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Open for Business - Designing Social Interfaces
By Christian CrumlishNovember 19, 2009
This is an excerpt from Designing Social Interfaces. From the creators of Yahoo!'s Design Pattern Library, Designing Social Interfaces provides you with more than 100 patterns, principles, and best practices, along with salient advice for many of the common challenges you'll face when starting a social website. Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone share hard-won insights into what works, what doesn't, and why. You'll learn how to balance opposing factions and grow healthy online communities by co-creating them with your users.
Four short links: 13 November 2009
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 13, 2009
Open Source Enters The World of Atoms -- an academic statistical analysis of open design. We indicated that, in open design communities, tangible objects can be developed in very similar fashion to software; one could even say that people treat a design as source code to a physical object and change the object via changing the source. Why I...
Four short links: 9 November 2009
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 9, 2009
A Battery-Free Implantable Neural Sensor (MIT Tech Review) -- Electrical engineers at the University of Washington have developed an implantable neural sensing chip that needs less power. Uses RFID's induction technology which means the power source can be up to a meter away. Proof of concept was implanted in a moth to sense central nervous system activity. New Microsoft...
Tactical and strategic XML design
By Rick JelliffeNovember 6, 2009
So I guess when we look at a system's architecture, the first thing we can do is ask 'Is this XML here being used strategically or tactically?' A strategic use might be, for example, to allow long-term archiving; a tactical use might be XML in AJAX (where using JSON would be another tactic.) If the answer is tactical, then we can ask 'Is it implemented in a way that allows flexible rearrangement, when a different tactic becomes appropriate?'
Four short links: 27 October 2009
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 27, 2009
Field -- a development environment for "experimental code" and digital art. We think that, for many uses, Field is a better Processing than Processing. Includes Python and Java bridges, goal is to connect to as many different programming systems as possible. OS X only at the moment. Contraptor -- a DIY open source construction set for experimental personal fabrication,...
Four short links: 23 October 2009
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 22, 2009
Information is Beautiful -- gorgeous descriptions of the design of infographics. For once, a design discussion that might be useful to mere mortals like me. Australian Teen Crafts "Sneaky" Games -- video interview with a 16 year-old winner of the IFTF, Sun, and BoingBoing Digital Open. Great to see game design, a topic we've followed on Radar, getting uptake...
Photoshop For Developers
By Jesse FreemanOctober 14, 2009
Advanced Flash Tactics or AFTs are techniques that come from deep within the Flash Art Of War, the oldest Flash military treatise in the world. Each AFT is designed to be quickly digested, usually only taking a few minutes to get up and running, and contains valuable information you can directly apply to your next Flash campaign. In this AFT I will go over - Photoshop for Developers.
Four short links: 1 October 2009
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 1, 2009
The End of Objectivity, Web2.0 Version -- Our behaviour as journalists is now measurable. And measurability gives the lie to the pretence that journalists behave like scientists, impartially observing the petri dish of society. (via Pia Waugh) Screens in Context -- ideas for the video screens spring up in place of billboards. Whilst the advertising industry has one of...
Taxonomy experts presume to teach FCC something about communication
By Andy OramSeptember 21, 2009
The Sunlight Foundation wants to redesign the FCC web site, but experts in taxonomy recommend a more deliberate strategy.
Four short links: 3 September 2009
By Nat TorkingtonSeptember 2, 2009
Many Eyes Make All Bugs Shallow, Especially When The Eyes Get Smarter (David Eaves) -- Mozilla released bug submission data, and David realizes with some minor investment (particularly some simpler vetting screens prior to reaching bugzilla) bug submitters could learn faster. For example, a landing screen that asks you if you've ever submitted a bug before might take newbies...
50 Most Usable RIAs
By Theresa NeilSeptember 2, 2009
We applied two simple criteria to identify the 50 most usable RIAs: Number 1: Does it adhere to the 10 basic usability principles? Number 2: Is it really rich? Developing a product with Ajax, Flex, or Silverlight doesn't inherently make it rich. A usable RIA will embody these six principles: Make it Direct, Keep it Lightweight, Stay in the Page, Provide an Invitation, Use Transitions, React Immediately.
A design trap of the maintenance phase - Clarity on roles the key?
By Rick JelliffeAugust 20, 2009
The slow addition of these little inappropriate fixes is like the growth of barnacles on a boat's hull: eventually you are not sailing a boat but sailing a rock.
