develop a sense of community among employees, in addition to its basic function of providing access to documents and procedural information. Unfortunately, some intranets have simply grown organically, as collections of disjointed Web sites for different departments or document repositories for particular…
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A List Apart
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Can You Say That in English? Explaining UX Research to Clients
3 Nov 2009 | 1:00 amIt's hard for clients to understand the true value of user experience research. As much as you'd like to tell your clients to go read The Elements of User Experience and call you back when they’re done, that won’t cut it in a professional services environment. David Sherwin creates a cheat sheet to help you pitch UX research using plain, client-friendly language that focuses on the business value of each exercise. -
You Can Get There From Here: Websites for Learners
3 Nov 2009 | 1:00 am"Content-rich" is not enough. Most websites are not learner-friendly. As an industry, we haven’t done our best to make our content-rich websites suitable for learning and exploration. Learners require more from us than keywords and killer headlines. They need an environment that is narrative, interactive, and discoverable. Amber Simmons tells how to begin creating rich content sites that invite and repay exploration and discovery. -
Getting to No
20 Oct 2009 | 3:00 amA bad client relationship is like a bad marriage without the benefits. To avoid such relationships, or to fix the one you’re in, learn the five classic signs of trouble. Recognizing the never-ending contract revisionist, the giant project team, the vanishing boss and other warning signs can help you run successful, angst-free projects. -
The Myth of Usability Testing
20 Oct 2009 | 3:00 amUsability evaluations are good for many things, but determining a team’s priorities is not one of them. The Molich experiment proves a single usability team can’t discover all or even most major problems on a site. But usability testing does have value as a shock treatment, trust builder, and part of a triangulation process. Test for the right reasons and achieve a positive outcome. -
Discovering Magic
6 Oct 2009 | 3:00 amWouldn’t it be a little magical if, when you signed up for a new site, it said something like, “We notice you have a profile photo on Flickr and Twitter, would you like to use one of those or upload a new one?” Glenn Jones created a JavaScript library called Ident Engine that can help you do just that.
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Functioning Form: Interface Design
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UI Pattern: Unified Settings & Tutorial
5 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pmThis design pattern is a great example of using an ordinary user interface control as a learning opportunity for users. While Apple's Magic Mouse control panel contains the kind of standard checkboxes, buttons, and sliders you might expect in a settings panel, it also features clear and concise videos outlining the key functions of the mouse. Simply mouse over the label or control you are interested in or want to adjust and the video on the right automatically plays to explain how the feature works. This turns an otherwise technical or confusing experience (very common in settings panels)… -
Who Made the IPod Killer? Apple Did.
4 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pmThere's been no shortage of digital media players that aimed for "iPod killer" status: Samsung's P3, Microsoft's Zune, Sony's X-series Walkman, Creative, Sandisk, and so on. But with over 220 million sold, Apple's iPod still has a 73.8% marketshare of digital music players. So while a lot of different companies have tried to "kill" the iPod -none have succeeded. But in the second quarter of 2009, the iPod, once Apple's No. 1 source of revenue, fell into third place after the Mac and the iPhone. As recently as 2006, the iPod had accounted for 55.5% of Apple's revenue. By August 2009, it was at… -
More Attention, More Contribution -To a Point
3 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pmRegardless of how social relationships are modeled in online software (be it community, group, 2-way/symmetrical, or 1-way asymmetrical models) more attention seems to result in increased contribution -to a point. To illustrate, when an average Twitter user gets to 1,000 followers, they move from 3 daily updates to 6. That number rises to 10 average daily updates with 1,750 followers (source). Conversely, less attention often means less production. In a study of over 500,000 users on YouTube, research showed that a decreasing number of video views resulted in a lack of contribution. In this… -
Mobile First
2 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pmMore often than not, the mobile experience for a Web application or site is designed and built after the PC version is complete. Here's three reasons why Web applications should be designed for mobile first instead. 1. Mobile is exploding Though the Web has been accessible on mobile devices for years, today's smart phones are driving huge use of networked applications and Web content. Consider that AT&T, the exclusive carrier for Apple's iPhone, has seen a 4,932% increase in mobile traffic data in the past three years. And that's just the start.Heavy mobile data users are projected to triple… -
Data Monday: Mobile Social Networking
1 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pmIn her keynote on Internet Trends (PDF), Mary Meeker forecast that next generation social networking mobile platforms will drive unprecedented change in communications and commerce. The current growth of mobile social networking seems to support her thesis.The second-most popular Web activity for mobile users to engage in on a daily basis is accessing a "social networking site or blog." Last January saw 1.8-million do this, with a monumental, 427-percent increase to 9.3-million people in January 2009. (source)Four of the top ten domains accessed via mobile devices are social networking sites.
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uselog.com | the product usability weblog
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Comparing iPhone and Android application management
3 Nov 2009 | 11:52 amAn intriguing comparison of the iPhone and Android UI paradigm for application access and management, by Luke Wroblewski. In the end, the within-product consistency that the iPhone offers seems to nudge him to a judgement somewhat in favor of the iPhone.I can’t help but wonder if the singular model Apple employs makes managing a set of mobile applications easier. Every app is accessed the same way and only open apps are running. Sure this is limiting in some ways (customization options, background processes) but empowering in others (clarity, control) at the same time. -
PC owner, but actually an Apple fanboy
30 Oct 2009 | 12:27 amSaw the guy in the picture above on the train during my commute. He covered the original logo on what appears to be a Dell XPS laptop with an Apple sticker. Imagine being the product manager for that Dell laptop and then running into this guy. No fun. If people put stickers of your brand's logo over that of others to create the (very poor) illusion that they have a different product than they actually have, you are doing a good job. Apple: congratulations. If people put stickers of another brand's logo over yours, you should worry. They've got no love for you. Dell: maybe you should look into… -
Why tablet PCs have failed and will fail
25 Oct 2009 | 2:56 amIn this article in Design Issues design historian Paul Atkinson presents an insightful, amusing and at times depressing analysis of the rise and fall of the tablet computer, from the early pen computing of the RAND tablet, via the Momenta Pentop, to the inevitable Apple Newton Messagepad.Technological or social challenge?An interesting aspect of the article is that Atkinson analyses the issue from both the social constructivist and the technology determinism perspective. Social constructivists suggest that a complex range of factors are involved in the success of products, and that social… -
Nov.12: Design for Usability Symposium
12 Oct 2009 | 8:54 amOn November 12, World Usability Day, the Design for Usability symposium on usability for professional and consumer electronics will take place in Delft. The event targets usability and design professionals as well as academics. The morning program features state of the art lectures on usability and design:Gerrit van der Veer (president of CHI): Designing for a moving target - from functionality to usability to experienceCees van Dok (creative director frog design Europe): The challenges in interaction design for consumer and professional electronicsAbbie Vanhoutte and Robert Eijlander… -
User-centered jigsaw provides background knowledge
7 Oct 2009 | 5:40 amWhen I buy tools, usually I don't buy the cheapest ones, because I like them to stay in one piece for a number of years. But when buying this Black & Decker jigsaw I did not only get a product that seems durable (so far, at least), but also one where considerable thought has been put into making a user-centered design.I might not be the sharpest tool in the shed (nudge nudge, wink wink), but I don't know by heart at what speed a jigsaw should be set for each type of material. Hence my liking of the speed dial on my new jigsaw (picture above) that lets you choose based on the material (wood,…
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Monday By Noon
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WordPress ‘Attachments’ Plugin Debut
2 Nov 2009 | 6:35 amSome time ago, I began meddling around with WordPress plugins. I had a specific need that WordPress wasn’t quite up to handling out of the box, and any existing plugins were far too over the top for my taste. I’m probably a bit different than most WordPress users in that I like to get my hands dirty with plugins. I’m not a fan of shortcodes doing all the work; I’d much rather integrate the plugin data directly with my theme using good old PHP. That said, I had an issue where I need to append any number of images to a Post. Sure, WordPress has its image gallery feature… -
WordPress Hidden Gem: get_extended()
26 Oct 2009 | 7:01 amI’ve been a WordPress fan for quite a long time now, and one of my favorite parts about that particular piece of software is that I still learn new things about it on a fairly consistent basis. When you build extremely custom websites for clients, there are often out of the ordinary requirements that must be met to ensure the needs of the project are catered to. By far, the biggest hurdle for me is to make sure that WordPress is set up in such a way that it’s as easy as possible for clients to edit their content. That’s the whole point after all, right? Publicly facing,… -
The Trouble with Lightbox (and its Variants)
12 Oct 2009 | 6:53 amLokesh Dhakar changed things with the original Lightbox JS. He designed and produced an interactive functionality that made nearly every Web designer slap his own forehead in amazement that it hadn’t been thought of before. Those are the best ideas, aren’t they? More often than not, it’s because those ideas solve a problem so simple and common place, we hardly see it as a “problem” any more. In the case of lightboxing, it came down to displaying images either by using target="_BLANK" or simply dealing with a full page refresh. For what? Clearly both the latency… -
SuggestRSS is Back and Way Better than Ever!
6 Oct 2009 | 5:13 amI’m really thrilled to be able to announce the soft launch of SuggestRSS v1.0! If you happened to check out the site in its first incarnation, you may have thought it was neat, but you also must have thought id had a ways to go; it did. Due to scalability issues, I was forced to take the site offline nearly eight months ago. I wish I could say that I’ve been working on it consistently since then, but that’s not the case. Instead, I took the experience for what it was worth in an educational sense, and let it sit for a short while. The project was always on my mind, but the… -
How to Handle IE6: Aggressive Graceful Degradation
21 Sep 2009 | 6:00 amNo matter how much it may bother us, IE6 is still quite a hot topic around our little community. Two camps have recruited their groups and each seems quite comfortable with the accepted stance on their side of the fence. To one segment, IE6 is literally a bane of existence, and taking active aggressive measures against IE is daily practice. The other side, however, sucks it up and deals. I often challenge my own stance on handling IE6, and have found what I consider to be a happy medium between both sides of this argument. I can’t in good faith stand behind the abrasive method of…
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UserGlue UserBlog
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IDEA09 Debts of Gratitude
25 Oct 2009 | 11:54 amI’m woefully behind on this, but it’s no less important that the people who propped-up the IDEA Conference experience get recognized. Certainly, as chair of the 2009 IDEA Conference, there’s a bit of a light shone directly on me, but the reality is that there’s no way on earth that any conference could–or should, at least–be pulled off by a single person. Without much more preamble, these fine folks let me lead and chose to follow–often challenging and questioning steps along the way, but always supporting the event and the community it is intended… -
Solving the “Repeat Email Address” Form Issue. Maybe.
