What’s on my virtual reading list (week of February 13, 2012)

February 13, 2012

in On My Mind

UX Job Board:  Valentines Day Edition

To celebrate Valentines Day this week, I thought I’d highlight a few dating/matchmaking sites are currently hiring UI, UX, Front-End and Mobile Dev folks.

And yes, that Grindr and eHarmony appear in the same list cracks me up.

All kidding and holiday-fueled silliness aside, online dating sites introduces an especially fascinating set of UX problems and patterns to me. This may be a topic I re-visit in the future.

Miscellanea & Effluvia

Rendering of the valentine’s day sculpture by BIG architects, image © bjarke ingels

BIG Architects designed this Valentines Day Sculpture in Time’s Square.

‘BIG(heart)NYC’ is a 10-foot tall cube-like structure composed of 400 transparent LED acrylic tubes enveloping a large red heart that is suspended within. the cylindrical components refract the surrounding bright lights of times square around the symbol of love. the interactive art piece pulses with a glowing red luminosity whereby, people’s interaction with one another intensify the beating of the brightly, burning heart. (via Designboom)

Amazing! I love the interactivity component of this sculpture. I’m curious as to what types of interactions, or how the sculpture is reading/registering them, trigger the behavior. Anyone know?

{ 0 comments }

What’s on my virtual reading list (week of February 6, 2012)

February 6, 2012

in On My Mind

From the User Experience Toolbox

Rachel Hinman graciously shares her UX Austrailia 2011 presentation on slide deck on Mobile Prototyping Essentials. One of the most damning challenges? “Designers new to mobile don’t have the domain specific skills or heuristics to lean on.” Her suggestion? Prototype early, prototype often. And she gives you some details on how to get started. Love the Steal This Slide tags she included throughout the presentation.

Things I’m Trying To Figure Out:  Pinterest

I may be bit behind in coming to Pinterest, the online pinboard “to organize and share things you love.” You “pin” a photo of something you like or find inspiring, and others can “like,” comment on, or re-pin your pin.

At first glance, it’s a site where ladies can share photos of hairstyles, crafts, clothes, food, and home decor. A friend described her first — and as far as I know, only — experience with the Pinterest UI as “It looks like Facebook went on a bender, threw up, then didn’t clean up after itself.” Pinterest is eye crack for visual people, admittedly, but what is the fuss really all about?

This infographic, pinned courtesy of Aaron Biebert—one of the small but growing number of men on Pinterest—perhaps sums it up best:

 

A mad tip of the hat to Monetate for an effective infographic that neatly summarizes the “What/So What?” of a topical subject, easy to distribute virally through social media, it includes their name, and a call to action to follow them on Twitter.

So, what’s on Pinterest that attracts me, personally? Oh, my. There’s…cinnamon roll pops. And a really creative, contemporary interpretation of Disney princess costumes. And that’s a charming visual narrative. Okay, so Pinterest warrants further investigation. (Or at least further groveling for an account invite.) Have some sway in getting a girl an invite? Hook me up, perhaps? ;)

Miscellanea & Effluvia

Designboom highlights some of Alan Sailer’s exploding food photography, wonderful arrangements captured using some homemade flash equipment. I poked about Alan’s Flickr collections and his The War Against Christmas series is absolutely amazing — exploding Christmas ornaments! Strange to see so much beauty in things being pulverized.

{ 0 comments }

What’s on my virtual reading list (week of January 30, 2012)

January 30, 2012

The Business of Designing Information 6 Steps to Making Your Infographic Work — Love them or hate them, infographics are trendy, and for good reason:  they’re visually interesting, easy to digest, and practically built circulate through social media channels and build SEO links. SEO Gadget shares some tips to guarantee your idea will take off [...]

Read the full article →

What’s on my virtual reading list (week of January 23, 2012)

January 23, 2012

I’m in the process of working on some really cool projects, which sadly are leaving me with little time to put together the blog posts I’d planned. In the meantime, here are a few things from my virtual reading list. From the User Experience Toolbox Site Architecture Stencil for OmniGraffle — Having used and loved [...]

Read the full article →

Judging for CSSOff 2011 continues to continue

January 23, 2012

Holy cats! Nearly three months after all entries were due, the Unmatched Style CSSOff team has finished evaluating every single one of the entries. Each and every one of the 416 entries. All. of. them. Yowza! Some participants and boosters have expressed concern that at the rate it takes to judge entries the CSSOff will [...]

Read the full article →

Judging for Unmatched Style 2011 CSS Off competition continues

November 26, 2011

Mid-October I was one of many to entry into the UnmatchedStyle.com CSS Off competition. And, like many, the demands of client work made me drop from the competition. But not to fear, 416 souls stepped up to the plate. An update from the Unmatched Style judges say the 2011 CSS Off entries are still being reviewed. The [...]

Read the full article →

Introducing French for Web designers

November 7, 2011

I’m in the process of planning a trip to Europe to celebrate my thirty-*mumble* birthday later this winter. To help me get into the mood I’m brushing up on my French language skills. To begin, I have to confess I don’t currently speak French. Not fluently. Or even, frankly, all that functionally. My first trip [...]

Read the full article →

Managing CSS with LESS is flippin’ sweet

October 21, 2011

I had the opportunity to meet groovy new folks and learn lots of really cool tricks at the HTML5tx conference in early October. One of the things that got me really riled up is LESS, the dynamic stylesheet language. (Not to be confused with the similarly-named Less framework, the CSS grid system—also is in my queue [...]

Read the full article →

Winnermint gets f-a-s-t! (Benjamin pile still in progress.)

October 16, 2011

I just recently upgraded the Winnermint Web site to WordPress using the Thesis theme framework from DIYthemes. Migrating to WordPress will let me (relatively painlessly) keep a blog on my site and make my less-frequently updated pages easy to maintain. As the first of many things I want to share, I’d like to kick off [...]

Read the full article →