Thursday, May 26, 2005

The Zen of UX design This headline caught my eye; then the underlying discussions provided more food for thought. Give up Control or You'll Lose it Forever. "Whether you know it or not, we're shifting control away from our own interface to the interface of others.(...) For the most part, designers can't control experiences because experiences are subject to the user." (Joshua Porter - Bokardo) [InfoDesign: Understanding by Design] Control, after all, is an illusion. The tighter you try to hold on to the illusion, the more your users will work to take it away from you (not that they really have control either). The most interesting and effective uses of products are frequently the ones users create themselves, and were never envisioned by the designer. If you think you have control of a Web application, just try to get a Web page to look the same across all browsers and platforms. Ha! Relinquish control, gain power. Let go to use the force, Luke. 2:15:22 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

No respect. . . Here we go again: iGuy: OMG!!!. . . . I suddenly have a vision: The Adventures of Fred, the Living iPod, a stop-motion animated film by C.K. Sample, III, featuring the iGuy. What do you think? [via iPoding] [The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)] How is it that every fictional goofy nerd gets named Fred? This is why I'm a charter member of The Fred Society. Although in this case it might be a compliment; I just can't be sure. 2:01:57 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

QOTD "Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish." Euripides. [Quotes of the Day] Which makes a lot of sense to me on those days when I feel like I'm beating my head against a brick wall trying to get certain dense individuals to understand what I'm saying. Too many dang fools to go around. . . 9:56:27 AM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

Speaking of his Steveness. . . Design in general is getting more and more recognition (witness Fast Company's June issue, devoted entirely to design), so it's nice to see good design being recognized: Jobs and Ive take top honors at UK design awards. . . Macworld UK reports that Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive were presented with four coveted design awards from Design and Art Direction (D&AD) at a ceremony in London last night. The 4G iPod and iPod mini each won a Yellow Pencil (the equivelant of a Silver Award) for product design inthe Home category, while the Cinema Display received a Yellow Pencil in the Work & Indistry category. But the top honor of the night went to Ive himself, who was singled out for his world-class achievments in design and awarded the special D&AD President's Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Industry. [The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)] 9:45:52 AM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

Who's conning whom? Uh-oh: iCon or iCrib?. . . Alan Deutschman says that Jeffrey Young's new book about Steve Jobs contains nothing particularly damning or revealing about the iCEO.  He should know... According to Alan, much of iCon, Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business was lifted directly from Alan's own book, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, which was published in 2001. I bought the book when all the flap arose over Apple removing all Wiley books from their stores in reaction to its publication. And everyone commented what good publicity it was—for the book, not Apple. It worked, I bought it; and now it sounds as if there's little to recommend iCon. Now I feel, er, conned. But I'll still read it, as it will likely be the only book on Jobs that I'll ever read. 9:35:03 AM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

[Scripting News] 8:03:51 AM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

© Copyright 2002-2005 Fred Sampson. Last update: 6/1/05; 7:57:21 PM.