9 Sep 2009 | 9:37 pmOne of the mailing lists that I’m on had a question posed today about using “Repeat Email Address” in form validation. I actually cringed as I typed that just now–that particular part of form validation is pretty annoying (to me, at least). I find it amusing that shift-tab, copy, tab, paste as a method for handling doesn’t cross anyone’s mind when creating these types of “validations” in forms. There were a number of responses to the thread, but Steve Krug (yeah, that Steve Krug) put out the notion that he suspects most of the email address… -
A Letter to my Lover Netflix
5 Sep 2009 | 5:35 amDear Netflix, I like you–a lot. The service you provide is pretty simple in concept, and it’s great–to a degree. I no longer walk through the video store and get distracted by all the extra stuff that’s be offered up, especially now that I have kids. That’s pretty great. Maybe. I miss taking a look at the video library in the store and the New Release Wall that generally surrounds the store. I miss seeing the goofy employee picks and the random surprise flick I would have never found otherwise. I don’t miss the realization on a Friday night that the new… -
Where’s Russ? – Fall 2009
23 Aug 2009 | 10:24 pmThings… have been busy. Busy is good! Busy is often exciting, too! That said, I’ve got a few places I’ll be this fall, and if you happen to be in these areas, it’d be great to see you. Agile 2009 – Chicago, IL – August 24 – 28, Hyatt Regency Todd Zaki Warfel and I will be presenting on “Guerilla Research Methods” on the User Experience Stage at the Agile 2009 Conference. More to come on this topic as discussions continue… This hands-on session will cover a number of low cost, yet powerful research methods, like the “burrito… -
IDEA 2009 – Social and Experience Design in Toronto, September 15-16
11 Aug 2009 | 4:23 pmAs Director of Events and Marketing for the Information Architecture Institute, I’ve been more than a little busy diligently working with a fantastic team of people to put together this year’s IDEA Conference, which will be held at the MaRS Centre in Toronto. Everyone–and I do mean everyone–on this team of exceptional individuals–has been burning the midnight oil to bring you an outstanding program at a gorgeous facility. Oh, and at a price that is reasonable given our economic climate. I am more than a little proud of this conference, and I really hope…
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Church of the Customer Blog
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Kicking out unwanted customers
30 Oct 2009 | 10:35 am"Don't talk during the movie or we will take your ass out." If you've been to an Alamo Drafthouse, the movie theater chain in Austin, Texas, then you've seen that semi-serious warning couched in a fun "public service announcement" before a movie showing. Theater founder Tim League knows that talkers mar the movie-watching experience for everyone else, and he does not tolerate them -- even if they punch the windshield of his car.See, Tim was a customer recently at one of his theaters. A nearby loud-talker was asked by a theater waiter to keep it down. The customer protested, loudly, demanding… -
Twitter: the killer app for customer service
22 Oct 2009 | 10:31 am"Hello, this is Sam Kaufman from the AT&T Internet Executive Office, and I am calling about your tweets."That's what I heard yesterday after posting a few tweets about my less-than-stellar customer service experience with an AT&T DSL technical support rep. The rep was trying to diagnose my DSL problems and after telling me to stay on the line for 10 minutes, he never returned after 30 minutes. I hung up. He never called back.With a few hours of my AT&T tweet, @ATTJohnathon, a customer care rep on Twitter contacted me, asking if he could help. I DM'ed him my account number as he… -
Fees are penalties. Always.
19 Oct 2009 | 1:24 pmIt's a wonder why some businesses can't grasp this. Consider the U.S. airlines last month: Southwest reported an 8.8% increase in revenue passenger miles. Its load factor, the percentage of seats that were filled, increased 11% from a year ago, to 74.7% — a big increase for a month in which schools reopen and summer vacation travels stop. JetBlue saw a 9.8% jump in passenger miles. Its load factor rose about 1% from the prior year, to 77.6%. Compare those numbers to other airlines. Delta: Down 5% on its mainline operation. It also cut capacity by 5%. American: Down 2.6% domestically. It cut… -
4 questions with author Jeanne Bliss
16 Oct 2009 | 1:30 pmWhat makes the difference between having customers who like you and customers who love you? Many businesses are admired, but only an elite few have passionate, loyal, vocal fans. The kind of customers who not only come back time and time again, but rave to friends, family, and even strangers. Jeanne Bliss has been the Chief Customer Officer for Lands End, Coldwell Banker, and Allstate, to name a few. Her new book, "I Love You More Than My Dog": Five Decisions That Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad,is her take on how companies create beloved brands. Q: You describe… -
A social media truism
13 Oct 2009 | 8:01 amWhen times are good, participate.When times are tough, participate more.(Doesn't that read better than "advertise" in that old saying?)
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InfoDesign: Understanding by Design
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How to Achieve Painless Registration
5 Nov 2009 | 4:26 am"I'm about to give you a number of ways to increase sales on ecommerce sites and increase sign-ups on service sites, but first, raise your hand if you personally, when surfing the web, enjoy registering to use a site." (Bruce Tognazzini) -
Agile User Experience Projects
4 Nov 2009 | 6:37 am"Agile projects aren't yet fully user-driven, but new research shows that developers are actually more bullish on key user experience issues than UX people themselves." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox) -
Can You Say That in English? Explaining UX Research to Clients
4 Nov 2009 | 6:17 am"As UX researchers, we're hired to be the glue between business stakeholders and users. In a sense, we're informed facilitators. And before a contract is signed, our role is to influence our clients with kindness, grace, and wit, on the true value of our engagement." (David Sherwin - A List Apart) -
The Age of the Informavore
3 Nov 2009 | 5:13 am"We are apparently now in a situation where modern technology is changing the way people behave, people talk, people react, people think, and people remember. And you encounter this not only in a theoretical way, but when you meet people, when suddenly people start forgetting things, when suddenly people depend on their gadgets, and other stuff, to remember certain things. This is the beginning, its just an experience. But if you think about it and you think about your own behavior, you suddenly realize that something fundamental is going on." (Edge) -
Looking back at EuroIA 2009
3 Nov 2009 | 1:55 am"The presence of so many cultures, and varied talks made for a surprisingly vibrant and enlightening event. This is the EuroIA's real strength and perhaps why I feel it has a greater meaning in the global sphere. There are few other groups in UX who have such a mix of backgrounds, experience and cultural references to call upon." (James Kelway - User Pathways)
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Dexo Design
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Intuitive vs. Conventional
15 Oct 2009 | 8:12 amThoughts? No related posts. -
Is software design a luxury?
10 Oct 2009 | 8:39 pmIn a team meeting recently, someone said “Isn’t it great that we have a software design team? Very few companies our size have that luxury!” The individual meant it as a positive compliment, but every time I hear someone say something like this, I’m reminded that while we are making great advances in software development, we still have a long way to go. Definition of Luxury [Source: wordnetweb.princeton.edu]: something that is an indulgence rather than a necessity lavishness: the quality possessed by something that is excessively expensive Software design is an… -
Design Process at Facebook
27 Aug 2009 | 7:03 amCaught this writeup from Luke Wroblewski on how Facebook designs their software. Key takeaways for me: design team delivers front-end code share early and often; design is involved start to finish design team size = 25 (out of 1000 employees) design is iterative – know from the start that your designs are “experiments” (my words) and may/will change See the whole article here. Related posts:4 Step Simple UI Design ProcessIs software design a luxury?Design Guiding Principles -
UI Design Guiding Principles
21 Jul 2009 | 8:32 amJust as my team and I began working on establishing a set of core guiding principles, I came across a post from John Schrag and his team at Autodesk describing their core design values. Based on their list and our own brainstorming, we have developed our own list of UI Design Guiding Principles: Understand the problem before solving it (and avoid “design on the spot”) Sketch before making it pretty (and discuss abstractions versus specifics — “selection” vs. “combo-box”) Validate designs before investing in (production) code Well designed key features & workflows… -
Design Guiding Principles
11 Jul 2009 | 3:47 pmJohn Schrag has just written a post titled Values in Software Design Practice. To summarize, John and his team came up with two lists: Appropriate order of actions: Setting Goals before Taking Action Understand Problems before Generating Solutions Designing before Writing Design Documents Validating Designs before Investing in Code Steak before Sizzle Values: Validated Data over Expert Opinion Quality of Data over Ease of Data Collection Complete Workflows over Long Feature Lists Achieving Results over Writing Reports Collaborative Design over Design by Referendum or Design by Fiat Ease of…
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Information Architects
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Kenya Hara On Japanese Aesthetics
What makes Japanese design so special? Basically, it's a matter of simplicity; a particular notion of simplicity, different from what simplicity means in the West. So are things in general better designed in Japan? Well, actually, it's not that simple... The New York Times asked us to get them in ... -
Internazionale: Look and Feel
Here are a few design explorations on the possible look and feel for Internazionale. They are based on the beautiful work that Mark Porter, creative director of the Guardian editorial did for the print edition. We'd like to post them without comment as we're curious to hear what you think. ... -
Google, Yahoo, Bing: Beyond the Hype
The story is quite clear: Yahoo is going down. Google is going up, Bing is insignificant. It's becoming quite clear who the real winner of the Yahoo!-Microsoft deal is. Compared to their competitors, Bing doesn't do that well on usability either. As for Yahoo!--the latest UI changes on Yahoo! (and the ... -
Tell me again: Who Relaunched Krone.at?
I got an email the other day from a young entrepreneur that asked whether we send out press releases. The answer is twisted: So far I have refrained from sending out press releases. But that might change... Press Releases: Contra Press releases are not authentic. They're written in an obsolete sleazy PR ... -
From Black to White: iA redesigns Krone.at
After covering a high percentage of newspaper sites in Switzerland and redoing DIE ZEIT, iA moved to the other very challenging side of the online news spectrum: With krone.at we updated one of the big players in the red top press industry. As of now, krone.at counts 124 Million page impressions, ...
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Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report
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Crazy man at Starbucks
4 Nov 2009 | 5:18 amShot by Mr Greg Storey. -
Once more into the breach
4 Nov 2009 | 3:50 am -
Less babble, more learning
3 Nov 2009 | 4:49 amIssue No. 295 of A List Apart emphasizes words and experiences that communicate. Can You Say That in English? Explaining UX Research to Clients by DAVID SHERWIN It’s hard for clients to understand the true value of user experience research. As much as you’d like to tell your clients to go read The Elements of User Experience and call you back when they’re done, that won’t cut it in a professional services environment. David Sherwin creates a cheat sheet to help you pitch UX research using plain, client-friendly language that focuses on the business value of each exercise. You… -
House Party
31 Oct 2009 | 10:02 amReal fonts on the web: House Industries supports WOFF format. …a font format for the Web that satisfies the needs and concerns of browser makers, web designers, and type foundries. … WOFF offers compression to speed page load times, freedom from thorny legacy issues, and inclusiveness (font outlines can be Postscript or TrueType). WOFF has the support of a wide spectrum of the type community; from peers such as Emigre, Hoefler & Frere-Jones, Commercial Type, etc., and larger foundries such as Linotype and Monotype. Today it has also gained the support of Mozilla in the their… -
Beep ’n Me, Live
29 Oct 2009 | 1:29 pmJoin Ethan Marcotte and me tonight at 8:00 PM EDT on the CreativeXpert Live Show, an interview and podcast with live listener call-in via Skype and Twitter. We’ll discuss the newly released third edition of Designing with Web Standards and such topics from its pages as selling standards to reluctant clients and bosses, changing what support for IE6 means, understanding and transitioning to HTML5, neato CSS3-based design techniques you can use right now, and more. Tune in, call in, rock on. Short URL: zeldman.com/?p=2810
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Keith Instone - IA, UX, Toledo, IBM, and less.
