30 Jul, 2008
Posted by: admin In: information design| visualization
A friend who tends to do very interesting (and often confidential) research about media just sent me this lovely diagram. Of what, you ask? Your guess is as good as mine.
Said friend writes: “That’s a charmingly normal distribution… I love it when, every now and then, data turns out exactly like you want it to… […]
08 Jul, 2008
Posted by: admin In: design| information design| search| user experience| visualization
Amaztype uses the amazon.com API to pull search results for a given keyword, then returns results in the shape of the search term. My name returns a lot of different editions of Julie of the Wolves.
(Another great find from Kristin.)
04 Jul, 2008
Posted by: admin In: design| information design| social media| user experience| user interface| visualization
Wordle has been making the rounds lately but I’ve just gotten in to mess around with it — and it’s fabulous.
Here is a Wordle rendering of all of my del.icio.us tags:
Sure, it’s just a tag cloud. But, because the final layout is so well done and the creation interface is so thoughtfully put together, […]
Salon.com’s coverage of Britney Spears is great. “We’re only interested in the cultural manifestations of Britney-dom, we swear.” This article points to a Google Trends infographic which embodies the essence of good information display: lots of data pulled together in a way that tells a compelling story.
One of the highlights of LifeCamp was the discussion about theme words and what our theme word for 2008 would be. (Mine was “create.”) Chris Messina posted his to twitter, and thus a meme was born. See Chris’s recounting: Kicking off 2008 with a themeword
I wondered if there were any interesting patterns in the #themewords, […]
29 Nov, 2007
Posted by: linoleumjet In: design| error messages| information design| user experience| user interface
Why do I have to answer so many questions when I just want to shut down my laptop and go home?
Textpad: Do you want to save untitled.txt?
Me: No! If I’d wanted to save it, I would have.
Entourage: Do you want to empty your junkmail folder?
Me: I don’t care! Maybe I do, but why do I […]
10 Nov, 2007
Posted by: linoleumjet In: information design| user experience| user interface
Another conference/seminar/meeting, another reference to netflix.com.
Many web eons ago, back in 2001 or so, amazon.com was brought up in every conversation of “what a website should look like.” Build tabs! Tabs are neat. They’re like file folders. People understand them. Just keep adding more tabs as you get or define new content areas. If you […]
06 Nov, 2007
Posted by: linoleumjet In: information design| user experience| user interface
A week ago the Bay Area experienced a 5.6 magnitude earthquake. Below, part of the USGS “Did you feel it?” earthquake report form:
Your experience of the earthquake:
How would you best describe the ground shaking?
No description
Not felt
Weak
Mild
Moderate
Strong
Violent
About how many seconds did the shaking last? []
How would you best describe your reaction?
No answer/No
reaction/Not felt
Very little reaction
Excitement
Somewhat […]
15 Oct, 2007
Posted by: linoleumjet In: design| information design| user experience| user interface
The Solar Magnitude Forum concept is essentially that a given user will be most interested in topics that are either 1. very closely aligned with her interests or 2. unusually important and interesting.
The idea was initially defined within the context of the asynchronous discussion forum, but it could be extended further.
A couple days ago I […]
30 May, 2007
Posted by: linoleumjet In: information design| user experience| user interface
I’m listening to All Things Considered, where they’re doing an admirable job of explaining the new Microsoft Surface. Interesting confluence of very different media.
NPR story
more about MS Surface
