What would happen if we take a more architectural approach to web design, and go into each project as if the design will be around for 100 years or more?
design
This is a great post by Anil Dash. There’s so much to learn from the Foursquare story, but my favorite part is the last paragraph. In Foursquare: Today’s best-executing startup he writes: But perhaps most importantly, I think we need more stories that celebrate the success of what seem like small, iterative product launches, but actually [...]
How designers and engineers can play nice is a really great post by Jenna Bilotta. I nodded along enthusiastically to this point in particular: Too often I observe my fellow designers rip into the aesthetics or interaction design of an early engineering prototype. When an engineer is met with critical feedback from a designer about issues [...]
This is one of my favorite stories in the Steve Jobs biography: The result was that the Macintosh team came to share Jobs’s passion for making a great product, not just a profitable one. “Jobs thought of himself as an artist, and he encouraged the design team to think of ourselves that way too,” said Hertzfeld. [...]
Rob Beschizza in What the Vaio Z says about Sony’s little design problem, a brilliant article on the difference between taste and design: Apple competitors are obsessed with copying Apple’s tastes without copying its central design habit, which is solving a problem and then refining the solution until the problem changes. This is also what makes [...]
I love pretty much everything Frank Chimero writes, and his essay on the meaning of design from a few weeks back still rings in my ears: We should care more about our craft because we’re granted an opportunity to contribute to the world. We should care more about what we say because each time we [...]
In Beauty Is Free, Mimi Zou argues that quality has become a given in most products, so beautiful design is one of the primary ways to differentiate in a crowded market: In a time when products outlast their reliability expectations, has aesthetic longevity become the new expiration date? While it’s not viable to design for changing tastes, [...]
A quick analysis of the clever changes Microsoft made to the infamous blue screen of death.
What would happen if we felt the weight of responsibility a little more when we’re designing?
I really like Adrian Shaughnessy’s view on design authorship and that constant struggle to find the right balance between art and science in design. From A Layperson’s Guide to Graphic Design: As designers we are inclined to solve the problems of our clients, but we want to do it in our own way and in our [...]
What a visit to an exceptional coffee shop taught me about designing experiences for the web.
I recently wrote about persuasion design on the web. In How Whole Foods “Primes” You To Shop, Martin Lindstrom gives some great examples of how grocery stores use persuasion design tactics to get people to buy more: Ever notice that there’s ice everywhere in this store? Why? Does hummus really need to be kept so cold? [...]
