Design Resources

Design News

Saving the World Through Design Thinking

21 Nov 2008
by Carrie Ritch
During a recent World Economic Forum in Dubai, the Global Agenda Council/Design Group came up with a Design Manifesto to advocate for "what design thinking can do to help reshape the big issues of the day."Learning – Design can help...
via [paper & pencil]

Airspaces

21 Nov 2008
via [Ask E.T]

Election data displays

20 Nov 2008
via [Ask E.T]

Dog sculpture

20 Nov 2008
via [Ask E.T]

CanUX: Leadership Insights

20 Nov 2008
by LukeW
A few points from the Banff Centre’s Creative Leadership session at CanUX 2008 stuck with me:Once you are able to get a group of people working together effectively, be prepared to let them improvise. A team in harmony has the potential to enhance plans and processes by building on each other. Sti... continues
via [Functioning Form: Interface Design]

Why Apple is great at interfaces when others are not

18 Nov 2008
by Carrie Ritch
Nick Merritt opines on Tech Radar about the pleasure principle and how Apple understands that more than other companies do.It is not just enough to make using something easy. Windows does that, more or less. When it comes to deciding...
via [paper & pencil]

Visual numeracy for collective survival

18 Nov 2008
by Jon Udell
In response to an item last week about regional sources of imported oil, @jesperfj wrote: Not sure what to conclude? Do informed people like Udell really not know that? I really didn’t. And the reaction to the item, plus my survey of friends and associates, tells me that while some info... continues
via [Jon Udell]

Choosing the Language for a User Interface

18 Nov 2008
by Carrie Ritch
Several prominent UX professionals tackle the topic Choosing the Language for a User Interface in the first UXMatters Q&A column.Exclaiming “I bet everyone is unhappy!” Whitney [Quesenbery] describes three of the intermingled issues this reader faces. “First, the language in...
via [paper & pencil]

A Universal Declaration of Users' Rights

18 Nov 2008
"We're coming up on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10. I'm a big supporter of this, and of Amnesty International, which works to protect these rights. Which got me to thinking: why isnt there a list of users' rights anywhere? What is the baseline that... continues
via [InfoDesign: Understanding by Design]

CanUX: 5 Sketches or Else

18 Nov 2008
by LukeW
At CanUX2008 in Banff, Jerome Ryckborst outlined his methodology for getting groups of developers to good design solutions in the absence of professional design help.In some organization, developers are doing design. How can we deal with this?Parallel design: have several developers attempt to solve... continues
via [Functioning Form: Interface Design]

CanUX: Sketchboards- Good Design Faster

18 Nov 2008
by LukeW
Brandon Schauer’s workshop at CanUX 2008 in Banff outlined a methodology for collaborative sketching that enabled teams to jumpstart the product design process.Clients want great experiences and they want them fastTraditionally designers use wireframes to explore designs but they only focus on a s... continues
via [Functioning Form: Interface Design]

CanUX: Visual Thinking in Practice

18 Nov 2008
by LukeW
David Gray’s workshop at CanUX 2008 in Banff provided the core elements needed to get people drawing so they can visually communicate concepts to others.We are taught to think that drawing is about making things look realistic.But drawing is really about getting ideas down on a page. Think of it a... continues
via [Functioning Form: Interface Design]

CanUX: Why so much Sketching?

18 Nov 2008
by LukeW
At the CanUX 2008 conference in Banff several speakers outlined the benefits around quick collaborative sketching in the early stages of a product design process. Though the methodologies for sketching they shared were somewhat different, there was a good deal of convergence on the basics:Use quick ... continues
via [Functioning Form: Interface Design]

Twine, del.icio.us, and event-driven service integration

17 Nov 2008
by Jon Udell
Last week on Interviews with Innovators I spoke with Nova Spivack about Twine, a service that’s been variously described as the first mainstream semantic web application and “just del.icio.us 2.0″. You’ll find support for both points of view in my conversation with Nova. It&#... continues
via [Jon Udell]

People Are From Earth, Machines Are From Outer Space

17 Nov 2008
"Norman's law: The number of hours per day spent maintaining our equipment doubles every 18 months." (Donald A. Norman) - courtesy of thehotstrudel
via [InfoDesign: Understanding by Design]

CanUX: UX Swimlanes

17 Nov 2008
by LukeW
At CanUX 2008 in Banff, Yvonne Shek described UX swimlane deliverables that help clients understand users, business needs and technology all at once.

