Playing With Shapes

Christmas Cards

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 01:11:00 -0600

Each year about this time something happens. My mailbox is a little fuller and the mail lady has to carry a bit more in her arms. Some of this is accounted for by the online purchasing of goods, some due to the increased junk mail touting HUGE after Thanksgiving sales, but the additional mail I look forward to comes in small colorful envelopes. It might be just me, but I enjoy Christmas cards. I’ve been fortunate, I guess, to have incredibly talented family and friends that deliver these amazing little cards year after year.

Over the last two years I’ve noticed an increasing trend, the Photo Card. You know the type, a picture of the family (usually taken months prior on some beach) with the words “Happy Holidays” written underneath them. Costco, Apple, Snapfish all crank these little babies out by the thousands. So far this year’s ratio is looking like 1 homemade card for every 10 photo cards. I’m sure there is good reason for the increase of these sins on humanity: people are busy, the photo card has started to look better, they’re easy, cheap, etc.

I beg of you, before you hit that submit button on the snapfish website, consider what your looking out on. With a homemade card you get the opportunity to express true creativity, share a story (this is after all the greatest story of all time), involve the entire family… in essence you get to express who your family is, in one card. With the photo card you get to show your mug and maybe type in a phrase (not too long or they’ll charge you extra). So next year around the end of November as you ask yourself if you should take the time to make your cards or just place a quick order of photo cards online, think hard.

Update: I ran across a PDF from Before and After magazine on designing your own Christmas cards (scroll down). It might be worth a look for those of you that would like to get back into the craft of custom cards.

Mini-Brands

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 00:19:00 -0600

The past few weeks I’ve started to notice something new. It’s not the paintings of Santa Claus and Rudolph splashed on the side of every department store window, or the lights that were hung days and weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. Don’t get me wrong, those are eventful and this is by far my favorite time of year.

What I’m referring to is the up and coming “mini-brand”. There seem to be an awful lot of these little guys showing up, names like WaMu, BevMo, PacSun and AmEx. This isn’t a new phenomena, brands like Orchard Supply Hardware, ~~Kentucky Fried Chicken~~ Kitchen Fresh Chicken and Bank of America have learned to shorten their names (OSH, KFC and BofA) for years. What’s odd about this new breed of mini-brands is how absurd they seem, its as if someone at the board meeting said “Oh crap, we don’t have a name that we can abbreviate, lets just takeout some letters and try to get it down to 4-5 obscure characters.”

What’s fascinating is why we are seeing these sorts of name changes more often. Personally I think its another example of the internets influencing traditional brick and mortar companies. Wamu.com preexisted the brand change by ten or so years, it became the nickname by customers and employees first and eventually lead to a full name change from Washington Mutual. Bevmo.com is similar leading its official corporate name change from Beverages & More to BevMo by five plus years.

I wonder if these mini-brands will eventually take the place and meaning away from their original parent brand… think AT&T.

A look into the Interface of iPhone Apps

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 00:34:00 -0500

Over the last few days I have linked to several iPhone apps and websites related to apps. This is an enjoyable time of exploration and discovery in the app business. People are looking at Apple’s decision to allow 3rd party apps to come through Safari as an opportunity instead of simply criticizing it (although many have). We are starting to see some interesting things percolate to the top: apps for News, RSS, Chat, Socializing, Movies, etc. It reminds me a lot of the very first weeks after widgets became mainstream in OS X.

With discovery and experimentation also come questions. Questions about standards, about methods, approaches. I’m particularly interested in the UI aspect of these iPhone specific apps. Many of the original apps came out sporting an almost identical interface to that of the stock apps that come with the iPhone (calendar, contacts, etc.) As the days have gone on the apps have started to branch out in their approach to the UI. I wonder in all of this how much attention is being given to the user experience aspect of the app. I have to assume that most of these applications are being developed by programers with little or no background in interaction design. It’s doubtful that these apps have “teams” working on them since most, if not all, are just things that have been “quickly put together
”. Don’t get me wrong I don’t care if they are put together quickly or over long periods of time, I just love the enthusiasm that is driving these efforts.

