January 2009
Do you use your back button? « Boriss’ Blog →
London Underground Tube Map Video Documentary -... →
A 25-minute documentary on the visual design of the London tube map, which is also coined as “The pinnacle of London Transport’s modernist design”, invented by an unemployed engineering draftsman, Harry Beck.
“Like designers, if you give a programmer a problem with parameters, they’ll...”
– Derek Powazek - Programmers are Tiny Gods
“The mobile industry has made this mistake time and again, seeking to sell users...”
– » An accidental manifesto on mobile touchscreen design | EverydayUX: Everyday User Experience by alex rainert
zipdecode | ben fry →
This project began a very short sketch (a few hours) that I created because I was curious about how the numbering works for postal codes in the states.
“In one of several experiments, the study’s authors screened the sitcom Taxi for...”
– Please Embrace This Commercial Interruption - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com
“From the patient perspective, hospital quality therefore embodies amenities as...”
– Hospitals as Hotels - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com
“According to a survey conducted by British Telecom Home IT Support seventy-one...”
– Survey: Consumers Abandon Complicated Products - uselog.com | the product usability weblog
The country's new robots.txt file →
“I’ve seen any number of interactives where it’s obvious that more...”
– Interactive News Team — Talk to the Newsroom — The New York Times — Reader Questions and Answers - Question - NYTimes.com
Harper’s Index: A retrospective of the Bush era... →
Ten Things That Need to be Redesigned - Design... →
10. IRS Forms
Though given a significant face-lift in the early 1980s by the designers at Siegel and Gale, tax forms are as dreary as they are dense: indeed, the very act of filing taxes remains an inescapably grim milestone of early winter. On the bright side, at least they’re not set in Comic Sans.
“Everything you deal with as a User Experience designer is a wicked problem, at...”
– No rest for the wicked: a UX designer’s job is never done- 90 Percent of Everything
“My advice to Microsoft is to add an additional test: a “Who’s In...”
– Elgan: Why products fail
“Indeed, popularity on TV and in print has not necessarily translated to the Web....”
– Can CNN.com, the go-to site, get you to stay? - International Herald Tribune
“By the way, we broke up. About two months ago. I forgot to tell you.”
– DearIE6 - So Long
“Large-scale enterprise vendors like IBM, Oracle, SAP and Microsoft sell...”
– Daily question: Foot. Bullet. Trigger. « counternotions
“Lately when I have to test in IE6, I pretend I’m Scott Bakula leaping into...”
– Twitter / Wilson Miner
The Moviemaking Process: Left 4 Dead's Intro Movie →
Because Left 4 Dead is a new property for us, we wanted to provide some basic player training prior to the start of the game. Traditional in-game training mechanics didn’t make sense for Left 4 Dead, because they would take away from the sense that players had been immediately dropped into a very real, very dire zombie apocalypse. We didn’t want a slow ramp-up in gameplay to take away...
“At heart, I’m a designer, and designers care passionately about making sure the...”
– Derek Powazek - Things I Learned the Hard Way (via iamdanw)
“Foodservice managers find that when trays are eliminated from all-you-can-eat...”
– What Happens When College Cafeterias Go Trayless? - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com
“Beauty is a signal, not just a physical state.”
– Seth’s Blog: Beauty as a signaling strategy
“The Times Online suggests what might happen when technology fuels in-depth...”
– The Renegades at the New York ‘Times’ — New York Magazine
FORA.tv - Dan Ariely: Tendencies of Irrational... →
“But he didn’t like day games,” Candiotti said. “We had a day...”
– Tim Kurkjian: Rickey Henderson looked at as being “too good” - ESPN
“We started out hoping the web would make it possible and easy to distribute...”
– Scroll Magazine | Unreadable by Joe Clark
