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The Best And Worst Design Details Of Nintendo’s Wii UI

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 04:24:00 -0500

The Best And Worst Design Details Of Nintendo’s Wii U

WITH THE WII U, NINTENDO IS CHANGING ITS ROLE IN YOUR LIVING ROOM. ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL GAMING COMPANIES IS TELLING YOU TO WATCH TV FOR A CHANGE.

It’s the worst kept secret in tech: 2013 will be the year of the console refresh. Microsoft will announce the Xbox 720 (which may have augmented reality glasses), and Sony will inevitably debut the PS4.

With the Wii U, Nintendo got a head start on the next gen. And after playing with a review unit for more hours than I’d like to admit, here are my thoughts on the system.

THE GOOD

Wii U’s Interface Juggles Old And New Paradigms Well … Mostly
You can’t underplay this accomplishment, even though most have: The Wii U has a new touchscreen controller with a bajillion buttons on it. Yet its main menus are just as navigable with the classic Wiimotes. Thanks to a clever button layout (similar to the Wii’s), it’s just as intuitive to tap the screen as it is to aim and click.

Unfortunately, you can’t use the Wiimote in apps like Netflix or YouTube. In fact, the Wiimote won’t even turn on in these modes. Will future updates bring more Wiimote control options? I’m guessing no but hoping yes. The Wiimote still works.

It’s The Simplest Universal Remote Ever
When you set up the Wii U, you’re asked what your cable provider is and if you have a dedicated box. You’re whisked through a few questions about the make and model of your TV and suddenly, you’re controlling your TV inputs and cable box with the Wii U GamePad. You can even pull up this TV remote at any time with a dedicated hard button on the GamePad.

CONTROLS ARE LIKE ONE OF THOSE BIG-BUTTONED REMOTES FOR SENIORS, IN A GOOD WAY.

The controls are absurdly basic. (Onscreen controls are like one of those big-buttoned remotes for seniors in a good way, allowing you to change the channel and volume and view your program guide, but not much more.) All the same, I can’t stress how liberating it is to use a D-pad or analog stick to look through shows, swapping between playing games and watching TV without ever putting down the controller.

Drawing On TV Feels Right
MiiVerse is like a mega messageboard on the Wii U, where bored players can chat about games or whatever else is on their mind. It’s like any other message board, with one fantastic trick: You can use the Wii U pad (which comes with a stylus) to draw messages instead of just typing them. These drawings permeate your welcome screen, too, where avatars from other players fill a public space (and frankly, the drawings are so good that one can’t help but wonder if Nintendo is curating a bit behind the scenes). Even still, I can’t help but wonder, in five years, if we’ll think it was absurd that we couldn’t always draw on our computer screens and TVs so simply.

THE MIXED

Gaming
What’s it like to play on the Wii U GamePad? It really depends on the game. Super Mario Bros. U actually asks up to four players to use Wiimotes, with a fifth person optionally holding the Wii U GamePad only to add blocks for others to jump on or stun enemies. The touchscreen controls feel tacked on and, frankly, pretty boring compared to really playing as a character. You can also play Mario single player, using the Wii U GamePad with full character controls. The screen mirrors the game so you can even play with the TV off, but you lose all the touchscreen components you get in multiplayer.

THE WII U GAMEPAD IS A DIGITAL SIMULATION OF DIGGING THROUGH YOUR BACKPACK.

ZombiU, on the other hand, uses the new remote at its core. This personal screen serves as a map and your inventory. It’s actually often quite frustrating to juggle two screens, never sure if a zombie is sneaking up on you—and that’s part of the fun. In a gaming world full of convenient HUDs, the remote is a digital simulation of digging through your backpack with your eyes down and a zombie at your back. In multiplayer, the Wii U gamer gets to place zombies tactically on a map to attack friends, which is an equally fun, innovative use of this second screen.

Controller Juggling
Above I mentioned that the Wii remote doesn’t work in some menus. It’s annoying. But the Wii U Pro controller, which is Nintendo’s take on the Xbox/PS3 controllers, isn’t supported in many games for reasons that simply don’t make sense. Super Mario Bros. U won’t support it, for instance. Why not? It has a D-pad and A/B buttons. What’s missing? Nothing. Just support.

WHEN NINTENDO ENABLES INPUTS, THE WII U’S DISSONANT CONTROL SCHEMES MAKE JAZZ.