UX swimlanes outline a bird’s eye view of a story, scenario, or component for sponsors, designers, businesses, and engineers.Executive & sponsors... continues
via [Functioning Form: Interface Design]

CanUX: Creative Leadership

17 Nov 2008
by LukeW
The creative leadership workshop at CanUX 2008 focused lessons from the discipline of theater for leaders.Ecoductions: introduce yourself to a person by describing the environment you come from and the environment you are in now. This surfaces core values about your “being” vs. what you are “d... continues
via [Functioning Form: Interface Design]

People Are From Earth, Machines Are From Outer Space

14 Nov 2008
by Don Norman
Column written for Interactions; ACM, 2008. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. It may be redistributed for non-commercial use only, provided this paragraph is included. Prologue: In the summer of 2008, I locked myself away in a se... continues
via [JND.org]

Signifiers, not affordances

14 Nov 2008
by Don Norman
Column written for Interactions; ACM, 2008. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. It may be redistributed for non-commercial use only, provided this paragraph is included. It is time for a review. As time and technologies change, as ... continues
via [JND.org]

Lessons for User Experience Consultants from Barack Obama

13 Nov 2008
by Carrie Ritch
John Yesko blogs on the lessons UX professionals can learn from the Barack Obama campaign.How can we emulate this approach? Remember that’s it’s all about people. Be sure to know your audience. It’s impossible to develop a good solution if...
via [paper & pencil]

Grounded versus Speculative Reasoning in HCI

12 Nov 2008
"If HCI wants competence in the cultural dimensions of interaction design, it must first have literacy in the intellectual disciplines that specialize in them." (Jeffrey Bardzell - Interaction Culture)
via [InfoDesign: Understanding by Design]

Color Lab with Flickr

11 Nov 2008
by Carrie Ritch
Thanks to the weekly signposts from Adaptive Path, I found this fun color tool from Idée Inc. They use an API from Flickr for all the photos.
via [paper & pencil]

Where the oil comes from: Not from where I thought

9 Nov 2008
by Jon Udell
At a party the other night, a friend mentioned that the country supplying us with the most oil is Canada. Maybe so, I said, but on a regional basis the Middle East dominates, right? He wasn’t sure, but didn’t think so. And it turns out he was right, at least according to the US Dept. [..... continues
via [Jon Udell]

Future Practice Interview

9 Nov 2008
by LukeW
I recently had the pleasure of answering a few questions from Lou Rosenfeld at Rosenfeld Media about my upcoming presentation at the Future Practice webinar series in November. We discussed:Why has web form design been ignored for so long?How important are aesthetics to making web forms successful?M... continues
via [Functioning Form: Interface Design]

Hello World

7 Nov 2008
by Jon Udell
In July 1995 I wrote a column in BYTE with the same title as this blog post. It began: One day this spring, an HTTP request popped out the back of my old Swan 386/25, rattled through our LAN, jumped across an X.25 link to BIX, negotiated its way through three major carriers and a dozen [...]
via [Jon Udell]

When the lights go on at the New York Times, our work can start

6 Nov 2008
by Jon Udell
On election night, the most useful information display I found was the New York Times’ interactive election map. It’s another bravura performance from a team of talented designers and programmers who keep raising the bar. Back in May, two of them — Gabriel Dance and Shan Carter ... continues
via [Jon Udell]

Common Visual Design Misconceptions

5 Nov 2008
by LukeW
In Communication Design column in UXmatters this quarter, I expanded on my thoughts about common misconceptions about the role of visual design that are still prominent in the beliefs of executives, product leaders, engineering managers, and marketing professionals.

Check out the article at UXmat... continues
via [Functioning Form: Interface Design]

My upcoming World Usability Day talk

3 Nov 2008
by Jon Udell
Next Thursday is World Usability Day, a distributed event that will happen in lots of places. One of them is Putney, Vermont, not far from my home, where I’ll be speaking at the New England venue, Landmark College. The program says: A description of Jon’s talk is forthcoming, but we&... continues
via [Jon Udell]

For Granicus, transparent democracy is just business as usual

3 Nov 2008
by Jon Udell
This week’s Interviews with Innovators explores the Granicus solution for civic webcasting with CEO Tom Spengler. If you’re lucky enough to live in a city that is a Granicus client you’re already familiar with how it works. If not, take a look at the Newport Beach, CA site. It&... continues
via [Jon Udell]