As these apps mature and this segment grows I think there will need to be some careful consideration given to how the user interacts with them. I’m not writing this as a call to arms to standardize the user interface, but rather that they should feel familiar to the user. By familiar I’m mostly referring to the “chrome” of the application and the way it interacts with the user’s input (scrolling, pinching, pressing, etc.) If you look at most applications within OS X (especially bundled apps like iLife) you will begin to notice consistent elements in each application. For instance all iLife apps share a panel in the interface called the media browser. Now if you look at the current iPhone ads and screenshots you will notice similar chrome and interactions across the various applications. If you look for a phone number or search through Google’s maps, the appearance of the application is familiar. I’m also going to bet, without playing with it yet, that they also interact in a familiar way.

So, as we venture out into this new brave world of iPhone applications I hope that an equal value will be placed on the user experience side of the app as well as the way its developed.

What excites me about this week

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 08:43:00 -0500

For many this week will come and go, but among Apple users and fans this week will have us glued to our screens waiting to see what Steve Jobs has up his sleeve. There are many speculations about what might be “announced” at this year’s WWDC. In the past Apple has used this week to release new hardware, updates to the iPod and OS upgrades. This year will be slightly different, there isn’t much in the pipeline as far as hardware (minus a much needed display update) and the current iPod is still fairly new especially if you lump in the iPhone into that category. That leaves us with Leopard… much has been talking about regarding the “secret features” of Leopard that Jobs will unveil tomorrow. While I’m sure the “secret features” will be nice thats not what I’m most excited about. I’m excited about what could potentially be the largest changes to the UI in the history of Apple, if not in its history then at least in its recent history (after the original release of OS X).

There have been some exciting explorations happening in the field of User Interface, specifically in the Mac app category. Delicious Monster led the pack with their exquisite UI in Delicious Library, many have followed with the trend including Disco, AppZapper, etc. The developers of these apps have begun to push the boundaries of what the “typical” mac app should look and function like. They have developed creative ways to do everyday tasks like burning discs and sorting your media collection. Apple (and now Microsoft as well) have joined the party to push the boundaries by using gestures in the case of the iPhone and Surface.

What does this mean for usability, should we just toss out our standards and human interface guidelines? Many would argue that’s the direction some of these applications and new forms of interaction are taking us. I think we are entering a new age of exploration in the area of UI design. Today’s technology has given us tools that just five years ago we would have dismissed as hollywood special effects. Users are interested more than ever in playful, exploratory interaction. If you don’t believe me compare the “traditional” game play of the Xbox 360 and PS3 against the wildly successful Nintendo Wii. As UI designers we have the unique opportunity to make our applications playful and engaging.

So, as Jobs steps to the stage and WWDC ushers in the “secrete features” for Leopard I’m hopeful for a new delicious interface for OS X. Something that will push the envelope further in UI development, something that is functional, user friendly, playful and explores new aspects of interaction… Is that too much to ask?

People Pleasing in Design

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Tue, 15 May 2007 23:31:00 -0500

People pleasing seems to be an epidemic in today’s world. We live in a society that gives tolerance the highest honor in the personality trait category. Unfortunately the industry of design and user experience is not exempt from this issue. It is multi-faceted, affecting how the client treats the designer, how the client deals within it internally, and how the designer responds to all of it.

Many might baulk at the idea of a client trying to people please the designer. For many designers this might even seem like an ideal turn of events. Think about your last pro-bono project or the last favor you did for a buddy. How much criticism or feedback did you get? For some of you there might have been some or even a lot. I personally have found that in these situations you don’t hear much at all. In fact I have completed several “favors” for friends recently and heard virtually no feedback whatsoever. Ideal right? Wrong. Many times situations like these will come back to bite you. You will start to hear things second hand, things like so and so wasn’t really happy with the outcome of the project, but because it was “free” they didn’t feel like they could bring anything up. This is people pleasing from the client side. They want to please you because your doing them a favor. This helps no one, the client isn’t happy with the end product and you feel no sense of real accomplishment because you know they aren’t completely satisfied.

The second scenario is much more in line with what we experience day to day. The pleasing of people within a given organization. It usually plays itself out in the middle, middle-management that is. Folks that have people above them and people below them. They are constantly walking a tightrope of pleasure, not for themselves but for the people around them. However, today we are also starting to see this from the top, CEOs and VPs trying to please the “market” and their customer. People like Steve Jobs are now an exception whereas 40 years ago it was common to find people at the top with a clear vision and little people pleasing. How does this affect design? This has one of the most profound affects on design and experience. When your contacts for a design project are so centered around pleasing their managers and executives they are much less likely to think about the end user. They are making decisions (design and alike) around the priorities of specific people in their organization.

