UI Design in Hacker News

         Design

It seems a week doesn’t get by without a post or two in Hacker News about GUI design or graphic design, often entitled something like “Design for Hackers” or “Design for Developers”. The trouble with all these posts is that they are trying to shortcut the methodology of design by various hacks, even something as lengthy as read 5 books is by-in-large a hack. There is no substitute for practise, for looking and appreciating your world in a different way (this can be self-taught, I will discuss more below) and for in-depth thinking about what either comes down to communication or feedback problems.

WANT – Oliver Jeffers Prints

         Design · Me

Oliver Jeffers Print: “” (Via swissmiss.)

A sneak peek at Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland film

         Design · Me

This just looks excellent (and I have shamelessly lifted this from another RSS feed). A sneak peek at Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland film: “           “ (Via Alpha Mummy – Times Online – WBLG.)

Nice things for the home

         Design      Design · home · IITTALA

Been buying things for the apartment recently, not least some lovely Iittala bowls: This one is the 2,8L salad bowl, part of the Taika design by Klaus Haapaniemi. Perfect summer design for summer salads. Kristin also picked up some bowls from a local potter in Varmland.

Hilarious look at Adobe’s UI

         Design · Software      UI

So what’s wrong with Adobe’s UI: Well this is a very funny tumbl log of plenty of comments of things that could be done better: [http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/ ]1 Things that particularly standout are issues with there cross-platform UI. Although praised by many as a good example, it just shows that some of the finer details are missed. Via UIEye.

UI design in the open

         Design · Software      Open · UAD · UI · User Interface

This is just great: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/01/redesigning-a-u.html A summary of the post that basically Bug Labs has hired IDEO to redesign their hardware user interface for BUGbase and to do it in the open. Updates on the design process can be sees at: Bug Blog, Bug Community, and the IDEO blog.

InspireUX

         Design      Design · User Experience Design · UX

Words in inspire user experience designers: http://www.inspireux.com/. Nice list of quotes, one to add to the news reader that’s for sure. I particularly agree with: “In design, space is not the problem. Attention is.” “Making assumptions about our users leads us to design for ourselves” “The worst misstep one can make in design is to solve the wrong problem”

Movie Posters with brand integration

         Design

Movie Posters with brand integration Alternate movie posters about film brand integration. These are just great.

Product redesign, first steps in a process

         Design      Design

So we have started on a major product redesign at work and things are going well. The product in question is the flagship product from our Swedish office, and the launch point and central resource for the many others here. Starting a redesign is no simple process, after all the decision to do so usually comes from several sources not just the need to do it, but justifiable business reasoning.

Creating workflow diagrams

         Computing · Design · Software      diagrams · illustrator · vision · workflow diagrams

I haven’t seen any good examples recently of workflow diagrams, at least not more technical ones based around software, services and workflow. Creating a diagram like this its always nice to see other examples of how people have approached the problem but in this scenario I have yet to see anything. Even Edward Tufte came short on this, though the diagrams and illustrations he provides examples for are excellent. So this is what I came up with to illustrate a workflow with our software in a newsroom environment.