Make no mistake about it, the Wii U is absurdly designed. It’s built with physical buttons, a touchscreen, occasional motion controls and even a stylus. But there are occasional payoffs to this everything-for-everyone approach: You can often control the system on your terms, unrestricted to a single UI. Heck, you can play Mario from the bathroom. When Nintendo enables every sort of input you can imagine, the Wii U’s dissonant control schemes make jazz. When Nintendo (or its developers) restrict its controls for no good reason, any semblance of reason or flexibility is lost.

THE BAD

It’s Also The Most Confounding Universal Remote Ever
Wait, I just said it was the best remote above! Well, that’s the stock remote. There’s also a newly released alternative called TVii, which we previewed before. TVii is like a funnel for your media content, allowing you to set your favorite shows and explore them with a thumbnail view. It will dig for your shows through your cable subscription or services like Amazon (Netflix is coming soon, too). You can even set a reminder to watch something, and the Wii U GamePad will change the channel for you at that time. Then, while you watch the show, you can surf IMDB to learn more about the actors. There are a lot of great ideas here.

TVII HAS 36 BUTTONS, IT SPINS, AND IT’S TOO LARGE TO REACH WITH MY THUMB.

The problems are twofold. TVii is perpetually, stutteringly slow, and no UI can feel like a joy unless it’s fast. (I’d sacrifice the pretty thumbnails for clean, quick text any day.) The other problem is its crazy, radial virtual remote for when you just want to change the channel. It has 36 buttons, it spins, it’s too large to reach with my thumb and I still can’t use it to dig through my DVR library or swap my inputs for some reason. TVii also disables the D-Pad and analog remote controls, which are so satisfying for gamers to use. Ultimately, the TVii remote is a magnitude more complex than that basic, senior-friendly remote we mentioned above, but it actually has less functionality. It’s unusable.

The Battery Life Actually Limits Use Cases
This is a design publication, so it’s rare we’d even mention battery life. But in this case, the 4-hour (or less) run time of the rechargeable Wii U GamePad severely limits functionality. It can’t be your go-to media device for TV and games when it can’t make it through a single evening binge ofBreaking Bad. My iPad is great because it feels like it always has power—I think of my iPad whenever I think of relaxing on the couch. With the Wii U, I’m always tense that the controller isn’t charged enough for me to play.

The good news for Nintendo is that most of these complaints are firmware-fixable (though sluggish speed and lousy battery life are likely here to stay). At the end of the day, the company has, yet again, built a seemingly absurd controller that has a surprising amount of ergonomic flexibility. And while Microsoft, Sony, and Apple are all trying to sell us on closed-system media content, it’s revelatory to have Nintendo do something as simple and thoughtful as enable us to swap an input to just watch TV. That is, assuming anyone out there other than me is still watching TV.

The Wii U is out now starting at $299.

T.G.I.F…yay!

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 14:21:00 -0500

T.G.I.F…yay!

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you..."

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 16:55:33 -0400

““Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.””

- Mark Twain (via bookshavepores)

Getting Started in iOS User Interface Design

Wed, 25 May 2011 07:42:00 -0400

iOS devices are becoming mainstream as avid technology buffs are playing with Apple’s latest technology. The release of the iPad tablet computer along with the HD iPhone 4 retina display has shown an impressive year for company branding.

We’ll be going over a few tips for designing a simple iOS interface in Adobe Photoshop. Out of the graphics software available Photoshop or a similar platform is the easiest option for UI design. With easy access to layers and project icons things become much simpler.

This process is similar to the artist or graphic web designer in that application prototyping requires strong creative energies. To put together an entire storyboard of app screens takes time and patience. With the tools we use today the process is much quicker and simpler than ever before.

Starting Off Generic

Designing for iOS isn’t much different than designing for the web. In fact it’s a bit easier since you’ll be working on a smaller screen with specific access points. Practicing with the native iPhone graphics is the easiest path for newbie designers.

Included is a small list of bells and whistles native to the iOS interface. These are the buttons and toolbars you see most commonly around the App Store.

These elements are commonly found inside Apple’s Interface Builder, which is software used to design resources for iPhone and Mac OS X apps. This is the software application developers can use to connect iOS graphics to backend Objective-C code.

Below is a small list of interface elements. This is not an exhaustive collection but should give you an idea of the basic starting points.

status bar
navigation bar
tabs/tab bar
sliders and switches
input fields
table lists

Many of these are available for free as iPhone and iPad UI kits. They will include layered documents for Photoshop and Fireworks containing all icons and page elements possible. Most developed UI templates will also include a graphic relating to an actual iPhone, screen sized to 480 x 320.

App Prototyping

Before opening Photoshop it can be handy to spend some time sketching out your idea first. This could be on a simple piece of paper or laid over an entire spread. This step all depends on your hand-drawn artistic abilities and how comfortable you feel.

