September 2011
1 post
Sure signs of UX's adolescence
Indecision about what it should be called
Insecurity about whether it has the “right” skills
July 2011
2 posts
Google+ and the "I don't want to look like a dick"...
Google+’s Circles has received a lot of well-deserved praise for the clever way it helps you control what you say to whom. But what about better controls over what other people say to me?
There is a tricky problem of reciprocation in social environments: what do I do when someone I know but don’t particularly want to be connected to adds me to a circle? If I don’t add them...
Squint test on the new Gmail design
Classic theme on top, new theme on the bottom.
I prefer the classic theme, which has higher information density—I see about 33% more messages by default with the classic theme—and more visual contrast. In the new theme, the message controls above and below the list of emails are sort of floating off on their own, without any sort of container. As a result, these controls feel unmoored and the...
June 2011
3 posts
Summer is 31-33% over
So, I started a blog called 13 Weekends a few weeks ago and it’s been going pretty well. I just posted Week 4’s entry last night.
For this project, I wanted to take a stab at the “art directed” style of blogging (in which each post is uniquely designed). I’ve got five posts under my belt and since this is my “professional” blog, I’ll share some...
How people (who read Business Insider) Really Use...
The Atlantic is linking to a Business Insider survey about iPad usage. The results are interesting enough; I suppose they are useful as a daily reminder that You Are Not the User.
I take issue with the lazy and misleading headline, though. This is not how people use the iPad. This is how people who read Business Insider and are willing to fill out an “extensive questionnaire” use the...
4 tags
Living With Mies →
A few blocks east of Detroit’s downtown, just across Interstate 375, sits Lafayette Park, an enclave of single- and two-story modernist townhouses set amid a forest of locust trees. Like hundreds of developments nationwide, they were the result of postwar urban renewal; unlike almost all of them, it had a trio of world-class designers behind it: Ludwig Hilbersheimer as urban planner, Alfred...
May 2011
9 posts
WatchI found this video captivating on a number of levels. Paul Graham spends about 6 minutes with founders of five startups he knows little to nothing about, uncovering fundamental challenges and offering cogent advice.
Even if you don’t care about startups, it’s cool to watch such a sharp mind get to the point so quickly. Lots of respect for that.
Skip past the TechCrunch dudes fumbling...
Ten design lessons from Frederick Law Olmsted →
Thirty years after he helped to design Central Park, he observed to his ex-partner, Calvert Vaux, “The great merit of all the works you and I have done is that in them the larger opportunities of the topography have not been wasted in aiming at ordinary suburban gardening, cottage gardening effects. We have let it alone more than most gardeners can. But never too much, hardly enough.”
On Unsolicited Redesigns
There’s been some debate recently (and not so recently) about whether unsolicited redesigns are Good or Bad, prompted by an unsolicited redesign of Instapaper (which is, in my humble opinion, perhaps the best designed app I’ve ever used).
I think unsolicited redesigns are generally a bad idea. That said, I think there’s a little nuance to get straight:
Unsolicited redesigns are...
The Information Sage →
“There is no such thing as information overload,” Tufte says at the start of his courses. “Only bad design.” (In Portland, this last line received some applause, as well as a cry of “God, yes!”)
"The Starbucks Effect"—What Safari’s "Reading... →
If Apple gets a bunch of Safari users — the browser that works best with Instapaper — to get into a “read later” workflow and see the value in such features, those users are prime potential Instapaper customers. And it gives me an easier way to explain it to them: “It’s like Safari’s Reading List, but better, in these ways.”
Famous Creators on the Fear of Failure →
“It’s much, much better to wind up with a lot of crap having tried it than to overthink in the beginning and not do it.” ~ Stefan Sagmeister
Regarding Those Sparktweets →
Since the current working set of Unicode characters gives you a range of six, as noted by WSJ’s Zach Seward, sparktweets fail Edward Tufte’s definition of a sparkline as “small, high-resolution graphics embedded in a context of words, numbers, images.” (Emphasis mine.) Tufte designed them to work well in print applications due to the high pixel and information density of printed ink.
And what of art direction? →
Exciting news:
Looking ahead, we plan to experiment with and share new ways of enabling designers and art directors on the reading view. We would like nothing more than to see great design meet a great reading experience.
