Local filmaker Issac Goeckertz will be premiering his latest film at the Worldfest Houston International Film Festival.
Details of the film and the trailer can be viewed on the film’s website.
“Pimp This Bum” details the life changing events of Tim Edwards, a Houston man living on the streets. After being approached by a father son marketing team about a unique charity idea, Tim agreed to participate. The Agreement: fly a cardboard sign at a busy intersection with the words, “All Major Credit Cards Accepted www.pimpthisbum.com”. What erupted from this internet experiment was a media campaign that traveled the globe in the expanse of a few days. Donations came pouring in and within three weeks, $75,000 had been raised to help Tim get off the streets. Pimp this Bum tells the inspiring story of Edward’s life in the wake of this unexpected turn of fortune and his courage to begin a new life.
Some useful design tips for comparison shopping interfaces from Get Elastic. Brings me back to my Carpoint days at Microsoft… It’s tough to put a lot of data across multiple products into tight columns, but it can be done well. Have you seen some good examples?
Be sure to check out the Web Font Specimen featured in today’s issue of A List Apart. This looks to be a very useful tool for anyone wanting to experiment with the brave new world of web fonts.
Jeffrey Kalmikoff, new design director at digg.com, sounds off on The anatomy of useful feedback, including some excellent suggestions for making design reviews productive:
Knowing there’d be the probability of a high volume of feedback and limited time to respond via both communicatively and creatively, I asked for feedback to come in a particular format to make it as easy as possible for my team to digest.
He also suggests including as many non-designers as possible in your reviews, to spread enthusiasm and gain valuable feedback:
I find collaboration with non-designers to be so important in design. Designers have a tendency to see things thought a different lens than most people, which can be counter-productive when trying to find solutions across all use cases
See his full post for more. Good to see design reviews going well somewhere, and it’s got me thinking of how to make them better over here..
Putting people first in product development:
“No product is an island. A product is more than the product. It is a cohesive, integrated set of experiences. Think through all of the stages of a product or service – from initial intentions through final reflections, from first usage to help, service, and maintenance. Make them all work together seamlessly. That’s systems thinking.”
Don Norman, Systems Thinking: A Product Is More Than the Product
Thirty Conversations on Design is a collection of interviews with some of today’s leading designers and creatives. Each were asked the following questions: “What single example of design inspires you most?” and “What problem should design solve next?” There are a number of interviews live right now, with more coming during the month of November.
I had a hard time believing this was not a spoof… but from all I can tell Burger King is selling Windows 7 Whoppers in Japan—a normal Whopper stacked with 7 patties. Now… who thought that was a good idea? Check out the comments in the link above for just a taste of the comic putdown possibilities. My favorite: “Introducing … Windows 7’s first killer app.”
Also thought it was pretty funny that whenever I tried to upload a pic of this monstrosity to post here—surprise! It crashed my browser :-)
Performance guru Steve Souders dives into current performance issues with the web’s latest hot techonolgy of font-embedding via @font-face. @font-face and performance describes how the major browsers handle font embedding for good and bad. Specifically how all browsers but Firefox show no text until the font is downloaded (FF shows the default font and then re-draws when the custom font is ready).
A must read for anyone thinking to use this new arrow in our quiver, so you can know the potential drawbacks.
Why Stylesheet Abstraction Matters (just realized that I didn’t post a link to the previous quote by Chris Eppstein) – interesting information for those who design and develop with CSS.
How the art of visual design plays a role in usability: A usability review of Microsoft and Apple websites.
Beyond the initial PC vs. Mac appearance of this article, it really points to how a great design team has worked to unify a company and present a unified message. No matter the size of your company, I think every design team struggles with focusing the company in one direction, especially when there are many people contributing to product development and content.
No small feat.
Great interview from Mark Hurst with Brian King on the re-design of Courtyard by Marriott. A great case study on segmentation, observation, user-centered design, branding, and prototyping. Fun to see these familiar concepts applied in a domain that’s less familiar (to me anyway). I loved the description of business travelers being invited to a life-size prototype of the new lobby, built out of foam core to see how they would react to Marriott’s innovations.
In a bizarre flood of memories this morning, I recalled one of the very first websites which pointed me in the direction of using CSS for layout. Whoever you are, BlueRobot, thanks.
Our friend and former colleague Tim Zheng is on the just-announced lineup for Ignite SLC #3, set for August 20. He’ll be giving a finely polished discourse entitled “Chinese People in 5 Minutes.” A few of us hit Ignite #2 earlier this year and loved it. Tim, just be sure to finally answer the question, What does Chinese Dragon eat?
The Human Centered Design Toolkit was created by IDEO and the Gates foundation as a free open-source toolkit to assist organizations providing services for communities in need.
John Jensen is a talented designer who is studying at BYU. My favorite pieces are his Air poster and his Zinc Magazine design. Not only is the work a notch (or two) above, but his URLs are nice and clean. No flash based, black box website syndrome here. (via my Brother Joey )
I agree with Jason that the mere existence of your Foo is not enough for people to be interested and that we’ve got to champion our good work.
As a counterpoint, lest we get carried away, Good Experience proposes a few tips on being authentic. (It goes without saying that Cameron’s Boredom is always Authentic.)
I’ve only listened to the first podcast so far, but the Mormon Channel’s series on creativity seems really promising. Looking forward to the next episode on my commute!
“Three lessons on what’s really important,” from Good Experience:
- “How important are you? Just ask a customer.” Great anecdote about Google asking people what a “browser” is…
- “Accept your unimportance. It may help.” If you believe you are the center of the universe, then you’ve just created a very small universe for yourself.
- “When people start believing their own hype, run.” Cites those “in the know” before the financial meltdown… who appeared to be in the “not-know” after all.
Burned out? From this week’s A List Apart article by Scott Boms:
You may be flirting with burnout if:
- Every day is a bad day
- You are no longer emotionally invested in your job or the work you’re doing
- You feel unappreciated or do not feel like you’re making a difference in your job
- There is a clear disconnect between your personal values and what is expected of you
- Self-defined goals or those imposed on you are unrealistic or unreasonable
- A significant amount of your day is focused on tasks that are not fulfilling on a personal or emotional level
See the full article for a well-written look at how burnout happens and what to do about it.
One of my new favorite blogs, 1001 rules for my unborn son, read my mind and has a book coming out based on the blog (but where’s the cover art?).