Category: Design
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Don’t design on spec
Happy Cog receives its share of RFPs, and sometimes these requests stipulate that our proposal include design work. Even if the project looks promising, we just say no.
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Staying creative
Everyone is creative. But some stay that way longer. How can you designers, writers, and the like, stay motivated and productive? (Plus: When the client says, “Make it like eBay,” what exactly does that mean?)
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A Sale of Two Cities
Join an amazing line-up of talented designers, developers, and thinkers for An Event Apart San Francisco — the final Event Apart show of 2007.
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The King of Web Standards
A new article in Business Week might help designers who aren’t named Jeffrey Zeldman sell web standards to their bosses or clients.
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Words, words, words
Writing has always been the beating heart of online user experience. It is also the part that designers and developers are least likely to study, discuss, or consider. The exceptions to this rule are almost…
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For web developers and iPhone users
Tools for web developers. Tricks for iPhone and iPod users.
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What Apple copied from Microsoft
Apple has learned the marketing psychology lesson that Microsoft got first. For many consumers, convenience is of greater value than choice. A platform built of parts that work together seamlessly beats a self-curated collection of…
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Link ‘n Park
A lifetime’s worth of comic book covers, deep thoughts on ubiquitous digitization, Spool on lessons learned when new features tank, and much more.
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ALA 241: better UI, scriptless trick ponies, and the deathly hallows
Unlearn a web interface design convention that causes users grief, and learn how to create a scrolling, fixed/liquid hybrid layout without using JavaScript (not that there’s anything wrong with it).
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Better know a speaker: Dan Cederholm
What’s up with Dan Cederholm these days?
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My Ding-a-Links
Fight for your right to publish. Ponder a Google-Wikipedia mashup, recycle old ipods and cell phones, generate diagonal backgrounds (with or without gradients), study Hitchcock’s visual storytelling techniques, and more.
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Let there be web divisions
Almost no one who makes websites works in their company or organization’s web division—because almost no company or organization has a web division. That void on the org chart is one reason we have so…
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WCAG Controversy and Human Design
By introducing testability and dumping accessibility criteria that are untestable, WCAG 2.0 may hurt the very people who need it most, argues former working group invited expert Gian Sampson-Wild in an important and timely ALA…
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“Maybe” is one option too many
“Maybe” is one option too many. As a best practice, we should dispense with it, just as we should replace five-star rating systems with four-star ones.
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Hi, Mom!
In a Special Report, Business Week focuses on designers creating innovation by crossing disciplines and combining technologies. I’m one of ten designers they profile. I kind of had to blog this.