February 2011
4 posts
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WatchGood methodology for determining a product proposition and potential functions
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December 2010
1 post
3 tags
September 2010
1 post
4 tags
July 2010
5 posts
3 tags
Defying Hitler
I just read this book and I urge anyone else to read it. What struck me was not just the insight into how a normally rational and kind people could be turned into monsters (which is enlightening and fascinating) but also serves as a reminder that those who lived through war torn attrocities in the past (and present) are actually no different to us, with the same feeling, hobbies, hopes etc.
2 tags
“We don’t want to be the best at what we do, we want to be the ONLY PEOPLE...”
– Jerry Garcia (The Grateful Dead)
WatchThis is one of the most awesome-ist animations i have seen.
April 2010
1 post
4 tags
Designing for Social Interaction - Paul Adams →
Great article by Paul Adams on Boxes & Arrows.
The gist being: If you understand the differences in the relationships we have with people; from the strongest being the ties we have with close friends and family to the weakest being temporary ties that we might have with a plumber or someone we’re buying something off, we can design interactions, linkages and functions to appropriately...
March 2010
3 posts
1 tag
3 tags
The schools of twitter and facebook
DISCLAIMER: This is a post without scientific backing, reason or really even a point. So look away now if you care not for my inane internet obsessed brain convulsions…
I was just thinking the other day that Facebook really reminds me of school. In particular the school I went to which was quite posh and conformist. This is probably because a lot of my ‘friends’ on it are...
February 2010
4 posts
3 tags
3 tags
4 tags
Guardian Zeitgeist
The Guardian today anounced zeitgeist, a navigational trending tool that allows people to browse content by what is popular. It kind of works like a heavily strcutured tag cloud for content. In fact I think that is exactly what it is. They probably didn’t need to write a 1000 word article explaining that…
I think it’s a great innovation for a majpr online newspaper to take...
January 2010
6 posts
1 tag
“Interaction design is the new liberal art of technological culture”
– Richard Buchanan
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iPad
Ok, so it looks fine. But did Apple’s desire for this product to fit in with the rest of their products, i.e. act like a giant iphone count against them this time. They love everything to be neat and perfect and from a product range perspective, it looks like a great addition.
But it feels like there is no innovation here. The truth will be in the use i suppose but it feels on first...
3 tags
Lego Click
The Lego Click site is awesome. It’s full of nostalgia, humour and it makes me (a grown man?) want to walk to the toy shop and buy some lego.
To bring it down to a super boring level though, from a UX point of view the site is kind of rubbish (like pretty much all flash sites… sorry Frederik). It’s really hard to figure out the layout of the site (it’s a traditional...
“People ask how can a Jewish kid from the Bronx do preppy clothes? Does it have...”
– Ralph Lauren
The Madness of crowds & an Internet Delusion →
Jason Ranier lays out his idea that the ‘free’ economy as labelled by Chris Anderson is leading to a culture of mobs, commitees and mediocrity. He asserts that culture has frozen and is locked in for better or worse in the same way that tehnology will lock in a particular, perhaps undesirable platform. Think Microsoft Windows and Betamax.
I agree with much of what he says but his...
December 2009
1 post
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To what extent could data visualisation be used to...
A huge trend over the past few years has been in data visualisation (see posts below); information abstracted to a schematic form to create an impact out of what otherwise would be a dry set of numbers. By giving data a sense of tangibility, it can help an audience understand the true value of a number, highlight relationships or make recommendations.
There are countless examples of data...
November 2009
3 posts
1 tag
WatchMark Baskinger of Carnegie Mellon University gives an excellent talk on how interaction designers can learn from industrial designers to communicate their designs better.
October 2009
4 posts
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The myth of the scrollbar
I have been trying to dispell the myth that all content needs to be above the fold. It leads to ugly confusing experiences. Finally some actual evidence!
Prescriptive UX & Jakob Nielsen's Alert Box
This will probably be a controversial comment in the world of user experience but I often find the prescriptive nature of the ux industry / movement sometimes annoys me slightly. What I mean is the snippets of information we all hear ux proffesionals profess from time to time. Essentially users ‘do’ like ‘this’ and users ‘don’t’ like ‘this’....
“politics is show business for ugly people”
– Jay Leno
September 2009
1 post
Design Thinking - Tim Brown on how Design Thinking... →
July 2009
3 posts
1 tag
“News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising”
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Harmsworth,_1st_Viscount_Northcliffe
June 2009
4 posts
best practice techniques for adding UX work to... →
Some really useful techniques to mitigate the slight hell that becomes your first foray into UX in an agile build
iplotz and cloud based collaborative tools
Ok, so not the most exciting topic in the world. But trying out iPlotz for a collaborative project I’m working on with a couple of friends.
I plotz is a flash based wireframing tool. It works very much like balsamiq, apart from balsamiq sits on your desktop as an air application and iplotz sits in the ether of the internet, affectionately called ‘the cloud’. And this is where...
The Multitouch Web →
How will the evolution of gestural interfaces effect the web? This article introduces the concept of ubiquitous computing and how this will effect how we interact with the web. It doesn’t contain anything revolutionary but summarises the major aspects of gestural computing quite nicely. I do however think that our view of the internet needs to change more from being about what we see through...
May 2009
9 posts
A List Apart - Taking the guesswork out of design →
A really great article that especially resonates with us guys working at the front end of a project dealing with clients, trying to convey their requirement as our vision. This is especially hard the client isn’t even sure of those requirements but what’s important is goal setting, documentation and communication.
clubmumble post →
Small miniramps… are fun
Sketching User Experiences
I am currently reading Bill Buxton’s ‘Sketching User Experiences’ which I am finding, like many others have, a really inspiring look into alternative approaches to interaction design. Definitely in the same league as Bill Moggeridges’ Designing Interactions which sparked my initial fascination with user centered design.
Anywho reading the section on visual story telling...
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Tim Berners-Lee at TED 2009 →
Really interesting talk by Tim Berners-Lee at TED about the value of Linked Data, what we can do with it and how it is the future. I would argue that it is less the future, more what is happening right now but who am I to argue with him!
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Way too much today
I feel like I’m going slightly insane with having way too much to do. At I’m work doing a massive IA job for RBS and trying to create the first online servicing site in the insurance industry, it’s super stressful but at least it feels a little like we’re coming up with something innovative and new.
Also still working on MYZEITGUIDE the startup that never seems like its...
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What is my job?!
My job title is officially ‘Information Architect’. That’s sounds fairly specific but the reality is much different which often leads me to really not knowing what my role on a project should be. My interest and what (i thought) I was employed to do is User Centered Design; to ensure that what we build here at the agency where I work is as empathetic towards who will be using it...
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My new blog
Hello,
What with having a proper job and all it seems I no longer have the time to update my wordpress blog. So, on many a recommendation I’m switching to tumblr.
Here we go…