This is a good reminder when designing interfaces, no? Cartoon from the New Yorker.
Via Chris Willis, who hasn’t updated his site in ages.
Here’s a fun little information graphic outlining our current economic situation from Mint.com.
“A person who works six hours a day but with total focus has an enormous advantage over a 12-hour-per-day workaholic who’s ‘multi-tasking’ all day, answering every phone call, constantly checking Facebook and Twitter, and indulging every interruption.Mike Elgan, in Work Ethic 2.0: Attention Control
It’s time we upgraded our work ethic for the age we’re living in, not our grandparents’ age. Hard work is still a virtue, but now takes a distant second place to the new determinant of success or failure in the age of Internet distractions: Control of attention.”
The Making of LittleBigPlanet, the uncontrollably cute game for Playstation 3.
House Industries redesigned.
Here’s a great recap of the accessibility advancements made in 2008 written by a high-level IBM engineer.
case study
Here in Northtemple Land, as in many parts of the United States, we’ve received slightly more than our fair share of precipitation in the last week. I have a long driveway to deal with and no snow blower (something I may need to remedy this year with Grandma’s Christmas check). The combination of heavy snow and a long driveway has resulted in an inordinate amount of time spent outside, with nothing to do but shovel and think.
What I’ve learned: Shovel smart, shovel soon, and shovel often. And what’s more, I think this applies to design as well as driveways, and maybe to any problem-solving effort.
“Make sure that the essential needs are met, but do not go overboard in creating so many good things to do that the essential ones are not accomplished. . . . Remember, don’t magnify the work to be done—simplify it.”Elder Dallin H. Oaks, Good, Better, Best, October, 2007
Dr. Josh Silver, professor of physics at Oxford University designed a pair of spectacles where the optical power can be tuned individually by the wearer, eliminating the need for the optician and the whole process of lens grinding. He hopes to bring 20/20 vision to 1 million people in India next year, and has a bigger goal to offer perfect vision to 1 billion of the worlds poorest by the year 2020.
His presentation on the topic and results of their initial study can be found at the Affordable Vision Correction conference web site. It appears that there were a variety of potential solutions presented there, Josh Silver’s brilliant solution being one of them.
Where We Do What We Do is a collection of agency and personal workspaces to inspire and perhaps motivate you to do a makeover of your own space during the holiday break.
LDS Maps is now live in 16 languages! The site should detect the browser language automatically, or if you want to poke around, there is a language selector at the bottom of the screen. Most of the work for this minor release was on the dev and translation teams, but props are due to Aaron Barker for helping define a new standard for language selection and Rob Foster for the soon-to-be-universal (?) language icon.
Update: Larry Richman provides some additional info about the release, including how to link to a specific language-version of the site.
“If anyone is interested, I’m thinking of doing a type poster representing the Church Office Building, set in Hobo and Impact. $200? Let me know if ur interested.”Jason, commenting on the fact that Cameron’s magnificent letterpress poster of the Salt Lake Temple has sold out after only a couple of days.
We are looking to hire two front end developer types RIGHT NOW. As in, interview on Thursday with a potential hire on Friday.
We are looking for two Senior level front end gurus who seriously know their HTML/CSS/JS stuff. One of those could be a more Junior level person with lots of potential and a sparkle in their eye.
If you or someone you know fits the bill and want to come work at the church send your resume to us ASAP.
Update: The time has passed on this. Thank you to those who submitted your resumes. We will keep them around for future opportunities.
Interesting read: the Uncanny Valley of user interface design
Uncle Mark’s Gift Guide and Almanac. A yearly publication with great gift ideas and other cool information.
Pitchfork’s posted 51-100 of their 100 Best Tracks of 2008. This isn’t only a great list, they’ve finally added handy little MP3 players to hear or download tracks on the list. I guarantee you haven’t heard of over half of these artists. Go explore and find some new faves.
My tops: The Veronicas (87), Justice (76), Sigur Rós (71), The Whitest Boy Alive (64), Q-Tip (61), and some freakin’ Vampire Weekend at 56.
Nielsen/Norman Group is offering a free report on Rich Internet Applications”. It’s from 2002 and most of the apps reviewed are Flash-based—but hey, it’s free :-) And most of the findings focus on the interaction itself, not the technology. Quick skim looks promising…
“Oh yeah, that’s the stuff.”Eric Meyer, after explaining the greatly sought after power of advanced selectors in CSS3. (six revisions)
As the second member of the NorthTemple Alumni organization (Brian Sweeting being the founder, I believe), I’m going to set a precedent here that I hope will take, Alumni posting. Yes, that’s Alumni with a capital A. If you don’t like it, get someone to kill my login.
It’s not a new idea, but Clay Shirky reminds us today of the value of simple user testing. I always get big value when I do this.
“The art of architecture is really the art of constraint. It’s the art of compromise in many ways. It’s not about a brilliant man or woman working in his or her studio and producing a design and then getting it built. It’s about negotiating a whole series of constraints or challenges, whether those have to do with budget or site or the community.”Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic, quoted in an interesting NPR piece on modern museum architecture. This reminded me about a great design discussion we had sometime last year about Bryan Lawson’s great book, How Designers Think. Negotiating that series of constraints and challenges is hard… but FUN! Rob mentioned this same concept as he worked with me on some map icons that needed to work well on widely varied map backgrounds in a 10X10 pixel space. (Thanks Rob!)