I’m in the middle of a project currently that suffers from this level of people pleasing. Their concern and the decisions they have made thus far have been around pleasing each other. Even with a clear vision document in place up front, they continue to exercise decisions that only affect their peers. Not only that but more often than not these decisions affect the end user experience in a less than ideal way. If your in this level of decision making power think twice before you decide for your peers and not your end users.

The last example for people pleasing is in respect to the designer directly. Over the years I have seen designers split into three camps: those that seek only to please their client, those that seek only to please themselves, and those that are in between. The first two groups are fairly self explanatory and deserve full posts in of themselves. However the third group is a little harder to pinpoint. This group is not made up of designers willing to compromise their design at any level to please the client, nor are they the group that’s so self centered you wonder if they have ears to hear. Instead this is the group that is informed. They are well thought out, both as they process through the initial iterations of their designs and as they take in feedback from clients, research and testing. They don’t make decisions based around pressures of pleasing instead they make the “right” decision based around years of experience and a listening ear.

It has been my attempt in the last two years to be part of this group, the third camp, the informed. I started out as part of the first camp, eager to design no matter at what cost. Those years lead to a holy war of sorts, constantly pushing the client to see my way instead of their way. But recently I’ve tried to set those things aside and focus more on the design, more on how its crafted, how I’m willing to adjust when it makes sense. This isn’t to say that I’m perfect, far from it in fact. I still feel a small desire to take up arms when a client offers critical feedback of my work and at times I sometimes just want to say yes to any request just so I can move on.

As you deal with the demons of people pleasing where do you fall? What methods do you utilize in order not to fall into the trap of mediocrity and tolerance? Please share.

Pushed to Perfection

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 18:31:00 -0500

I’ve been working in the industry of design for roughly 12 years now. During some of my early experiences in doing it as a professional I was let in on a dirty little secret… the client doesn’t always like what you present. I can hear graphic design students everywhere as they shudder at the thought. It’s true, you might think what your presenting is the best work in the world and 9 times out of 10 there is going to be some criticism and feedback from the client.

The question becomes how do you respond to the this? Early on I would put up a fight, I would argue against each and every point they had. Don’t get me wrong, if I feel strongly enough about something they are criticizing I will still go to the gauntlet over it. However, I have learned to listen, something they don’t always teach you in school, but a skill for designers nonetheless. It’s only when you listen from an objective point of view that you can start to get at the heart of their issue. Your client might say they don’t like that color but what they mean is they don’t care for how saturated it is in that usage. Other times the feedback might be more general, something along the lines of your design looking to busy or sparse. It’s important when given a general statement that you follow up and dig deeper into what exactly they feel makes the design busy or sparse.

Recently, I finished a round of concepts for a client that I felt were pretty polished. Internally I had iterated them several times and worked out most of the kinks. During the presentation it was clear they they wanted to go with one of the concepts right away. The client’s early comments were very light, but as the week went on the comments continued to come in and there were 5-6 points that I would need to rethink. Fortunately they weren’t foundational issues, instead they were things that could be solved in refinement of a few details.

If I had chosen to push back on all points I could have probably avoided making a single change, but I would’ve also passed up on a great opportunity to push the design further to perfection. As designers we tend to push ourselves quite a bit, but I have found that there is always a little more we could do. It’s a lot like an orange, you can squeeze 90% of all of its juice with very little effort, but there is always the opportunity to squeeze out those last drops if you try hard enough. Sometimes we can squeeze the last drops of juice out of our design on our own, but many times it will take an outside force to push us to perfection.

Designing for the Edge Cases

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 02:26:00 -0500

I’ve been thinking a lot about edge cases recently. Not so much along the lines of “we don’t need to worry about that because its an ‘edge case’” but instead the small details that pop up when you least expect them.

There are several examples I can think of when I think of edge case details in interface design:

1) Starting up OS X for the first time: the very first time you start up your mac (or freshly install the OS) you go through a series of setup screens. The screens themselves are designed very well and the animations (including the intro movie clip) make for a nice start up experience. Recently Apple has added a new touch to this start up process, you now get a prompt to take your photo which applications like iChat and Address Book take advantage of. Its a very minor thing, but its the sort of experience that ends up being memorable for users. It stands out for many as part of their “mac experience.” Its been pretty well documented that Jobs cares quite a bit about the user’s impression when booting their mac for the first time.

