In this age we live in, so much of what was has been replaced by the digital. My laptop is in essence, a day planner, a calendar, a notebook, a pen, a typewriter, a desk, a clock, etc. The digital realm presents us with the opportunity to reduce our consumption of other objects. I keep thinking about that photo of Steve Jobs, sipping tea in an empty apartment; cross legged on the floor. It seems so zen, so unachievable. A ridiculous thought right!? How can not having anything be unachievable, it should be the most achievable of things. But it’s not.

Structure in time of chaos

Simplicity is not simple. Rather, the achievement of simplicity is not simple, it’s very very hard. I’ve been told that we crave simplicity, especially when we are not in control. When I’m stressed at work or at home I often find myself straightening the house or organizing my clutter. Our minds yearn for the structure that many of us, especially as creatives, have a hard time accomplishing.

If we look at Google insights and search for “minimalist”, we can clearly see that the term is on the rise, being used now 2x more than in 2005-07. But the rising trend didn’t start until 08. It seems the recession has brought with it a new wave of minimalists. I think we are in a state as a nation, in which we’re searching for less, not only because we have less, but because we want peace of mind.

Final thoughts

So what’s the take away? I’m not sure yet, but what I do know is that chaos breeds desire for structure and simplicity. If we can continue to deliver as designers, an experience that puts the user at ease and gives them a sense of peace, then I think we’re on the right track. It’s worth mentioning as well, that chaos is not the presence of more stuff, it’s just the stuff with an utter lack of organization. The perception of simplicity is not simply achieved by reducing, it’s achieved through thoughtful and meaningful organization and discernment.

If you’d like to dive deeper with the complex subject of simplicity, I highly recommend John Maeda’s “The Laws of Simplicity”. It’s a small book, but dense and extremely applicable for any designer.

Remember to subscribe to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter @fullpdx!

Bad UI = :(

The problem is with their UI. The online check in UI has a (IMO) fairly glaring UX problem, which is hard to believe was overlooked until now. My dilemma is documented with the following comic (if you could even call it that).

Why listen to my rant?

So, if you’re reading this and you work for JetBlue, you’re welcome for the free consultation. It always baffles me how a large company with great customer service and marketing can miss things like this. Aside from just providing a good experience to the end user, fixing problems like this can also:

1. Lower costs by reducing customer service calls
2. Make users HAPPY that they are using online check in (which is also more cost effective)
3. Keep people from feeling like they are taking crazy pills when they have to call the 800 number and speak with a rep that doesn’t even take the time to see if they know what they are talking about.

Ok then, that’s my rant. I actually had a great flight on JetBlue, and would strongly recommend them despite my frustrations. I’ll post an update if I get any response, but I’m not necessarily expecting it. Thanks for reading!

UPDATE: JetBlue did end up responding to our tweet with “Thanks for the note, Jason. There are limitations on our check-in flow and we’re trying our best to work around them & fix it.” and “excellent skills of an artist. Can you draw a dragon? #sbemail58 ^MJ”. Now lets just hope that they fix it!

To add this theme to your fancy new Skype beta, just follow these 7 easy steps:

1. Download the FULL chat style below
2. Go to your Applications folder and right click on Skype. From the right click menu choose “Show Package Contents”
3. Now browse to Contents> Resources> ChatStyles
4. Unzip the Full.SkypeChatStyle file and drag into this folder
5. Restart Skype.
6. Go to Skype Preferences> Messaging and from the “Style” drop down choose the Full theme.
7. Restart Skype.

*Edit: We updated the download with some minor tweaks!

For more on editing and applying chat styles, as well as another styling option, check out this article. They beat us to the punch and deserve some credit :)

Remember to subscribe to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter @fullpdx!

Stay tuned for more icon sets in this collection. Remember to stay in touch with by subscribing to our RSS feed or following us twitter @fullpdx.

If we left out a particular UI element that you’d really like to see added to the Mobility set, please leave us a comment and we’ll try to add it in a future release. Remember to subscribe to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter @fullpdx!

P.S. The icons used in Mobility are part of our Switch vector icon set that you can also download for free!

You have to know it all so you can get rid of it.