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My schedule, November 10 & 12
21 Oct 2009 | 6:55 amI am attending two "local" events in mid-November. Hope to touch base with colleagues in the area I have not seen in a while - and meet some new ones, too, of course. The first is the Smarter Cities Cleveland Forum on November 10th. From the description: Cleveland Smarter Cities Forum will create a peer-to-peer exchange for mayors, civic leaders and businesses to engage with like-minded thinkers and shape the blueprints for smarter cities. We will discuss new approaches to regional partnership, identify roadblocks, evaluate frameworks for investment and review the tools and technologies that… -
Panel: Effective user experience professionals and teams
22 Sep 2009 | 7:15 amI am honored to be one of the panelists at tonight's Michigan UPA / MOCHI meeting: What makes an effective user experience professional and team (UX management perspectives). Here is an outline of what I will cover in my 5-10 minute introduction. Why I am qualified - and not qualified - to be on the panel Best Careers 2009: Usability Experience Specialist On the ibm.com User experience design team: From Sales and distribution to CIO. Convergence and transformation. Success = partnering. Overall trends within IBM. Design convergence Branding and corporate messaging. See Smarter Planet and the… -
Tickets still available: July 11, UX with Mud Hens
3 Jun 2009 | 5:40 pmI am organizing a local get-together where you can hang out with others who are interested in user experience. We chose a truly-Toledo location: a Mud Hens ball game. What: User Experience Day with the Mud Hens When: Saturday, July 11 (first game of the double header starts at 5:30pm) Where: Fifth Third Field, downtown Toledo, Ohio Would you like to enjoy the company of fellow interaction designers, information architects, usability engineers, developers and others interested in enabling quality user experiences for their customers? And enjoy the world-famous Toledo Mud Hens in a… -
Upcoming local (Toledo, OH) and area events
24 Mar 2009 | 10:48 amSpring is in the air here, and as the weather gets warmer, all sorts of things to do are popping up for people interested in user experience. This is where you will find me in the next 6 weeks or so. March 26, Detroit, Information Architecture Summit '09 Recap March 28, Bowling Green, Social networking for good April 1-2, Ann Arbor, Internet User Experience 2009 April 24, Bowling Green, 2009 Sebo Series in Entrepreneurship Add in a "spring break" trip to Boston for CHI 2009 and I will be busy. I have not recovered from IA Summit 2009 yet. There is a lot more happening in the region - things I… -
UX+IA workshop: Toronto, June 2008
8 Mar 2009 | 9:01 amIn the better-late-than-never category, let me tell you about something I did last summer. In June, we took a family vacation to Toronto: while there, I did a TorCHI talk, and helped lead a "hands-on" workshop about information architecture. It is that workshop that I never got around to mentioning here. The original TorCHI call for participation gives a good overview of what we set out to do. Paul McInerney, my co-collaborator who talked me into doing this and did at least as much work as I did, if not more, came up with this recap of the topics we actually covered: Site sections: When to…
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mcu.org.uk
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60 Hot To Touch Accessible Web Design Tips by Jim Byrne - published in paperback today
New book by Jim Byrne launched: 60 hot to touch Accessible Web Design tips - the tips no web developer can live without!. Now available in paperback. It takes a different approach to the standard big and heavy web technique tomes currently available - this one offers light bytes for easy digestion. It contains 60 easy to understand, practical tips you can put to good use when developing your next website. -
New Website launched: Accessible Web Design Services Glasgow
Former Making Connections Unit Director and Web accessibility specialist Jim Byrne has launched his new business website with the aim of helping organisations: Comply with Disability Discrimination legislation. Reach the largest potential audience - via an accessible, usable website. Access tailored training and support to maintain websites in the most efficient and accessible way. -
Seminar: The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) and UK websites
A two hour seminar: Date: 25th May 9.45am - 12am. Book early to avoid disappointment. Venue: The Volunteer Centre, 84 Miller Street, Glasgow G1 1DT Cost: 39UK pounds per person. Facilitator: Jim Byrne email: ddaseminar@jimbyrne.co.uk Does your website comply with the DDA? Book your place on this seminar to explore the issues and find out what you need to know about the DDA and UK websites. This seminar is aimed at those individuals responsible for the creation, or management, of an organisation’s website. By the end of the seminar you will have answers to the following questions: Is your… -
Jim Byrne leaves Glasgow Caledonian University - now providing Web accessibility services
Jim Byrne leaves Glasgow Caledonian University - to provide accessibility web design, development and training services. I have been working within Glasgow Caledonian University since 1996, running the Making Connections Unit as a non-profit organisation providing advice, support and services to organisations interested in publishing accessible information on the web. In the last year I have worked as the University Web Accessibility Project Manager, providing training and consultancy to the web team (and external organisations) and working towards ensuring university websites are accessible… -
Accessible Web Design in Practice Training Course
There are still a few places left on the next Making Connections Unit, Accessible Web Design in Practice training course on the 9th and 10th of December. This a 2 day course being run in Glasgow Caledonian University Library in the Centre of Glasgow; the venue is close to both main Glasgow bus and train stations. Register your interest in the course by filling in the booking form. About the course This course is not about creating unattractive 'text only' pages; accessible design is about designing for disabled people and non-disabled people. The training combines off-line discussion and…
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maxdesign.com.au
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Some links for light reading (3/11/09)
3 Nov 2009 | 12:28 pmPseudo-Phantoms Twitter lists, creators vs curators, and who owns the meta-data? Firefox Adds Support for Web Open Font Format (WOFF) via font-face Font Embedding Services Moderating with Multiple Personalities: 3 Roles for Facilitating Usability Tests Why do we have an IMG element? The Future of Interface Design You Can Get There From Here: Websites for Learners Can You Say That in English? Explaining UX Research to Clients Authoring invalid HTML - a key factor in the Web’s success? Dive Deeper into Wave - The Complete Guide to Google Wave: How to Use Google Wave Screen Reader User… -
Some links for light reading (27/10/09)
27 Oct 2009 | 1:18 pmFonty font font Font Dragr: A drag and drop font tester After Firefox 3.6 - new font control features for designers Declaring Languages in HTML 5 Browser support for CSS3 and HTML5 Why is the HTML specification a failure? How to measure social media ROI Haystack: Discover the right Web Designer for your next project Online Database of Social Media Policies Getting to No The Myth of Usability Testing Logo Design Toolbox: 60+ Resources for Logo Design -
Some links for light reading (20/10/09)
20 Oct 2009 | 4:05 amiPhone Accessibility: High contrast “White on Black” Do I have to answer this question? Mandatory versus optional fields Comment Form Styling: Examples and Best Practices Streams, Walls, and Feeds: Distributing Content Through Social Networks and RSS HTML, CSS, and Web Development Practices: Past, Present, and Future UX Exchange - Q&A site for user experience professionals The essence of qualitative research Chrome Experiments Becoming a Font Embedding Master Call to Action Buttons: Examples and Best Practices Top 5 Twitter Trends to Watch Right Now 5 Ways Social Media is… -
Some links for light reading (13/10/09)
13 Oct 2009 | 2:58 amWebKit, Mobile, and Progress There is no WebKit on Mobile The Ever-Evolving Arrow: Universal Control Symbol 7 principles for decentralized publishing @font-face in Depth Becoming a Font Embedding Master Learn more about robots.txt Ankoder - Video Encoding On Demand 16 Fabulous Web Browser Options Password unmasking 15 Common Mistakes in E-Commerce Design FindMeByIP Step by Step Menu a ‘Wizard Lke’ RGraph: A canvas graph library based on the HTML5 canvas tag -
Schrödinger’s Rapist: or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced
11 Oct 2009 | 11:53 pmSeveral years ago, I came across a woman standing on a street corner at night, obviously lost. She asked where the nearest train station was and I told her - about 20 minutes walk away. I offered to drive her to the station but she refused, saying she’d catch a cab instead. When I got home, I told my partner about the incident and how puzzled I was that the woman refuse my offer of a lift. My partner said “why would she get into a car with an unknown male. For all she knew, you may take her somewhere and rape her”. While I understood this, I was a little offended -…
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Muffin Research Labs
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Web Application Security – LugRadio Live 2009
1 Nov 2009 | 3:04 amThese are my slides from the presentation I gave at LugRadio Live 2009 at Wolverhampton. The presentation was a brief tour of some common security issues you might come across developing web applications. I also covered ReDOS which is a lot less well known but an interesting vulnerability. The notes are available on slideshare.net View more presentations from Stuart Colville. I’ve had to pull the presentation from slideshare.net temporarily – I’ll re-upload as soon as possible The problem at slideshare has now been resolved. -
Ubuntu: Lock Screen and Pause Spotify
22 Oct 2009 | 9:23 amWhen I used a mac I had a shonky little applescript to pause iTunes when I locked the screen. These days I mostly listen to Spotify (running under wine) on Ubuntu which of course doesn’t have applescript. What I wanted was a similar script so I can hit a keystroke and pause spotify and lock the screen at the same time. With a few utilities I was able to programatically tell if Spotify is playing and get focus on the Spotify window and send a keystroke to get spotify to pause. But the solution it has to be said is far from perfect. The need to know if Spotify is actively playing is as a… -
Open Redirects and Phishing Vectors
30 Sep 2009 | 3:43 pmThere was an interesting article on the Google Webmaster Central blog back in Jan talking about open redirects being abused by spammers. One point they didn’t go into too much detail on is that of phishing vectors. If you’re running a site with any kind of user registration and you have a redirect script that allows redirects to any arbitrary urls. Then it’s fairly likely that you’ve straight away made it possible for a 3rd party to phish your registration form. Let’s see an example of how something like this would work, first a standard redirection script:… -
Distraxion
16 Sep 2009 | 5:01 amBrilliant animation – and nails exactly how I feel about Smooth Jazz. via BoingBoing -
Cross Platform Keyring Library for Python
26 Aug 2009 | 3:18 amKang Zhang has been busy on a Google Summer of Code project to create a cross platform keychain library for Python. The Python keyring lib provides a easy way to access the system keyring service from python. It can be used in any application that needs safe password storage. It supports OSX, KDE, Gnome and Windows’s native password storing services. Besides this, it is shipped with kinds of Python implemented keyring for the left environments. It’s also been written in a way that makes it possible to create your own Keyring backend if you want to. As this provides a native Python…
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vanderwal.net Off the Top
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I Too Miss Blogging
Ian said it best in the header for his post I miss blogging. There is so much good in Ian's brief post as well as the linked to Dan Cederholm post WoodPress. Before the thoughtless "15 ways to...", which rarely state anything worth reading. I am beginning to believe that the number lists are not meant for reading and only for SEO hits and ad revenue, which is not anything related to user experience but site owner's revenue experience. I repeatedly am finding things I blogged years ago in Google searches when looking for answers. Sadly, at some point I had the answer and was… -
I Love You Dad
it is in this precious life of ours that we see the living the dying the loving the caring the sharing the bearing the seeing the believing the comforting the guiding and all of the grace we can embrace it is from these lessons most wonderfully shared from a father to his son that we do really see the greatness in life and the blessings within us to live each day as a gift not only to each of us but to all of us through the human bonds of love provided through everlasting grace -
Social Design for the Enterprise Workshop in Washington, DC Area
I am finally bringing workshop to my home base, the Washington, DC area. I am putting on a my �Social Design for the Enterprise� half-day workshop on the afternoon of July 17th at Viget Labs (register from this prior link). Yes, it is a Friday in the Summer in Washington, DC area. This is the filter to sort out who really wants to improve what they offer and how successful they want their products and solutions to be. Past Attendees have Said... �A few hours and a few hundred dollar saved us tens of thousands, if not well into six figures dollars of value through improving our… -