I love services like Readability and Instapaper that essentially allow me to DVR stuff I want to read online so I can read it on the train. But occasionally the article is...
April 2011
1 post
“I think some of the reason “Calvin and Hobbes” still finds an...”
– Bill Watterson in The Plain Dealer (Feb. 1, 2010)
February 2011
3 posts
“But as a designer, hell, as ANY type of craftsman, you are responsible for what...”
– Mike Monteiro, “How to Pick the Right Clients”
A Few UX Professional Development Links
Through the magic of coincidence, a few links came over the wire this week that all have to do with the professional and creative development of UX types like me. In no particular order, they are:
The Information Architecture Institute released the results of their 2010 salary survey. IAI 2010 Salary Survey.
Jared Spool spoke at UXCamp DC and gave tons of valuable advice for UX jobseekers, UX...
“The honeypot around eBooks is to think only in terms of artifact. When, in fact,...”
– Craig Mod, “In praise of shadows”
January 2011
3 posts
3 ways to improve Google Reader
Create a solid editorial filter. The weak spot in any news reading experience is that, sooner or later, unread posts to read will overwhelm you. How the software manages that volume on behalf of the reader is critical. Google Reader competes for the same time slots that Twitter does—two minute distractions from work, an unplanned pause while on the go, a 15 minute, desk-bound lunch, and so...
Fewer steps isn't necessarily better
Twitter changed their new user signup process from 3 steps to 4 steps, and saw a significant increase in signups. This flies in the face of the designer’s intuition that says that fewer steps are always better. Why is that? What was the step that Twitter added to its new user flow that caused a >20% increase in conversion?
The Evaporative Cooling Effect in Social Software
The people who most want to meet people are the people who the least number of people want to meet. The people who are the most desperate to date are those who the least number of people want to date. The people who are the most eager to talk are the ones who the least number of people are interested in hearing.
The Evaporative Cooling Effect… describes a particular phenomena of group...
December 2010
4 posts
Notes from Emily Ruth Cohen's Creative Morning...
Well, notes from a single slide, anyway. With maybe just a trace of hyperbole, I tweeted that the slide below brought tears to my eyes. A couple people asked for a clearer picture. I’ll try to do one better: what follows are the bullet points from the slides and the remarks I remember from each. I’m working from memory, so if you were there and can clarify these notes, please comment!
...
Entitlement, attention, and daring to give a shit
I had the good luck to come across three separate pieces of writing this week that described quite clearly, I thought, how it feels to be alive at this moment. Together, these pieces reminded me of some of the primary sources professors carefully chose for me as a history undergraduate; they were such clear-eyed assessments and resonated so deeply that they seemed like they were written about 2010...
November 2010
2 posts
“The French have yet to discover this food match, so let me be the one to tell...”
– Garrett Oliver, The Brewmaster’s Table
October 2010
6 posts
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us...”
– Ira Glass (via benjaminpalmer)
How TheLadders.com integrated UX into Agile →
No easy answers in this article describing how TheLadders.com integrated UX into a new Agile development process. I admire how candid they are about sharing their failures and I’m glad they ultimately found something that works for them, but… wow. The whole experience sounds absolutely miserable. I wonder who they lost along the way.
Despite all of this upfront research, preparation,...
"My opinion about iPad-based magazines is that... →
First impressions of the iPad UX
Everyone’s right—it’s not just a big iPhone. Here’s a list of things that are noticeably different about the iPad, in comparison to my experiences using an iPhone 4.
Oh, and this is not meant to be anything profound, it’s just a list.
I can see individual pixels. The iPhone feels much sharper.
In my lap, on the couch, it feels like a device for video chatting, yet there...
“To fulfill its real mission, personal finance software should result in users...”
– “Someone Could Make a Lot of Money with Personal Finance Software,” Khoi Vinh
September 2010
4 posts
Reviews of Brooklyn Post Offices on Yelp →
Cathartic.
The limit →
mattbot posted a photo:
Walking on the beach →
mattbot posted a video:
"Staring at the woefully desaturated iTunes 10... →
August 2010
2 posts
A Letter to My Students →
Of course we can afford a government that actually works: the fact is that your parents have simply chosen not to have it.
2 tags
January 2009
1 post
Scott McCloud on comics and new media →
McCloud’s Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art is one of the most influential books I’ve read—it’s a must-read for any designer.