Illustrators will generally sketch out frames for each piece to an iOS application. These are also known as views and can immensely help the app developers down the line by having a contained set of templates. If you are less artistically gifted and wish to jump right into the technology then check out a sample iPhone UI kit. Working from the newest releases Teehan+lax has a fantastic iPhone 4 GUI PSD release for free.

The file includes everything you would expect to find inside a standard application. Once downloaded I’d recommend saving the initial template in a new directory where it can be used as a reference point.

Prototyping is much simpler when you can work through a diagram similar to the iPhone design, included in portrait and landscape. The same goes for iPad kits which include the same framing style.

Best Practices

The suggested practices towards creating individual app prototypes is to save separate view states into a new directory. As an example you could create a new directory labeled myApp and inside create a folder named views.

Within here you can save individual .psd files labeled after which content they contain. This could range to include home.psd or settings.psd. After a bit of work you’ll notice creating complementary views becomes easier once the initial design is set.

Also it’s important to save copies of each file as a .jpg or .png. This alternate is beneficial to those who do not use Photoshop or would be too confused to mess around with layered files. When working on a project with many developers and closing deadlines this can become especially time efficient.

Example iOS UI Sets

Below are just a few examples of some great starter kits. These will include all of the core functionality which lives naively in Interface Builder. Note iOS3 and iOS4 do contain differing graphics as the screen resolution has been updated.

iPhone GUI PSD Version 4

iPhone WireFrames & Stencils

Fireworks toolkit for iPhone UI

iPad GUI Kit(PSD)

iPhone PSD Vector Kit by Smashing Magazine

iPad vector GUI Elements

These are just some of the best tips towards getting into iPhone app design. There’s a large world of mobile graphics out there and iOS is a hugely popular operating system. As the mobile app market advances there will be a huge spike in demand for mobile app UI and icon designers.

Getting started is always the hardest step but returns the greatest rewards. Pick up a few of these PSD kits and mess around for an hour or two to see what you can create. Often times practice does make perfect and designing for the iOS platform can be not only fun but a truly fulfilling learning experience.

Copied from: WDL - Posted by Jake Rocheleau on Jan 11, 2011

Converse Canvas Experimental

Thu, 19 May 2011 12:45:00 -0400

The Converse mark thought this called interesting installation “Canvas Experimental”. While assembling a wall made up of shoes on 2 sides and being able to swivel, those react to the music for one made original. A vidéos of the concept is to be discovered in the continuation.

Copied from: fubiz

Think different. I like this idea which seems like kinda mixed...

Thu, 19 May 2011 12:37:43 -0400

Think different.

I like this idea which seems like kinda mixed with Android and iOS.

Galaxy UI seems too much like iPhone one.

I don’t prefer ‘following’ and ‘chasing’ but ‘creating’.

I do want to think different.. and work with new idea and better one..

Keep thinking, and keep in mind about innovation..

How to Quit Your Job, Move to Paradise, and Get Paid to Change the World

Wed, 18 May 2011 11:07:09 -0400

This guest post is by Jon Morrow of Copyblogger.

After all, that’s the dream, right?

Forget the mansions and limousines and other trappings of Hollywood-style wealth. Sure, it would be nice, but for the most part, we bloggers are simpler souls with much kinder dreams.

We want to quit our jobs, spend more time with our families, and finally have time to write. We want the freedom to work when we want, where we want. We want our writing to help people, to inspire them, to change them from the inside out.

It’s a modest dream, a dream that deserves to come true, and yet a part of you might be wondering…

Will it?

Do you really have what it takes to be a professional blogger, or are you just being dumb? Is it realistic to make enough money from this to quit your job, or is that just silly? Can you really expect people to fall in love with what you write, or is that just wishful thinking?

Sure, it’s fun to dream about your blog taking off and changing your life, but sometimes you wonder if it’s just that: a dream. This is the real world, and in the real world, dreams don’t really come true.

Right?

Well, let me tell you a little story…

How I quit my job

My van

In April of 2006, I was hit by a car going 85 miles an hour.

I didn’t see him coming, and I don’t remember much about the accident, but I do remember being pulled out of my minivan with my shirt on fire. The front end of the van was torn off, gasoline was everywhere, and my legs were broken in 14 places.

For the next three months, I had nothing to do but endure the pain and think about my life. I thought about my childhood. I thought about my dreams. I thought about my career.

And overall, I decided I didn’t like the way things were going.

So I quit.

I sold everything I owned. I stopped paying most of my bills. I turned in my letter of resignation, worked my two weeks, and then disappeared without saying goodbye.