Catching Up On Personal InfoCloud Blog Posts
Things here are a little quiet as I have been in writing mode as well as pitching new work. I have been blogging work related items over at Personal InfoCloud, but I am likely only going to be posting summaries of those pieces here from now on, rather than the full posts. I am doing this to concentrate work related posts, particularly on a platform that has commenting available. I am still running my own blogging tool here at vanderwal.net I wrote in 2001 and turned off the comments in 2006 after growing tired of dealing comment spam. The following are recently posted over at Personal… -
Optimizing Tagging UI for People & Search
Overview/Intro One of my areas of focus is around social tools in the workplace (enterprise 2.0) is social bookmarking. Sadly, is does not have the reach it should as it and wiki (most enterprise focused wikis have collective voice pages (blogs) included now & enterprise blog tools have collaborative document pages (wikis). I focus a lot of my attention these days on what happens inside the organization�s firewall, as that is where their is incredible untapped potential for these tools to make a huge difference. One of the things I see on a regular basis is tagging interfaces on a wide…
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PinPoint Performance Solutions
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Planning for Effective Traditional Training
2 Nov 2009 | 3:51 pmMuch attention is given to e-learning, but from time to time traditional forms of training need to be created when, for example, your audience may not be technically savvy or if job conditions do not allow for learners to stop their work to be trained. Proper planning will help ensure the creation of effective, objective training. The keys to effective training are the following elements: continue reading... -
5 Ways to Jump Into Rapid E-learning
9 Oct 2009 | 3:10 pmArticulate is a software company that produces e-learning authorware to create your own media-rich, interactive e-learning courses. The term Rapid E-learning is used quite often throughout their website and supporting Rapid E-Learning Blog written and managed by Tom Kuhlmann. continue reading... -
5 Ways to Improve Your Traditional Training
28 Sep 2009 | 3:02 pmWhen you are creating training, some form of instructional design should be employed however most of us neither have the time or background to apply this practice to make objective, performance-based training. We use training as a way to improve performance or fill a knowledge & skills gap in our target audience. Sometimes, this training misses the mark. In other words, it proves to be unsuccessful but the intention was in the right place. continue reading... -
Defining Interactivity
21 Jul 2009 | 9:52 pmThere’s a common misconception that e-learning in an of itself is interactive. However, interactivity is more than just delivering content in an online format. Just because you use multimedia, doesn't make it interactive. You have to have things such as challenges, decision making and problem solving on the part of the learner integrated in the content. Elements such as the following help make e-learning interactive: continue reading... -
Planning for Effective E-Learning
13 Jun 2009 | 9:18 pmYou may have heard the term Rapid E-learning and wondered to yourself, what does it mean? As I understand it, Rapid E-learning is delivering training (learning) by electronic means, utilizing quick design and development methodologies and available resources to bring a final solution to your target audience in the most efficient manner. If you have conducted your own research on the subject, you may have found different definitions. Nevertheless, the result is still the same – creating an engaging learning experience quickly and inexpensively. continue reading...
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Putting people first
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Reinventing British manners the Post-It way
5 Nov 2009 | 7:32 amWired UK asked Bill Moggridge and his IDEO team to tackle the urban rage problem that is rendering the UK cityscapes ever more aggressive. “Design thinking defines the practical way in which IDEO approaches its problems, but as a phrase it also allows design to be talked about in a meaningful way by non-designers. After all, what is a designer? In the popular mind, it’s the person who lends his or her name to a range of sunglasses or shoes – beret-sporting chaps who add several noughts to price tags. Or it’s the engineer surrounded by technical drawings, making… -
Social isolation and new technology
5 Nov 2009 | 7:25 amThe Pew Internet Personal Networks and Community survey finds that Americans are not as isolated as has been previously reported. People’s use of the mobile phone and the internet is associated with larger and more diverse discussion networks. And, when we examine people’s full personal network – their strong and weak ties – internet use in general and use of social networking services such as Facebook in particular are associated with more diverse social networks. Read media reports: - Tech tools may help pull people together (Silicon Valley Mercury News) - Web, cellphone users are… -
Strength in science collaboration
5 Nov 2009 | 7:11 amRory Cellan-Jones of BBC News reports on how Google Wave is proving its worth in the scientific community, as one of the new collaboration tools which scientists are using to work together and conduct research. “The key to these sites is putting scientists in touch with fellow researchers and academics in a way that was only before possible with word of mouth or extensive, time-consuming networking.” Read full story -
Answering the call to service design
4 Nov 2009 | 7:36 amPhi-Hong D. Ha, an interaction design and strategy consultant, discusses discusses the viability of the new field of service design with Steven Heller of AIGA Voice. Isn’t all design a service to someone? Perhaps that can be debated. But currently the service design genre is receiving considerable attention and achieving currency. When Phi-Hong D. Ha, an interaction design and strategy consultant, was asked what is meant by “service” in today’s design world, she responded, “Service design is a collaborative process of researching, planning and realizing the experiences that happen… -
The new fast ways of keeping in touch are driving us further apart
4 Nov 2009 | 7:26 amEmail, texting and Facebook let us hide behind our computer screens instead of talking to each other. Elizabeth Day asks in The Observer if we have the tyranny of technology to blame or ourselves? According to John Freeman, who is the new editor of Granta magazine and a former president of the National Book Critics Circle in the US, the modern tools of communication that are meant to connect us are actually driving us further apart. Instead of bringing us into closer contact with the global community, email, instant messaging, texting and social networking sites all enforce the notion of what…
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Reaction!
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Apple's new video-rich control panels
6 Nov 2009 | 1:53 amLove this: In addition to the standard checkboxes, buttons and sliders you'll find in any settings panel, Apple's Magic Mouse control panel also includes a collection of snappy video tutorials that explain the effect of adjusting each setting. All you need to do is mouseover the setting you're interested in and the relevant clip automatically plays on the right. (Not sure that this is enough to convince us to buy a Magic Mouse though - our scars from using the Mighty Mouse have still yet to heal!) [via Functioning Form] -
Cheer up, emergency phone...
6 Nov 2009 | 1:42 amNice of them to put Braille on it. Shame you have to be able to see which light is flashing to be able to use it though... [via reddit] -
8-bit wedding invitation
6 Nov 2009 | 1:14 am[via BuzzFeed] -
The HTC HD2 stops ringing when picked up
5 Nov 2009 | 2:19 amNice usability tweak: HTC's new HD2 smartphone stops ringing when you pick it up - which is a great feature for those who routinely leave their phone in their purse/bag with its ringer turned on...and then have to fumble around blindly to find it and switch it off when someone calls during an important meeting. [via User Centered/Opera] -
Symbiosis: A font grown from E. coli
5 Nov 2009 | 2:07 amDezeen reports that Dutch designer Jelte van Abbema won the €10,000 Rado Prize at the Dutch Design Awards last week for a body of work including Symbiosis - a font printed in bacteria. Van Abbema printed this font on paper (see above) and billboards, creating "simple typographic forms that changed colour and form as the bacteria multiplied and then died". [via Fast Company]
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Standard Web Standards
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Design/Sustain: World Usability Day 2009 in Manila
28 Oct 2009 | 7:47 pmFor the fifth year, the World Usability Day will be in Manila. I’m working with the Adobe User Group – Philippines (AUGPhil) and the UST Information Systems Society to organize “Design/Sustain: World Usability Day 2009 in Manila,” the Manila event leg of the World Usability Day. Coincidentally, this is the last pending event I’m heading as [...] -
Mozilla Philippines Community Building Up Steam
26 Oct 2009 | 1:50 amIf you’re a Mozilla Firefox enthusiast here in the Philippines and you’re not yet member of the Mozilla Philippines Community mailing list, you may miss a lot in the coming months. Apart from meetups, the community here in the Philippines could be undertaking localization of Mozilla Firefox, organizing launch events, and probably even getting some cool Mozilla merchandise in the [...] -
Human Factors and Ergonomics in Business and Technology
23 Oct 2009 | 1:00 amI just attended a symposium entitled “Human Factors and Ergonomics in Business and Technology“ at the De La Salle University in Manila and it was hosted by the Human Factors and Ergonomics Center (HFEC). The symposium had four main talks and were given by the HFEC’s research faculty: Human Factors in Business and Technology by Dr. Rosemary Seva Improving [...] -
Review: UserTesting.com
21 Oct 2009 | 4:08 amThe folks at UserTesting.com let me used their service and had this blog tested for its usability. I plan on redesigning soon and I figured this is a good time to get feedback from various sources on how I plan to move forward. The sign-up form goes directly to the usability test set-up where I’m supposed [...] -
Aza Raskin Talks About the Future of Browsing
19 Oct 2009 | 12:20 amAza Raskin, head of User Experience (UX) of Mozilla Labs, gave this talk during the Future of Web Apps London event earlier this month. He shared what the next three years could be like in the browser space. From more user-centric features to payments using the browser, what could be is very intriguing: You-Centric: The Future [...]
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UsabilityBlog
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Sorry, But I Don’t Know Your Acronyms Intel
27 Oct 2009 | 8:28 am[Click image to view full-sized] Illustrated in this simple dialog are three common errors that software producers make: Assuming that users know what the heck their acronyms mean, Not helping users understand the implications of selecting/not selecting an option, and Using a single selection control to perform what appears to be a combination of two actions (e.g., “run WinSAT” and “enable Windows Aero desktop theme.”) Here’s the context: I was finishing up a Windows 7 install, and found an updated driver for my laptop’s video card. When I started the… -
This Is Going To Take Awhile…
27 Oct 2009 | 8:26 am[Click image to view full-sized] Really? I need permission from EVERYONE? Well OK, but I think that’s going to take awhile…can you give me some time to get everyone’s permission? Or do you need to know right now? Fine, be that way. -
Computerworld Article On Linux Drawbacks Misses Usability
15 Oct 2009 | 11:05 amI just read an article I found via Digg (my favorite guilty pleasure social news aggregator) about the drawbacks of desktop Linux. The writer touches on the ecosystem-related reasons that desktop Linux is languishing, but almost completely glosses over the fact that many people who try out a Linux distro are beset by significant and sometimes insurmountable usability and user experience issues. First the author makes the dubious claim that “in 2009, any reasonably smart person can use any major Linux distribution without much trouble” (maybe he hasn’t read “The Great… -
Lazy Programming 101
15 Oct 2009 | 7:24 am(Click image to view full-sized) Not parsing phone numbers into area code-exchange-suffix is just plain lazy coding. It makes for hard-to-read numbers. ’nuff said. OK, I didn’t say enough. This is yet more evidence that the price of usability is eternal vigilance. Stepping off the soapbox now. Have a good day y’all. -
My Usability Marathon Preso
14 Oct 2009 | 9:34 amI just posted my Usability Marathon presentation to Slideshare. (I love Slideshare btw…no surprise; Rashmi Sinha started out as a UX person.) I’m getting good feedback and nice retweets on Twitter; which is a good sign. Normally, I’d pull some choice quotes to whet your appetite. But I’ve got a pile of storyboarding and wireframing to do this week, so it’s back to the UX grind (but what a satisfying fun grind!). Enjoy. Usability…Or Strategic User Experience? :: Usability Marathon 2
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User Centered
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User Centered Design...HTC HD2- ringer shuts off when it's picked up!