2) Another good example of an edge case UI decision is the “Blank Slate”. This is a term that 37signals made famous in the book Getting Real and on their blog Signal vs. Noise. It refers to the initial state of a web application before you put in any data. In the case of Basecamp when you initially come to-do section that isn’t populated with to-dos you have some helpful information and maybe some some sample to-dos just to show you how it might look populated. This has started to become the norm for most web applications. I love the idea that someone thought ahead and instead of making the page blank and bare they were most interested in helping you out, showing you how to use their app by example.

3) The last example is a detail that you can find in Shaun Inman’s mint. Its not a functional detail, its more of an easter egg, but I think it’s just as valid for this discussion. When you hit the keys “up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a” inside of mint you get a nice easter egg of stan. Obviously Shaun placed this in as as a joke or just for his own enjoyment, but nonetheless he made a decision for that detail. In mint’s case it no doubt helped create some buzz within the blog community and possibly even led to more sales through general awareness.

I hope the above examples demonstrate that thinking about the smallest details do matter when creating interfaces. They can help users better understand how to use your application, like in the case of basecamp or they simply delight the user as in the cases of Apple and Mint.

These are just a few examples I would love to get some feedback on other examples that you can think of.

Wired.com "Redesigns"

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 00:06:00 -0500

So today on chat a friend of mine ping’d me with this: “Have you seen the new redesigned wired.com?” Oh, man I got to see this, I thought. “Oh, wow” was the first thought in my head, and not the kind of “oh wow” you would think, it was more like “oh crap what did they do!” The new wired site is hideous (only my opinion, I’m sure there will be some that love it), its a lot of things that could have gone right, gone wrong.

Lets start from the top, mainly because thats probably the worst part of the entire thing. Today it has two ads for Planet Earth on Discovery wrapping the identity of the site. Nevermind that you have two ads that are virtually the same only inches from each other, but they sandwich the logo like a bad pastrami on rye. It seems that ad sales must be a little dry over at Wired news, otherwise I’m sure they would’ve opted for two ads that were slightly different.

As you move down through what looks like unstyled content (I tried refreshing twice just to make sure) you end up in this little section of square purgatory. I mean I love a square grid as much as the next guy but it has to be done right.

To top it off once you click on their 3-D (yep thats right, MTV style) sub nav you end up going into pages that look like a bad mix of Doug Bowman’s original design and what they have “evolved” to with this new approach.

Alright, take a breath, I feel better. I needed to get that off my chest. I’m sure this new design will lend itself to some great case studies on how it could’ve gone better. I look forward to the forthcoming discussions. Maybe its all a mistake and we will wake up tomorrow with the real redesign… a boy can dream.

Update: looks like I’m not the only one with strong feelings about the new design.

Embracing your "signature-style"

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 01:13:00 -0500

Certain designers (most actually) have what I call a “signature-style.” Many times you can look at their designs without knowing who did it and guess the author. For illustration purposes I can think of three incredible designers that have very distinct styles. You could bring out an example of their work that is completely new and I could probably cite it as theirs.

My first example is Michael Schwab. Schwab is a distinguished illustrator that has created amazing work for over 20 years. Once you have seen a piece of work by Michael Schwab it becomes fairly easy to identify it when you encounter it again. He is recognized for depicting complex messages using a style of simplicity. He calls our attention to his subjects by his incredible use of positive and negative space. If you don’t have a poster by Schwab I encourage you to pick one up.

The second example is a person that has gained incredible notoriety in the field of industrial design, Jonathan Ive. Although Ive is well known now, he started life as a designer with humble means. It wasn’t until the unveiling of the original iMac that we heard much about Ive, even though he was responsible for older apple designs like the Newton MessagePad. Ive has a signature style that is marked by minimalism, clean lines and incredible details. Although many separate Ive’s work into two design phases (the phase of the original colored iMacs and the current “white product” phase) I would ague that both are representative of his style. He has always been obsessed with the details and from this all of us benefit (well at least those that use Apple’s products).

My last example is in the area of interaction design, Ryan Sims. Although there are many other examples in this field, I have always appreciated Sims as both a person and a designer. Sims has influenced many designers as well as those obsessed with standard based code. His work can be seen in sites like the band Acceptance, US Traffic Tickets, PureVolume and just last week Virb°. Sims designs are defined by his combination of smooth boxes with gentle gradients. The designs are very easy on the eyes and make for great design built around many levels of information. Although some might argue that these traits are inherent to the “web 2.0” phenomena I would argue that Sims designs stand out in that crowd, that he uses small details that distinguish him from others.

