What Design Is
I think this might be the truest statement about design that I've come across. Who better than Milton Glaser to say it?
Slide by @Colly
Your Driverless Car is (Almost) Ready
People are the weak link in the automobile ecosystem. If we weren’t part of the control loop, things would be safer. A lot safer. It’s estimated that 94 percent of the world’s yearly 1.2 million automotive deaths involve human error. We’re uncorrectable bugs in the system, you and me. We get into accidents once every 500,000 miles, and cause fatalities once every 1.3 million miles. But the software that’s driving autonomous cars? It was performing at levels equal to or better than that error rate three years ago.
Read MoreFaceted Search: a Real World Example
Faceted search allows a user to narrow their choices down when searching for something online. This type of search is easy to understand if we look at a real world equivalent. Let's use the example of a car purchase I made in 2012
Read MoreDifferent Approaches to the Search UI
Different designers solve the same common problems in different ways. I was interested in looking at how a popular website handles its search interface. I decided (for no very good reason) to look at The Atlanticmagazine.
Read MoreAwwward-winning? Not So Much (Pt. 2)
Let's take a look at website judged by the good folks at www.awwwawards.com as having an excellent navigation system. Does it stand up to a detailed UX analysis?
Read MoreAwwward-winning? Not So Much (Pt. 1)
Let's take a look at the site of winemaker Chateau Yquem, a website judged by the good folks at www.awwwawards.com as having an excellent navigation system. How good is it?
Read MoreOnline Persona, a Wikipedia Entry
Sometimes Wikipedia doesn't cover the topics you need to have defined. I think this is the case with personas as the term is understood in the web communications world. Here's my attempt to rectify that.
Read MoreIcon Labels: the Good and the Bad
As the concepts that we try to symbolize through icons become more complex, the harder the designer has to work at finding an easily recognizable image. The best solution is usually to pair icons with a brief text label. Some designers solve this problem better than others.
Read MoreYou Don't Need a Website
You don’t need a website unless you have something to say. If your job is to build websites, you’ll often be asked to build them before there are any words or images to carry on them. Sometimes, there’s nothing to say; the client simply knows that they want a website. Everybody has websites now. It’s standard. Your client thinks that they need one. But do they really? Your first step as a web designer is to help them figure out what they have to say.
Read MoreI Can't Be Bothered
I used to pity the older adults in my life when I was a kid. They simply didn’t understand the way the modern world worked. My grandparents didn’t own a VCR and they didn't seem to care. They didn’t have cable service, no longer listened to music (in any format), and had no VCR, nor did they want any of those things. Decades later, I get it.
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