Hearing about my insanity, a friend called and asked me, “Well, what are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “Maybe start a blog.”

And so that’s what I did.

For the next three months, I didn’t just tinker around with blogging. I dedicated myself to it. I started work at 8 AM in the morning, and I kept going until 11 PM at night. I didn’t watch television. I didn’t see my friends. From morning till night, I was writing, reading, and connecting with other bloggers. Nothing else.

Within a month, I had On Moneymaking off the ground, and within two months, it was getting 2,000 visitors a day and Performancing nominated it for the best business/money blog of the year. A couple of months after that, Brian Clark asked me to become the Associate Editor of Copyblogger, and so I sold On Moneymaking for five figures and went to work at one of the most popular blogs at the world.

And amazingly, that’s just the beginning of the story.

How I moved to paradise

Have you ever woken up one day and realized you secretly despise everything about where you live?

The weather is horrible. Your neighbors are jerks. You don’t like inviting anyone to your home, because it’s always a wreck, and you’re ashamed of how it looks.

Well, that’s exactly what happened to me in January of 2009. I was sitting in my pathetic apartment, wrapped up in blankets to keep warm, trying to get some work done on the computer, when it struck me how monumentally stupid it was.

I was a full-time blogger, for God’s sakes. I could do my work from anywhere in the world. Why on Earth was I living in this hellhole?

The only problem was I had no idea where I wanted to go, but a couple of weeks later, the telephone rang, and it was an old friend who had retired to Mazatlan, Mexico. As usual, he was calling to gloat about the weather and the food and the general superiority of the Mexican lifestyle, but instead of just suffering through it this time, I stopped him and said, “No, don’t tell me any more. I’m moving there.”

My office

“What? When?” he stammered.

“I don’t know exactly when,” I told him, “but I’m starting right now.”

Two months later, I took a one-week trip to scout it out and look for places to live. When I got back, I started selling all of my stuff, packing the rest of it into storage, and saying goodbye to friends. Almost one year to the day after our phone call, I hopped in the car and drove just shy of 3,000 miles to my new beachfront condo in the finest resort in Mazatlan.

As I write this, I’m sitting on my balcony with my laptop, watching (no kidding) dolphins jumping out in the Pacific. It’s a sunny day, there’s a nice breeze, and I’m thinking about ordering a piña colada from the restaurant downstairs.

Lucky me, right?

Well, what might surprise you is I left out a piece of the story. It’s the part where I have a fatal disease, I can’t move from the neck down, and yet I essentially get paid to help people. Let’s talk about that part next.

How I get paid to change the world

You know what’s funny?

Yours truly

The worst part about having a disease like SMA isn’t how everyone treats you like a charity case. It’s not the frustration, anger, or depression. It’s not even the inability to reach over and pinch a cute girl’s butt when you want to (although that’s pretty bad).

No, the worst part is the freakin’ bills. The doctors. The medication. The nurses.

I added it all up, and the total cost of keeping me alive in the US was $127,000 a year. That’s not rent. That’s not food. That’s just medical expenses.

Granted, I didn’t actually have to pay all that. I had private insurance, Medicaid, other government aid programs, but all that support comes at a price: they control you. The government allotted me only $700 a month to live on, and I had to spend every single cent above that on medical expenses, or they would cut me off.

So for years, that’s what I did. If I made $5,000 one month, I set aside $700 for living expenses, and I spent the other $4,300 on medical bills. Nothing was left. Ever.

And eventually, I got sick of it.

I wanted to make money without having to worry about losing my healthcare. I wanted to take care of my family, instead of them always having to take care of me. I wanted to actually live somewhere nice, not some ratty little apartment built for folks below the poverty line.

The only problem was, it just wasn’t possible for me in US. No matter how I played with the numbers, I couldn’t make it work. So, I did something crazy:

I quit Medicaid. I moved to Mexico. I stopped worrying about myself at all and started a business based on one simple idea:

Helping people.

I found up-and-coming writers who wanted a mentor, and I trained them. I found businesses who wanted to cash in on social media, and I developed their strategy. I found bloggers who wanted more traffic, and I created a course on how to get it.

In exchange, they paid me what they could. Some folks gave me $50 an hour and others $300 an hour, but I treated them all the same, and I dedicated myself to making their dreams a reality.

The results?

Within two months, I was making so much money so fast PayPal shut down my account under suspicions of fraudulent activity. Today, not only am I making more than enough to take care of myself, but a couple of months ago, I got uppity and bought my father a car.

