“ Microsoft needs to shift the culture from planning the exact features to planning a set of possible features, and letting customers guide us.
Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect
Designing Innovations
Todd Walker's design, innovation and creative strategy ephemera. Read, enjoy, share, discard.
Richer by the Day » Chrysler Gas Card
Interesting analysis of Chrysler’s innovative, but ultimately disingenous, “Let’s Refuel America” promotion where they lock in $2.99/gallon gas for three years.
Information Design Patterns. A reference site for various, well, information design patterns, naturally. Not so thrilled with the nested scrolling blog section, but the individual entries for each pattern or approach are pretty great.
Wells Fargo's New ATM Interface - useful and beautiful
When my family and I moved to Colorado from New York, I had assumed I could just stick with Bank of America. It is, afterall, named “Bank of America” and one would assume there were be a wide availability of branch locations in all 50 states. Nope. A quick reference to BoA’s nifty iPhone-formatted site shows that the nearest branch to me is in Souix City, Iowa. Plenty of ATMs nearby, but none that accept deposits. So, we switched to Wells Fargo, which has plenty of convenient locations nearby and pretty decent online banking, a feature of BoA that I was loathe to give up.
Today when I used the Wells Fargo ATM around the corner from the office, I noticed the new interface design. It features large, clean, easy to read type with simple colors and customized quicklink selections based on your previous ATM usage history. Of instance, if you typically use the machine to buy stamps or you always withdraw a specific amount of cash, those links are on the left side ready to quickly access after typing in your PIN. Makes me glad to make the switch. (Their online banking has some pretty great interface options that make me happy to leave BoA, as well.)
For a more detailed anaysis, complete with screenshots, check out Elson User Experience. I just wish I could figure out who is responsible for the design.
Jones Soda carbonated candy. Not nearly as fizzy as I’d expected, or wanted. A “serving size” is 4, so maybe you have to pop a few in your mouth to get the desired effect. The instructions on the back suggest dropping them in the soda for extra “punch”.
Addictomatic: Inhale the Web
There’s occasionally talk about what “post-Google search” might look like. Addictomatic is one take, and not a bad one.
“ The Twitter population is a rounding error compared with Web mail or Yahoo Messenger, AIM, MSN Messenger.
What Twitter brings to the party - CNET News.com
Sometimes it’s hard to keep perspective in all the breatheless hype around new technologies. Twitter’s a great case. THis doesn’t mean it’s not valuable now or that it won’t be huge later, but it does mean you should be careful and try to get some perspective on who your customer really is before you double down on the latest early adopter trend. Early adopters try a lot of things, most of which go up in smoke.
Google User Experience - Ten Principles to Make Things "Googley"
- Focus on people – their lives, their work, their dreams.
- Every millisecond counts.
- Simplicity is powerful.
- Dare to innovate.
- Design for the world.
- Plan for today’s and tomorrow’s business.
- Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
- Be worthy of people’s trust.
- Add a human touch.
QR codes are paving a way to share and hide media » Hell Yeah Dude - A voice for a young generation • Webliography
We’re not there yet, but the 2-D barcode is about to break into the mainstream in the US.
“ Some of them have food in their beard. Some of them have never heard of Cannes. Some are women who smoke pipes. This is big tent creativity. It’s big enough for designers, technologists and, yes, storytellers.
Nick Law: The Next Creative Revolution | Creativity Online
Announcing the death of the copywriter/art director partnership model. Amen, brother.