June 2007
18 posts
Designing Calm Technology
Great, and very old (1995!) article on ‘calm’ technology. A fascinating idea, and something that my friend Nadine often works on in her day job at the Interaction Research Centre at Goldsmiths university. I also really like the HTML.
Designing Calm Technology
Via
Frameworks, affordances and services
“What exactly is a framework? And are they only useful to programmers, or can we web designers benefit from the concept, as well?”
Interesting article on alistapart on CSS frameworks for designers. Programmers have always used frameworks, because so much of their work is routinised - Some designers (such as web designers) now produce very routinsed work too, so it makes sense to build...
“As the ball player Dizzy Dean once said, “It ain’t bragging if you done it.”
– The iPhone Matches Most of Its Hype - New York Times
Roundup: Apple iPhone Reviews →
I’m such a freaking sucker. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted any thing more, ever. Sometimes it sucks being British. C’mon! Hurry up christmas…
Great article in Business Week on ethnography and...
“Companies have been harnessing the social sciences, including ethnography, since the 1930s. Back then executives were mostly interested in figuring out how to make their employees more productive. But since the 1960s, when management gurus crowned the consumer king, companies have been tapping ethnographers to get a better handle on their customers. Now, as more and more businesses...
Marc Andreessen on hiring the best
Really great (and long!) piece on what it takes to build a great team. A great candidate needs three things: Drive, Curiosity, Ethics. They need to be Churchillian:
“We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island,...
Big brother is setting up shop in your fridge
No doubt this service has good itentions, but its a little extreme - Not to mention extremely onerous on the user. I like the concept, but surely that’s what it should have remained!
“Ikan is a special bar code scanner you can use to keep your grocery shopping list up to date. As you use items, simply scan them before you trash them to keep a running tally of what you’ve used. It...
Another hefty pdf report on Service Innovation,... →
Huge report on service innovation from Peer... →
Creating a user experience process
I can relate to this article on Boxes and Arrows having spent a long time developing these types of processes for diverse organisations.
“Creating a User Experience (UX) process can be a very rewarding journey; it can also be a nightmare if approached from the wrong angle. Initiating a culture-shift, overhauling existing processes, evangelizing, strategizing, and educating is an enormous...
disambiguity: Innies and Outies →
something I’m always interested in at work - what makes a client and what makes a consultant? Here’s some ideas…
Intersections
“Many developments in the nineties were driven by the integration of computer skills into the designers toolbox. Now the emphasis is on acquiring more multi-disciplinary and contextual skills.”
My boss Joe Heapy is speaking here, it looks to be an interesting and transformational event… £250 though!
WatchThe greatest recruitment video ever. Awesome. You need to watch it until at least 60 seconds in and then the awesomeness starts. Via
And slowly, their eyes began to open...
It seems people are starting to get it…
“The long-standing distinctions between products and services are beginning to break down. Traditionally, a product was physical and discrete, something obviously demarcated in space and time. The designer’s brief rarely encompassed more than the form of an object, and use would be considered only in terms of a narrow range of scenarios....