Four short links: 18 August 2009
By Nat TorkingtonAugust 18, 2009
The Making of the NPR News iPhone App -- interesting behind-the-scenes look, with sketches and all. Station streams, however, presented a larger challenge. To begin with, NPR didn't have direct stream links for any of its stations, so we built a Web spider that identified and captured more than 300 iPhone-compatible station streams. After that first pass, we worked...
Four short links: 13 July 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJuly 9, 2009
IDEO's Human Centered Design Toolkit -- methodology and toolkit for inspiring new solutions to difficult challenges within communities of need. Full PDF of manual and cards available for free download. Bentham and the Privacy of the Grave -- [M]uch of what Bentham meant to address in the context of his Panoptic structures we now take for granted. In Bentham’s...
Four short links: 8 July 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJuly 8, 2009
Stop Whining About Facebook's Redesign (Slate) -- How can I be so sure that you'll learn to like the redesign? Because you did the last two times Facebook did it. The conclusion is that sites don't say why they're redesigning, and that causes the resistance. C# and CLI under the Community Promise (Miguel de Icaza) -- Microsoft have announced...
Four short links: 3 July 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJuly 2, 2009
OECD Factbook -- Flash-built impressive data explorer from OECD. Go to Indicators > Load and, in the words of Ben Goldacre, "prepare for nerdgasm". (via bengoldacre on Twitter) James Boyle is on Twitter -- author of the book The Public Domain. Sewers and Startups (Pete Warden) -- designing to last, reminds me of Saul Griffith's heirloom design riff. When...
Four short links: 10 June 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJune 9, 2009
Apple's Cool Matrix-Style App Wall (TechCrunch) -- a huge collection of icons for many of the apps available in the App Store, arranged by color. Apparently, when someone purchased one, that app’s icon would pulsate. An App Store version of Google's search globe. Information visualization makes activities meaningful, beautiful, and useful, but not necessarily all at the same time....
Four short links: 9 June 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJune 9, 2009
Drawing Inspiration From Nature To Build A Better Radio -- based on the design of the cochlear, this MIT-built RF chip is faster than others out there, and consumes 1/100th the power. Biomimicry and UWB radio are on our radar. Why the Smart Grid Won’t Have the Innovations of the Internet Any Time Soon -- While it’s significant that...
Four short links: 5 June 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJune 6, 2009
Visual Programming Environments for Kids -- detailed writeup of the research and coding done by Shone Sadler to build a visual programming environment for robots, so simple that kids can use it. (via steveweiss on Twitter) The Nation's CTO Lays Out His Priorities -- it's still not entirely clear how the CTO and CIO's roles differ, as both are...
Four short links: 2 June 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJune 2, 2009
TypeKit -- Jeff Veen's new startup, making typography on the web fail to suck. Every major browser is about to support the ability to link to a font. That means you can write a bit of CSS, include a URL to a font file, and have your page display with the typography you expect. While it’s technically quite easy...
Creating and Maintaining Client-facing RIAs on a National Scale
By Tom BarkerJune 1, 2009
I thought I would take some time to talk about some of the special considerations that you have to take when creating and maintaining RIAs for sites that have a national audience. While these can be considered good general practice, at a certain tipping point they become indispensable for the health of your system.
Flash Catalyst Beta 1 [Top Branch Demo Part 1]
By Garth BraithwaiteMay 28, 2009
In this two part screencast I show some of the neat new features of the Flash Catalyst Beta 1 available on labs.adobe.com. I also demonstrate some good practices for preparing a file in Adobe Illustrator and how to keep yourself organized in Catalyst.
Four short links: 27 May 2009
By Nat TorkingtonMay 27, 2009
uzbl -- lightweight WebKit-based web browser controlled with vim-like keystrokes, controllable through a FIFO for scripting, and all the "features" (bookmarking, history, changing URL) happen through external scripts. For the hardcore. (via joshua on delicious) A Conversation With Eric Rodenbeck About Usefully Cool Design and Engineering (Jon Udell) -- if we could only distil Stamen down to their barest...
The Art and Science of Experience Design
By Christian SaylorMay 22, 2009
In a world that is overly saturated with technology and the ever so present visual clutter of messages trying to vie for our attention we, as Designers and Technologists must embrace the "Art and Science" of the experience.
