iOS 7 : Welcome to the future of the iPhone (by SimplyZesty)
Don Norman: The three ways that good design makes you happy (by TEDtalksDirector)
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Visceral
What is your gut reaction?
As designers we can give this the ‘blink’ test: show product to users without explanation or direction and simply gauge their reaction on a negative to positive scale. First impressions are often hard to change.
Behavioral
How (well) does it work?
More traditional assessment of usability. Bonus: can the product delight you over time or in new scenarios?
Reflective
What does the product say about my identity?
This overlaps with brand and positioning. People often choose products based on their perception and emotion, rather than features or benefits (e.g. buying a watch as a status symbol rather than for it’s time-telling capabilities).
Motion graphics for the UI
Whether or not ‘companies are people’, brands can be more human. Designers should think about anthropomorphizing brands and making them more responsive, communicative, and ephemeral, just like people.
Consider the analogy: people wear different clothes for different events, such as weddings versus funerals, yet we retain our unique identities despite the visual variations. One could even argue that the contrast and variations gives us more personality and uniqueness (everyone pretty much wears the same tux at weddings anyways). So, why should brands have to continually ‘wear’ the same outfit?
People retain their personality because their identity is more than their appearance. Similarly, brands could retain their identity despite changing their visual assets if their brand is truly more than just a logo.
While the idea to disrupt this design cliche is nothing new, it is only now feasible thanks to current technology. As IDEO put it, “monolithic solutions are a necessity of yesterday” when it was time-consuming and costly to design, print and distribute your brand. Hence ‘fixed’ identities. We now live in an era of low-cost technology and quick digital distribution that makes adjustable and responsive identities possible.
We’ve now reached the 1% inspiration mark, and I look forward to the perspiration to come…
I keep bouncing between tumblr, squarespace and medium for blogging, and realized a lot of it has to do with the experience of creation. Forget the other considerations like platform, stack, distribution, cost, etc, and just consider the editor, which in a way is the most crucial interface in the experience.
* tumblr wins for most frictionless posting (probably because most posts are re-blogs and not new creations)
* squarespace wins for simplest and most distraction-free editor
* medium wins for best styling (WYSIWYG, formatting and layout)
Guess that’s why it’s hard to choose one.
I guess the conclusion is… tumblr, I love you, but please fix your editor.
(*yes, this was posted via tumblr; no, the irony is not lost on me)
Foursquare check-in visualization.
You can get yours by going to foursquare.com/visualizeme
