In My Experience: Design

NFOTB

2003-04-21T14:58:31-05:00

There's a new font on the block, and it's called Vera, and get this... it's free.

There are four monospace and sans faces (normal, oblique, bold, bold oblique) and two serif faces (normal and bold).

It's a pretty good looking font that is well proportioned and is meant to replace Verdana, and I'd guess that it could if people were inclined to download it in droves. Which they won't, which means Verdana, Helvetica and Arial will be our sans-serif choice for years to come.

[ via the webdesign list ]

Jaw dropping.

2002-12-24T10:10:01-05:00

A friend of mine has recently gotten me into playing Quake 3 after years of avoiding that whole crowd of rocket jumpers and twitch adrenaline junkies. Too bad for me. I have been missing out on some of the best level design and game play in the first person shooter genre, and let me be clear, I harbor none of the religious attitudes in the UT vs. Quake argument. I've been playing Tribes and Tribes2 for the last several years. :)

Anyway, I was missing out on superior gameplay, and the visual element. Most importantly, I was missing the work coming from this guy, Sparth. He's a producer of Quake 3 levels, and little digging revealed his portfolio site containing some of the best art work I've seen in years. It's a must see.

A free tiBook desktop.

2002-08-19T16:09:52-05:00

Everyone else seems to be covering the Apple iPhone story to death (I want one), and that letter to Americans from that Canadian is pissing me off (so I'm not going to link to it), and I was up late due to a friend bringing me to the Redskins game last night, so I have nothing to share but a self promotion in the form an image to use as a desktop on your Apple Titanium Powerbook. Just click the thumbnail, and save the image from the popup, and away you go. I think I'll post more desktops in the coming weeks that are a little less self promotional ;)

Pirated Web Design. Yar Matey!

2002-07-18T21:44:55-05:00

Denizens of the WebDesign List already know about this and those who don't, should. Two web sites (here and here) have the same interface, and Earl Cooley from the List notes...

A check of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine shows that heshketh.com use [sic] the design at least as early as November 9th, 2000 and bannerboxuk.com started with it around November 22nd, 2001, about a year later.

So, what's a web designer to do when the entire profession is based on reusable (read: stolen) code? Well, I have to believe there's some sort of case for (or against?) copyright violations here. Just read the source code and you'll see they didn't even bother changing the comments.

New OmniGraffle UI Palette.

2002-06-17T08:59:28-05:00

Chances are you already know what OmniGraffle is, and perhaps you know about the wireframe oriented palette already available for it (from the guy who runs IAslash). I like that palette, but I don't use OmniGraffle that much, but maybe I'll use it a bit more because a new UI palette is available.

The advantage of this one is more GUI widgets, which makes serious prototyping and visualization a bit more robust without taking the time to do full UI prototyping with actual HTML (which in my experience, is a great way to get a good sense of what you are building, but is also expensive to do). Between these two palettes, you have a pretty robust set of elements for prototyping.

Tiny Font roundup.

2002-06-11T16:27:20-05:00

There are many miniature fonts out there in the world, but you probably won't ever need any more than the following...

Sevenet is a good little 7 pixel font with a semi-serif version that's kinda cool if you are looking for a change from pure tiny pixelisms. [Update: Link rot has occured and Sevenet is no longer a free download. Silkscreen (see below) is a more than worthy replacement.]
Mini7 is a font that you have to pay for, which, in today's world, means you probably won't be using it, but I think it's still a great little font that includes a monotype version.
Silkscreen is free and is an 8 pixel size bitmap font that is pretty well rounded (in terms of size, clarity, width, etc).
The 04 fonts are pretty small, but not necessarily tiny. They range from the 8 to 12 pixel range and are pretty stylized compared to Silkscreen.

The distributor of Mini 7 offers a free guide on using tiny fonts that isn't just limited to Mini 7. ;) But beware that tiny fonts are just that, tiny, and don't help the usability quotient of a site (but they sure do look cool).

Meaning in 10 pixels square.

2002-06-05T11:39:57-05:00

It's amazing that these tiny icons can actually convey their meaning within a 10 by 10 pixel square. I've been working on a set of 20 plus icons for a web app, and have been struggling with how to use 25 pixels square effectively. I have more than twice the space and probably do a less effective job at conveying the meanings I need to iconify. But, I'm trying to keep my lines anti-aliased in my set, which puts me at a huge disadvantage, so what are ya gunna do?

Old skills inform new ideas?

2002-05-18T01:41:22-05:00

At 'Advance for Design' I read...

The tools of the experience designer lie in software, hardware, and the "wetware" of the human mind. The experience designer must combine the rigors of engineering with the inspiration of high art. He or she must become adept at the traditional skills of design, and engage in dialogue with the virtuosos in the world of social science, economics, architecture, theatre and the narrative arts.

...and I'm surprised to see a few things missing here. Everything is relative of course, and my perspective is similarly a perspective. However, I can't help but think that the list is hard coded to physical design that remains when the power is turned off. In the pervious paragraph I read...

Experience design embraces the fluid nature of media and transactions within the network. Experience design jumps into new dimensions--asking not only where, or how design happens, but WHEN design happens.

...which clearly speaks to the transient nature of the network mediated experience. I would suspect the point is that the traditional skills will at least assist the new media experience designer. But does the lack of a narrative transition between these two paragraphs scuttle that? I think so, simply because the two are not mutually exclusive and provide doors in an out of the related disciplines with and without crossing paths. I am proof.

*Must* I be adept at these traditional skills to be an experience designer? I hope not since I have no interest in designing physically represented 'stuff' for the sake of experience. Nor do I have the talent to make those 'things' look good. The network mediate experience, and WHY it is engaged in, and what a person (virtuoso or otherwise) hopes to gain from it is what I'm interested in.

So, *must* I converse with virtuosos? I hope not since these sorts of people don't typically travel in the circles that I do. Usually I find I have access to everyday people experiencing problems with the world they live in. To wit, I'd suggest that these people have more to offer me than the virtuoso.

Platitudes suck ass.

2002-05-03T16:11:40-05:00

As uttered by Charles Cooper in a C|Net Perspectives article...

"Jakob Nielsen, who probably knows more about Web design than anybody else on planet Earth,"

Puhleeze. Jakob is a usability guy, not a web designer. He is a critique engine, not a web designer. He is a patent holding, self proclaimed guru of web usability, but he is not a web designer containing fountains of knowledge on the day to day struggles of web design. Does he know XSLT? Does he know about IMG-DIV-TD bug in Netscape 4.x? Does he know more about web design than guys like kottke, taylor or zeldman? I have my doubts.

Iconography.

2002-04-24T21:51:36-05:00

I am struggling with the task of representing the concept of "usage" as an icon. Response Time wasn't difficult, but I have exactly zero ideas about drawing usage. Oh yeah, I only have 25 pixels square to work within :^/

Don't forget the design part of the methodology.

2002-03-08T15:39:53-05:00

I was reading thru some blogs just now and found this link at blackbeltjones.com to Joel Spolsky's latest meandering. In it he says...

You have to design things before you implement them.

I hope this isn't a revelation to anyone out there in dotcom land. In my experience, methodologies like XP can make things move more quickly, but more quickly to what? If there's no thought about what you are building, or why, or for whom, then you've failed before you have begun. Also, IMHO, I think the price of change is way more than people think it is, so refactoring should be thought of as a problem, not a solution. To put it another (overly simplistic) way if you don't have the time to do it right the first time, when are you going to have time to right the second time?

Dilbert Does Design.

2001-12-12T12:18:52-05:00

Info Architecture practitioners (eg, interface designers, creative directors, taxonomists, et al.) will find the current Dilbert story line amusing.

Waiting for Adobe

2001-12-11T22:33:02-05:00

Being a Mac user, and being an Interface Geek as well, Adobe applications are my power tools and to extend that metaphor, Mac OS X is my current source of energy. Unfortunately, the core tool, Photoshop, is still not OSX native. But it looks like that will be changing soon.

MacPlus, a French language OSX website has screen shots of several Adobe apps that are coming to OSX in native code. RAILhead Design has also been posting information about the pending release of Photoshop 7 that is greatly encouraging. I would link directly to a relevant URL, but he's using frames and you will need the navigation frame to get around.

Graceful Degradation is Good

2001-12-03T23:06:24-05:00

'Design Not Found is here to help... [display] real-world examples of good and bad contingency design.'

InMyExperience.com is designed to degrade gracefully contingent on browsers and computing platform. Some features, like CSS based navigation degrade gracefully on Netscape. You can still click on links, but you don't see highlighting. This is, however, a lightweight example compared to what DNF is taking on.