Category: ixd

• IxD / Dear everyone, I hope you can find my albums in flickr, ixd, web · Aug 26, 22:01

  What we have here is both a failure to communicate and an ingenious workaround. To Kristen & Rob: Kudos.

• Cooper Journal / My new blog friend in ixd, tech · Jul 22, 02:42

  Oh gosh, hello again. I stepped away for a second, and the next thing I knew a month had passed. Anyway, I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce the Internetz to the Cooper Journal, a blog that we’re publishing at work. Launching it was part of the reason why there’s been some radio silence, [...]

• Muxtape / Non-interface interface excellence in ixd, music, web · May 8, 22:55

  Muxtape has blown up — just a matter of time, I guess — but I hope this doesn’t mean that they’ll add a bunch of “features” to it. It’s basically two things — the homepage where you pick a mix, and the player where you listen — and it doesn’t need much more. Really! Please! [...]

• The Flickr style / Ugh in flickr, ixd, photo, visual, web · May 7, 01:16

  It’s hard to ignore the fact that Flickr promotes a distinct style of photography; I say “promotes” because Flickr’s “Explore” tab displays photos that are deemed “interesting” by Flickr’s “interestingness” algorithm, and the photos in this area are generally characterized by what many are now calling “Flickr style.” This is shorthand for “extensively post-processed” — [...]

• Research / East Baltimore police narratives in ixd, lit, reviews, urban · May 4, 17:53

  Last week I picked up a book called

• Archaeology of UX Weeks past in flickr, ixd, the ancient past, travel · Apr 24, 21:11

  It’s kinda strange (and thrilling) to browse through the many alleyways and avenues of Flickr and suddenly unearth a photo of … yourself. Just now I came across this picture of myself and a shadowy figure, who I suspect is UX it-guy Jan Chipchase taken last summer during UX Week. My hazy recollection: We met [...]

• Idols / Khoi Vinh of NYT.com in ideas, ixd, web · Apr 23, 15:55

  I’ve followed Khoi Vinh’s excellent blog, Subtraction, for a long time. A couple of years ago, he became the Design Director of the New York Times website, and in the meantime the site has really changed, for the better, mostly, I’d say. This week he’s doing a Q&A about his work, the NYT, design, and [...]

• UX / Cellphones & world poverty in ixd, mobile, urban · Apr 15, 01:30

  Jan Chipchase seems to be the “it” guy1 of user experience these days. He lives in Tokyo, works at Nokia, and plays this kind of swashbuckling, Indiana-Jones-ish role in researching mobile technologies in developing cultures. He keeps an intriguing blog called Future Perfect, where he documents UX-related nuggets from the shantytowns of Lagos, the markets [...]

• Microsoft Sync / There will be blood. It will run from your eyes. in ixd · Feb 6, 01:52

  A few nights ago, I was watching the Warriors on TNT, when out of the blue appeared a commercial that featured interface design (!!!!). As my man Baron Davis would say: Ya dig?!
  It was a car ad — for the Lincoln MKZ — and it featured Microsoft Sync, a voice-activated technology for use in [...]

• UX / Flickr pisses me off in flickr, ixd, tech, web · Aug 23, 21:09

  Yes, I appreciate Flickr. After all, it allows me to store my photos online, share them with others, and display them on my website. Yay. Thanks for that. Still, it frustrates me daily. Here’s why:
  Sequence of photo display is set in stone
  If I drag a dozen pictures into the Flickr Uploadr, God only knows the [...]

• Adaptive Path UX Week / One of ux, one of ux¹ in ixd, tech, web · Aug 21, 14:40

  I attended (and spoke at) my first UX Week last week in Washington DC, and it lived up to its billing as a good ol’ time. I met many amazing people, stayed out too late, and yet was still motivated to get up early every morning to see the keynotes. That’s saying something. Most conferences [...]

• NYC subway maps / The great debate of 2007 in ixd, urban, visual · Apr 27, 18:56

  A graphic designer named Eddie Jabbour has proposed an alternative design for NYC subway maps. The New York Times wrote about it last week, and since then blogs have been blowing up over it. 37 signals evaluated it, and applauds the effort to increase usability at the expense of geographic accuracy: “Subway map readers want [...]

• ESPN.com / March (information) madness in ixd · Mar 6, 21:57

  To the editors of ESPN.com,
  I visit your site every day, multiple times a day. Today, I decided that I’ve had enough. You need to stop. Whatever you’re doing, just STOP.
  Years ago, ESPN.com was a useful collection of online sports information. It was relatively easy to navigate, scan and read. Today, it is a dark, [...]

• National nightmares / Restoring a modicum of utility to the Complete New Yorker in ixd, lit · Feb 1, 22:10

  I was one of the suckers who pre-ordered The Complete New Yorker magazine. I am a long-long-time New Yorker reader, and the enticement was just too powerful — 8 DVDs filled with 60+ years of cultural commentary, quirky cartoons and cool cover art, all in a distinct highbrow-yet-practical-minded voice and scanned in at super-high-res? For [...]

• My New York Times? Not quite. in ixd, new york, web · Sep 7, 21:18

  The NYT just rolled out a beta of something they’re calling MyTimes. As a daily reader of both the print and online editions, I’m intrigued by new developments and ideas at the NYT, and I’ve been pleased with their recent site redesign. MyTimes, however, strikes me as somewhat misguided.
  First off, the name MyTimes sounds like [...]

• Architecture / Daniel Libeskind’s sauna in architecture, ixd, new york, urban, visual · Aug 26, 02:25

  A few months ago, the NYT Sunday magazine ran a profile of architect Daniel Libeskind and his Tribeca loft. (Incidentally, check out that link to his website; there’s some pretty hot flouting of web conventions. For example, when you mouse over a link, almost everything on the screen disappears, except a few stray words and [...]

• Radio / The best interview ever in ixd · Aug 17, 18:02

  NPR recently did a great story about John Sawatsky, a former journalist who now teaches interviewing techniques to editorial staff at ESPN. Highlights include Sawatsky’s obvious dislike for "hard-hitting" interviewers like Larry King, Barbara Walters and Mike Wallace: "Mike Wallace enjoys … having the question being more important than the answer." Other resources with [...]

• Bikes / Key ingredients for interactive bike maps of the future in bike, ixd · Aug 16, 14:45

  ByCycle and Bikely both bring bike route mapping to the web, and not a minute too soon. Finding bike routes through cities (especially unfamiliar cities) can be a lonely, scary process of elimination. After much experimentation, the best route often ends up being a patchwork of quiet side streets, alleys, and paths that [...]