paper & pencil

apple stores

Apple's stores reached $1 billion in sales faster than any retail business in history

from the ifoAppleStore site, a report on Sr. VP Retail Ron Johnson's talk at the Success for Design conference.

"But the most important thing we set in our design criteria," Johnson said, "is we wanted to create very distinct experiences for customers, in what they perceive as a public place. More like a great library, which has natural light, and it feels like a gift to the community. In a perfect world, that's what we want our stores to be."

He then asked the key question, "Does good design lead to increased sales profit?" For Apple, he responded, "The answer is clearly, yes." He displayed a graph of Apple's stock price since the retail stores opened, and it showed the annual price has increased. He forecast the stores will do about $1.2 billion in sales, and make a $30 million direct profit, along with a$200 million in so-called "manufacturing profit" for the company.

natural inspiration

the online gallery of Yann Arthus-Bertrand's outdoor aerial photography exhibition is truly amazing.

(via lukew)

language design

Mark Rettig, of BBC, gave a talk to the London IxD'ers: Interaction Design is Language Design

from CD's notes:

Mark said, as quoted by Kevin Cheng, "When you design an interactive product, you are creating the setting for thousands of conversations. You are creating the language which will be spoken between product and person." This idea was further developed in Mark's construction of a medical imaging interface, where the amount of data involved meant creating an interface that 'spoke the same language' as the practitioner using the equipment.

(via CD Evans)

design matters

quickly becoming my favorite blog - Andrei Herasimchuk of Design By Fire responds to a number of recent articles placing design in a secondary role, or worse, downplaying it's impact completely.

Let me be blunt:

Design matters. It matters in everyday life. It matters in everything we consume or use. It matters in every human endeavor. Without design and those people that commit their lives to its practice, the world that would result from that absence would be an intolerable place to live.

he targets designers as well:

But to stand behind the practice of design, we as designers must also understand that good design has some basic assumptions. Good design is always about usability. If something is not usable, it is also not well-designed. Good design is always about legibility. If it can’t be read, it is not good design. Good design is always about lifting the content, data or object at the center of the project to a higher plane. If it does not do so, it is nothing more than a standard, commonplace occurrence. Good design ignites the imagination, excites the senses, opens up possibilities to those who encounter it that were previously unavailable before the design existed.

These are basic assumptions about design. To constantly have discussions, debates, or articles that somehow do not assume that the goal of design encompasses these things is a waste of precious time.

response to Jakob:

When Jakob Nieslen says, “Use graphics to show real content, not just to decorate your homepage… People are naturally drawn to pictures; gratuitous graphics can distract users from critical content.” Remind him that anything gratuitous is not in line with good design, and that anything, whether it be a rule, a unique drop cap, or image that is put into a good design with thought and purpose is not decoration.

aifia library

the AIfIA has launched the IA Library. browse by subject, reosurce type, author and language. there is also a "select list of introductory resource".

before you build it . . .

new ala article: The Problem, the Balloon, and the Four Bedroom House that nicely sums up a best practice in pm.

75% of the work of every successful project is completed in the initial stage. In other words, every project has a balloon phase. And if it doesn’t happen at the beginning of the project, then you may get into some serious trouble.

great anecdote:

On 13 March, 1999, Habitat for Humanity in New Zealand made the Guinness Book of Records. They constructed a four-bedroom house from scratch. It took a mere 3 hours, 44 minutes and 59 seconds. (I’m sure there’s a reality TV show in there somewhere, but I don’t believe we need another one of those.) An incredible feat. The significant fact is that it took 14 months of planning to achieve.

this also reminds me of a quote I've seen in Ziya's signature:

Design is the art of gradually applying constraints until only one solution remains.

(via dave boyer)

wpa posters

came across the Library of Congress WPA posters archive!

use cases for ixd

new guui.com issue: Use Cases and interaction design - Modelling user workflows with Use Cases

Henrik Olsen proposes that use cases are effective in helping the interaction designer capture all the paths a user may take in a complex app - both the successful and not sucessful paths - that need to be accommodated for in the design phase. But he also says use cases do have their flaws.

problem #1: no standard method of writing them. One solution is Constantine and Lockwood's Essential Use Cases.

tube animals

more tube map fun! animalsontheunderground.com

The Animals, made up using tube lines, stations and junctions were spotted by Paul Middlewick some 15 years ago.

The original Animal, the Elephant was discovered while Paul was staring at the tube map during his daily journey to work.

Structural markup: code what you mean, mean what you code

Sybold seminar presentation on why you need semantic markup.

geared towards non-techies - could be very useful in educating the higher ups as well as clients.

(via sporter)