4 Nov 2009 | 12:27 pmIt's a simple matter that just about any modern smartphone can do, but it's the fit & finish that make a great user centered experience.The HTC HD2 (which I'm impressed with) uses its accelerometer to silence the ringer when the user picks up the device. Great for those that fumble around in their purse or computer bag because they forgot to switch to vibrate (use Locale on the Android platform!) -
Opera Unite Review - Part 3
4 Oct 2009 | 1:00 pmI apologize for the delay in this posting... While this fulfills an internal drive at bettering the world it doesn't quite pay for my rent. Job hunting bites.In Part 1, I discussed what Opera Unite wants to be. In Part 2, I reviewed the current offerings and my personal use cases. In Part 3, I'd like to discuss why I feel the underlying architecture seems flawed from a usability perspective and how that demonstrated itself in Part 2.As a reader pointed out to me. Opera Unite is not the Apps it runs, Opera Unite is the platform that runs it. However, I contend that is semantics, you cannot… -
Opera Unite Review - Part 2
23 Sep 2009 | 12:22 pmNow onto the use cases. I actually wrote this first and will leave it in that original form for the sake of preserving my perspective.Opera Unite is still in Beta but the architecture issues here are still fair game.I've been playing with Opera Unite over the past couple of weeks, using it to share files and I must admit I'm disappointed. What is the problem Opera is trying to solve here? Let's use Opera's own words, "Opera Unite is a form of collaboration technology that allows you to share data such as files or photos with other users, directly from your computer." (What Is… -
Opera Unite Review - Part 1
22 Sep 2009 | 11:35 amGreetings Usability Fans, Amateurs and Professionals!I've decided, unwisely for myself*, to spend some time reviewing the new Opera Unite feature being tested and with plans for general release soon. I enjoy Opera and for the amount of work being put into this new feature it was time to give it a go and being the Usability Amateur that I am, I wanted to share my experience.I'm going to work backwards. The first thing I did with Opera Unite was use it. I did not read about it. I heard from a friend that he had used it and it "basically turned your computer into a server." I think… -
Proclamation: I will never use a browser that doesn't support mouse gestures as long as I live
15 Sep 2009 | 9:53 am(...unless forced to by work)Post updated 17 SeptSeriously- I love the irony of people haggling over milliseconds of JavaScript rendering times for pages, but don't bat an eye at the amount of time spent waste pushing a mouse pointer around the screen to find the "back" button, the "X" on the tab,the "new tab" button, or moving your hand back and forth from the keyboard to the mouse. I would think the user's "Locus of Attention" would at least factor in to the equation to some extent.To me, reading a page and being able to have my browser respond to my…
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The Work•Play•Experience Blog
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Powerpoint, bras and twitter art
19 Oct 2009 | 4:44 amJust for funArtist Johanna Basford asked the twittering world for ideas, and proceeded to incorporate every one in a drawing that could easily become the new wallpaper at Arkham Asylum.Of course, I tweeted in "Powerpoint and a bra", and the result is in there somewhere. Thanks Johanna!See if you can spot our contribution among the whales, badgers, monkeys and dinosaurs... here's the report. -
Top 10 Reasons why Powerpoint is like a bra
7 Oct 2009 | 3:42 pmYes, really. It drives me crazy when people think of their Powerpoint* slides as their "presentation". Really, truly crunchy-monkey-nut crazy. Today, I was so annoyed at this habit that I tweeted:The tweet rang bells with a few folks, notably Chris Atherton. Well, I do like to ring bells - so, for the list fetishists among you, here are...The Top 10 Reasons a Powerpoint Slidedeck is Just Like a Bra. (You can also have this boring (?) list in Chinese, courtesy of ExcelPro.)10. It is often used out of habit or insecurity - but there are plenty of situations where it only gets in the way 9. It's… -
Customer experience, the jazz way
2 Oct 2009 | 11:20 amLessons for customer experience from a master of voiceOver the last couple of days, I have spent a little time with three exceptional musicians: New York's Refuge Trio, made up of Theo Bleckmann, Gary Versace and John Hollenbeck. I was able to take part in a masterclass vocal workshop with Bleckmann, and several of his statements on singing - like so many showbiz ideas - offer excellent insight for customer experience practitioners.(We spoke in German, and all this is based on my brief notes, so all quotes are no more than "my best attempt" at capturing the meaning.)The Master on backstage… -
How to rehearse (or not) a presentation
10 Sep 2009 | 3:24 amBest of both worldsHow a stand-up comedian rehearses for both flexibility and confidence.An over-rehearsed presentation - like an over-rehearsed show - can really stink. It can be so automatic that it loses touch with the audience. It becomes a polished set of actions and words and ceases to be two-way communication, a persuasive dialogue.On stage, we know that the comic aside - the gag improvised when the scenery collapses or a cellphone in the audience rings - is usually the biggest laugh of the evening. It's because the audience knows it was one-off, one-time, authentic creativity. So… -
Upcoming workshop in Munich
2 Sep 2009 | 11:45 amInput please...I've been talking to the charming folks at EDO, that's Europe's own Experience Design Organisation*, about doing a workshop with them this autumn. I'll be presenting some of my theatrical tools that can be used in service design and customer experience work. It will be hot, fast and will - as always - involve huge quantities of flying chocolate.Daniel Hunzicker at EDO has had the excellent idea of combining my egg-throwing-antics with input from the magical whizzkids at IDEO Munich, so it is shaping up to be a rather splendid couple of days in the city of beer.Here's the cool…
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Yu Centrik
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Yu Centrik speaking at Cleverbridge networking event
13 Oct 2009 | 1:28 pmJay Virdyarthi User Experience Designer & Research Coordinator at Yu Centrik will be a speaker at Cleverbridge’s Networking Event which will be held in Montreal, October 14th, 2009. More than 50 representatives from European and North American countries are expected. Jay will speak about Customer Experience. Cleverbridge solution is unencumbered by the limitations of traditional e-commerce platforms and is designed to cater to the ever-changing needs of clients, now and in the future. ———- -
Digital Etiquette
29 Sep 2009 | 6:41 amEngaging with socially-powered technology for the past decade, I’ve noticed the slow, natural formation of ‘digital etiquette’. In the same way that researchers have found information-seeking behaviour to be akin to animalistic ‘foraging’ behaviour, it seems that our typical social behaviour manifests itself on the web as well. As online tools are appropriated by real users in a social context, we are starting to see the natural development of online ‘politeness’. Some examples… Re-Tweeting and Sharing Posts When finding an interesting… -
Yu Centrik: Canadian Partner of UXalliance
24 Sep 2009 | 5:13 pmMontreal, September 24th 2009 – Yu Centrik, an independent firm specialized in usability and user experience, is proud to announce its partnership with UXalliance. UXalliance is an international organization gathering the best user experience firms in the world under a common objective: maintaining consistency and high standards while conducting globalized user experience research. Since its inception in 2005, UXalliance has been gaining momentum through more than 250 international projects with its partners, testing 15 000 participants in 20 countries. We are proud of what we have… -
Captcha tests (2/2): Alternatives and Best Practices
14 Sep 2009 | 7:12 amIn a previous bulletin, I was talking about captcha tests, their reason for being, and how easy it is to bypass the system.I also mentioned that adding more noise to the test also makes it more difficult for human users.However, in my research on different strategies to satisfy security requirements while still allowing the user to get through this step, I found out that a number of variations to the captcha test exist.Here’s a quick overview. The Classic Captcha 1. MSN sign-up The Animated Captcha Advantage -The captcha isn’t fully revealed all at the same time and/or its… -
Using Flash to Prototype Voice Interfaces
10 Sep 2009 | 2:00 pmIt is often necessary to use fairly complex tools to perform usability tests on voice interfaces (cf. Nexus[1], Database Systems Corp.[2]). One of our projects involved a touch-activated automated telephone information system. We required a test solution that was flexible, easy to build, and which provided a relatively natural simulation of a telephone call that would allow us to capture the call and a certain number of events during said call. It also had to be easy to modify and not too expensive. We therefore developed a simple flash utility that was adapted to simulate a user’s phone…
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UI-patterns.com
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Blog post: A good design is measurable
21 Oct 2009 | 5:00 pmHow do you know if your design is a success? Simply, that it will be better than the old design? A good design only makes sense if it is measurable. In order to make the success measurable, you need to lay down what metrics you are trying to improve. Web design is no longer just about making stuff look good, but has undergone a radical change from being just about aesthetics to being a strategic tool to improve business. Successful design is aligned with the business. Successful design metrics are aligned with business metrics. At Benjamin Media, a lifestyle magazine company with significant… -
Blog post: Seasoned vs rookie designers
19 Oct 2009 | 5:00 pmWhen you design for the web, what parameters are you designing for? Aesthetics? Reuse? Sign up? Clicks? Reuse? Conversion rate? The rookie designer What separates the seasoned and mature designer from the rookie is the end goal. The rookie designer designs for aesthetics as this is what got him interested in the first place. He lurks around CSS galleries to spot new clever ways to design yet unknown to the masses. His end goal is to astonish and make his peers go ‘WOW’. The main problem with the rookie designer his end goal. He designs for his peers rather than for the end user,… -
Blog post: Design-Build and Agile development
15 Sep 2009 | 5:00 pmIt seems that most industries have their own form of agile development methodologies. Manufacturing has lean manufacturing originally developed by Toyota. I just found out today that construction has something similar: Design-build which is in contrast to the traditional “design-bid-build”. In the Design-Build construction methodology tasks are completed in overlapping fashion, like beginning construction while still designing the building. The comparison between software development and physical construction has often been used to argue against agile development practices in that… -
Blog post: Presentation tips
7 Sep 2009 | 5:00 pmThe topics on this blog tend to go beyond just design and its patterns. It has also covered how to get there and what to do once you’ve arrived. This post is about making presentations: physical presentations of your product, thoughts, or whatever you have in mind. Here is my and other’s collection of presentation tips collected and tested over some time now. Set the scene: Be on top of the game, the beginning is critical Show up early. If there aren’t any technical problems to fix, you can always chat and mingle with the audience. What is the problem, who cares, and what is… -
Blog post: From the computer to the wall
2 Sep 2009 | 5:00 pmOne of the principles we live by at Benjamin Interactive is to get things out of the computer and up on the wall. The problem with keeping everything in the computer or in electronic form is that nobody else than who’s working on it sees it. You can have loads of information in the wiki, in Basecamp, in email correspondences, in powerpoints, in photoshop files, in excel sheets, or on note paper – but most likely it is only you and the team members involved with the specific content, that will ever see it. The problem with that is late feedback. Late feedback from all the other…
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Futile
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The Sony and Atracsys surface like interface
Here’s a video about the Sony & Atracsys surface like table that was seen at the Vision 2009 conference From what I’ve seen most of the functionality of the is very similar to the Microsoft Surface table only bigger. Related posts:Wirestone Surface app at TechReady 8TiVo to Transfer Shows to iPods, Sony PSP – New York [...] Related posts:Wirestone Surface app at TechReady 8TiVo to Transfer Shows to iPods, Sony PSP – New York TimesLonely Planet on MS Surface -
Papercraft Self Portrait by Eric Testroete
Made using: 3ds Max 2009 Mudbox 2010 Photoshop CS3 Pepakura Really amazing results. I totally want to go and make a whole bunch of these. Related posts:links for 2009-04-13Intelligent design Related posts:links for 2009-04-13Intelligent design -
links for 2009-10-27
That VideoGame Blog » Microsoft retail store lets you print your own physical copies of PC games Nice little article that was reposted many times (tags: "Microsoft Store" ondemand) Related posts:links for 2009-08-13links for 2009-08-11links for 2009-07-14 Related posts:links for 2009-08-13links for 2009-08-11links for 2009-07-14 -
Photos of the First Microsoft Store
I was lucky enough to be at the first Microsoft Store in Scottsdale on opening day. Here are the photos I took: Related posts:Microsoft Surface in AT&T Retail StoreFairwell to Microsoft from David StutzMicrosoft tries a new model for device team Related posts:Microsoft Surface in AT&T Retail StoreFairwell to Microsoft from David StutzMicrosoft tries a new model for device team -
links for 2009-10-03
Grab data from WordPress database | StylizedWeb.com (tags: webdesign programming wordpress php code useful data database) How To Create A Custom WordPress Page Template (tags: development webdesign hacks cms blogging wordpress) RESTful Web Services in a WordPress Plugin? | MikeSchinkel.com (tags: development web wordpress WebService rest) Related posts:links for 2009-06-03links for 2009-07-14links for 2009-09-18 Related posts:links for 2009-06-03links for 2009-07-14links for 2009-09-18
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Dexo Design
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Intuitive vs. Conventional
15 Oct 2009 | 8:12 amThoughts? No related posts. -
Is software design a luxury?
