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Hicksdesign Go to the source

There’s a lot of sneering about end of year lists, but I love looking back personally, as well as reading others (like Jeremy and Elliot ) as well. Anyway, I’ve been doing it since 1990, so I don’t see why I should stop now… Music With the exception of Vampire Weekend, 2008 didn’t have a great deal that excited me musically. So much so, I didn’t list any favourites for that year. In contrast, there has been a shipload of albums that have done it for me in 2009 (and in no particular order): Silversun Pickups : Swoon Placebo : Battle for the Sun Phoenix : Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix The Clientele : Bonfires on the Heath Mew : No More Stories Are Told Today… (long pretentious album title, but another great Mew album nonetheless) Yeah Yeah Yeahs : It’s Blitz! Mos Def : The Ecstatic Mastodon : Crack the Skye Pelle Carlberg : The Lilac Time Bat for Lashes : Two Suns Bombay Bicycle Club : I had the blues but I shook them loose Brendan Benson : My Old Familiar Friend The Duckworth Lewis Method : The Duckworth Lewis Method Idlewild : Post Electric Blues Imogen Heap : Ellipse Editors : On this light and on this evening Kasabian : West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum Graham Coxon : Spinning Top School of Seven Bells : Alpinisms iTunes also tells me that the most played tracks this year were Silversun Pickups’ “Panic Switch” and Placebos’ “Bright Lights”. … Read the rest here

Andy Budd Go to the source

Ticket sales for UX London launched today so I thought I’d take this opportunity to outline what we’re trying to achieve with this event. A lot of industry conferences are what I’d describe as “talking heads” events, where well known speakers stand up for an hour and give the audience a big does of inspiration. I love these type of events and this is essentially what we do at dConstruct . I always come away with a head full of ideas and an a renewed interest in my profession. The one criticism I hear is that, while these events are inspiring, you don’t usually end up learning new skills. I think a lot of people blame the speakers or conference organisers for this, but I actually think it’s down to the format… Read the rest here

Digital Web Go to the source

We a very interesting article this week from new contributor Steve Heffernan , who brings us REST ful CSS . Our last few CSS articles sparked quite a row in the comments, so I hope the same audience takes a long look at Steve’s proposals, even if web app languages like Ruby on Rails isn’t your day-to-day forte. CSS management is a growing issue as we make even greater advances in CSS techiques, JavaScript support and enhancement and rich interactions like web apps. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Let’s be honest: Who doesn’t profit from thinking in the shower? I imagine we’d be hard-pressed to find anyone reading these words who hasn’t had an epiphany, big or small, under the cadence of falling water. There’s something about showering that tends to spawn new ideas which may not occur otherwise. And the frequency with which this occurs seems to suggest that perhaps the occurrence isn’t merely happenstance, but instead a decent model for what has been called “creative pause” — the shift from being fully engaged in a creative activity to being passively engaged, or the shift to being disengaged altogether. Edward de Bono, who may have first coined the phrase, describes creative pause as a deliberate, self-imposed pause to consider alternative solutions to a problem — even when things are going perfectly fine — for “some of the best results come when people stop to think about things that no one else has stopped to think about” ( Serious Creativity: Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create New Ideas )… Read the rest here

Clagnut Go to the source

Over on the IXDA mailing list, Jared Spool opened a discussion on Where that ACD thing fits in which he wonders what Activity-Centred Design (ACD) might be and where it fits into other design approaches. In the previous discussion of ACD versus UCD on this list, the focus has been defined simply: Someone practicing ACD focuses on the activities of the design, where someone practicing UCD focuses on the users. Some have said that ACD minimizes the need of doing personas (a ‘user-centered’ activity) and just looks at the underlying activities that are obvious to the design result. If one asserts that UCD is a collection of activities that go beyond ACD , looking at the goals, needs, and context of the user, beyond just that of the underlying activities, then I would say that ACD is just a lazy man’s UCD . In this context, Jared considers laziness to be a good thing, applauding ‘anyone who is creatively lazy, looking for ways reduce effort while producing more.’ Jared’s points reflect a conversation we occasionally have here at Clearleft . We say we do User-Centred Design (UCD), but ask ourselves if we really do ACD ? … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

R eading is one of my great loves in life, a fact that is sometimes at odds with my smock wearing tendencies. Over the years, I’ve repeatedly affirmed self-education despite the lack of a classroom. This helps me stay sharp and challenge my notions about design and the stuff I make everyday. Good books are tough to find, so I’ve begun keeping track of notable ones. I still get a lot of emails asking about graphic design reading recommendations, so when I relaunched this site, I decided to dedicate a section to others like me where I could keep a list of books that I’ve found helpful. I don’t provide these as a comprehensive canon, but as a source of books I’ve vetted as worthwhile for those wanting to keep learning. … Read the rest here

