Scraps

shortformblog: About time: Facebook now allows fan page owners...

Thu, 31 May 2012 07:47:26 -0700

About time: Facebook now allows fan page owners to schedule their posts and give team member roles to users — and as a result, taking away some of the usefulness of dedicated apps like HootSuite. Took ‘em long enough.

Omnigraffle is a girl’s best friend. #ux (Taken with...

Wed, 30 May 2012 09:46:00 -0700

Omnigraffle is a girl’s best friend. #ux (Taken with Instagram at Dachis Group Portland)

Workflow in short: Starts from the content out and encourages...

Tue, 29 May 2012 10:12:54 -0700

Workflow in short: Starts from the content out and encourages to spend time to really think it through. After the first content drafts are done I convert them to HTML prototypes, open them up in a mobile browser, and look how the order of the content works there. I do sketching and visual design mostly before and after prototyping. After first sketches I usually go pretty fast back to the HTML prototype and start adding some CSS to see how my ideas actually work. The whole process happens in iterations which usually go somewhat like this: sketch → prototype → design → test → discuss until it works. The order might not be this linear in reality, but I wanted to simplify my diagram for this article.

Responsive Typography | Information Architects

Fri, 25 May 2012 14:30:04 -0700

Responsive Typography | Information Architects:

iA is back with a redesign and a really wonderful piece on the state of web typography.

This Advertising Life

Fri, 25 May 2012 09:01:30 -0700

This Advertising Life:

Introducing Facebook Camera. An app that lets you post photos to...

Thu, 24 May 2012 11:05:00 -0700

Introducing Facebook Camera.

An app that lets you post photos to your Facebook Timeline.

And add photo filters.

And…….?

This makes the $1 billion for Instagram seem even more unbelievable.

Facebook appears to be testing a way for pages to customize...

Thu, 24 May 2012 10:23:35 -0700

Facebook appears to be testing a way for pages to customize their presence for different regions while maintaining a unified total Like count across all pages.

It seems users who visit a page will be automatically directed to the version specific to their region, but they can access any regional or global page through a drop-down menu. Many pages have amassed large global fan bases, but any given post reaches a small subset of those people. Sharing region-specific content with the right audience can have a big impact on reach and engagement. This latest test allows each page to display the same total fan count, which could encourage brands and organizations to expand their regional efforts without worrying about the perception of having pages with a low number of Likes.

Finally, geez.

A survey of 11 recent Portland tech startups, ranging from...

Wed, 23 May 2012 10:39:46 -0700

A survey of 11 recent Portland tech startups, ranging from companies with four employees to 80, reveals that their total workforces were typically 70 percent to 80 percent male, while their development and engineering teams—i.e., the people who write the actual code—have even fewer women. In many cases, none.

So glad to have found this piece from the Willamette Week! Super solid reporting on the state of gender diversity in the startup boom here in Portland.

betabetabeatbeat: “Is venture capital a sexist industry?”...

Wed, 23 May 2012 10:10:35 -0700

betabetabeatbeat:

“Is venture capital a sexist industry?” -David Kirkpatrick, moderating the all-male investing panel at TechCrunch Disrupt

reuters: During an interview with ABC News on Wednesday, U.S....

Wed, 09 May 2012 12:45:40 -0700

reuters:

During an interview with ABC News on Wednesday, U.S. President Barack Obama said he believed same-sex marriage should be legal.

Glimpse at a #ux designer’s desk. (Taken with Instagram at...

Mon, 07 May 2012 16:47:00 -0700

Glimpse at a #ux designer’s desk. (Taken with Instagram at Dachis Group Portland)

absurdlakefront: As seen on Facebook. (posted by Homestead...

Thu, 03 May 2012 08:30:21 -0700

absurdlakefront:

As seen on Facebook. (posted by Homestead Survival)

A sweet lesson on patience.

A NYC Taxi driver wrote:

I arrived at the address and honked the horn. After waiting a few minutes I honked again. Since this was going to be my last ride of my shift I thought about just driving away, but instead I put the car in park and walked up to the door and knocked.. ‘Just a minute’, answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor.

After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 90’s stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940’s movie.

By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets.

There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard
box filled with photos and glassware.

‘Would you carry my bag out to the car?’ she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman.

She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb.

She kept thanking me for my kindness. ‘It’s nothing’, I told her.. ‘I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother to be treated.’

‘Oh, you’re such a good boy, she said. When we got in the cab, she gave me an address and then asked, ‘Could you drive
through downtown?’

