Letters Remain

Tag: design

  • A Visual Technique Library for Film Shots

    From the common to the lesser-seen cinematographic techniques, Eyecandy is a “visual technique library” for film shots. A database of over 5,000 GIFs, organised into around 100 different techniques, you select the technique and you get a short description and a wall of example clips. While I love movies, I’m certainly a cinematography neophyte, so…

  • International, Multilingual Eye-test Chart, 1907

    At the turn of the twentieth century, in San Francisco, German optometrist George Mayerle created and published the “international” eye-test chart: “an artifact of an immigrant nationā€”produced by a German optician in a polyglot city where West met East (and which was then undergoing massive rebuilding after the 1906 earthquake)ā€”and of a globalizing economy”. Running…

  • Subway Maps of Roman Roads

    Sasha Trubetskoy is a “geography and data nerd” who makes data visualisations and maps. His Roman Roads project styles the Ancient Roman road network as modern transit maps. That’s the full Empire, as of ca. 125 AD. Trubetskoy also made similar maps for Britain, Italy, Gaul and Iberia. I recommend clicking through and reading about…

  • The Three Important Response Time Limits

    There are three important response time limits in user interface design, and this has remained constant since 1968, says usability guru Jakob Nielsen. Those three time limits? Chess, anyone? It’s worth also looking at Nielsen’s Powers of 10, detailing further time scales of user interaction. My summary:

  • Perceptions of Probability and Numbers

    Back in 2011 I wrote about “words of estimative probability“; the quantitative ranges we apply to ambiguous words and phrases, based on Sherman Kent’s research for the CIA in the 1960s. In 2015, Reddit user zonination duplicated the study using /r/samplesize. His resulting post in /r/dataisbeautiful made the longlist for the 2015 Kantar Information is…

  • Realism and Abstraction in User Interface Design

    User interface designers (and particularly icon designers) could learn a lot from comics and the theory behind them. Taking his cue from Scott McCloud’s excellent Understanding Comics, Lukas Mathis looks at how for optimum recognition and in order to aid understanding, user interface elements must find the sweet spot between universality and realism. Like when…

  • Non-Design Skills Needed by Designers

    Like in many other specialised fields, to become a great designer one must master or beĀ acquaintedĀ with many non-design skills. User interface designer Aza Raskin — ex-Creative Lead at Firefox andĀ son of Jef — offers up this list of what he believes to beĀ most important to do and master in order to become a designer: The…

  • PlentyofFish and Unusability

    In an early 2009 profile of Markus Frind–the founderĀ and CEO of the online dating website PlentyofFish—Inc. briefly touched on the topic of the site’s famously bad user interface, with Frind explaining why heĀ believesĀ that, sometimes, user experience should take a back seat as a better experience isn’t always linked to greater profits. ļ»æPlenty of Fish is…

  • Dark Patterns: Evil Design Patterns

    I’ve looked at design patterns many times before: persuasive patterns, anti-patterns and interaction patterns. The missing link: dark patterns. According to Harry Brignull–the designer who really started the discussion on this topic–dark patterns can succinctly be described as “user interfaces designed to trick people” or “dirty tricks designers use to make people do stuff”. Brignull…

  • The Three Design Principles and The Simplicity Myth

    We are confusing usability with simplicity and capability with features. This is faulty logic, says usability and ‘cognitive design’ expert Don Norman, and our interpretation of our needs is mistaken: the goal is not simplicity; it is appropriateness, usability and enjoyability. Suggesting that what consumers really want are frustration-free, capable devices that tame our complexity-rich…