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posted by Ray @ Wednesday, April 21, 2010 0 comments links to this post

Taking Design to Small Donors

I'm starting to move the Small Donors Foundation into the public.

Labels: small donor

posted by Ray @ Wednesday, November 05, 2008 0 comments links to this post

Petrol Station

Jan Chipchase's presentation at UXWeek 2007 still has me thinking. So I wrote this comment on his blog about one of the images he discussed.

Your image of a petrol bottle atop a brick in Vietnam and your comments have stuck with me. You asked the audience about what it was and you stated a gasoline station. You pondered if the brick could have been removed.

My perspective is that the brick was essential to making it commerce. The brick removed it from just being someone's jar on the street to a purposeful display of petrol for sale.

And the more I thought about this image, the larger the metaphor grew for me. The brick is marketing stripped to its simplest form. The user experiences the marketing and the product as one.

Labels: simplicity, uxweek2007

posted by Ray @ Friday, August 24, 2007 0 comments links to this post

UXWeek2007: One Laptop Per Child

Upon reflection and conversation, two concerns about One Laptop Per Child. First, Sugar - the operating/network system - is an interface. I believe that "interface is content" and therefore it requires critical review. Sugar will "teach" as much as the content. And because the MIT Media Lab, home of One Laptop Per Child, has a dogmatic approach to teaching, I'm concerned about the flexibility of teaching styles that Sugar offers.

Second, the product is aimed at the poor in developing countries. What about the poor in this country? The primary group that does not graduate from high school. Sure the product is new, the design is new, the concept is new. More work needs to be done.

Labels: uxweek2007

posted by Ray @ Tuesday, August 14, 2007 0 comments links to this post

Charmr

An Adaptive Path team just showed their research and design for a Diabetic Management device called Charmr. Their research was good and there may be more problems that it could solve. For example, the problem of getting people onto the pump. Not a gripe, but an unintended consequence.

Labels: uxweek2007

posted by Ray @ Tuesday, August 14, 2007 0 comments links to this post

UXWeek2007: More at

Twitter
and
Technorati

Labels: uxweek2007

posted by Ray @ Tuesday, August 14, 2007 0 comments links to this post

UXWeek2007: One Laptop Per Child

Saw first UI demo of one laptop per child which introduces a different OS/network to developing world which produces new way of learning. More...

Labels: uxweek2007

posted by Ray @ Tuesday, August 14, 2007 0 comments links to this post

50 Ways to Become a Better Designer

I don’t take this list as a set of rules but rather as a checklist to see “have I thought of that yet.” Sorta like solo brainstorming. So enjoy 50 Ways to Become a Better Designer, best advice from 17 print, video and web designers published by computerarts.co.uk

posted by Ray @ Thursday, August 24, 2006 0 comments links to this post

Presentation Handouts

At UX Week every printed handout with one exception was a copy of the slides. So I now have this folder of 8 1/2 x 11 papers with two pictures or maybe some words on each page. Is this really helpful to me when I go back to the office? Maybe when I listen to the blogcast. Or maybe when I review my blog entries from the week.

Next year I hope the designers take on the challenge to design handouts. I’ll take on that challenge for the upcoming year.

posted by Ray @ Monday, August 21, 2006 0 comments links to this post

Data Viz: Why Now?

Michal Migurski.

• Reason #1 — Data Got Cheaper
• Map of the Market (1998) - treemap view of stock market.
• Newmap – Markos Weskamp – also treemap
• FundRace – Michael Frumin, Eyebeam
• Red or Blue by Gravity Monkey – Phone App to see red or green of GSP from phone
• Historyflow Martin Wattenberg & Fernanda Viegas– looking at WikiPedia changes
• Phyllotaxy by Jim Bumbgardner aka KrazyDad (Flickr)
• Related Tab Browser (Flickr)
• Reason #2 – Flash Got Better
• Gapminder – Visualizing World Development
• Digg Labs – for Digg.com called Swarm – get people to look at hidden stories -> API coming for digg.com
• Etsy — Jared Tarbell – shop by color
• Flash Wins — 2004 Presidental Election graphic maps
• One Use – Geography – lots of public info in US
• Election Maps – U. Michigan – did the Purple America Map
• Mappr — Stamen Design – looking at Route 66 and geotags
• OpenStreetMap – Tom Carden in UK
• OpenData – free software is useless without data
• Another Use:  sousvallence (??)
• Sparklines in very dense way. See product: StressEraswer
• Attention – Stamen
• Trixie Tracker – MacNeill and Egan – information about your infant
• Week in Review – bunch of people in LA get together over beers and put it on paper
• Resources
• Tableau Software. Show you the best type of display
• http://uxweek06.stamen.com – deck for presentation

posted by Ray @ Thursday, August 17, 2006 0 comments links to this post