10 Oct 2009 | 8:39 pmIn a team meeting recently, someone said “Isn’t it great that we have a software design team? Very few companies our size have that luxury!” The individual meant it as a positive compliment, but every time I hear someone say something like this, I’m reminded that while we are making great advances in software development, we still have a long way to go. Definition of Luxury [Source: wordnetweb.princeton.edu]: something that is an indulgence rather than a necessity lavishness: the quality possessed by something that is excessively expensive Software design is an… -
Design Process at Facebook
27 Aug 2009 | 7:03 amCaught this writeup from Luke Wroblewski on how Facebook designs their software. Key takeaways for me: design team delivers front-end code share early and often; design is involved start to finish design team size = 25 (out of 1000 employees) design is iterative – know from the start that your designs are “experiments” (my words) and may/will change See the whole article here. Related posts:4 Step Simple UI Design ProcessIs software design a luxury?Design Guiding Principles -
UI Design Guiding Principles
21 Jul 2009 | 8:32 amJust as my team and I began working on establishing a set of core guiding principles, I came across a post from John Schrag and his team at Autodesk describing their core design values. Based on their list and our own brainstorming, we have developed our own list of UI Design Guiding Principles: Understand the problem before solving it (and avoid “design on the spot”) Sketch before making it pretty (and discuss abstractions versus specifics — “selection” vs. “combo-box”) Validate designs before investing in (production) code Well designed key features & workflows… -
Design Guiding Principles
11 Jul 2009 | 3:47 pmJohn Schrag has just written a post titled Values in Software Design Practice. To summarize, John and his team came up with two lists: Appropriate order of actions: Setting Goals before Taking Action Understand Problems before Generating Solutions Designing before Writing Design Documents Validating Designs before Investing in Code Steak before Sizzle Values: Validated Data over Expert Opinion Quality of Data over Ease of Data Collection Complete Workflows over Long Feature Lists Achieving Results over Writing Reports Collaborative Design over Design by Referendum or Design by Fiat Ease of…
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Usability Counts | User Experience, Social Media
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Career Mondays: Information Architect — Los Angeles, CA
2 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pmI have a client that wants the transition the role to full time. I’m starting another gig, so I can’t do it. I’m recruiting for the role, so… The company A well-funded startup with founders that have multiple successes behind them (good, as opposed to lucky). They seem like really good people, and the track record of the leadership is solid. Like huge startup solid, five times over, with cash in the bank. The position Information Architect with some design experience so when the contract designer is done, the IA can carry through creating of buttons, some graphics,… -
Silly Saturdays: Social Media Guru
24 Oct 2009 | 1:00 pmSo true, so true.Similar Posts: Startup Weekend LA: Focusing On The Important Features Is The Key In Successful Product Development Marketing Wednesdays: Stay Top of Mind with Customers and Prospects Great Design: It Spoils Us, And We Should Expect Better -
You Mean Not Everyone’s On Facebook?
15 Oct 2009 | 8:54 amFrom the Washington Post: Tomek Kott is so stubborn about not joining his friends — in truth, nearly his entire generation — on any social networking site that his wife launched a mini-crusade against him. Exploiting a tactic surely befitting our times, she whipped up a Facebook group last year called “Tomek Kott Must Join Facebook.” … “I am old-school in the personal touch way,” said Tomek Kott, who lives in Silver Spring and has outsourced many of his digital communication duties to his wife, Anne. “All my friends from high school have also… -
Stupid, Er, Silly Saturdays: Dead Frogs
10 Oct 2009 | 1:00 pmDidn’t PETA say anything?Similar Posts: What User Experience Means To Me Consultant Thursdays: Working With Clients That Don’t Understand The Finish Line CMS Fridays: White Paper On SharePoint Public Facing Websites -
Silly Saturdays: World’s Loudest Alarm Clock
3 Oct 2009 | 1:00 pmFor insomniacs like me.Similar Posts: What Do You Mean There’s A World Outside Of The Interwebs? Silly Saturdays: Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy The Whole World Isn’t On Broadband, Yet
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Kotsego Design
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What Makes a Good Intranet site
4 Nov 2009 | 1:41 pmThe development of corporate intranets is often overlooked. Not enough thought is put into organizing its content logically. Good intranets can really increase efficiency in your office. You need to think of the employees who will have to use it to publish or find information. Here are some key considerations of a good intranet: Clear purpose. Determine [...] -
Design Tips for Startups
28 Oct 2009 | 12:44 pmThousands of startups are founded each year. Each and every one of them offers products that will fullfil needs on the market. Giving new products visibility is one of the biggest challenge startups face. Indeed, the launch of any new product has to be meticulously thought out to be successful. These first steps need to [...] -
Tips to encourage user registration and participation
23 Oct 2009 | 12:59 pmOne of the many challenges of running a Website is attracting an audience that will stay loyal. It’s a jungle out there and there may be a dozen of Websites that offer similar content to yours. How can you differentiate yourself? To build loyalty, you may want to engage users by including a community. Setting up [...] -
How to Create a Good Online Shopping Experience Part 2: Shopping Cart and Checkout Process
14 Oct 2009 | 9:29 pmIn part 1 of our two-part feature, we studied the best ways to develop a good product page. Creating a user-friendly product page is beneficial but the following steps have even more impact. Your user will expect to easily be able to add various products to his virtual shopping cart and for the checkout process [...] -
How to Create a Good Online Shopping Experience Part 1: Product Page Design
7 Oct 2009 | 2:01 pmOnline shopping has evolved considerably since its beginnings a few years ago. More and more people worry less about giving their information to online retailers, making e-commerce sites more viable. However, in order to be successful, you have to gain your customers’ trust by offering a credible and user-friendly place to shop. In this first [...]