The first five years of my career in design were spent struggling with my own signature-style. It started with trying desperately to establish one and once I had it, I found myself fighting to break out of it. I wouldn’t go with my gut simply because I knew I had done something similar in the past. In other words, I was being different just for the sake of being different. These experiences ended with me falling flat on my face. The designs were “forced” and felt that way both to the client and to the end user.

It was about year six when I started to dialogue with other designers about this issue I was having. I found that many designers, especially those that were far more experienced than I, had similar problems early in their careers. Without exception they all came to the conclusion, embrace your signature-style. It is only once you’ve embraced it that you can begin to prefect it and iterate it for each project you work on. Besides the three mentioned above there are hundreds of other designers that have found success through accepting their style and running with it. In fact, many of them are contacted by clients specifically for their signature-style. If Michael Schwab started illustrating like Craig Frazier its likely his requests for work would cease, people go to Schwab for his style, his vision and what he delivers, each and every time.

So think through those things that make you unique, those traits that people gravitate towards in your designs. These are more than likely pieces to your signature-style. If you spend time embracing, developing and maturing your style I’m confident that you will end up more confident as a designer and more sought out for work that only you can do.

Keeping Simplelog Simple

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 11:33:00 -0600

Several months ago I decided I would finally enter the world of weblogs. I’ve had a list of ideas going for sometime and it was finally time to take the plunge and develop them. Like many others I looked at the usual suspects: Moveable Type, Wordpress, Expression Engine, etc. One thing that started to influence my choice was Ruby on Rails. In the last 9 months or so I’ve had lots of opportunity to work inside of the MVC model so it eventually became a criteria that the solution rely on rails. At the time I knew of only two players within the rails world, Typo and Mephisto. Many were making the move to Mephisto and the plugin architecture was growing with the community, I thought it was a no brainer. Then Garrett Dimon wrote his post titled ”A Closer Look at SimpleLog”. It completely changed my perspective, I was faced with a choice between a blogging solution that clearly had more features and a solution that at the time looked like a stripped down but very elegant tool. I tried a version a friend had installed and over the next few days really wrestled with making the choice, I wanted the tool that would ideally help me to write more often and flesh out my ideas faster. In the end user experience won me over and I installed Simplelog as my blogging solution.

Extending with creative solutions

After I started to build out my theme within Simplelog it was clear that many of the little frills I wanted weren’t available right out of the box. After cruising the forums and exchanging a few emails with Simplelog’s creator, Garrett Murray, it was clear that many of the things I wanted to do were either in the works, or simply weren’t part of the core vision. Instead of seeking another feature heavy solution I enlisted a friend of mine to help me find a few creative ways to pull off what I wanted.

I wanted to do 99% of my publishing though the Simplelog UI instead of having to mess with the view layer once the site launched. At first glance this seamed simple but I had these little sidebar areas I wanted to update regularly: recommendations, things of interest, links to friends. A solution that came out of the forums was to tag certain posts with something I could filter with, this would give me the ability to just display posts tagged with “X”. This was a great idea but there wasn’t anything that would prevent those items from showing up in the normal article area. The solution we eventually came to was to tag it with a specific tag but not activate it, then we would grab those posts and display them in their selected areas. Was it as easy as having some sort of categories or snippets right inside of the Simplelog interface? Probably not, but it didn’t take that much effort either.

I also wanted to feature some flickr and last.fm data in my footer. I had seen similar plugins available for other blogging solutions but the Simpleblog community was still growing and there wasn’t anything developed like that (yet). With Flickr’s easy badging code and some CSS changes I was able to implement it pretty easily. The last.fm area was scrapped from the HTML in my albums chart. The album artwork isn’t available in the XML feed yet so we resorted to scrapping for now.

Staying happy with simple

At the end of the day I’m extremely happy. Sure, it might have taken a bit more time and some creative solutions to get my blog to the point that I wanted but now I get to use an incredibly simple yet extremely thought out interface to do all of my authoring in. After all isn’t that why I started blogging?

Sidenote:

This entry could have been three times as long by going into all of the ins and outs of Simplelog. Garrett Dimon has already done such a nice job that I encourage all of you not familiar with Simplelog to read though his piece.