CanUX Interview

3 Nov 2008
by LukeW
I recently had the pleasure of answering a few questions from Dennis Breen at nForm about my upcoming presentation at CanUX 2008 in November. We discussed:Software design considerationsThe role of the presentation layerWhy Web forms matterThe distinction between best practices and consistencyAnd mor... continues
via [Functioning Form: Interface Design]

CNN Designers challenged to include disabled

1 Nov 2008
by Don Norman
I’m on a campaign. The quest: To make assistive devices aesthetically delightful – without impairing effectiveness and cost. This occurred to me because of an interview I gave to CNN (Designers challenged to include disabled. ) and the amazing emails I have gotten back asking for help. The more... continues
via [JND.org]

URI, XML, HTTP, REST, and the Azure Services Platform

31 Oct 2008
by Jon Udell
When friends and family ask about the Professional Developers Conference I attended this week, I tell them it’s kind of like Microsoft’s State of the Union address. I’ve been to a number of these over the years. This was my first as an employee, and Microsoft’s first as a... continues
via [Jon Udell]

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31 Oct 2008
by Andrei
While it's been forever and a year since I've written a new blog post, I do want to let folks know I have been writing. In case you've missed it, I'm the new Desktop columnist for PRINT Magazine. You can always find my articles at their website or better yet, go buy the magazine since it's one of... continues
via [Design by Fire]

PyAWS, Fermat’s Last Theorem, and search diversity

25 Oct 2008
by Jon Udell
I use the Amazon API to check wishlists programmatically, and back in March I mentioned that it was being upgraded in a way that would break the Python wrapper I’d been using for years. Readers pointed me to a new wrapper called PyAWS, but I found that it didn’t offer the one thing I nee... continues
via [Jon Udell]

Pumpkins with Oomph

24 Oct 2008
by Jon Udell
Five years ago I was exploring the idea of embedding active chunks of structured data into web pages. Back then I used the phrase interactive microcontent. Nowadays, we say microformats. If you’re a reader of this blog you’re probably technically-oriented, and you already know about ... continues
via [Jon Udell]

Architectures of Global Knowledge 

15 Oct 2008
"The Mundaneum, a series of museums, was meant to promote international understanding. The concept was conceived by Paul Otlet (1868-1944), an information theorist and librarian, who commissioned Le Corbusier to design a 'cité mondiale', an institution for all the world's knowledge. Charles v... continues
via [InfoDesign: Understanding by Design]

Start-up developing new Web interaction paradigm

14 Oct 2008
"According to the Siri PR pitch, the product is 'a new interaction paradigm for the consumer Internet experience that applies intelligence at the interface.' (...) If we want our technology to have world-changing impact, bring it to the interface: get useful knowledge from all those intelligent peop... continues
via [InfoDesign: Understanding by Design]

Emotion and Voice User Interfaces

22 Sep 2008
"When you hear the term voice user interface (VUI), what comes to mind? Most likely, memories of an interactive voice response system (IVR) for customer service arise. IVRs are certainly not going away. For many companies, they remain the foremost contact point with customers. But voice user interfa... continues
via [InfoDesign: Understanding by Design]

The Three Paradigms of HCI 

10 Sep 2008
"Informal histories of HCI commonly document two major intellectual waves that have formed the field: the first orienting from engineering/human factors with its focus on optimizing man-machine fit, and the second stemming from cognitive science, with an increased emphasis on theory and on what is h... continues
via [InfoDesign: Understanding by Design]

Chromium Developer Documentation: User Experience

3 Sep 2008
"This section describes the motivations, assumptions, and directions behind Chromium's user interface design. Its goal is to explain the current design in a way that further work can be developed in-style, or so that our assumptions can be challenged, changed, and improved." (CDD)
via [InfoDesign: Understanding by Design]

Design Links

Effectiveness of Brainstorming

Although brainstorming has become a popular group technique, researchers have generally failed to find evidence of its effectiveness for enhancing either quantity or quality of ideas generated. Because of such problems as distraction, social loafing, evaluation apprehension, and production blocking,... continues

Data Visualization: Modern Approaches | Graphics | Smashing Magazine

Think Simple Now

Ads of the World: Creative Advertising Archive & Community | Your Daily Dose ...

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity | Video on TED.com

early on, and 13 minutes

AdverBox Advertising Blog

Spoonflower

Petzold Book Blog - Hard Work, No Pay: What's the Point?

Congratulations to Jeff Atwood on the publication of his first book. Jeff seems to have found the book-writing process to be hard work with few rewards. (And this is a "tips" book with three co-authors!) What he says about book-writing is mostly true, but I'd like to add a few clarifi... continues