The reason that the design process seems to take a bit longer than normal tasks is the fact that we have to learn everything we can about the problem before we can come up with a solution. Research is a very important part of the process in any design project, especially application design. If I can’t explain why something works the way it does, why is it even being used? I knew that the learning curve would be quite steep for application design, but didn’t know it would be a mountain. The app assigned to me was fairly large and open ended, my goal was to simplify the process with a more manageable and easier to learn interface. To make the new design better I had to learn the issues with the old design first. At the end of my research phase, I had a ridiculous amount of screens and information that made it a bit overwhelming. I took a step back and realized that you have to know all the ins and outs of something before you can eliminate items and group things together. I would say the most important part of the research phase is learning how users interact with the application. Constant feedback is essential and you have to empathize with the people who use something daily, because they will know the major flaws better than anyone. If they say something has to go, more than likely it needs to go. The feedback shouldn’t stop in the research phase either, keeping the daily users within reach will be highly beneficial. When you think you have nailed something chances are you aren’t even close.

Be heartless when it comes to clutter.

When it comes time to start eliminating items and you are on the fence about something – delete it. The element in question is probably not that important and could be trashed. You have to be heartless about slimming something down which is a difficult task for most of us. Designers tend to cling to their work for dear life, but with good reason. We spend endless hours perfecting elements to the last pixel (we can’t help it), and it isn’t easy to turn our backs on those ideas. Sometimes, though, you have to bite the bullet. It is hard to do but most of the time it is necessary. For a user to easily understand something you have to lead them where they need to go. Since attention spans are in short supply these days, extra elements – even though they may look fantastic – normally take people away from where they should be. In turn, users get bored or side tracked and loose site of the end goal. You have to constantly ask yourself “Is this new bell or whistle worth it?” and “Will the element take away from the goals of the project?”

80/20

A really useful theory for simplification that has been used with success and has been around for a while, is the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule. This theory states that you gain 80% of your results from 20% of your content. This rule can be applied to many things in life. For example, the Italian economist, Vilredo Pareto, who discovered this theory found that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. He also discovered that 20% of his pea pods were producing 80% of the peas in his garden. To start using the 80/20 rule, your goal is to leave only what is necessary for the user to complete the task. When designing for any project, always be analytical with your design, always be on the lookout for what supports your end goal. If that goal is getting someone to sign up for an online service, is it essential to have a twitter feed displayed on the page? Will your conversion rate increase if you have 14 call to action buttons? Spending your time perfecting that 20% is the most efficient use of your time and energy and a great way to start making your design as simple as possible. Conversion rates for websites, comprehension for applications and recognition of brands can all benefit from this. If you give users fewer options you will have a better idea of what they will choose.

It’s quite ironic that an article about simplicity can be this long, I thought they were essential though, so I didn’t trash them :) Simplification is always the best route. If you don’t believe me, look at some of the most successful businesses and brands out there, they make millions or billions of dollars a year. If you think that is a coincidence you are sadly mistaken. These businesses and or products have been slimmed down to the bare essentials to make users happy and help them understand by keeping things straight forward. If it isn’t needed, why keep it?

Who are we missing?

A quick look at internetworldstats.com shows that of the roughly 2 billion people using the internet only 27.3% are reading it in English. 22.6% of the world is reading in Chinese. If you total the next 5 most popular languages: Spanish, Japanese, Portugese, German and Arabic; you’ve got another 24.1% of the world’s internet users. What does this all mean? It means if you offer just Chinese as an alternate language for your content you can reach almost twice as many people. If you offer your content in six additional languages you could go from reaching 27.3% of online readers to reaching nearly 75% of the world’s internet users.

So it’s simple: learn six languages and begin writing your articles in each of them. Wait. You’re telling me you don’t have that kind of time? You only speak English?

What are mortal men to do?

Ethan Shen surveyed people who speak a second language to see which translation tool they prefer. Ethan Shen came to this conclusion:

At the highest level, it appears that survey participants prefer Google Translate’s results across the board.

Shen also found that among speakers who identify themselves as fluent in their second language some other services take the lead: Yahoo! Babelfish for Chinese and Microsoft Bing for German. Shen also found something interesting about the length of translated text:

For phrases below 50 characters, Google’s lead in Spanish, Japanese, and French disappear. And Microsoft’s lead in German widens.

Beyond 50 characters, Google’s relative performance seems to improve across the board.

How do I start translating content?

While Google Translate may not be the best translation tool in all cases it appears to have the widest success. It also enables you to automatically convert all of your content to the most popular languages of internet users. That’s an opportunity to increase your potential audience by at least three fold.

For a quick test run of Google Translate you can check out the website. For instructions on how to provide automated translations of your content with Google Translate check out this article on googletutor.com. If you need to provide custom translations you can use a multi-language tool like WPML for WordPress.

