Apple UI designers have learned how to grab the user's attention using a classic physical animation technique called squash and stretch. Think of a cartoon nose squishing exaggeratedly as it bumps into a wall, then going pop! as it pulls away—that’s squash and stretch. Animators have been using it for decades to give their drawn figures depth and weight As the newest Web 2.0 RIAs are getting more into what might be called cinematic, UI designers could do well to look to animation experts like apparently Apple has done. See the article below for more information.
read more | digg story
The World - Version 2.0
I gave a talk at Ryerson University on the topic of "The World - Version 2.0: How Recent Enhancements in the Design of Technology are Changing Companies, Universities, Society, and You". Here's the abstract of the talk.
Increased Revenue Due to Improved Design
All of us in the design business believe in the importance of good design. However, its good every once in a while to get anecdotal or better yet quantitative evidence. One company experienced a 13 percent increase in revenue linked to an improved design. See the "Read more" below for more details.
read more | digg story
Active Involvement in Web 2.0 Still Low
New results show that a small percentage of users of so-called social computing or Web 2.0 sites get actively involved in directly contributing to the site. An article on vnunet.com summarizes the results. A key point that is made is that most of these sites, like YouTube, Flickr, and Wikipedia have huge numbers of people actually viewing them so if a relatively small percentage of them contribute, that still accounts for some significant contribution numbers. However, it is important for those building Web 2.0 capabilities into the projects and products to keep these percentages in mind when tracking both passive and active interactions.
Fashion and Technology Meet
I've been seeing a trend toward technology companies focusing more on great design - in fact fashionable design. Geeks of Doom has an article that points out that electronics giant Philips and crystal company Swarovski are collaborating on a line of fashionable tech accessories called Active Crystals. So far, the Active Crystals line has unveiled four sets of headphones of polished silver metal embedded with crystals: Space, Icon, Amazone (in-ear headphones), and Mirage is of the (ear hook headphones). See the "read more" link below for more information.
Intelligent Designs: Edward Tufte Champions Truth and Beauty in Analytical Design
When information needs to be communicated, Edward Tufte demands both truth and beauty. He is the father of analytical design and a visionary in driving for optimal integration of purposefulness and aesthetics in design. Fran Smith has written a very good summary of Tufte's history, work, and influence. See the "read more" link below for the Stanford Magazine story.
Everything you ever wanted to know about AJAX but were afraid to ask...
This aims to be the simplest possible AJAX example, using only static HTML files. Examples can be tried on the website, or downloaded and run locally. First, there is a (short) explanation on the DOM, then on the XML HTTP Request Object and finally the two are combined to make AJAX. A more useful example with a PHP-driven backend is also available.
read more | digg story
Palm Hires iPhone Designer
I find it interesting and heartening that designers are seen as critical and central to a company's future success. The article below reports that the key iPhone designer was hired by competitor Palm in the hopes that Palm may be able to come up with a design as good or perhaps better than the amazing iPhone one. Quite apart from the details of this particular story, it is interesting how important design has become.
read more | digg story
Adopting Web 2.0 Externally but not Internally
A couple of recent announcements from two large, very well-known organizations provides some interesting data points on how Web 2.0 is affecting the product designs and business processes of otherwise very traditional institutions. Both USA Today and the U.S. Patent and Trademark office have recently unveiled strategies for letting their users use two-way Web capabilities to contribute directly to the products and services they offer. And many other mainstream companies, such as Pepsi as well as GM and XM Radio have been exploring externally-facing Web 2.0 concepts in their products for a while now.
See the article for more: More organizations shift to Web 2.0 while IT departments remain wary
Visual Design Characteristics of Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is many things. In fact, some would argue that it is too many things and, as a result, people have a difficult time figuring out what it encompasses. I won't go into that here. However, one key element of Web 2.0 is its unique visual design trend. Reflections, clean, simple, and wordmarks without the final consonant. The link below includes a summary of over 65 tutorials, references, and related resources, which have been designed to help you to create graphics in Web 2.0-Look. Have a look and start Web 2.0izing your designs.
Hiring Designers
One of the most important aspects of running a design operation is actually hiring great designers. This article summarizes the experiences by the author who reviews nine sites before hiring a designer. Interesting stuff.
read more | digg story
Way to go Go Daddy and Google!
After a bit of back and forth with Go Daddy support and references back to the instructions on Blogger, I've managed to get this blog accessible from my new karelvredenburg.com domain. Its so cool when things like this work.
Its been my experience, by the way, that the new Web 2.0 companies like Digg.com, Google, and Go Daddy, are particularly good at support and also base ease of use. I had a problem with my Digg.com account, I resolved it in a matter of hours via multiple emails with their support staff each time getting a response within 30 to 60 minutes. I experienced the same with Go Daddy over the last few days. I even got an unsolicited phone call!
So, the site is up on the domain and I'm all set now to blog at a single location.
Moved to a new domain
I've created a new domain for all of my blog activity at karelvredenburg.com. This should simplify my blogging and simplify people finding my blog material. It wasn't immediately obvious how to do the various steps in setting up a new domain name and then getting my blog on that domain name. Let me describe it for anyone who wants to do the same.
Details to come...
Using Social Computing to Stay Sane!
I think the social computing aspects of Web 2.0 provide a mechanism for communication between people from across the globe to share ideas, strategies, personal experiences, and get advice. Web 2.0 also simply connects people so that nobody is ever alone again!
But then again, spending all your time online could prevent you from making actual human connections with other people.
I'd very much appreciate your thoughts on this by providing a comment to this blog entry.