Do you understand how precious that is? For a guy who can’t move from the neck down to buy his father a car?

And the best part is, I’m not making money doing mindless drudgery. I’m changing people’s lives.

Every day, I get emails from readers who say my posts have changed their thinking. Every day, I get emails from students who say my advice has changed their writing. Every day, I get emails from clients who say my strategies have changed the way they do business.

I can’t really believe it. Normally, a guy like me would be wasting away in a nursing home somewhere, watching television and waiting to die, but here I am speaking into a microphone and essentially getting paid to change the world. If my fingers worked, I’d pinch myself.

And here’s the thing:

I don’t want it for just me. I want it for you too.

The reason I told you this whole story wasn’t just to brag but also to convince you of one incontrovertible point:

YOU CAN DO THIS!

You want to quit your job and become a professional blogger?

You can.

You want to travel around the world, living life to its fullest?

You can.

You want to dedicate your every hour to helping people and making the world a better place?

You can.

Because listen … I know it’s horribly cliché, but if I can quit my job, risk the government carting me off to a nursing home because I can’t afford my own healthcare, convince my poor mother to abandon her career and drive my crippled butt 3,000 miles to a foreign country, and then make enough money to support myself, my mother, my father, and an entire nursing staff using nothing but my voice, then what can you accomplish if you really set your mind to it?

My guess: pretty much anything.

No, it won’t be easy. At some point, I guarantee you’ll want to quit. I guarantee people will treat you like you’re insane. I guarantee you’ll cry yourself to sleep, wondering if you made a horrible mistake.

But never stop believing in yourself. The world is full of naysayers, all of them eager to shout you down at the slightest indication you might transcend mediocrity, but the greatest sin you can commit is to yourself become one of them. Our job isn’t to join that group, but to silence it, to accomplish things so great and unimaginable that its members are too awed to speak.

You can do it.

I believe in you.

So get started.

Right freaking now.

Jon Morrow is Associate Editor of Copyblogger. If you’d like to learn more about what it really takes to become a popular blogger, check out his free videos on guest blogging.

Copied from: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/05/18/how-to-quit-your-job-move-to-paradise-and-get-paid-to-change-the-world/

This is a very touching advertisement.. lovely.

Wed, 18 May 2011 10:42:56 -0400

This is a very touching advertisement.. lovely.

This is brilliant! :D I wish I can make my tiny studio like...

Wed, 18 May 2011 10:40:41 -0400

This is brilliant! :D I wish I can make my tiny studio like this.

Aiming To Become Iconic, A Houston Museum Morphs Its Building Into A Logo

Wed, 11 May 2011 11:28:00 -0400

The new logo is both bold and cost effective, using design-world standards to maximum effect.

The Guggenheim Bilbao, San Francisco’s DeYoung, New York’s Whitney — all are museums that have identities inextricably linked to their buildings and the architects who gave them shape (Frank Gehry, Herzog & deMeuron, and Marcel Breuer, respectively). You may know squat about art, but odds are you can pick Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic Guggenheim out of a lineup. Can you say the same of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston? Unless you live in Houston, probably not. That isn’t stopping the CAMH from trying to remix the building, as the basis for its rebranding campaign.

Although it never made it into the architectural cannon, the stainless-steel-clad structure, designed by Latvian-born Gunnar Birkerts in 1972, is a standout work, especially for Houston. (Birkerts, the father of the literary critic Sven Birkerts, is better known for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, 1973, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, in Kansas City, 1994.) Various views of the building yield four distinctive geometric shapes, which the New York-based firm AHL&CO layered on top of each other like a CMYK collage. (The previous logo was a flat, literal representation of the museum.) The mark can be used separately or in combination with the acronym in Helvetica Bold and all caps.

Detractors immediately seized on the logo when it began making the rounds on the Interweb, slamming it for the color palette (unimaginative!) and the typeface (Helvetica? Snore.). The designers answer their critics thusly: “In terms of the Helvetica and CMYK — it was a simple matter of economy,” Peter Ahlberg writes in an email. “That meant there was no budget for new/customized type, spot color, etc. We felt that Helvetica Bold was malleable enough to accommodate any art (style, medium, etc.) paired with it.”

We’ll leave it to the graphic designers to debate the finer points. Regardless of the logo’s merits, we applaud the museum’s appreciation of its home, even if it hasn’t achieved landmark status. And the mark just may encourage people to investigate their built environment from all angles, and there’s no downside to that.

[Hat tip to Brand New]

copied from: fastcodesign

This is AWESOME! I wish I was there!! :(

Wed, 11 May 2011 10:22:33 -0400

This is AWESOME!