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Usability Post
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A Better Distribution Channel for Desktop Apps
6 Nov 2009 | 10:42 amMy Tuesday’s post was about the iPhone and what it does right. Apart from being a usable device it has another great feature: the App Store. You can browse all the apps available for the phone and get them with just a tap of the finger (or two, together with password input to be precise). The apps you download are also updated through the App Store — so whenever there’s a new version of the app out, you see a little number pop up above the App Store icon. That number says: you’ve got a new update available. Going to the update window lets you see what’s been… -
3 Things Phone Manufacturers Should Get Right to Beat the iPhone
3 Nov 2009 | 3:03 pmIt’s interesting to see the latest developments in the phone market. Everyone is scrambling to match the iPhone in form and function in order to hold on to their market share. Sure, the iPhone is a high end phone, so not everyone is going for it, but it at is also a very very successful phone that gets a lot of things right, and the competition knows it. Which is why we’re seeing all those Storms, Pres and Droids on the market lately. They come close, but always seem to fall short. It’s not the features — these phones usually have more features and better specs than… -
Mouse Cursor Affordance
26 Oct 2009 | 12:18 pmOne important interaction indicator on the web is the mouse cursor. The default cursor arrow changes into a pointing hand when you hover over links for example, which indicates they are indeed links and can be clicked on. It also changes into other things to differentiate context, for example it can change into a text input cursor when hovering over text fields to indicate you can type there. When styling your website with CSS, in some cases you may lose the correct cursor type for certain elements. It’s important to retain this indicator as it will inform the user about how the item… -
Everyday Usability Heuristics: Visibility Of System Status
23 Oct 2009 | 9:41 amGuest post by Ondřej Válka Ondřej is a freelance front-end Web developer & designer, currently helping Pixmac to make its front-end bulletproof. Two weeks ago, I was watching my 45-year old father browsing the Internet. Every time I watch him I learn a lesson in usability. I’m sure you know with situations like this one – valuable opportunities to learn from the ordinary users for whom we design. As he is using Windows XP the very first thing he did was that he ran Firefox clicking an icon on the desktop. No response. Nothing happened so after a few seconds he clicked the icon… -
Remember Me
5 Oct 2009 | 7:59 amLast month David Heinemeier Hansson posted a micropost on the 37signals blog asking if it’s time to kill off the “Remember me” checkbox on login forms and simply assume that the user wants the app to remember them the next time they load it, automatically logging them in. I think this falls in the same category as Jakob Nielsen’s recent suggestion to drop password masking. Yes, it would make life easier in many cases, but it would also pose problems. The consensus seems to be that the problems outweigh the benefits. Forgetting to log out and thus compromising your data…
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UIE Brain Sparks
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UIEtips: Gerry McGovern Says “Manage the Tasks”
28 Oct 2009 | 9:36 amFor years, we’ve known about the importance of completing tasks. Not the items on your to-do list — the users’ tasks. What we found in our research over the last 10 years is that practically every measure of users’ performance correlates strongly with the users completing their task. Users who achieve their objective believe the web site looks more professional, rate it as more fun, tell us it runs faster, and are more satisfied with the site. There’s no doubt: if you want users to love your site, make sure they complete their tasks. Yet, even though we know task… -
SpoolCast: Innovation Beyond the Buzzword
23 Oct 2009 | 1:31 pmDuration: 27.5m | 15MB Recorded: October, 2009 Brian Christiansen, UIE Podcast Producer [ Subscribe to our podcast via ←This link will launch the iTunes application.] [ Subscribe with other podcast applications.] [ Direct Link to MP3 File ] How many IBM or General Electric television ads do we need to see before we are groaning at the mention of the word “innovation”? It’s too late for me, personally. But that doesn’t mean real innovation is dead. Steve Jobs has been quoted saying Apple will innovate their way through tight times. This past week Apple announced… -
UIEtips: Four Essential Skills for Information Architects – An Interview with Donna Spencer
22 Oct 2009 | 7:59 amI recently facilitated several usability tests, watching user after user struggle with our client’s web site. Not one user could find the most valuable content on the site. Every user knew exactly what they wanted and all of the information they were looking for was available — they just had no idea how to find it. Once they made it to the page with their content, they still struggled. The navigation links and categories were so unclearly written that users weren’t at all sure where to click. They had to work very hard just to figure out what content was available to them on… -
UIEtips: Moderating with Multiple Personalities: 3 Roles for Facilitating Usability Tests
14 Oct 2009 | 9:06 amSometimes, just adding a mental image to something difficult can make it dramatically easier. I discovered this while helping people learn to become better usability test moderators. Moderating a usability test is difficult. There’s a lot going on, and you have to keep it all moving. Years ago, when we were privileged to have Carolyn Snyder working for us, she came up with a simple metaphor for facilitating usability test sessions. We called it the “Flight attendant, Sportscaster, Scientist” metaphor and it really helped us simplify how to moderate the session. In… -
Effectively Moderating Usability Tests, October 21
14 Oct 2009 | 6:37 amYou’ve just been asked to moderate a usability test. Whether it’s your first or your 199th, do you know how to do it and capture the best results? Will you be able to start it without a lump in your throat, or without being distracted by the thought that your every move is being watched? We’re bringing an expert in to help you make the most of this important research study. In our next UIEVS on Wednesday, October 21, Beth Loring will teach you 6 Golden Rules to Effectively Moderate Usability Tests. Conducting a usability test can be stressful, but you know how important this…
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Cone Trees
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Laika- a dynamic typeface created with Processing
1 Nov 2009 | 7:27 amLaika is a dynamic typeface. Via a custom designed control panel, kerning, italics, size and other properties of a typeface can be adjusted. Laika can be responsive to any possible input. The final project installation included type that which was responsive to passers-by. Laika was done as a bachelor thesis project by Michael Flückiger and Nicholas Kunz. Laika was created using Processing. In case you did not know, Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. I recommend you have a look at it if you… -
Increase Conversions in Long Web Forms by Resolving the Accidental Back Button Activation Issue
20 Oct 2009 | 5:08 amThis article is published at Evolt. Read the article there. -
Fixing the sIFR 3 text wrap issue
9 Oct 2009 | 8:30 amIf you are facing the issue of sIFR text wrapping in Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, just like I did while trying to implement it on my new website meant for the user experience community: UX Quotes , then you should find this post useful. I am assuming this solution should work with all version 3 revisions though I have particularly tried it with sIFR 3.436. Try one of the two arguments given below to fix the text wrap issue. 1. forceSingleLine The forceSingleLine argument forces text to be displayed in a single line. Values True, false Note Note that if you have a very long line of text,… -
Evolt
5 Oct 2009 | 10:30 amMy article, ‘Increase Conversions in Long Web Forms by Resolving the Accidental Back Button Activation Issue’, is published by Evolt (a pleasure since articles in the Usability/ IA column selected and published roughly once a year). -
Lionhead Studios demos the capabilities of Microsoft Project Natal
30 Sep 2009 | 8:34 amCode named Project Natal by Microsoft, this sensor device that will be able to be added to any XBOX 360 will allow for a controller-free gaming experience. Through Natal, the user will be interact with the Xbox 360 using gestures, spoken commands or presented objects and images instead of the regular game controller we use today. To be released in late 2010, the Project Natal sensor is the world’s first to combine an RGB camera, depth sensor, multi-array microphone and custom processor running proprietary software all in one device. Unlike 2-D cameras and controllers, Project Natal tracks…
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HFI Connect
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Where is a good chart when you need it?
HFI Trainer John Sorflaten, PhD, CPE, CUA, discusses guidelines for creating online decision tools. Remember the Challenger O-ring debacle? On 28 January, 1986 NASA managers had to decide if the circular rubber rings used to join sections of the orbital spaceship could perform. Unusually cold for the Florida launch pad, temperatures had dipped to about 28 degrees Fahrenheit (-2 degrees Celsius). Pretty cold for rubber O-rings that must flex to work. In a teleconference, engineers at Morton Thiokol recommended against launch. They said they had no performance data at temperatures below 53… -
Case Study: Applying Neuro Web Design to a web site for "Creative Wealth Building"
Nick Pfennigwerth took his old site: and applied some of the principles in my book, Neuro Web Design: What makes them click? Here is what Nick wrote to me: “What I found most interesting and what I applied the most was activating the old brain. If you go to, www.creative-wealthbuilding.com/what-are-smart-goals.html , I used your methods for activating the old brain by telling a dangerous story with a picture of danger in the first couple of paragraphs. Then, I used other photos such as the beautiful woman holding money and the creative art of the human mind. I also tried to activate the mid… -
Cognition Matters: What else can be done by designers to help people execute delayed intention? (I)
On the way to my 'Institute Residence' from my Department, I started thinking about 'cross sectional study'. When I reached my room and sat at the table I opened Mozilla browser but forgot what I actually wanted to get information about. Here, it is clear that the where/when aspect of my intended task is present but what aspect of the task is not available for me to initiate the intended action. The event cue (marker) 'reaching my room' is not cuing enough for me to get the (lost) 'what'. So, I started with 'Quasi experiments' which I was thinking about few hours back. After a while, when I… -
Human Interaction - the Netherlands vs States
I will be paying extra close attention this time to Amsterdam. I lived in the Netherlands for a year and travel back often, I always notice things but never really try too hard to document anything. I will return with a few topics of discussion. I find it so interesting that each country/culture has their own interpretation of a light switch, door handle, toilet flushing handle. Another item I always notice is their Advertising, as the Country is very progressive so are their Ads. Can't wait to share it with all you, if you've had similar experiences and taken note of HFI items in other… -
Trust Lesson #2: Building Trust Is Not Enough
I choose the vendor I trust and have a "habit" for: I saw the movie Julie and Julia and now am reading the book. I got inspired, therefore, to try making a souffle and a quiche. Except I don't own a souffle dish or a quiche dish. So, time to do my part for the economy, and actually purchase some kitchen wares. I happened to be in a Williams Sonoma store and even looked at and picked up both a quiche and a souffle dish. But I didn't purchase them. I was thinking about a news story I had read recently that Amazon is positioning itself to be the major retailer of everything. I'm an Amazon fan (I…
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Talkabout Design
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The work of Lisa Chin
4 Nov 2009 | 2:26 pmCheck out the work of the super talented Lisa Chin, who is an Art Director from NYC. Her work includes Web Design, Print, as well as email campaign design. -
CNN.com New Design
26 Oct 2009 | 7:09 amI am really liking the brand new redesign of CNN.com Even though the previous design was good, this new iteration just feels fresher and cleaner. It is also featuring a lot of social networking features like twitter and facebook. How do you feel about the new cnn.com ? -
Apple Magic Mouse
20 Oct 2009 | 12:42 pmToday Apple introduced the new wireless Magic Mouse, the first mouse to use Apple’s revolutionary Multi-Touch technology. Pioneered on iPhone, iPod touch and Mac notebook trackpads, Multi-Touch allows customers to navigate using intuitive finger gestures. Instead of mechanical buttons, scroll wheels or scroll balls, the entire top of the Magic Mouse is a seamless Multi-Touch surface. Magic Mouse comes standard with the new iMac and will be available as a Mac accessory at just $69. -
Apple intros New iPod nano With Built-in Video Camera
9 Sep 2009 | 2:25 pmSAN FRANCISCO—September 9, 2009—Apple® today introduced the new iPod nano®, adding a video camera, mic and speaker to the world’s most popular music player. Music lovers can now shoot video wherever they are, view it on their iPod nano and use their computers to easily transfer their videos to YouTube. The new iPod nano features an ultra-thin and sleek design with a larger 2.2-inch color display and gorgeous polished aluminum and glass enclosure. iPod nano also features a built-in FM radio with live pause and iTunes® Tagging, as well as a built-in pedometer. The new iPod nano is… -
Apple Premieres iTunes 9
9 Sep 2009 | 2:22 pmSAN FRANCISCO—September 9, 2009—Apple® today introduced iTunes® 9, the latest version of the world’s most popular software application to purchase, manage and play media, packed with innovative features such as iTunes LP, Home Sharing and Genius Mixes, as well as a redesigned store and improved syncing. iTunes 9 makes it easier than ever to discover, purchase and enjoy your music, movies, TV shows, and apps for iPhone™ and iPod touch® from Apple’s revolutionary App Store. Plus, Home Sharing now lets you easily transfer songs, movies and TV shows to other computers in your home.
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90 percent of everything
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At last, a sketchy Axure widget library
5 Nov 2009 | 2:16 pmThe default widget library supplied with Axure occupies an uncomfortable middle ground – it looks like it’s just badly designed high fidelity, rather than intentionally lo-fi. This sketchy Axure widget library by Kevin Wick gets around the problem by giving your your prototypes a rough hand-drawn look. You can see the full widget library here (You’ll need to install Scoder hand font for it to look right). -
“Just add an egg” – Usability, User Experience and Dramaturgy
20 Oct 2009 | 6:56 amI’ve always liked this story about Betty Crocker and how General Mills took such care in designing the experience of making a cake. They’d been espousing speed and ease in the kitchen since 1931 with products like Bisquick, but this story originates from a cake mix they launched in 1952, almost 2 decades later. To quote from Finding Betty Crocker by Susan Marks: “At this time, the company was still refining their approach to marketing. While they sought to promote a quick and easy product that still retained a “fresh, ‘home-made’” quality, ‘the… -
Pidoco° – prototying and remote, moderated user testing – combined!
19 Oct 2009 | 5:24 amI have to admit I only tried Pidoco° very briefly at UX Brighton last week, but I was impressed with what I saw. They’ve integrated an Axure-style prototyping tool with a remote, moderated usability testing tool, and the price is very competitive: only $45/month for the entry-level package. For the same service using Protoshare (which only does prototyping) and Uservue (which only does remote moderated testing), you’d be paying almost $200/month in total: almost 3x the price! Here’s a quick walkthrough the product: Above you can see the wireframing/prototyping tool. -
Achieving adoption of a disruptive product
14 Oct 2009 | 12:22 am“The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.” – Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, 1878 “This telephone has too many shortcomings to be considered as a means of communication. The device is of inherently no value to us.” – Western Union internal memo, 1876 “Getting a new idea adopted, even when it has obvious advantages, is often very difficult.” – Rogers, 1962 Adoption of technology by end users is key to its success – even the most brilliant innovation is worth nothing if… -
ABtests.com – great new resource for sharing A/B test findings
6 Oct 2009 | 3:15 amThis is going to be something special. Abtests.com is created by Bokardo, Performable, and KISSmetrics. In their words: “Our goal is simple: to help people test their web sites/applications and share that knowledge with others, making everyone smarter in the process.” The site uses a well considered and concise format for the articles, making it really easy to read. I think it’s still in Beta, but it looks almost ready to me. Follow @abtests to find out more.
