UsababbleUsability, Design, and the Rambling Man.Quickie- July 28, 2004 The UI design group at Sun attended a course on design patterns last year. I have to admit that at the time I wondered how effective patterns could be -and to some degree still do since the delineation between patterns and the cornucopia of styleguides isn't that clear to me. All that aside, there's a very useful set of ui design patterns from Jenifer Tidwell. So useful that they're going into the permanent 'Of...http://blogs.sun.com/usababble/entry/quickie Gimmie Old School- July 28, 2004 Wired ran an article the week before I went vacation on trendy electronics companies making new stuff with old panache. I have to admit I'm a sucker for one of those 50's Art Deco tv's and if I did want a digital camera then I'd want it to look like that Leica keep dreaming about. I love the move toward retro designs for one big reason: when executed well the best fit between form and function bubbles to the surface..http://blogs.sun.com/usababble/entry/gimmie_old_school Who is that Guy- July 28, 2004 Hooray for vacation! After getting the v1.0 look of Usababble finished I jetted off to see my folks and frolic in the high alpine confines of Colorado -with a weekend trip to visit a good buddy in Chicago and catch a Cubs game (we were in the bleachers and all I can really remember is that Sammy blew a couple of plays and the cubs lost to go 9 games back. Or some such.) While in Colorado I spent many hours on my mountain...http://blogs.sun.com/usababble/entry/who_is_that_guy Adopt a Director- July 2, 2004 I stumbled on this older document that presents several guidelines for building a user experience team. I found number 2 of interest: Executives and managers should set the standard for "customer-centric" behavior. Customer-centric means the customer comes first, all the time. We've actually observed executives making fun of customers during usability testing, behind the one-way mirror but in front of marketing and development teams. Behaviors like this set a.http://blogs.sun.com/usababble/entry/adopt_a_director |