Template-Based Application Design With Flex
By Jan PoehlandMay 15, 2009
Very often the layout and design process of rich Internet applications is detached from the actual application development itself. The application layout is developed from scratch for every new application or designers generate the layout independently. While this is certainly...
Creative Ideas for RIA
By John PapaMay 15, 2009
Design can be a huge stumbling block for developers coming to the RIA world. Here are a few tips on how I started tackling this hurdle.
Four short links: 12 May 2009
By Nat TorkingtonMay 12, 2009
Lacie 10TB Storage -- for what used to be the price of a good computer, you can now buy 10TB of storage. Storage on sale goes for less than $100 a terabyte. This obviously promotes collecting, hoarding, packratting, and the search technology necessary to find what you've stashed away. Analogies to be drawn between McMansions full of Chinese-made crap...
The Virtual Instrument I'd Like to See
By David BattinoApril 30, 2009
Reading about an audiophile who compared the crackling of vinyl to the coughing of old men at a concert, I started to imagine a virtual audience plugin. What controls would you add?
Four short links: 14 Apr 2009
By Nat TorkingtonApril 14, 2009
Open data, lean startups, RSS-as-newspaper, and a design call to arms: OpenSecrets Goes Open Data -- The following data sets, along with a user guide, resource tables and other documentation, are now available in CSV format (comma-separated values, for easy importing) through OpenSecrets.org's Action Center [...] : CAMPAIGN FINANCE: 195 million records dating to the 1989-1990 election cycle, tracking campaign...
Using Helpers and Blocks to easily add design to your site
By Eric BerryApril 8, 2009
I bought the program Coda by Panic software. It is a pretty cool app, even though it is not my preferred editor. One thing that I love about Panic software is they make beautiful interfaces. In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to create a 'sheet' similar to those found in Coda.
You ain't gonna need what?
By Mike LoukidesApril 8, 2009
One of the defining characteristics of the Rails movement has been its willingness to throw out the rules by which software developers and consultants have typically worked. Those rules typically produce big, overblown projects laden with features that no one ever uses--but which sounded good during the project specification phase. Build the simplest thing that could possibly work, and...
Shippingness vs. Awesomeness
By David BattinoMarch 31, 2009
Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music posted this terrific graph yesterday, showing that the more appealing the promised product, the longer it will take to ship: The object of Peter's gear lust was the Teenage Engineering (even the company name...
Four short links: 31 Mar 2009
By Nat TorkingtonMarch 31, 2009
Web traffic, web design, hacker spaces, and feature spaces: iPhone and Android Make Up 50% of Google's SmartPhone Traffic Worldwide -- Matt Gross found this interesting tidbit in a TechCrunchIT story. Refining Data Tables -- Luke Wroblewski gives some seriously good tips for designing usable tables in web pages. After forms, data tables are likely the next most ubiquitous interface...
Four short links: 27 Mar 2009
By Nat TorkingtonMarch 27, 2009
Design, Perl, Heresy, and Ephemera: Product Panic: 2009 -- Bruce Sterling essay on design for recession-panicked consumers. As is usual with Bruce, I can't tell whether he's wryly tongue-in-cheek or literally advocating what he says. Great panic products are like Roosevelt’s fireside chats. They’re cheery bluff. The standard virtues of fine industrial design—safety, convenience, serviceability, utility, solid construction … well,...
The Art of Storytelling
By Christian SaylorMarch 23, 2009
I stumbled upon an NPR interview called “A Movie’s Look, From Toilet To Villain’s Lair.” An interview with award winning set designer J. Michael Riva. It was a fascinating look into the life of the Hollywood Set Designer and how...
We Need to Teach Visual Critical Thinking
By Spencer CritchleyMarch 16, 2009
I was just looking at yet another vacuous presentation graphic, this one purporting to illustrate the SMART test for defining objectives. It looked something like this: This is of course rubbish. Infographics guru Edward Tufte would object strenuously to its...
New Poll: How do you go about creating the design of your applications?
By Rich TretolaMarch 9, 2009
The design, (which includes the look and feel, user experience, and information architecture) of an application can often be the determining factor in the overall success of the application. Given this level of importance we would like to know how...