I wish I was there!! :(

. ‘…Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of...

Tue, 10 May 2011 15:44:00 -0400

‘…Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change the world?’

‘It was really aimed at the people inside the apple computer. And It was ‘think different’.

Let’s not do what everybody else is doing.

Let’s not mimic microsoft.

Let’s not chase IBM.

The only way we are going to carve out a special place for our company is to think different and express that in our own products. ‘

startupquote: Do or do not. There is no try. - Yoda (Startup...

Mon, 09 May 2011 11:11:32 -0400

startupquote:

Do or do not. There is no try.

- Yoda

(Startup Quote Anniversary Edition 5/5)

*Okay, Yoda does not run a startup, but he runs the Jedi Council! Happy April Fools’ Day!

Child’s Play Storybook Bed

Mon, 09 May 2011 10:58:17 -0400

The Child’s Play bed envisioned by Yusuke Suzuki looks just like every child’s dream. Ever tried reading a book and falling asleep half-way through it? Well, this time, you can actually sleep on it.

The bed looks big enough to accommodate two children in its comfortably and cushy looking blankets. Crack the bed open during nap time and fold it shut to save some space when the kids are up and about.

Child’s Play isn’t just for sleeping; it’s also for playing. The key to a world of fun and imagination is literally within reach with the turn of a page. This is definitely at the top of my list for the Best Book of The Year.

It’s not yet available commercially but I hope it will be soon.

(Via Buzzfeed)

Copied from: http://www.geekalerts.com/childs-play-storybook-bed/

Vintage Label Designs

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 14:34:00 -0400

I’ve been Brand museum at the hidden place in London 2 weeks ago.

When I arrived there, well unfortunately I just only had less than 30 mins to look around because I was too late, I felt I was at an amazing amusement park! It was absolutely fantastic.

I do like modern and simple design stuff but can’t stop loving vintage design. It is impossible. Especially after moving to London, more and more I love vintage design.

I would like to visit there again def. I would like to know more vintage design and brand and share with you. If you know or find more, please share here with me :)

I found this design through this site article: http://abduzeedo.com/vintage-label-designs

For more from Wallace Design House visit their website wallacedesignhouse.com

Trackback URL: http://disqus.com/forums/abduzeedo/vintage_label_designs/trackback/

50 reasons not to date a graphic designer

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 13:54:41 -0400

1. They are very weird people.
2. There are billions of them in the world, like colors on the screen of your computer.
3. They will analyse conversations in layers.
4. You will spend the day assembling furniture from IKEA.
5. They drink and eat all kinds of weird shit just because they like the packaging.
6. They hate each other.
7. You’ll come out the last out of the movies because you have to see the full list of credits.
8. They cant change a light bulb or without making a sketch.
9. They fuck up all the tables with their cutters.
10. They rather study the paisley pattern on your outfit than listen to what you have to say.
11. They will fill your house with magazines and whatever is out there that has drawings.
12. You never know if it is really an original or a copy.
13. They make collages with your photos.
14. They do not know how to add and subtract, they just understand letters.
15. They idolize people who nobody knows and speak of them as if they were his colleagues.
16. They take pictures almost daily and all are cut in weird shapes.
17. They ask your opinion about everything but they do whatever they want.
18. Everything is left justified, right or center unless they arrive late.
19. They hate Comic Sans with the same passion they love Helvetica.
20. They use iPhone for everything, because everyone has one.
21. You can not decorate the house without consulting them.
22. They steal street signs.
23. Always carry their hands painted with something.
24. They buy dolls unfinished for them to paint.
25. Everything becomes something other than what it really is: cards as tickets, cards as …
26. When arguing, you will be nicknamed like the OSX spinning wheel (not affectionately)
27. Do not know how to dress without consulting the Pantone book.
28. They hate Excel.
29. They read comics.
30. They want to save the world only with a poster.
31. You will spend the day brainstorming.
32. On vacation they will take you to countries that you do not know exist and have no beach.
33. Museums are their second home.
34. They know more positions than the Kamasutra.
35. They can’t go to a restaurant without secretly critiquing the menu design.
36. They listen to music you have never heard of.
37. They can´t cook a normal dish, they always have to experiment with new ingredients.
38. They read rare books: stories of children, Semiotics …
39. When you are going to tell you something, everyone has read it in their facebook and twitter.
40. They have own iPods before you knew they existed.
41. The orgasm they remember is when they heard that Adobe was acquiring Macromedia.
42. They have their own shops just for them and there are the most expensive in the city.
43. They want to spend all the money in the Apple Store.
44. You will never understand their gifts.
45. They see ordinary objects and laugh.
46. You wake up in the middle of the night hearim them screaming “When is the deadline?”
47. They see CMYK and RGB like Neo sees the Matrix.
48. They dream of the day nobody will make a single change to their designs.
49. They rather pay for a font than for a special birthday gift.
50. They are always sleepy because they work 24/7.