Digital Web Go to the source

This week Digital Web features an interview (by our own Frances Berriman ) with Aral Balkan , the organizer of the upcoming <head> Conference . Aral talks about the goals of <head>, social interactions and the challenges of virtual communication. … Read the rest here

Digital Web Go to the source

So I wasn’t able to live blog my own session, so I am blogging it after the fact. I did a talk about simply what it takes to get a job in UX. I decided to start out and talk about my experiences and how I got to where I am today, specifically my experiences of working in-house in a tech/web company, working in-house in a non-tech company, working as a freelancer, working as a contractor, and working at an agency. I asked for questions during the session but no one really had any until about 1/2 way thru. … Read the rest here

Digital Web Go to the source

Rachel Elkington is giving the introduction for Jacob Wobbrock . Jacob is going to be talking on Flipping the Burden: Marking computer accessible with everyday input devices. Jacob takes the stage, after quickly plugging in his laptop we’re rolling. He hopes to do justice to InfoCamp’s “power to the people” theme. He is involved with DUB : Design, Use, Build which is a mix of people from various departments and schools at UW. He starts off by talking about AIM : Accessibility Interaction and Mobility group. … Read the rest here

Digital Web Go to the source

There have been a couple of great presentations either side of lunch here at dConstruct. Joshua Porter — social web expert and occasional Digital Web contributor — revealed the hidden mental tics (or “cognitive biases”) that designers should be aware of when thinking about how best to attract engage with their users; and Daniel Burka (Pownce, Digg) shared his recommendations on how to approach the key pain points when designing for social interaction. Keep an eye out for the dConstruct podcasts of these talks; in the meantime, Daniel’s slides are on SlideShare — when I find Josh’s I’ll post the link here too. … Read the rest here

Andy Budd Go to the source

Silverback launched just over a month ago and what a roller coaster month that was. We launched towards the end of July and within the first couple of days the app had been downloaded 7,000 times. Thirty days on and well over 20,000 people have grabbed themselves a copy. Crikey! For the first couple of weeks the whole company was hooked on the Twitter feedback. I had a Summize window permanently open and kept refreshing the search every few minutes. Messages were coming thick and fast and I was pretty bowled over by the feedback… Read the rest here

Digital Web Go to the source

Our friends over at AbilityNet have been busy testing the official Beijing Olympics website to see how accessible it is for disabled web users — and though things have improved, they found there were still a number of issues. AbilityNet’s Judith Garman said: “In this special report we asked disabled users to try out the Beijing Olympics website in our interaction lab. Poor information architecture and a lack of adherence to web standards result in an uneven playing field for disabled sports fans across the world. The Beijing website has clearly been developed with some accessibility principles in mind, however these have been poorly implemented — showing how a purely technical approach to accessibility won’t result in a good user experience.” You can read more comments, access the full report, and watch clips of the testers on the AbilityNet eNation site . … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

I had a long discussion with a friend the other day about the notion of a “graphic designer” as it applies to web design. She opined that graphic design is largely relegated to static mediums and that online we are designing for interaction and behavior. While there is truth to that last bit, the first part really bugged me. Mostly because of how unsure it made me feel about what I most closely identify with. I have always called myself a graphic designer because I like the idea that I can design in many mediums, not only the web. I realize this can seem elitist (and she agreed) to not embrace the moniker of “web designer”, but I’ve never been able to identify with it… Read the rest here

Mezzoblue Go to the source

Time to dive back in to the Bright Creative redesign I wrote about last week , and focus on some of the good stuff that came out of it. Most people got it; but for anyone who misinterpreted my laundry list of rants from last time, that was just some healthy critiquing of my own work. It’s a good idea to step back every now and then and judge what you do with a critical eye. The truth is I’m very pleased with the way this redesign came off. Here’s why. jQuery I’d like to thank the star of our show, John Resig ’s fabulous jQuery library. … Read the rest here

Andy Budd Go to the source

If you haven’t already heard, we quietly launched the dConstruct 2008 website at the start of the week. So if you’ve not seen the latest incarnation yet, I suggest you pop along to take a look. 2008.dconstruct.org The conference itself will be take place on Friday the 5th of September, back at the Dome in sunny Brighton. And like last year, we’ll be hosting a series of practical workshops in the run-up to the event. … Read the rest here