Posts Tagged: design

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31
Aug 10

Word v Pages

If you can’t get excited about your word processor, stop reading now. But if you can get excited, Betalogue offers a great side-by-side compairson of Microsoft Word and Apple’s take on the classic word processor, Pages:

“In Word 2008, you have at least three different ways of viewing the same information (the style[s] of the current selection), i.e. a palette, a toolbar control, and a dialog box, and none of them is able to provide any useful information. In addition, each of them provides a difference piece of false information!”

Lots of screen shots. Good write up. Check it out.

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5
Aug 10

Experience IS the Product

Merholz writes a good reminder in Experience IS the Product… and the only thing users care about.

Building a product or a feature that works is only half the problem, and probably a lot less of the problem at that. How do people find get it? How do they learn how to use it? When do they use it? How do they fix it if it breaks? How do they pay for it? What happens if they don’t use it?

Do they even *like* using it?

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2
Jun 10

Global Navigation

Esther Derby has some advice about site (or application) navigation:

“Design global navigation last.  Before designing global navigation, design screens with only local navigation–how people do the work of that screen.  Then, as parts of the system are ready to release, create an application map that shows hub and spoke relationships, selection screens, modal screens and links and build just enough global navigation for the current feature set.”

I like the idea. Seems like it would generate more a more natural organization in the tool instead of a lot of artificial constructs used to categorize and sort the functionality ahead of time.

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16
Feb 10

I’d like that feature, and that one, and that one…

Marco considers input from his users but ultimately says:

“If I let users steer product decisions, the result would be a massive codebase producing a bloated, cluttered product full of features that hardly anyone used at the expense of everyday usability and polish on the features that matter. Like Microsoft Word. Or Firefox.

By listening too much to outside suggestions, I’d destroy the very reason why I’m receiving them.”

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8
Feb 10

Make your own Font

YourFont let’s you make a font from your handwriting. Cool.

Picture 1

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