Posted by a bourbon for silvia

copy from: http://abourbonforsilvia.wordpress.com/2010/11/10/50-reasons-not-to-date-a-graphic-designer/

Awesome Typography Commercials by EF Language Schools

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 13:19:00 -0400

I (François Hoang) am a huge fan of typography and when you mix typography, photography and videos? I am just speechless! This is the set of videos from the EF Language commercial campaign: “Live the Language”. It’s a beautiful combination of rich colours and typography work and I especially love the angles of shooting that makes you feel the action.

For more information about EF Language Schools, check out their website EF.com . To know more about the people behind the videos, there’s the art director Albin Holmqvist , the director of photography Niklas Johansson and the music by Magnus Lidehäll .

"Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future"

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 17:11:23 -0400

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- Paul Boese

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The World's Prettiest Paper Plates (Yes, Paper Plates)

When is Learnability More Important than Usability?

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 13:55:00 -0400

Is it ok to ask your users to learn your interface? As UI design is maturing and the web is becoming a more advanced land of complex interfaces is it now unreasonable for every feature to be instantly usable? Touch devices have also entered the mainstream and added a multitude of interactions that UI designers can lean on.

So, how do you know when it is ok to hide features and ask your audience to learn your application? Is ‘learnability’ now more important than usability?

People like to feel that they are making progress. They like to feel that they are learning and mastering new knowledge and skills.

whatmakesthemclick.net

I recently wrote a short post listing my initial thoughts of ‘Reeder’ the RSS app for Mac.

I had heard so many superlatives about it from others that I was compelled to give it a try. However, on first showing I was massively disappointed, during my first attempt at using it, I was constantly guessing and was unsure about where to find the features I wanted.

Despite these initial UX grumbles, I know there is a huge audience out there who love using ‘Reeder’ and find using it a breeze. If you get over the initial confusion and spend time learning the interface, it becomes second nature and needs no thought to operate.

So, what factors allow you the chance to experiment with your user interface?

Importance

If the interface you are designing is critical to your users then it’s far more likely they are going to spend time learning how to use it. The more important the application is the more time they will spend trying to get used to it.

For example, if the application is a critical part of the user’s workflow and they would be far less productive without it, they are going to be far more willing to overcome initial confusion if the long term goal is worth it.

Frequency

I use a handful of applications and websites everyday. Using them so regularly has meant their interface is now very familiar to me and I know exactly where everything is. I tend to perform the same tasks during every visit and because I perform them so frequently I can complete them without having to think about them.

The ‘Reeder’ app is a good example of an interface that people would use a lot. I keep up to date with my RSS feed at regular intervals during the day so any users of ‘Reeder’ are likely to get used to it very quickly.

Cost

This might sound counter-intuitive but the more someone pays for an application the more time they are going to invest in learning it. I’m not saying you should charge exorbitant amounts for your app so that you can neglect the user experience. However, people are far less likely to stop using something they have paid for.

Take iPhone apps for example, if I download a free app and I don’t instantly like it I will delete it without so much as a second thought. Alternatively, if I have decided to pay for an app, I’m going to make sure I invest a little bit of my time before deciding to keep or bin it.

One reason for this is the ‘Value Attribution’ theory that states we value things more when they cost more. If something is expensive then we assume it is worth the investment and our expectations rise. These expectations are likely to cause you to persevere past any initial problems.

It could also have something to do with the ‘Commitment & Consistency’ theory. People want to be seen acting consistently and if they have made a commitment to purchase something they are going to try harder to prove to themselves that it was a worthwhile purchase.

Alternative

Another important factor determining how long people will spend trying to learn your interface is the amount and quality of the alternatives on offer. If there are lots of companies providing the same service then it’s likely you will try to find a better solution elsewhere.

However, if your app is unique in some way and it’s much harder to find a suitable substitute then your users are going to be forced to push through any difficulties until the app feels familiar.

Be careful though, you are unlikely to stay unique for long, so be sure to fix any usability issues before a better alternative comes along and makes it easy for your audience to leave you.

Simplicity

How many features does your application have? The more features you have within your interface the more complicated it will look. If your interface looks complicated your users are going to perceive it as difficult to use and expect it to take a long time to learn.