LEGO Iterations

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 09:17:00 -0600

I have a son, that in June will be 3 years old. About 5 months ago we decided it was time to introduce him to every boy’s (and girl’s) favorite past time… LEGOs. He took right to them, building, tearing down, building, tearing down, well you get the idea. After awhile I started to get sucked in and before I knew it I was a 6 year old again in LEGO world, or what we called back then a “LEGO maniac”. While working with my son, building airplanes, helicopters, cars, I started to realize something… the object you build is good until you find that next piece and then it becomes better, well that is until you find another piece that could even make it better than the last.

As I reflected on this I realized that the work we do in the field of user experience is very much the same. We can work on something for a decent amount of time, feeling that its just right and after a period of time something happens… we discover a new “piece” and in order to make the project better we decide we need to add it. There’re typically three different kinds of “pieces” that I have run into over the years.

The Technology “Piece”

The technology piece happens when you are in the middle of a project and some new technology emerges that compels you to consider it in your experience. For those working in the consultancy side of user experience, this is rare. Its rare because the time from start to finish doesn’t give enough time for new technologies to come in and sweep you off your feet (although I’m sure one could argue this is changing). For those of us working in the area of user experience for a single project or a set of fixed projects, it can be a different story. Over time technologies will influence our work and eventually we will want to introduce them in to the projects we’re working on. I would say a good example of this is the Ajax phenomena. This “new” technology has swept its way into almost everyone’s interface, for good and bad. I’m sure that most VCs that specialize in the field of web applications now have a new line in their application that says something to the tune of “Does your app have Ajax? (those that do not need not apply)” Although there are times when a new technology does need influence us and our iterations there are many times that additional technology just adds additional bloat to the project.

The Self Discovery “Piece”

The next piece that many of us typically find is the piece of self discovery. This can happen both in a team environment or a project you might be working on by yourself. Things will be moving along well and you might even be on the last lap when suddenly you will have an epiphany or a self discovery. This can be as simple as a small change to the UI or it can be as major as having to retrofit an entire block of the application or website. The danger with this piece is many times in a consulting environment you are working with a fixed budget and now suddenly you now find yourself with an ethical dilemma. Do you do what’s right and introduce the new piece or do you continue down the path you know is wrong so you can stay within the budget you quoted? Its not an easy decision but you can guess which one will make you feel better once you do it.

The Feedback “Piece”

The final piece I’d like to discuss is the one that many of us run into during any given project. Its the feedback piece. The feedback piece can take many shapes and sizes, it can be a set of responses you get during some usability testing early on or it can be the support requests you get months after you app has launched. This is a critical piece, if you choose to ignore the feedback it’s likely that your project will still function and survive, but it can be the difference between having a simple LEGO airplane or an X-Wing fighter. It’s feedback that overtime give us the best sense for how people use the experiences we build and it’s also feedback that will help us as we iterate to make that experience that much better.

Don’t build monsters

One of the things my son likes to do is take all the pieces he can and add them to the object that he’s building. This is fine (and creative) but he ends up with a monster of a thing, its a cross between a house, a car, an airplane… well, you get the picture. This works when your 2 1/2 years old and playing with LEGOS, but it doesn’t work very well in the real life of user experience. Part of our jobs is to decide which pieces will actually add value to the project we are working on and what pieces are just extra. I have been part of several projects where the requirements start off fairly simple and as things move along “pieces” start getting added. It might be a new technology that comes along that would be “cool” to add, it might be some personal idea that either a team member or I come up with, or it might be feedback from an individual or a set of individuals. I have found over time that one of the things that makes a great project is deciding which pieces we should allow to influence our iterations and which pieces we shouldn’t. So as you take on your next project or set of iterations on an experience think about LEGOs, ask yourself what your building. Are you building something that ultimately you will be happy with later, something elegant and useful, or are you picking up too many “pieces” and its starting to look like some sort of frankenstein?

What are your thoughts? Are there “pieces” that you can think of that influence how you iterate your design, code, etc?

NYT iPhone GUI

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:24:00 -0500

Insightful write-up by Felix Sockwell on the GUI for the NYT’s app.

Features are a one-way street

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:55:00 -0500

Ryan put up a great post on living with decisions you make when it comes to features. Bottom line you put in a feature and your gonna have to live with that puppy for a long time.

John Nack talks about Product Inovation

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:40:00 -0500

Scott Kelby invited John Knack (Photoshop Product Manager) to guest this week at Photoshop Insider. Knack has some great insight into what makes a great product in his post, well worth the read!