Four short links: 4 Mar 2009
By Nat TorkingtonMarch 4, 2009
Wall Street on the Tundra -- Michael Lewis's long but fascinating glimpse into Iceland's rise and fall as hubris-filled banker to the world. One of the many lessons is not to believe the post-hoc explanations for success: "Icelanders—or at any rate Icelandic men—had their own explanations for why, when they leapt into global finance, they broke world records: the...
Four short links: 20 Feb 2009
By Nat TorkingtonFebruary 20, 2009
Accessibility, trails, Pacman, and power today. Have a fun weekend! Social Accessibility Project -- clever IBM approach to solving web accessibility problems: a sidebar for Firefox that lets people with assistive devices like screenreaders say "hey, I had this problem with this page", and a crowd will help fix it. (via Derek Featherstone's Webstock talk, notes here) Why I Want...
Four short links: 13 Feb 2009
By Nat TorkingtonFebruary 12, 2009
One work-related and three fun geeky links to set you up for the weekend: Continuous Deployment and Continuous Learning -- I've been reading about the processes and structures that different organizations use to develop software, and this was interesting. "Our eventual conclusion was that there was no reason to have code that had passed the integration step but was not...
Communicating Interactive Gestures
By Kathryn BarrettFebruary 6, 2009
Nintendo's Wii, Apple's iPhone and iPod touch have made gestural interfaces wildly popular, but have created a new set of challenges for designers who want to move beyond traditional interface design. Dan Saffer's Designing Gestural Interfaces covers the subject exhaustively, but also shows how carefully we need to look at our assumptions about the way people interact with devices. In this excerpt, Dan covers communicating interactive gestures as well as the three zones of engagement designers need to be aware of.
Four short links: 14 Jan 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJanuary 14, 2009
Something beautiful, something informative, something mindblowing, something revealing: something for everyone in today's link set. Trees and Forests on Old Russian Maps - old maps, like old books, are works of art. I loved this collection of symbols; it reminded me how much creativity and beauty we've lost (temporarily, I hope) in modern maps. Distinguishing Decorative from Meaningful Elements in...
Four short links: 12 Jan 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJanuary 12, 2009
Brace yourself: kids, design, newspapers, and robots. It can only be another collection of four tasty links (or the key elements of the least successful Disney holiday movie ever). Our Work So Far This Year - amazing blog entry about St Pauls high school in England, which has had exceptional technologists come to speak to their ITC class. Who? Oh,...
Four short links: 9 Jan 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJanuary 9, 2009
Four questions, one per link: what next, can it solve a big problem, what's the final boss for Python programming, and why on earth would anyone want yogurt that glows in the dark? End Times - gloomy piece on the future of journalism, to be added to the large pile of other gloomy pieces on the future of journalism. The...
The Economics of Disruption
By Christian SaylorDecember 18, 2008
"Chaos in the world brings uneasiness, but it also allows the opportunity for creativity and growth." (tom barrett) As global markets and economies are shifting and rearranging businesses must have the ability to quickly and efficiently adapt to this ever...
But What Exactly "Is" Cloud Computing?
By Kurt CagleDecember 17, 2008
If buzzwords didn't exist, the computer industry as we know it would collapse. Really! For instance, here's a quick pop-quiz - 1. Define Cloud Computing in twenty five words or less. Please show all work. Er ... um ... it's...
A Better RIA Assembly Line
By Francisco InchausteDecember 8, 2008
This is an introductory post into the UX Revolution. In this series I will talk about the changes that RIA development is going through from an experience design perspective. I'll touch on everything from applications like Flash Catalyst to best practices in the XD process. Enjoy!
Are Computer Languages Irrelevant?
By Kurt CagleNovember 24, 2008
Consider this - I spend a significant amount of my working day staring at a web window pane within a browser. Now, that browser may be written in C++ (which would certainly have been the case even five years ago) but is increasingly likely to be written in JavaScript or Python of even Java, not necessarily because these languages are any faster (even with some of the most startling improvements in JavaScript, there's still an order of magnitude or two separating performance) but because these languages are generally easier to work with.
Nice "Appliance," Boys! Xbox 360 statistical twitter...
By The Fat ManNovember 13, 2008
I just saw this twitter: @EmanuelPM sent his 360 away in it's coffin. The ups guy knew the box was a 360 by the shape since they get 10-12 bad ones a day, he said....
Experiments in Sound Design
By Perry NortonNovember 5, 2008
Creating an audio-only version of Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are" gave me a huge lesson in sound design - a process more analagous to songwriting than I realized...
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