‘It’s not the shortest way,’ I answered quickly..

‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I’m in no hurry. I’m on my way to a hospice.

I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening. ‘I don’t have any family left,’ she continued in a soft voice..’The doctor says I don’t have very long.’ I quietly reached over and shut off the meter.

‘What route would you like me to take?’ I asked.

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator.

We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.

Sometimes she’d ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, ‘I’m tired.Let’s go now’.
We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico.

Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move.
They must have been expecting her.

I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.

‘How much do I owe you?’ She asked, reaching into her purse.

‘Nothing,’ I said

‘You have to make a living,’ she answered.

‘There are other passengers,’ I responded.

Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug.She held onto me tightly.

‘You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dim morning light.. Behind me, a door shut.It was the sound of the closing of a life..

I didn’t pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of that day,I could hardly talk.What if that woman had gotten an angry driver,or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?

On a quick review, I don’t think that I have done anything more important in my life.

We’re conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments.

But great moments often catch us unaware-beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.

This is the kind of story I’d be happy to read every day.

"Design is the manipulation of materials (wood, cloth). For a long time, designers thought of screens..."

Wed, 02 May 2012 12:13:00 -0700

“Design is the manipulation of materials (wood, cloth). For a long time, designers thought of screens and pages as their design medium. But really content is our medium.”

- LukeW | UX Immersion: The Mobile Frontier (via soxiam)

"Fifty-four per cent of all Android tablets are Amazon Kindle Fires, according to research from..."

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:25:16 -0700

“Fifty-four per cent of all Android tablets are Amazon Kindle Fires, according to research from ComScore. The second most popular tablet, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, has 15.4 per cent of the market.”

- Amazon Kindle Fire is top Android tablet

Welp that certainly makes the “what Android tablets should I optimize most for” game easier.

Five responsive web design pitfalls to avoid

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 09:22:06 -0700

Five responsive web design pitfalls to avoid:

Hiding content

Bloating it up

Ignoring contextual conventions

Serving a one-size-fits-all experience

Relying on device dimensions

Brad Frost put together five great things to remember about responsive web that basically all boil down to this: Use common sense to deliver the best possible experience for the greatest number of users.

I would like to submit my own pitfall: trying to design responsively without writing a line of code. Nothing beats actually seeing a website break in real time, instead of trying to guess in Photoshop.

Bearded: Mocking Up Is Hard To Do

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 11:20:47 -0700

Bearded: Mocking Up Is Hard To Do:

beardedstudio:

Recently at Bearded we made a pretty drastic decision in terms of our web design process: we’re not creating mock-ups anymore.

That is to say: we’re not creating flat, Photoshop/Illustrator-produced mock-ups of websites, which we present to clients as JPGs or PNGs. And that’s because we’re…

This guys, this.

laughingsquid: Cool Pranks for Cats To Play on Their Owners

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:50:29 -0700

laughingsquid:

Cool Pranks for Cats To Play on Their Owners

"The first wave of the emotional web caught hold over the last year with services like Instagram,..."

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:40:58 -0700

“

The first wave of the emotional web caught hold over the last year with services like Instagram, Tumblr and About.me.

It’s easy to feel the personal appeal of a product like Instagram. Though the app is simple, it somehow transforms a phone into a window through which we see the lives of the people we love. This feeling of closeness isn’t purely scientific — but somehow by using filters we don’t see exactly *what* the photographer visually sees (as they would with a raw picture) but *how* they see it.

Said another way, Instagram makes our pictures less accurate, but what we lose in exactness we gain in the ability to create instant nostalgia and show our view of our subjects. At its core, Instagram is a simple tool that doesn’t make us better photographers, but better communicators of feelings and experiences, and thats what matters to people.

”

- The ugly truth: why beautiful wins in 2012

Love this description of Instagram, and what the article goes on to say about Tumblr and About.me.

There’s a stark contrast when you look at services like Facebook and Twitter versus the “social networks” that are coming out in the past few years. Social networks has proven that people are yearning to connect in more human ways over the internet; apps like Instagram are proving that people both take pride in that human interaction and want to take their online interaction to a new, more emotional level.

President Obama Slow Jams the News I’m just going to leave...

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 07:19:41 -0700

President Obama Slow Jams the News

I’m just going to leave this here, so I can remember how awesome the POTUS is later.

Pragmatic responsive design

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 17:55:56 -0700