Lovely UI - See What You Print

SWYP: See What You Print from Artefact on Vimeo.
Artefact created a radically simple printer concept called SWYP. See What You Print. To learn more: http://www.artefactgroup.com/#/content/swyp

Windows on another world

Imagine that digital information exist in another world that lies just beneath our feet. A world jam-pack with data and activity, a world of ever increasing importance.

But as the creators of this world it is strange that we are forever looking down, peering through tiny windows to gain access and view a snapshot of what is going on.

Surely this is not right, we should be bringing this world out into our own. Making these windows as large and expansive as possible, through which we can survey and interact with this information. Here is a good example:



and also this:

Typical Price – Google Hotel Finder

Lots of people are talking about Google's new hotel finder. One thing I thought was really clever was this.

Because hotel prices are not the same from one city to the next, it is difficult to know if you are getting a good deal or not. 

Most of us begin the hotel bookings process with a bit of research. We compare a number of hotels to establish the typical price, which we use as a bench mark to compare others to.

This handy little tool does the research for us, it even gives the relative cost in the hotel details (top right) 

Hopefully we will see this used a lot more across the internet, real-estate might be a good place to start.

Manhattan in motion

love this sort of thing

Google adds politically bias search (maybe)

It is widely excepted that most publications and often news programmes have a political bias. We often choose to read a particular news paper because it reflects our own bias or view of the world, whether left or right wing.

So why not add this feature to search, at least you will know the bias of the results you are looking at

Conventional

Controversial

How not to draw a map

A great example of how breaking a trusted convention can make things a tad confusing. Maybe it is just me, but I spend at least 20 seconds staring at this wondering what country I was looking at.

Data Mines

By the end of the decade data mines will be common place and like the great gold rush of the 1850's people will flock to this industry. A combination of luck and hard work will allow some to earn a living and a few to make a fortune.

We're rapidly digitising and moving every aspect of our work and personal lives into the cloud.
Over time our ability to organise and control this information will become increasingly challenged.

Over the years you can guarantee a proportion of this information
will be lost, discarded or simply forgotten, but the nice thing with digital information is it is rarely physically destroyed. Just the ability to access it is lost.

The vast majority of this inaccessible information will be rubbish, old documents, photos and general digital junk, but some will be valuable and some might well be worth a fortune.

In the next decade we will reach a tipping point, when it becomes worth mining this rubbish to find the nuggets of digital gold hidden within.

And then sell them back to their owners or more likely the highest bidder.

Clouds Apps - Just Design and Build One Version

Apple came along and created  'apps'
And very good they are
Everybody loves apps and everybody wants apps
Thus every platform and device needs to have apps
And of course a suitable app store from where consumers can fill there device

But for Apple it was easy
They have one device with one OS and one screen resolution
Creating an app for multiple platforms is no fun
In fact, it is a nightmare (believe me I have lived that nightmare)

You begin with one platform - lets say android.
Android define three screen sizes; small, medium and large.
For an app with 10 key screens
You will need to design a total of 30 screens.

Now lets add Java touch (think Nokia).
Maybe just two key resolutions
Thats another 20 screens to design

Now add Java non-touch, Blackberry and Windows
Suddenly you are designing 80 screens for your simple app
thats 8 variations of each screen

This is not a lot of fun for anyone involved in the project
And a huge waste of time and money
(and that is not to mention all the time coding each of these different versions)


This is another great reason to be moving towards HTML 5 apps,
or Cloud Apps as a colleague called them the other day.

We keep the strict UI - this is great for users
We keep the tightly focused functionality - also great for users
We loose the constant updates

And we only design and build one version

UX: Not just part of a design process

The last 18 months has seen User Experience become the trendy buzz word of the moment.
Its been around for years, but suddenly clients are asking:
'Do you do you UX?' or
'Who is the UX expert in your team?'.

This has led to the idea that UX is part of the digital design process.
Something you do between requirements gathering and visual design.
You bring a UX designer in.
They do some UX magic.
And the end user gets a fantastic experience.

What I'm realising is that in reality UX is not just part of the design process.
It is the process.

UX Design is a way of thinking.
A point of view or a design philosophy.
It informs every aspect of the design process.
From requirements gathering through to visual design and the final coding of the site.

If you fail to consider the users experience at anyone of these points you are not truly practicing UX design (or should that be user centred design).

Books Ngram Viewer

I'm sure I'm pretty late to the party on this one, but what a great tool for researching social trends -  Google Ngram viewer.

Search occurrences of words in books published over the past 200 years. Although obviously it is only the books scanned by Googles Books Project (a pretty amazing thing in it self).

Even better you can compare occurrences of different words. To me this seems like a great way to search and understand social trends over an extend time frame (i.e. before the internet)

Here is my comparison of art vs design, (design in blue) interestingly since the late 70s design has begun to be mentioned more frequently - what does this mean?

It's also worth doing the same comparison on Google Trends and also Blog Pluse to get an idea of trends right now.

Slicky not sticky

Convectional wisdom suggests websites should be sticky. The longer someone spends on a site the more successful it is and the better we have engaged them.

It struck me that this might be rubbish, that maybe we should begin to consider how spending less time on a site is an equally valuable measure of a sites success.

Most people when visiting a site are there to complete a particular task, be it find a piece of information or buy something. The quicker they can do this, the sooner they can get back to their life. The last thing they want is a sticky website that slows them down and distracts them from the task in hand.

So that's slicky not sticky, easing the process not slowing it down.