tadd giles archives
“Any time a bureaucrat (i.e., a custodian of a system) stands between you and something you need or want, your challenge is to help that bureaucrat discover a means, harmonious with the system, to meet your need.”
Gordon MacKenzie, Orbiting the Giant Hairball

posted by tadd on Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Lunch Bag Art A talented dad creates drawings on his kids lunch bags.

posted by tadd on Wednesday, Feb 11, 2009 · 0 comments

“The advent of the computer generated the phenomena called desktop publishing. This enabled anyone who could type the freedom of using any available typeface and do any kind of distortion. It was a disaster of mega proportions. A cultural pollution of incomparable dimension. As I said, at the time, if all people doing desktop publishing were doctors we would all be dead!”
Massimo Vignelli, The Vignelli Canon p. 52.

posted by tadd on Tuesday, Feb 03, 2009 · 6 comments

Smashing Magazine has a nice collection of Textures in Modern Web Design

posted by tadd on Tuesday, Jan 13, 2009 · 0 comments

“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

posted by tadd on Tuesday, Dec 23, 2008 · 0 comments

posted by tadd on Wednesday, Dec 17, 2008 · 0 comments

Meetup’s Dead Simple User Testing

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.

Meetup’s Dead Simple User Testing

posted by tadd on Monday, Dec 15, 2008 · 3 comments

In attempting to delete a Twitter account this morning I got the following message. Not my desired outcome, but somehow I think I’m ok with it. I don’t want to be adding to anyone’s stress.

posted by tadd on Wednesday, Dec 03, 2008 · 3 comments

Finally able to use CSS child and adjacent sibling selectors in a real project. Feels so good!

posted by tadd on Thursday, Nov 13, 2008 · 8 comments

Don’t miss Elder Holland’s talk from this weekend’s CES fireside. Highly, highly recommended.

posted by tadd on Monday, Sep 08, 2008 · 3 comments

Google announced they are making a new web browser called Chrome. Their intent is to simplify, speed up, stabilize and optimize our experience with web apps. And they introduce it with a comic book. I just felt my job get a little harder, did you?

posted by tadd on Monday, Sep 01, 2008 · 4 comments

Yesterday we started using Balsamiq Mockups to mock up some new ideas for Lds.org. Great stuff. Its allowing us to quickly comp up ideas for discussion and feedback without overinvesting too much time. Peldi, the owner/developer, has put together a great little tool here and he’s very responsive and helpful with questions. Note, this screenshot is not one of our mockups, its a sample from the Balsamiq site. We’re not creating another version of YouTube.

posted by tadd on Friday, Aug 22, 2008 · 7 comments

Sweet status ui at Dominos. My pizzas are baking now. Good web design just won some more business.

posted by tadd on Saturday, May 10, 2008

Revixio, creators of CorePage, inspired and informed by Getting Real. I still think there’s lots we can learn from Getting Real.

posted by tadd on Thursday, May 08, 2008

Information Design Patterns provides a comprehensive and rich resource. via (The Sweeting)

posted by tadd on Tuesday, May 06, 2008

“What does it mean to speak of child protection when pornography and violence can be viewed in so many homes through media widely available today? Children deserve to grow up with a healthy understanding of sexuality and its proper place in human relationships. They should be spared the degrading manifestations and the crude manipulation of sexuality so prevalent today…All have a part to play in this task—not only parents, religious leaders, teachers and catechists, but the media and entertainment industries as well.”
Pope Benedict XVI, in his address to American bishops (Vatican.va, April 16, 2008)

posted by tadd on Saturday, Apr 26, 2008

Best speaker at Web 2.0 Expo, Clay Shirky on the cognitive surplus.

posted by tadd on Saturday, Apr 26, 2008

Job Opening: Director, User Experience

I recently decided to step down as the Director of User Experience in the IT department of the Church. While I thoroughly enjoyed my work as a Director (best job of my life to date), I found myself longing to get more hands on in product design and development. I’ve now started as a Product Manager assigned to the Priesthood department where I’m working on new ideas for how the Church uses the Internet.

So, we have a new job opening. We need a new Director for our User Experience group. You can read the official job description for the full details, but let me give you my quick “unofficial” job description and a thought.

This job rocks! It has great management support. Joel Dehlin, our CIO, is our biggest fan and supporter. It’s a very challenging job. You have to be a great leader to a team of very talented and competent professionals. It’s a job that has a multitude of different kinds of end-users. Our end-users include Church employees, General Authorities, missionaries, Church leaders, Church members, and people who do not belong to our faith. Many of our solutions have to be global and work in a variety of languages and cultures. This job requires you to be a leader in the IT department. You need to work effectively with the CIO and the other Directors to accomplish department-level objectives and goals. Finally, and possibly the most challenging, you need to figure out what a user experience group should be and do at the Church. I’ve learned that you can’t just copy and paste what you’ve learned in previous jobs into the Church. Practices and approaches that have worked in other organizations, don’t always work or apply here. You have to discover the Lord’s Way to do your work. Working in that position the past two years has been a fun, wonderful, challenging and growing experience for me as I’m sure it will be for my replacement.

The person we need may come from a very unexpected place or they might come from our current team. I don’t know, but I am confident the Lord will help us place the right person in this position. Let me make a sincere request. If you are feeling a prompting regarding this position, either to suggest it to someone else or to consider it yourself, please act on that prompting. There are plenty of great places to work in the world doing meaningful, important work. If the Lord wants you where you are, we want you there, please stay there and have the impact He intends. The Lord needs good people doing good things everywhere. However, consider that the Church is also a great place to work where you can do meaningful, important work. If the Lord wants you here, we want you here. In this matter, like many others, you and others will be blessed if you seek to know the Lord’s will and then follow it. Again, if you’re feeling a prompting, I simply ask that you act on it. I suggest you also take a good hard look at the full job requirements as well. Thanks!

posted by tadd on Tuesday, Mar 25, 2008

“The gift of the Holy Spirit adapts itself to all these organs or attributes. It quickens all the intellectual faculties, increases, enlarges, expands and purifies all the natural passions and affections; and adapts them, by the gift of wisdom, to their lawful use. It inspires, developes, cultivates and matures all the fine toned sympathies, joys, tastes, kindred feelings and affections of our nature. It inspires virtue, kindness, goodness, tenderness, gentleness and charity. It developes beauty of person, form and features. It tends to health, vigour, animation and social feeling. It developes and invigorates all the faculties of the physical and intellectual man. It strengthens, invigorates, and gives tone to the nerves. In short, it is, as it were, marrow to the bone, joy to the heart, light to the eyes, music to the ears, and life to the whole being.”
Parley P. Pratt, Key to the Science of Theology, p. 98 partially cited by James E. Faust

posted by tadd on Tuesday, Mar 25, 2008

“Conversion is not a matter of choosing what we like and ignoring the rest, but of whole-minded acceptance. . . . When we have performed this act of faith, . . . all the difficulties are resolved by it. When we have laid down at Christ’s feet all our scholarship, all our learning, all the tools of our trades, we discover that we may pick them all up again, clean them, adjust them, and use them for the Church in the name of Christ and in the light of his countenance. We do not need to discard them. All we need to do is to use them from the faith which now possesses us. And we find that we can.”
Arthur Henry King, The Abundance of the Heart, p. 30, via Dallin H. Oaks, Sins and Mistakes

posted by tadd on Monday, Mar 17, 2008