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Konigi
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Sketchy Axure Widget Library
6 Nov 2009 | 1:38 pm -
Usabilla Travel Site Test: Underdogs beat Expedia in usability showdown
6 Nov 2009 | 1:22 pmUsabilla was ran usability tests to compare the usability of four travel sites and has posted the results. Their analysis concludes that Expedia gets defeated by its competitors Hotwire, Priceline, and Travelocity on basic usability tasks. Expedia performed the worst in a usability showdown between the four major international travel sites. A total of 148 people participated in this usability test and tried to perform three basic tasks on one of the four websites. Read the result analysis at the Usabilla blog. -
Annotating Specs With Tracing Paper
29 Oct 2009 | 8:02 amDonna Lichaw posted a photo showing a nice method for annotating specs using tracing paper or vellum. -
Michael Bierut: 5 Secrets from 86 Notebooks
28 Oct 2009 | 7:33 amThis is fantastic presentation from Pentagram's Michael Bierut at The 99 Percent conference. Shows how a quiet, humble, and empathetic bedside manner can be such useful attributes in a designer. Renowned graphic designer Michael Bierut claims that he's not creative. Instead, he likens his job to that of a doctor who tends to patients – "the sicker, the better." Digging into the 86 notebooks he's kept over the course of his career, Bierut walks us through 5 projects – from original conception to final execution – extracting a handful of simple lessons (e.g. the problem contains the… -
Finding Focus While Trying to Work
27 Oct 2009 | 3:08 pmHow I try and occasionally succeed at finding focus. Ambient information and notification is killing me; so much so I'm mostly avoiding email, I'm disabling Growl notifications for apps, and looking at stuff like Tweetie on my own time rather than leaving it always on. I have to admit that I occasionally have a hard time focusing on tasks and have sometimes put more effort into tweaking my systems for getting things done than I should. All for the greater good of finding a better way to be productive, I say. I am of course fooling myself. I have found some practices rather useful for getting…
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Kristian Andersen + Associates
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Redbox: The $1 Experience
5 Nov 2009 | 10:21 amFive years ago, if you wanted to rent a movie, you’d get in your car, drive to the nearest Blockbuster and spend 15 minutes browsing the movies on the walls, make your selection, and then proceed through the aisle of candy and popcorn to the next eager & available checkout clerk who would scan your membership card and take your money. Today, if you want to rent a movie, you probably add it to your Netflix queue and wait a day or two for it to arrive in your mailbox, or you visit a big giant vending machine robot called Redbox. Redbox seems to be all the rage these days (from what I… -
Anti-Energy Nowism
4 Nov 2009 | 1:41 pmTrendwatching.com, one of the world’s leading consumer trends firms, released their report on NOWISM this month. As a consumer, I can certainly understand the urge to have everything right now. But as a provider of a service, I’ve learned that there are benefits to those who wait. Here at KA+A, we serve a bevy of clients whose jobs are to fulfill customers who need their product or service on-demand: they need the latest data on their customers right now; they needed a new feature of the product yesterday; and they need to get the software rolled out in their company with little or no… -
Bigger Ideas Conference Video Available
4 Nov 2009 | 7:49 amThe gang over at SmallerIndiana, have posted all of the video content from the Bigger Ideas Conference. If you missed the event, head on over here, to catch-up on what you missed out on. Kristian Andersen from Smaller Indiana, Bigger Ideas on Vimeo. -
Design & Performance-Based Business Models
2 Nov 2009 | 8:02 amA recent BusinessWeek podcast featured an interview with Fahrenheit 212 founder and CEO Geoff Vuleta. Fahrenheit 212 is an innovation consultancy that engages their clients in a unique way by subjecting two thirds of their fees to agreed upon commercial milestones. If they don’t meet those milestones, they lose those fees. As a result the consultancy has a tangible interest in whether or not an initiative succeeds. KA+A’s VentureSpring program produces similar results. When commercial interests are aligned a truer partnership, with all the honesty and transparency that necessarily goes… -
Coke’s Prize in Disguise
30 Oct 2009 | 10:48 amCoca-Cola recently unveiled their all new state of the art, “world-changing” Freestyle Fountain soft-drink dispensers. Just to preface the rest of the post, I’m a bit put off by the freewheeling tendencies that come with this machine. The hype, the calories, the promises – all seem empty to me. It all sort of bubbled to the surface when I read a recently posted BusinessWeek article that featured the new dispensers. The piece opened by saying “The inventor of life-saving medical devices (Dean Kamen) sees Coca-Cola’s new Freestyle fountain as a way to make progress on…
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The UX Booth
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The Future of Interface Design
3 Nov 2009 | 5:00 amDid you know the first “brain-tweet” was sent out this year? How about that we may someday be customizing windshields with widgets? In the not-to-distant future, we may be interfacing with computers in exciting and innovative new ways.In the grand scheme of history, it wasn’t long ago that the first telephone conversation took place. Relatively speaking, that makes the personal computer an invention of yesteryear, and social networking only a blink of an eye later. Just imagine what’s coming in the near future…The future of how we interact with computers is… -
10 UX Blogs You Should Be Reading
28 Oct 2009 | 6:30 amIn our recent redesign we’ve added more emphasis on our resources section. There are so many great UX related posts out there, we just have to share them with you. Besides, sometimes one awesome UX Booth post a week isn’t enough! Therefore, I wanted to share with you other UX blogs that you should be reading on a regular basis.Usability Post Usability Post knows exactly what usability means when they describe their site as: …a blog about design. Design isn’t what something looks like, design is about how it works. This blog run by Dmitry really dives into relevant… -
Focusing Interaction Design with Design Strategy
20 Oct 2009 | 6:30 amDesign has a reputation for being one of the more ambiguous areas of product development. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard clients say: “first we’ll get the application functionally correct and then we’ll put a skin on top of it.” This gets my blood boiling.As Whitney Hess stated earlier this year: UX Design isn’t just “a step in the process.” Users themselves experience much more than just the look and feel of an application. By the time the aforementioned client addresses their application’s aesthetics, many decisions will… -
Handling User Error with Care: Getting Users Back on Track
13 Oct 2009 | 6:00 amDealing with user errors is a hidden source of friction. UX consultant John Hyde discusses best practice including a financial website that boosted conversions by 17% with these guidelines.The happy pathDesigners talk about the ‘happy path’ through a website, where smiling users enter correct and complete data and press the right buttons in the right order.The first time I measured this happiness I was surprised. My programmer logged details of a simple lead-generation form:31% made an error on their first go7 of these got back on track24 left the website without… -
Tools for Sketching User Experiences
6 Oct 2009 | 6:00 amA paper wireframe template in action.In this article, I’ll expound on the tools I use every day to design interfaces and experiences. I’ve spent years trying a variety of tools, and so far, analog tools such as markers, notebooks and paper templates have proved to be the most effective because of their constraints and flexibility.Sketching communicates ideasOur brains are the ultimate tool for solving problems. But it’s hard to share ideas when they’re locked away in our heads. Sketching frees our ideas from our mind allowing others to see them. A visual representation…
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Mantia
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Your Death Certificate
30 Oct 2009 | 5:43 amEarlier this week I thought it’d be pretty cool to design my own Death Certificate, related to the Haunted Mansion. As I was showing it to my good friend David Occhino (who creates some fantastic typefaces, I must say), we agreed it would be exponentially cooler if we could somehow create a dynamic PDF so that other foolish mortals can enjoy it as well. Layton Duncan, who I’ve worked with before, jumped on board to make it a reality. I redesigned the certificate and it sports David’s new Mansion 3.0 typeface and witness signatures for your favorite Haunted Mansion… -
Eerie Eyes
27 Oct 2009 | 7:25 am -
Redesigning SF Transportation
24 Oct 2009 | 1:09 pmI lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for about a year, and during that time, Caltrain and BART were essential for traveling, as I didn’t have a car. Just for a fun exercise, I wanted to redesign both of these logos. Top: original logo. Bottom: my redesign. Caltrain My apartment was in Mountain View, so Caltrain was an incredibly useful form of transportation to get me to Palo Alto where I worked. The train traveled all the way from San Francisco to San Jose, and therefore was also handy when I needed to get to the San Jose Airport or downtown San Francisco. I rode these trains nearly… -
Steven Troughton-Smith: Orbit
22 Oct 2009 | 6:25 pm -
Kraft Macaroni & Cheese
30 Sep 2009 | 5:05 pmSo, surely at least a few of you out there have had your share of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. It’s wonderful and cheap. The main problem with it is… opening the box. Today, I decided to call up Kraft Foods because frankly, I’ve had it. Exhibit A “Hey ma’am, surely you’re familiar with Kraft Macaroni & Cheese…” “Yes, sir.” “Well you know on the top-left corner of the box there’s that ‘To Open Push Here’ area? Have you ever been able to open the box by pushing that spot?” “No, sir, I always just…
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UX Passion - Things about user experience, usability, IA, SEO, tutorials, blogging and Microsoft
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On the Web, competition is just one click away (JustHost is our new host)
2 Nov 2009 | 1:31 pmThis is a post about customer service, customer frustration and customer / user experience. I've made a move from my old webhost Inside.hr to JustHost.com. Reason? Well, I was frustrated with their „customer service“. After careful consideration, I’ve decided to use JustHost.com. I want to share my (user) experience with you. -
Design pricing: It’s never just about the price
14 Oct 2009 | 2:22 pmSetting proper pricing for your UX design work is crucial. It goes hand in hand with setting your customer's expectations. Set the price too low and you will gain reputation of the same kind. Set it high – you will also set high expectations. If you can deliver on them – then keep it that way. Reason: it’s never just about the price. -
UX ROI: User Experience Return on Investment
10 Oct 2009 | 12:58 pmCalculating and even trying to understand what all adds up to the UX ROI is difficult task. When we are faced with clients and investors – ROI is something they often ask for. How to even start thinking about return on investment in the field of user experience? Here I’m talking about UX ROI discussion tool and other metrics. -
Expression Blend tutorial: Brushes, gradients, fills and strokes (webcast)
6 Oct 2009 | 7:48 amThis Expression Blend 3 tutorial introduces you to brushes and how to change the appearance of the specific object. You will learn how to use different types of brushes, and the special emphasis is given to gradient tools. How to create and modify gradients, using the gradient eyedropper and other goodies! -
RIA jobs market trends: Silverlight vs Flex vs JavaFX
17 Sep 2009 | 11:05 amSeveral days ago I've received message with link to the InsideRIA. Mike Slinn of the InsideRIA has posted interesting article about job trends regarding Silverlight, Flex and JavaFX. If you go to the Indeed webpage and search for these keywords, you might be surprised. Here are some really interesting facts.