Snap-to-Pixels

Let’s face it, the iPhone 4′s retina display looks really, really, good. Snap-to-Pixels will ensure your designs do too. This sneaky Photoshop function will keep the edges of your shapes from becoming a blurry mess. To activate, simply choose the rectangle or rounded rectangle tool, and then find the dropdown to the right of the shapes list in the options toolbar. Next, check the box labeled “Snap to Pixels” in the dropdown box. This simple checkbox will save you hours of design frustration in the future.

Double Your Resolution: @2x + NameChanger

The iPhone 4′s retina display is twice the pixel density of most other mobile device screens. This means designers will have to create two versions of their bitmap images for their native apps. One image will be used for the retina display, and the other used for normal resolution devices. If you’ve built your Photoshop file correctly using vector shapes and snap-to-pixels, you can simply double the size of your design, and output the images for the web. Luckily, Apple built in a function to automatically look for the hi-res bitmaps on native apps. You simply have to append your file names with “@2x”.

To do this, I’ve found that NameChanger, a free mac application, does the job simply and quickly. Drag you files into the window, replace “.” with “@x2.”, and hit Enter. NameChanger does all the tedious renaming work for you.

Use Dropbox to quickly preview your design comps on your phone

Dropbox is a popular online-backup and file-sharing tool. I’ve also found it to be an extremely useful tool to quickly view mobile design mockups on the iPhone. Simply output your designs to your Dropbox shared folder and fire up the mobile application on your iPhone. The iPhone’s swipe functions are fully supported in the Dropbox app, allowing you to quickly swipe through all the screens, enabling you to feel the progression of the application you’re working on. Dropbox makes previewing changes to a design a lot quicker than uploading the images via FTP or manually transferring them to your phone.

For a more in-depth process of designing for the iPhone 4 retina display, check out Walt Dickenson’s article.

The problem with these “make your life easier” applications is that you have to find one that fits the needs of your work habits. It’s hard to find a perfect solution, but when one comes along it feels like the planets have aligned. I am going to give you a look into a solution that works great for me personally with hopes to give someone else the solution they are looking for.

Ideas, ideas everywhere, not a sheet to sketch.

I am a designer and designers like to sketch. Besides my sketchbook and pocket notebook (which I take everywhere) I need a place to quickly get ideas out and record them in some way. Whiteboards are a great resource for this exact task, but because of office restrictions we couldn’t hang a large whiteboard on the wall. We decided to go with smaller, letter-sized whiteboards instead that we sit by our desks.

They come in surprisingly handy, as I didn’t think they would be at first. Smaller boards are great for sharing ideas, working out problems in critiques and for general sketching. Since most ideas aren’t winners it’s nice to get things down without wasting your weight in paper.

Organize your life – in a junk drawer.

Designers are also quite fond of organization (most of us at least). I filtered through numerous to-do, photo clipping and organization app’s in my time as a designer. I thought my dream of an organized design utopia was diminished until my co-worker Josh, here at Full Creative, recommended a program called Journler.

This program is basically a junk drawer for your every thought. It allows you to write entries, manage information, collect photos and more. All of these entries can be tagged for organization in a smart folder and makes for easy searching of previous files.

At first I didn’t see eye to eye with this software due to it’s free form, unrestricted format (it scared me). I took a few deep breaths and gave it another try consulting Josh as I went, asking him how he used it for his daily tasks. Before long, Journler was added to my “things I can not live without” list.

From marker to pixel and back again.

After a few weeks of using my personal whiteboard I came to the realization that I had too many ideas for it’s limited surface (not tooting my own horn). I found that with each idea I came up with I had to erase it for other ideas. Trying to remember my previous ideas wasn’t the most efficient way of brainstorming.

I needed a creative solution, so I began searching the net for yet another application that could solve my issue. I added “search web for new app” to my to-do list in Journler and noticed that there is a photo capture feature that uses your computer’s camera. The wheels started turning and I put two and two together, why I had not thought of this sooner I do not know.

Now when I start an intense brain storming session I quickly get all of the ideas out of my head by sketching on my small white board, starting a new entry in Journler, writing an overview of the idea and snapping a picture with my computer’s camera. Most designers tackle this task by using a ton of post-it’s on a wall, each one with an idea and then periodically taking a photo of what you have. The problem with this method is that you are limited in documentation and most of the time it is hard to see. By using my method, I allow myself to include as much documentation about the sketch as I want and the photo that take of the whiteboard is a thumbnail that is enlarged upon clicking on it.

Unfortunately Journler has stopped being developed and you are limited to early releases of the software which is free. I highly suggest picking it up and trying out this method to see if it works for you. I have noticed a significant improvement in my brainstorming and concept generation while at the same time keeping true to my office’s paper free goal. Give it a try you won’t be disappointed.