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This site is written in HTML and rendered in CSS + Javascript. The layout is heavily inspired by the geometric design experiments at the Bauhaus in the mid 1920s, but with a…
Was lucky enough today to attend a talk by Ben Bederson, who presented his work on Interfaces for Staying in the Flow, and examples of software that he has developed …
So Te Ara is finally live, and I'm immensely proud of having been involved in the design process, primarily the development of the CSS/Javascript system, the lower level content pages and the…
It's good in Wellington at the moment. I'm just glad that I am going to be able to sleep this weekend (unlike those about to unleash the 48 Hours!). But there's a lot going…
Wireframes or schematics (also known as "paper prototypes") are a common way to create a mock up of a user interface. In the best case, they can function in a similar…
The web design class that I've been teaching in the Fashion and Textiles Department at Massey is finally finished, and what's more, we've put the portfolios online for all to see at crafty.coretxt.net.nz These…
The key concept that underlies the modern web is the separation of presentation and structure, and recently, there has been a lot of interest in documenting the synthesis of human friendly and…
Our formal attempts at understanding language tend to be hierachically structured, but when it comes to actually organizing language, it is well known that meaning is relational and constantly fluctuates.…
The games industry has come to a crossroads, something that is becoming more and more apparent as I engage deeper into research for my upcoming game (more on that soon). The Guardian Games Blog has…
This technique been mentioned in passing for a couple of years now, and recently seems to be gaining a fair amount of attention. Many web designers love the idea of building dropdowns like this.…
Grant has been doing some great stuff over at Xero, with an account balance view that enables fluid browsing of the time range by adjusting the width of the scroller control. This is a good technique …
Treemaps emerged in the mid 90's as a method of visualizing heirachies, and have since been widely used throughout the software design community. But very little work is out there exploring visualizations…
In Hearing without listening, 37Signals screws up, then admits what they did wrong and how they fixed it. In the end, it's just a matter of several weeks downtime before the application is working…
Since Ali posted 20 things I learned at FullCodePress, I thought I'd chime in with my own observations from the perspective of being programmer for the Code Blacks: Working side by side is…
Raganwald dissects the misguided metaphor from a software process perspective. I have come to believe that these kinds of problems are even more prevalent in the web development world than in…
Wellington based startup Ponoko went public today, in conjunction with the TechCrunch event in San Francisco. Some of you may have seen bits and pieces at the Dowse recently, or even come across…
It gets tiresome when every time someone publishes an article about this issue, a stream of misogynistic trolls start babbling and complaining. You fucking assholes are just proving the point…
In a 1950 editorial the "New Zealand Design Review" identified the "horrible forces ranged against good design" as Indifference, Cheapness First, Unnecessary Novelty, Mass Production, De Luxe…
Really? I expected better from such a radical thinker as Jaron Lanier. His recent op-ed in the NYT is just not making any sense at all. Traditionally, artists, writers, musicians have been at…
As languages change, so do typefaces. These changes are not radical; they are subtle evolutions that address culture and technology. Modern typography requires modern typefaces, designed by the…
Origami has expanded far beyond its origins in step by step folding patterns. These Crease Patterns are designed to be one-step transforms from flat paper into the finished shape. Even though the…
So I've started another website, a kind of ongoing accident, with the idea echoing so intensely during Webstock as I culled together my 8x5 presentation, it just seemed to burst out of my brain and…
Jason Santa Maria's Good Design Ain't Easy was one of the most interesting sessions for me, digging into a topic that I've been through so many arguments over in the past. It may have been old news…
Many of us are still conditioned to think of design frameworks in terms of grid systems, Swiss graphic design, and rigid corporate identity systems. The problems with these are similar to the problems…
How can we close the perceptional gap that lies between two dimensional maps and the surrounding three dimensional reality? Enkin is a technology aimed at the Google Android platform that…
Late to the party, I know, but it's worth pointing this out, as an addendum to previous ranting. hoverIntent is a jQuery plugin that replaces the standard on/off hover switch with a delay, triggering…
It's hard to step away from our assumptions and actually consider the experiences that non-technical people have using the web.
Software development is hard. A lot of people like the idea of couching this difficulty in a form of explanation by analogy. The most common comparisons are generally the most facile and glib, and…
Man the lifeboats... Rowan explains why you shouldn't underestimate being in the right place at the right time - and he of all people would know from experience. Great Entrepreneurs are PASSIONATE…
Brand New on the MTV Redesign.
“Just as soon as we begin to hone the ability to communicate through images it is stripped away from us.”
“Every time we went down the ‘wrong’ path, we learned something concrete — if not about software than at least about people”
Not only the end of a decade, but the 20th anniversary of a monumental political event. Eye Magazine 74 is a focus on the graphic output from Berlin.
On the frequency of Facebook redesigns, and user reactions.
Rethink the expectation that people will use a service for that which it is intended.
The explosion of conversation-driven web applications in today’s world is a sign of technology beginning to fold in upon itself.
The only “right” approach is tweaking a design based on a feedback loop of observation.
A new skillset for interactive designers, who must now take direct evidence into account with every design variation that affects user flows.