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Designers behind facebook timeline: 5 keys to creating a UI with soul

TechDept — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 16:25:57 +0000

Nick Felton and Joey Flynn say that when creating a page to tell someone’s life story, you have to throw out the UI rulebook and study how people recount memories.

For most of computing history, interfaces have been about function. Word processing programs help you compose documents. Banking websites help you make transactions. Sites like Flickr help you display and share photographs.

But Facebook’s Timeline (the new version of the user profile which is slated to be released to the general public “in the next few weeks”) wanted to do something more: It wanted to convey a feeling. Two feelings actually: The feeling of telling someone your life story, and the feeling of memory–of remembering your own life.

By E.B.Boyd for Fast Co Design, 19 Dec 2011.

Dropbox’s attention to detail on their download page

TechDept — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 13:00:41 +0000

Sometimes good UX is about being clever. Sometimes it’s to make the user happy or smile. However, when the success of your product depends on new, possibly inexperienced users successfully downloading and installing it, good UX is the difference between success and failure.

I love what Dropbox has done here. I’ve noticed it for years and mentioned it in talks and to friends but I wanted to call it out here because it’s so thoughtful.

When you go to download Dropbox, here’s what you see on Internet Explorer. Note they’ve used a three step tiny screenshot sequence. Each of them isn’t a real screenshot, but rather “evocative” of the thing an IE user would see. For example, the second User Access Control dialog isn’t real, but it’s close enough that it makes the point while still fitting into width of the page cleanly. Their Welcome to Dropbox Setup screenshot is the same way, distilling the essence of what’s coming while keeping the design consistent

By Scott Hanselman for Scott Hanselman’s computer Zen, 07 Dec 2011.

Easier is better than better

TechDept — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:08:59 +0000

In his book, The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz comes to an interesting conclusion involving human choice.

“People choose not on the basis of what’s most important, but on what’s easiest to evaluate.”

Common sense would dictate that if you were given a list of choices, you would choose the one that is most important to you, when in reality humans usually choose the one that is easiest for them to understand and evaluate. Very often we do so because we don’t have the time to put in the research necessary to make an informed decision. Politicians are rarely elected based on the majority of people doing research on their background and the policies they support. They are elected for the fact that people can relate to the message they are spreading and because we have heard of them before.

By Paul Scrivens for Smashing Magazine, 28 Nov 2011.

The perfect paragraph

TechDept — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 09:05:07 +0000

In 1992, Tim Berners-Lee circulated a document titled “HTML Tags,” which outlined just 20 tags, many of which are now obsolete or have taken other forms. The first surviving tag to be defined in the document, after the crucial anchor tag, is the paragraph tag. It wasn’t until 1993 that a discussion emerged on the proposed image tag.

Bursting with imagery, motion, interaction and distraction though it is, today’s World Wide Web is still primarily a conduit for textual information. In HTML5, the focus on writing and authorship is more pronounced than ever. It’s evident in the very way that new elements such as article and aside are named. HTML5 asks us to treat the HTML document more as… well, a document.

It’s not just the specifications that are changing, either. Much has been made of permutations to Google’s algorithms, which are beginning to favor better written, more authoritative content (and making work for the growing content strategy industry). Google’s bots are now charged with asking questions like, “Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?” and “Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?,” the sorts of questions one might expect to be posed by an earnest college professor.

By Heydon Pickering for Smashing Magazine, 29 Nov 2011.

The 45 most powerful images of 2011

TechDept — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 09:12:19 +0000

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By Matt Stopera for Buzz Feed, 03 Dec 2011.

Content strategy within the design process

TechDept — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:01:40 +0000

The first thing to understand about content strategy is that no two people understand it the same way. It’s a relatively new — and extremely broad — discipline with no single definitive definition. A highly informative Knol on content strategy defines it as follows:

“Content strategy is an emerging field of practice encompassing every aspect of content, including its design, development, analysis, presentation, measurement, evaluation, production, management, and governance.”

This definition is a great place to start. Although the discipline has clearly evolved, this breakdown of its scope makes perfect sense. The aspects of content strategy that matter most to Web designers in this definition are design (obviously!), development, presentation and production. In this article, we’ll concentrate on the relationship between content strategy and design in creating, organizing and displaying Web copy.

By Brad Shorr for Smashing Magazine, 02 Dec 2011.

A great use of google+ for business

TechDept — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 09:00:18 +0000

If you want to see someone using Google+ for business very well, check out the Corcoran Group and what they’re doing. They’re a real estate firm who share so much more than their listings. Instead of focusing on their own properties, the Corcoran Group site posts photos and tells stories about interesting things to see around New York.

Their About page on Google+ is filled out enough to show people how to reach them, but not overly so. They’ve filled their video page with useful interviews with their staff. They take plenty of photos of New York that capture the beauty and diversity of the city. Just absolutely perfect.

By Chris Brogan for Chris Brogan, 22 Nov 2011.

How 5 top brands crafted their social media voices

TechDept — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 09:00:26 +0000

Social networks are platforms for personal connection and dialogue, a reality that has proved challenging for many companies that are not used to speaking to their customers in conversational tones. As companies have established profiles on Facebook, Twitter and other social channels, many have had to develop their brand voices anew.

Mashable spoke with the figures behind some of the most compelling voices on Twitter. (Since I primarily follow media and fashion brands and their teams, my sample is a bit skewed — forgive me.) Each has taken a different path to identifying and relaying the brand voice on social networks. Some, like fashion designer and CEO Tory Burch, speak directly on behalf of their brands. Others, like DKNY and Kate Spade, have developed semi-fictional personalities that speak to the best of their brands’ traits, while still others, including Esquire andLucky magazines, have adapted their existing, “all-encompassing” editorial tones to social channels.

Here’s how they’ve accomplished it.

By Lauren Indvik for Mashable, 21 Nov 2011.

Cool web animations

TechDept — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 09:00:51 +0000

Paper.js — The Swiss Army Knife of Vector Graphics Scripting.

Paper.js is an open source vector graphics scripting framework that runs on top of the HTML5 Canvas. It offers a clean Scene Graph / Document Object Model and a lot of powerful functionality to create and work with vector graphics and bezier curves, all neatly wrapped up in a well designed, consistent and clean programming interface.

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WTF mobile web

TechDept — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 09:00:28 +0000

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