If it looks like it’s going to take a substantial investment in time to learn, people are going to be more apprehensive about starting the learning process.

Testing for Learnability

One dilemma faced when designing an interface that needs to be learned is that it can be hard to test before putting it live.

On most projects I am involved with we build a prototype and then conduct some user tests, asking participants to complete some pre-defined tasks. We can then use the feedback gained from these to iterate the prototype. When we are happy with our solution we can then build it and put it live knowing our creation has been validated by our potential audience.

However, this type of testing doesn’t really lend itself to an interface that isn’t looking to be instantly understandable. It’s very likely that this type of interface would perform poorly during initial testing. It would be better to test in a timeframe in which you hope your audience would start to feel comfortable using your product.

With this in mind it would be recommended that this type of solution should be put live and iterated from there. This way you can learn from user statistics and test actual users who have chosen to try your site. After a given period of live time it might be a good idea to question your audience and ask them how much they understand about your interface.

A Steep learning curve is beter in the long run?

There has been some research into this field that would seem to suggest a steep learning curve will eventually lead users who persist with the application to use it more efficiently.(Haldar, 2011)

In the article Haldar cites some research conducted by Dr. Christof van Nimwegen (2005) where he outlines 3 recommendations for interface design:

Designers could consider making interactions “less assisted” to persuade users into specific behavior. This issue is beyond plain usability issues and focuses on more meta cognitive aspects of interface-induced behavior such as planfulness and user engagement.

…after the interruption, internalization-subjects kept improving, while externalization fell back… internalization-subjects continue to work on base of the plan-based strategy as they did before, while externalization on the other hand performs worse after interruption. They fell back depending on the interface, having a less elaborated plan.

…internalization- subjects had to build a stronger, more elaborated plan and could rely less on interface information, and indeed working with the internalized version resulted in having significantly better knowledge of the problems rules and problem space…

blog.vivekhaldar.com

Examples

Google maps

Google are brilliant at designing for learnability. A lot of their apps are really simple upon first inspection and it’s very easy to use their core functions. However, if you delve a little deeper there is always very advanced functionality hidden away that once you find you can use again and again.

At first glance this looks like a nice and basic view

Take Google maps as an example, finding a location on a map or planning a route is very easy. However, there are lots of other features that can be turned on if you know where to look. If you wanted to see photos of the locations then it’s possible by opening up a hidden menu behind the traffic option.

There are some hidden features behind that traffic tab

Another Google product that uses advanced functionality is their newly design iOS app. The first time the app loads, the user is presented with a tutorial screen that highlights all of the functionality available. After this screen they have focused the display on the core functionality of the search bar. If a user needs to limit their search they can swipe the screen to the right to see the filter options.

There are even hidden features behind that

Google iOS app

Another Google product with hidden functionality is the newly launched iOS app. This new update has a new UI, which could be confusing to use on first viewing. However, the designers have provided a tutorial screen that loads the first time the app is opened, which softens the learning curve by quickly pointing out all the features available.

Clicking on the question marks provides a short introduction to the feature giving the user just enough information to know if it will be useful to them.

When you first load the app, there are some helpful pointers to quickly tell users how things work

The basic screen of the app is a simple Google search bar, which most people will be familiar with using and will feel comfortable entering their search term into. However, for people who want to filter their search, to provide images only for example, can swipe the screen to the right to reveal extra filter options.

This isn’t something all users would want, so Google have cleverly decided to hide this extra functionality.

If you swipe the screen to the right some hidden filters are revealed

Summery

The next time you are about to start an interface design, you should stop and think about the learning curve you are going to leave your users with. Creating an interface where every feature is easily accessible is not always the best option. It’s not always a bad thing to ask your users to experiment with your interface to find what they are looking for.

If the interface is an important tool then users will persist with it. If it’s an application that is used frequently then it’s less likely your audience will have to re-learn difficult actions.

Of course, I’m not trying to say your interfaces should be difficult to use, but I do want to make you think about possibly hiding some advanced features from users or trying to experiment with how you ask your audience to interact with your application. The ‘easiest’ solution is not necessarily the best solution for the end user in the long run.

About the Author

AtiKuSDesign is the creator and editor of the web and graphic design inspiration blog D-Lists.He lives and breathes design, spending 90% of his life online looking at a screen, finding inspiration everywhere. To add to his passion for design he is an experienced front-end and wordpress developer.He’s recently taken to the world of UI design with a keen interest in User Experience.Follow him on twitter or follow his complete set of online ramblings via his flavors page

Copied from: http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/when-is-learnability-more-important-than-usability/

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