Experience, design & technology.

Posts tagged “Design”

#8 Keep Pointing to the Possible

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Posted on May 17th, 2013

Subscribe to Divergent Minds on iTunes. TITLE: Keep Pointing To The Possible TOPIC: You can’t have leadership without connection. This week we discuss how to align people to shared goals, big or small, we talk about historical examples of explorers who were mapping new territory and leading the way to a new future. We talk about the golden age of technological capability (right now) and the difference between designing an object and designing a process. On todays journey we touch on the value and price of trust, the power of uniting people behind your ideas and how to truly lead in the connection economy. SPONSOR: This weeks show is brought to you by The Experience Workshop. The Experience workshop builds outstanding experiences that your…

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#6 You’re Not Designing for Yourself

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Posted on April 30th, 2013

Subscribe to Divergent Minds on iTunes. TOPIC: When to know you need feedback. Trying to solve a new problem? Looking to improve your business but don’t know how? How do you know what you ought to be doing? What information do you need in order to make your decisions better? Feedback is critical to increase your ability to make the right decision, to avoid wasting time, attention and effort and to maximise your efforts in bringing your ideas to life. This week we tackle feedback, when to give it, when to look for it and how you can use feedback productively. SPONSOR: This weeks show is brought to you by The Experience Workshop. The Experience workshop builds outstanding experiences that your customers love, talk…

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The Myth of Minimalism

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Posted on February 8th, 2012

Cliff Kuang, on the minimalist Apple design, over at Fastcodesign.com; Not only do HP, Dell, Lenovo, and Samsung make boring black boxes, but every single black box they make seems to have no relationship with the others. As Apple has proved, that’s a massive missed opportunity. Each one of Apple’s gadgets quietly sells the others, every single day you have it. When you buy an iPhone, you’re buying into the Apple design language, and the little details you come to appreciate are details you know you’ll find in all their other products–from the laser-etched buttons to the stunningly beautiful screws to the dead-simple UI layout. When you finally decide to buy another Apple gadget–say, an iPad or a MacBook Air–you’ve already been primed to…

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Stay curious

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Posted on January 5th, 2012

If you’re a designer (heck even if you’re not a designer), stop everything and read this article by Mike Monteiro, over at net magazine. It’s what Jason Santa Maria describes as a rallying call for designers to take wake up and take 2012 by storm. It does have the sheen of a new years resolution list, but honestly it does ring true for me outside of holiday reality distortion time. Take a look for yourself 6. Stay curious Don’t be the designer who gets proficient and then stops. It’s easy to make a steady living doing that one thing you’re really good at. Until something comes along and obliterates it. Aim higher. Remember those guys who were really good at Debabelizer? (Ask your parents.)…

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So far, I'm impressed with MailChimp

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Posted on December 15th, 2011

Why do email clients have such prehistoric web browsers? The web browser which comes built into my iPad RSS reading app (MobileRSS) is so much more fully featured than the majority of email clients. It’s ridiculous. I wouldn’t advocate that rich email clients should contain all the functionality of web browsers (and indeed, some email clients essentially sit within web browsers), but it does seem quite backward. The reason I mention this is that I’ve been playing with MailChimp over the last two days, working out how to concoct and distribute nice looking email. A simple aim, no doubt, but one worth chasing. It turns out, that the above problem requires a considerate designer to think very carefully about which web technologies they’re prepared…

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Make a decision

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Posted on December 6th, 2011

This got me thinking today, and I must say I couldn’t agree more. The key to this is making a decision. Look at your market, make some reasonable guesses, and be honest with yourself about what you’re gaining versus what you lose. Make a decision. Just please, don’t sit and agonise over it – or before you know it, the new version has become old, and you’re back where you started. Tick tock. Any business (new or incumbent) approaching a changing market has to be prepared to try, experiment, prototype and iterate its offering. Unless you’re prepared to try and fail, you can’t begin to try doing things differently and disrupting others. Failing to fail, can lead to you being disrupted yourself, by others…

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Worry dream

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Posted on December 4th, 2011

The wonderful mind of Bret Victor is on full display over at worrydream. I couldn’t recommend taking a browse highly enough, but do be warned there’s quite a lot to get lost amongst so give yourself plenty of time. Some highlights would include his thoughts on abstraction, simulation and the future of interaction design. Great stuff.

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Google barred

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Posted on December 1st, 2011

Things do change quickly! I actually don’t mind the black navigation bar on the google sites, it had a bit of a welcome unifying effect on their products. I don’t mind the new google bar, but I do wonder how much this a) deals with the new touch based paradigm we’re learning, or b) will frustrate me by introducing one or two more clicks for specific menu items. I liked having access to the main products in one spot. I hate navigating multi-click menus. I do agree with MG, regarding the likelihood that the google navigation will eventually creep up into the browser controls themselves, but I do wonder if that will make them easier or harder to find/use? The google search has been…

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