December 2009 Archives

• 31 Dec 2009

  Fixing Twitter from the Other Extreme

  "What we need to do to design is to look at the extremes. The middle will take care of itself." —Dan Formosa, from the documentary "Objectified" When Twitter introduced features to address their retention problems with new users, they failed...

• 30 Dec 2009

  Create triangles, chat bubbles using CSS only

  Jon Rohan offers a neat tip for creating triangles (handy to use instead of « or ») and chat bubbles using CSS borders—no images! Includes IE6 hack. Creating Triangles in CSS

• 27 Dec 2009

  Fabricating Stories

  I recently came across the story of the Significant Objects Project, an interesting experiment where Joshua Glenn and his other collaborators take cheap thrift-store finds and see if they can create something more valuable by contriving a back story...

• 24 Dec 2009

  Google's Multivariate Testing Approach to Design

  Google's reliance on multi-variate testing as part of their design decision-making process isn't news. However, let's say, you find that you might need to conduct a test to determine which shade of blue among 41 gradations should be used...

• 14 Dec 2009

  What Matters Now

  What does matter now? Ishita Gupta and Seth Godin asked several notable people (well, with one exception—somehow, I wound up being part of such a distinguished group) to respond with a short essay on a single word that defines what mattered to each of us right now...

• 6 Dec 2009

  "IA is not Boxes and Arrows."

  Amen! I came across CS and IA Unite Already, Will Ya! just shortly after I came across a job posting from Smart Design where they emphasized they were looking for User Experience designers who were not the Boxes and Arrows types…