08:02 am | 0 recommendations | 1 comment
http://www.artimusart.com/
It is so simple but yet beautiful. It taps into the desire of
parents to keep everything their precious one does but without the
clutter. Parents take their kids art and send it in to artimusart and they post the images online so the parent can create a book with all the artwork.
"Parents, you’ve got enough to
do. Let us take the worry and the hassle out of preserving your
children’s precious artwork. Sketches, paintings, doodles and drawings.
Beautifully published, shared on the web, preserved for a lifetime."
Recommend This If you liked this, let others know:
10:28 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Why is it that the design does not look like you expected? You gave
a picture of what you wanted. What you got back was exactly the things
you asked for but ... it just does not look the same.
Luke W has an interesting guess as why this is the case:
"What’s missing is what’s invisible: alignment and whitespace.
Often, user interface elements are not aligned. What’s
centered in the design doesn’t appear that way in what’s implemented.
What was vertically or horizontally aligned in the design appears
ragged.
Padding, or whitespace, often fares worse. In some
places, padding is gone; in others, there is too much. Padding is set
to different values, leading to columns and rows of varying widths.
Changes in padding and alignment can negatively impact readability and
obscure visual relationships that clarify how to use an interface.
Why is this the case? It’s not that the developers
deliberately modified the design. It’s not that they necessarily
consider alignment and whitespace to be unimportant. It’s just that
these elements in the user interface are often invisible to them.
Development teams are responsible for putting
interactive features and content into a product. Empty space is neither
feature nor content. Therefore, it is not a requirement. For a
designer, however, whitespace is often just as important as the content.
As a designer, I spend a lot of time adjusting whitespace to enable effective scanning of content. I also spend a lot of time refining alignment and padding to establish the right prioritization between user interface elements.
I utilize both of these design elements to guide users through the
interactions on a page. I use them to communicate what’s most
important, what’s related, and what needs attention. For designers,
these are key requirements of effective communication. And yes, there’s
a lot of evidence that shows what’s invisible does make a difference. "
Here is the article: http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000097.php
Recommend This If you liked this, let others know:
11:56 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Over the last year there has been many designers posting their love for Apple and the iPhone. The critiques took a long time to appear and I got bored quickly of the hype. Too much hype makes me tune out. Kottke posted a link to Tufte's praise of the iPhone and I was going to ignore it. But of course I did not as you can see.
Tufte does a beautiful job simply explaining how the iPhone meets the core needs of the interaction and visual design. He also points out where the iPhone does not do so well and gives good examples of how things could be improved.
Listen, watch and learn. This short design review provides many lessons.
mTp
Recommend This If you liked this, let others know:
12:00 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Can user interface designers make a manifesto to dove tail with the developers Agile Manifesto? Here is my attempt:
Activity Centered Techniques for Agile Design
1) Intimacy of stories over iteration management
2) Breadth of screens to provide a vision over depth and detail
3) User Acceptance every iteration over usability tests
4) Design Standards over unique designs
Focusing on the activities that the personas of interest are performing within the
business environment, there X main things to perform.
1) Intimacy of stories over iteration management - Since the user interface designer
is acting as one of the customer/user surogates, he should know as much as possible
about the user's work environment. The designer should be able to create a portrait
of the stories the user goes through at any point in the business problem. The designer
should know this better than the user himself knows it. Don't get caught in the lie
of making stuff up. (this may be a significant role change for many designers)
2) Breadth of screens to provide a vision over depth and detail - Since the designer
has an intimacy with the stories he should be able to define the vision of where the
software application/ website is going to go. He should be able to architect the
flow, information, interaction and behaviors of the system across the breadth of the
application. This should be an going effort (a parallel process to engineering) to
define the vision and strategy of the product. Need to lead the developers to a vision.
The analogy of sailing works well in this situation. When you head out in the sail
boat you pick a point to sail to. However, the wind is not always at your back and you
need to tack back and forth always heading but not necessarily pointing toward where
you want to be. The task of the crew is to manuever the boat and keep it sailing well,
the captain needs to be focusing on where the boat and crew are going. The designer is
the captain and needs to keep his developers focused on the iteration and its tack
while keeping the point/ vision in mind.
3) User acceptance every iteration over usability test - Since the designer should have
working code, the process should be set up where users are invited in to work with the
application at every iteration. Feedback should be on 1st impressions, effectiveness
of solving their business problem (activities), and issues with interactions and behaviors.
4) Design standards over unique designs - Since the iterations are focused on creating
shippable code there is no time for futzing around with basic designs. (Complicated
designs may require a design spike.) Creating design standards that are baked into the
reusable code packages that developers use helps focus the design task on the story not
the nits. Style, layout, and behaviors of basic controls and combinations of controls
should be coded for resuse. (These may need to be early refactoring tasks.)
Recommend This If you liked this, let others know:
