I have been working designing Flex-based applications for the past year or so, and in that time I have come to the conclusion that skinning Flex apps is simply too difficult for all but the most technical of designers.
Ryan Stewart has a great post about how to add sound to user events in Flex. Sound is such an under-utilized media in web-based applications. When I worked at Frog Design we hired sound designers on various projects and it’s hard to convey what a huge difference it made. The sound design definitely made the applications easier and more fun to use.
In this age of never-ending technological change, keeping up-to-date is a huge challenge. Luckily, Lynda.com has awesome video tutorials that are well-produced and easy to follow. If that’s not enough, quite often the tutorials are released simultaneously with new product releases. I can’t recommend the service enough!
Also, if you decide to sign up, there might be a discount offer available.
If you are unfamiliar with him, Bill Buxton is probably one of the most influential interaction designers in the world. Here are some great articles he has published on his site about human-computer interaction. Not light reading, but its pretty amazing stuff.
Forms are the primary way that users interact with web sites, yet until now there has not been a book dedicated to them. Until now.
“Web Form Design” by Luke W. Overall is a highly useful book full of actionable practices based on real research.
When I was signing up for the Adobe Connect service the other day, I forgot to fill in one of the required fields. The error message was displayed at the top of the form (nothing new), but then an animated line traced a path from the error message to the field:
very cool!
When I was learning to fly, one of the things I learned is that the net effect of wind always negative*. One might assume that a steady wind helps you when travelling in one direction and slows you down in the opposite direction, so that you break even. This is not true because, since the wind slows you down, it has longer to act on you.
I just watched the keynote speech from the Apple Developer Conference and am amazed at how great and integrated their iPhone development environment is. Its funny that the Flex development environment is really expensive and far less intergrated
I remember Jared Spool talking about the main reason for the iPod success was that it was part of a complete system; this system included not only the iPod but iTunes and the ITunes music store. Apple has duplicated this strategy again with the iPhone and its going to pay off in spades for them.
In my career I have worked at a lot of tech companies and I can tell you that the folks are not smarter than everyone else out there. At every company I work with the people there have outstanding ideas that would make their offerings much stronger; most of the these ideas die on the vine because no one wants to risk the idea not working or the idea gets watered down in a sea of meeting. I believe the huge difference is that Apple has the bravery to execute on these ideas and accept the risk that comes with innovation. They have done this for so long now that its ingrained in the personality of the company and not even thought of as “risky”; and as long as they keep it up I don’t think many other companies will be able to touch them …
How many times have you heard statements like:
“This app should be for beginners and pros….”
“I want the site to be simple, but have a lot of advanced features….”
“Our app should have everything in one place, but not be intimidating to the user…”
After nearly 10 years of doing digital design, one of the things that has really stood out for me is that great digital design does not absolve us of making decisions..
Its an honor to be speaking again this year at the Webmaster Jam Session in Atlanta, Oct 3-4.
Some of the other speakers include
If you are not familiar with the Webmaster Jam Conference, it’s great. Its much smaller and more intimate than SXSW, yet has the same high quality speakers. Moreover, participants and speakers have a lot of opportunity to interact, making it more fun for everybody.
Hope to see you all there!