I feel nothing.
I can not distinguish between them.
I need the label to understand them.
My eyes hurt.
- @ephanypdx I use Timemachine although a lot less often then I should. I also attach docs to draft emails in gmail ;)
- Featured Content
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December11th
Tweet This!when the use of icons goes terribly wrong
Posted in: Design
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December4th
Business lunch in Portland?
Posted in: Portland Oregon
Where would you go for a lunch meeting here in Portland.
It must be yummy, reflect well on our fair city and quiet enough to have a conversation.
Here are the responses from my twitter friends.
skry… Navarre, Blue Hour, Portland City Grill
benry…. “I’d suggest Higgins Restaurant and Bar”
DevilGirlPDX…. “Highly recommend @BellyTimberPDX ! The menu is creative, but simple with a few items to raise eyebrows.”
nick …. ” Heathman, Thyphoon, Newport Bay on the waterfront, or even Henry’s.” (Newport Bay on the waterfront has closed )
ranielle…. “I’m a fan of the Heathman Restaurant.”
joshuarr…. “Bridgeport Brewery (Pearl), BellyTImber (Hawthorne), ten-01 (pearl), Clyde Common (NW), or Whiffies. )”
chadmor…. “Clyde Common is pretty good for that pdx eclectic charm. Fats pub is good for neighborhood charm.”
What’s your suggestion? The meeting is next Tuesday.
Thanks!
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December4th
Ten out of Tenn gets a 10
Posted in: Design, Inspiration, Portland Oregon
This is such a beautiful and effective site. I love the the subtlety of the navigation and social media links.
The colors are excellent.
My eyes moves around easily finding everything I would expect to find.
and who could deny the beauty and brillance of this? check out the site to experience the roll over interaction.
This tour will be in Portland on Sunday. Maybe I’ll see you there.
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November20th
There are many ways to engage your users, one of these ways is to allow them to register their opinion in a quick and simple way. This trend is a nice way to engage the majority of people will never actually construct a written comment or craft any other type of content. It’s the “low barrier to entry” User Generated Content (UGC).
You often see this done with a nice set of buttons that range from approval to disapproval depending on the social environment of the application. Facebook for example only allows you to “Like” something, which is perfectly appropriate, as there is no sense in giving people tools to be mean spirited with. A person can do plenty of damage with the current set of features. Although, it would be nice to have a range of “nice” or constructive” opinions you could register via a simple button.
One thing to remember when designing this type of User Generated Opinion (UGO) functionality is that you must have a scalable plan.
The plan needs to consider the effect of these opinions at project launch and a year later.
It needs to envision how will they impact the experience when you have 100 participates, 1000 participates or tens of thousands.How can these ratings establish and maintain value, usefulness and creditability over time?
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November16th
Bringing Stakeholders into the User Experience Plan
Posted in: Deliverables, Research, Strategy, User Experience
I recently worked on a project that ran into a few issues when we got to the design comp phase. Essentially when the comps were circulated internally, a number of stakeholders felt their needs where not being met. You may ask how we got all the way to comps before this came up and I could talk through the entire project identifying places where the process could have been improved, but I’d like to bring the focus to the beginning of the project where I think we missed an opportunity to succeed.
The responsibility of a User Experience Designer are vast. We take a leadership role in project definition, we gather, validate and nurture the needs of not just customers but of the business and the stakeholders. I’ve distinguished the business from the stakeholders on purpose because I think this is where the problems on the my project began. Read More
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October26th
I’ve noticed that the best creative minds tend to work in multiple mediums. They have a primary focus, something they really do well, but they always have something else going on on the side or regularly try new creative endeavors.
Keeping my creative pursuits diversified is really important to me. I find it particularly important for those of us who work primarily in the digital realm to spend time working with physical materials. This isn’t a problem for me I love to sew and make art of all kinds, but recently I’ve been a bit stuck and haven’t be able to decide what to work on, so last week I ran a little contest. I guess I was crowd-sourcing inspiration.…
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October23rd
Have you seen this commercial from Dawn? Dawn Commercial, Wash Away: Help Dawn Save Wildlife
It such a perfect marriage of brand, product and cause. When you first see it you get that “of course” feeling. We all know Dawn cuts grease and is mild on your hands right. Why wouldn’t it be the best thing to remove oil from animals fur and feathers.
The interesting thing is that the campaign idea was brought to Dawn from the people who actually work on recoveries, see this NY Times article, they found it was the best product to use and brought it to Dawn’s attention.
I think they’ve done a nice job with the campaign. It’s on brand, reinforces the value proposition of the product and is telling a true story. There is conversation on the web about Proctor and Gamble’s continued use of animal testing, but that’s another issue. This campaign I like and it is raising money for an issue I think gets way too little attention.
If you buy Dawn go here to make sure a dollar of your purchase goes to save wildlife.
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October22nd
I’ll be doing a little presentation at next week’s Show n’ Tell. The theme for the night is “What are you doing to change the world?”. While I’m not sure I’m quite changing the world (yet) I am formulating approaches to my work that will contribute positively to the world and at the very least avoid causing harm.
In the presentation will be talking about Strategy. It’s a word that is thrown around so much in business and in particular in the marketing/advertising/creative industries world, but what does it mean? What are the implications of creating and implementing one? I will talk about the underling spirit of the term and introduce ways we can avoid doing harm when we create one.
I hope you will come on down. This event is part of the very first, The New Communicators event. Check it out. Come on out.
Thanks Substance