View your web photos in a full-screen environment.

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 19:42:00 -0600

PicLens has come up with an amazing way to view photos from your favorite sites (Google, Picasa, Flickr, Yahoo, Facebook, etc.), its worth checking out! [via Cameron Moll]

Design Couldn't Save Yahoo

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:05:00 -0600

Khoi takes a critical look at the role that designed played in Y! role in the last year.

Comparison tools in Google Analytics

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:23:00 -0600

Google rolls out caparison data tools into their analytics app, could Google Analytics get any better… I submit that it can not!

80 Percenter

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:38:00 -0600

Dan Cederholm writes up a nice little summary of his thoughts on being an 80 percenter based on Yvon Chouinard’s book Let my people go surfing. It’s something I’ve been thinking about lately and tips my hand to read the book, thanks Dan!

Chocolate Type!

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:13:00 -0600

Edible type, yum! I know what’s getting added to my Christmas list.

Real-time photo editing on flickr!

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 20:42:00 -0600

The flickr team has done it again, this time they’ve linked up with Picnik to provide real time photo editing within the familiar flick interface. Unlike other online photo editing tools out there flick and Picnik have executed this near perfectly. [via Stan]

24 ways

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 01:55:00 -0600

24 ways kicks off tonight, here’s to another year or great tips. This year they’ve added a twitter feed as well.

Virgin America's Safety Video

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 23:55:00 -0600

Virgin America does a great job by balancing humor, entertainment and safety in their airline safety video, it’s well worth a watch. [via Monoscope]

ALA: Understanding Web Design

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 18:24:00 -0600

Last week A List Apart published a great little article by Jeffrey Zeldman entitled “Understanding Web Design”. Its a great look into our industry and how it differentiates itself from other mediums. What are you waiting for? Read it!

Design + Coffee: Could it get any better?

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:09:00 -0600

Lokesh Dhakar has done it again, this time he has put together a great visualization of the various coffee drinks available at your local coffee shop. [via Simplebits]

The Design Curve

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 00:44:00 -0500

Matthew Inman writes up a nice little post about “the design curve”. It illustrates perfectly the effects of designing by committee.

Keyboard Accents

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 18:30:00 -0500

iPhone 1.1.1 introduces new keyboard accents, sweet! [via gruber]

Similar Diversity

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 23:51:00 -0500

Similar Diversity, freaking amazing…

For web nerds.

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 00:21:00 -0500

Happy Webbies for web nerds.

Charmr: Diabetes meets Design

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 20:21:00 -0500

Adaptive path is giving all of us a inside look at their work on the Charmr project. It’s a great example of how design can aid in the medical and science field. Well worth the read.

Great NYT article on new road sign system

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 20:21:00 -0500

NY Times has written up a nice article detailing the new road sign systems, complete with the new typeface. The interactive slideshow is excellent as well. [via jibbajabba]

Image Upload Widget

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 18:11:00 -0500

Need to put up an image for everyone to see easily? Give the image upload widget a shot.

XRAY

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 18:03:00 -0500

Here’s a great little bookmarklet to help us better understand what our code is doing under the skin.

Evolution of the Apple product line

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 17:41:00 -0500

Here’s a nice historical view of just how far the Apple product line has come.

Web Development resource for iPhone

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 01:58:00 -0500

Apple releases resources for how to develop specifically for the iPhone.

iPhoney, the iPhone for your desktop.

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 19:27:00 -0500

For those of us who are wild about the iPhone Marketcircle has created the “iPhoney” Not only with the iPhoney allow you to have the iPhone in a virtual space but it allows you to test all of those great iPhone apps in a pixel perfect environment. [link via Daikini]

iPhone Application Site

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 08:31:00 -0500

The iPhone apps keep coming, here’s a site dedicated to 3rd party iPhone apps.

Instant Messaging for the iPhone

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 06:10:00 -0500

Another great iPhone app from David Cann. This time around its a chat client. David did a very nice job with the interaction design of this client, simple yet beautiful. If this is any indication of what is to come from 3rd party apps I think Apple’s decision to go with web-based apps as the SDK was the right decision (I’m sure some Mac app developers will disagree).

A iPhone-based Webapp

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 02:42:00 -0500

To prove just how easy creating an iPhone-based webapp could be David Cann has ported over a widget-like version of digg. Check it out. [link via TUAW]

iPhone's SDK... Safari

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 03:02:00 -0500

Apple finally answered the question that was on the mind of many: how can we get 3rd party apps on our iPhone? Use web apps in iPhone’s full featured version of Safari. As the Jason over at 37 Signals notes this is a huge affirmation for those of us that love to build great web apps.

