Author: mpullen

This a cool design solution to a complex problem. When doing analysis of urine samples the difference between the sample and the ideal may be very slim. Many visual representations take to long and are error prone. These people solved this with sound. http://synesign.squarespace.com/blog/2009/3/7/the-sweet-sound-ofurine.html

Seth Godin has created a list of things he thinks a company should do to start in today’s world of marketing. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/12/is-it-too-late-to-catch-up.html The first 3 mentioned are: get email make a company website with addresses and contact info at a minimum start an email campaign The others on the list are even more interesting.

Dan Saffer’s article on design research is a great overview for someone trying to understand what design research is all about. He does an excellent job setting the stage of what design research is and why it is important. Hopefully it will excite more people to do design research on a regular basis. http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1389669&rll=1

Have you ever heard of Spezify? It is a search engine that brings all the results back on an infinite plane. All the images of videos, pictures, text and tweets are spread across your desk top and you pan around looking for what you want. Either you have many monitors that you are spread across… Continue reading Visual Search

On the HFI site Susan Weinschenk is doing a top 100 things you should know about humans. Her first item is Inattention Blindness. This stuff is so cool. I love the human brain. You can be asked to focus on one thing and in the process you ignore what seems to be the irrelvant items.… Continue reading Inattention Blindness

Is UX becoming a commodity? With an emphatic NO!! I soooo disagree with Kem’s assertion, I even left a nice comment. Kem Kramer on Johnny Holland declared: “After 10 years in the field, I woke up one day to realise that my service as a UX practitioner had become a commodity. Usability had become the… Continue reading Is UX becoming a commodity?

As a person who approaches design from the cognitive science and human factors angle, I think I resemble this quote. “User interface experts are often suspicious of the role of visual aesthetics in user interfaces—and of designers who insist that graphic emotive impact and careful attention to a site’s visual framework really contribute to measurable… Continue reading Case Made for Compelling Visual Design

Johnny Holland has an article on Sketching as Communication. The video is a bit long but the first half is worth listening to. Mark Baskinger talks about sketching in industrial design and interaction design. He points out why interaction designers should work on their sketching skills.

I liked the use of black in this page. The background is almost black. The font oscillates in transparency as it moves across and up or down the page. The page is split by completely black headers. I like it. http://konigi.com/interface/webmynd-header-and-footer

I love this technique California Pizza Kitchen is using. This article asks if we should be doing more of it in interaction design. I would say yes if you are having a hard time getting repeat visitors or users. “Here is a rather interesting promotion from California Pizza Kitchen. At the end of my dinner… Continue reading Curiosity in Design

Surprise! Surprise! I looked at the new apps installed and there was BrowserPlus. It was not even under the Yahoo folder. Anyway, it is a pretty cool idea. Here is a little snippet of what they advertise: “The most unique attribute of BrowserPlus is its ability to update and add new services on the fly… Continue reading BrowserPlus

Innovation and unique ideas seem to be on the top of mind for product and service people these days. This article is an interesting summary with a few links for further reading at the bottom. Design for Interaction: Ideation and Design Principles “The purpose of brainstorming is not to find the one perfect design for… Continue reading Brainstorming

280 Atlas.com : Cappacino and Atlas I am ready to check this out. It looks cool. A quick way to build html applications. I like the idea that they are focusing on application development on not on website development. This looks promising. http://vimeo.com/6930037 http://280atlas.com/ Beta is coming out soon. They have done a good job… Continue reading HTML Application Rapid Design Tool : Cappacino and Atlas

I really enjoyed this video of a design to replace the mouse. Instead of coming up with an out there kind of experience that would require a different paradigm of interaction, 10gui extends the use of your hands. Can we extend the idea of the mouse pad to something more useful. make it bigger and… Continue reading Beyond the Mouse