xBlog: The visual thinking weblog
4th April 2005

Blinking Out Design

“One of my colleagues at Adaptive Path often refers to design as being derived from user research. I can certainly see how one would come to that conclusion. In many of our projects, we’ll do a bunch of user interviews, generate a model based on the analysis of the transcripts, and map an architecture to that model. That becomes a foundation for the web site, and thus the user experience. I believe in this approach, but it’s just not at all how I work. Rather, I find my designs are more often inspired by research. I find that the best designs I’ve created are produced more like writing songs or short stories than conducting an experiment using the scientific method. They just hit me. So it was revealing to read Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Blink’ in which he discusses split-second decisions…”

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4th April 2005

Edit in Place with JavaScript and CSS

“Edit in place (also called in-place editing) follows the axiom Alan Cooper calls ‘allow input wherever you have output.’ The combobox — a form element unfortunately absent from HTML — demonstrates this. In the same place where the current selection is displayed, the user can enter a value directly.”

posted in Scripts (JS/PHP/etc) | Permalink | Comments Off

4th April 2005

Camera Bits announces Here I Am photo tracking solution

“”Camera Bits, maker of the Photo Mechanic image browser, today announced a technology for tracking photo usage. Dubbed Here I Am, a press release states that by using ‘a unique mixture of peer-to-peer (P2P) and anti-virus technologies, photos can be embedded with a small program that will track the usage of the photo. The photo will then report statistics back to its creator about who is using the photo and how the photo is being used.’”

posted in Photography | Permalink | Comments Off