360 Streetside views with Google Maps

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Mon, 28 May 2007 22:24:00 -0500

Google has just released their 360 degree streetside views. TechCrunch has a great little write up about it, the best way to see how it works is to try this little demo of it in San Francisco.

Interesting: No more rearanging your screens with dual monitors

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Tue, 01 May 2007 17:39:00 -0500

For those of us with dual monitors and laptops its always a sort of musical chairs as we have to rearrange our windows whenever we get the urge to step away from our second monitor. Well there is now a fix for this, its called “Forget-Me-Not”, a preference pane that remembers the way you had your windows when you switch back and forth between displays. [via maniacal rage]

Intersting: Fruit Crate Art

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 16:03:00 -0500

For quite awhile I’ve been enamored by fruit crate art. I’m not sure if its because of the fact that I live in such an agriculturally rich location or simply because they’re just beautiful. This site has a great collection of some of the best.

Interesting: 100 years of photos

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 16:02:00 -0500

If you’ve ever wanted to see what life looked like 100 years ago check out Shorpy’s 100-year old photo blog.

Interesting: Turn your 2D photos into 3D

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 15:57:00 -0500

Fotowoosh has an interesting promise, the ability to turn your 2D photos into 3D, there’s some great potential here, watch their video to see more.

Interesting: New book by Luke Wroblewski all about Forms

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 22:49:00 -0500

Luke Wroblewski announces his new book all about forms. I’ve personally been waiting for something like this for a very long time. I’m a huge fan of the many articles Luke has written about forms and look forward to a book dedicated to this subject… yeah, I’m a sick, sick man.

Interesting: CSS Guide for HTML Email 2007 Edition

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 16:06:00 -0500

Campaign Monitor has posted their guide to CSS support in email for 2007. This includes the new feature that Outlook now offers… it’s called the we’ve decided to render everything through Microsoft Word vs. our new standard compliant (almost) browser, IE 7. If you do anything with HTML email you will want to keep this handy.

Interesting: Mother Futon is BACK

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 18:15:00 -0500

After months of hibernating everyone’s favorite mother futon is back, filled with tons of new web 2.0.1 features.

Interesting: Online Converters

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 23:46:00 -0500

Smashing Magazine has put together another one of their great lists. This time they have gathered a ton of online converters that are freely available.

Interesting: Google's FREE 411 service.

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 18:02:00 -0500

I just discovered that Google has a free voice 411 service. Up until now I’ve used 1-800-FREE-411 as my way to get business info on my cel, the nice thing about Google’s service is they will connect you free to the listing as well as SMS you the info if you want it. Link was provided by Ryan.

Interesting: Schoolhouse

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 00:40:00 -0500

I don’t remember homework being this much fun when I was in school.

Interesting: Tasks to Experiences Poster

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 20:42:00 -0500

Here’s an interesting poster that breaks out the continuum from being “Task Focused” to “Experience” focused. It would probably go really nicely with one of my other favorite UX posters.

Interesting: Disk Image Design

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 01:57:00 -0500

Patrick Haney has a great flickr set on Disk Image Design. It’s quite fascinating, I have always loved the little details that go into a design like this.

Interesting: One project per practitioner.

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 19:58:00 -0500

Adaptive Path posted an interesting blog entry today about interaction practitioners working on one project at a time. They make a good case.

Interesting: Stock icons are very in vogue these days.

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 23:17:00 -0500

Apparently I didn’t get the memo, stock icon design is the new black. There are some great shops sprouting up everywhere.

Interesting: Full details on the redesign of ExpressionEngine's new site.

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 05:35:00 -0500

Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain is kind enough to give Digital Web Magazine a peek into his process as he walks through the Redesign of the ExpressionEngine website. It’s a great example of project using a iterative design method.

Interesting: Noahstokes.com is live

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 20:31:00 -0500

A few days late, but its up… Noah has launched his blog, complete with some great examples of his work.

Interesting: The new EllisLab network is released!

harold@emsheimer.com (Harold) — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 20:18:00 -0600

Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain pulls the covers off of the new EllisLab network websites (most notably EspressionEngine.com). This is some incredible stuff, from the layouts to the illustrations.