Form and Future recently released an interview with yours truly in which I talk about the challenges of design and writing Designing For Emotion.
Aarron Walter
Designing into the Future
Smashing Book #3: Redesigning the Web
OmniGraffle Keyboard Shortcuts
A compendium of OmniGraffle keyboard shortcuts, discovered using CheatSheet.
Todd Zaki Warfel on Design Studio Methodology
The Design Studio method has become an important methods in Agile and Lean UX. This rapid, iterative approach blends concept creation with critique. Design Studio is a great way to jumpstart your design process, create 300-400 design concepts in just a couple of hours, or get team buy-in and ownership.
Steve Krug on When to Do Usability Tests
Testing one user early in the project is better than testing fifty near the end.
@skrug
The ROI of Usability Testing
For every dollar a company invests to increase usability, it receives $10-$100 in benefits.
John Karat, IBM Research
Hartmut Esslinger’s Design Philosophy
Form follows function emotion.
Although his focus was on the Macintosh, Jobs wanted to create a consistent design language for all Apple products. So he set up a contest to choose a world-class designer who would be for Apple what Dieter Rams was for Braun. The project was code-names Snow White, not because of his preference for the color but because the products to be designed were code-named after the seven dwarfs. The Winner was Hartmut Esslinger, a German designer who was responsible for the look of Sony’s Trinitron televisions. Jobs flew to the Black Forest region of Bavaria to meet him and was impressed not only with Esslinger’s passion but also his spirited way of driving his Mercedes at more than one hundred miles per hour.
Even though he was German, Esslinger proposed that there should be a “born-in-America gene for Apple’s DNA” that would produce a “California global” look, inspired by “Hollywood and music, a bit of rebellion, and natural sex appeal.” His guiding principle was “Form follows emotion”, a play on the familiar axiom that form follows function. He produced forty models of products to demonstrate the concept, and when JObs saw them he proclaimed, “Yes, this is it!” The Snow White look, which was adopted immediately for the Apple II c, featured white cases, tight rounded curves, and lines of thin grooves for both ventilation and decoration. Jobs offered Esslinger a contract on the condition that he move to California. They shook hands and , in Esslinger’s not-so-modest- words, “that handshake launched one of the most decisive collaborations in the history of industrial design.” Esslinger’s firm frogdesign, opened in Palo Alto in mid-1983 with a $1.2 million annual contract to work for Apple, and from then on every Apple product has included the proud declaration “Designed in California.”
Steve Jobs on Usability
This story from Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography says a lot about how usabile products change us.
The Difference Between Pain and Suck
Pain is temporary, suck is forever.
/ht @jmspool
Interview With Scott Harrison of Charity Water
@kevinrose interviews Scott Harrison of @charitywater, a non-profit that is changing the world through design, technology, marketing, and compassion. Scott’s life story is absolutely inspiring.
The Hug Machine
Buy a Coke with a hug.
The Effect of Sound on the Human Mind
Soundcloud explores the four effects sound has on us – physiological, psychological, cognitive, and behavioral – in a concrete complement to their wonderful abstract short film, Sound.
