Jony Ive on Simplicity

Posted inReposts2018-08-12
Why do we assume that simple is good? Because with physical products, we have to feel we can dominate them. As you bring order to complexity, you find a way to make the product defer to you. Simplicity isn’t just a visual style. It’s not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of the complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. For example, to have no screws on something, you can end up having a product that is so convoluted and so complex. The better way is to go deeper…

Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

Posted inReviews2018-08-11
Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager Read hilarious stories with serious lessons that Michael Lopp extracts from his varied and sometimes bizarre experiences as a manager at Apple, Pinterest, Palantir, Netscape, Symantec, Slack, and Borland. Many of the stories first appeared in primitive form in Lopp’s perennially popular blog, Rands in Repose. The Third Edition of Managing Humans contains a whole new season of episodes from the ongoing saga of Lopp’s adventures in Silicon Valley, together with classic episodes remastered for high fidelity and freshness. Whether you’re an aspiring manager, a current manager, or just…

Is this my interface or yours?

Posted inReposts2018-08-11
Is this my interface or yours? As you tap around from app to app, you’ll see that there’s no standard way to refer to the things that belong to you within an interface. Some say it’s mystuff. Some say it’s your stuff. If you’re designing an interface, does it matter whether the words are written from the user’s point of view or the product’s point of view? I think there’s a subtle difference, and it all depends on how you want your users to feel while using your product. John Saito

The Laws of Simplicity (Design, Technology, Business, Life)

Posted inReviews2018-08-11
The Laws of Simplicity (Design, Technology, Business, Life) The basic objective of the book, the Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life) is to promote simplicity. The book has been authored by John Maeda and it equates simplicity with sanity. We are living in an era which is heavily dependent on technology, which can be complicated. for example, DVD players come with many menus and options and softwares which are bundled with voluminous manuals which are often too tedious to go through. However, despite the technological advancements, we want things that are easy and simple to use and, at…

The life of a designer is a life of fight. Fight against the ugliness. Just like a doctor fights against disease. For us, the visual disease is what we have around, and what we try to do is cure it somehow with design.

Massimo Vignelli

The life of a designer is a life of fight

Mobile Internet Statistics and Facts 2016

Posted inReposts2016-12-03
digital-marketing-engineer: There are more mobile internet users than desktop internet users; 52.7% of global internet users access the internet via mobile, and 75.1% of U.S. internet users access the internet via mobile. Mobile media time in the U.S. has exceeded desktop, with mobile media time estimated to be 51% while desktop media time is estimated to be 42%. While there are more mobile users than desktop users, mobile advertising spend is still slightly lower than desktop advertising spend; mobile advertising spend currently represents 49% of digital advertising spend, compared to desktop at 51%. Mobile advertising spend is projected to account…

How Google Ventures Uses Design Sprints to Ship Great Products

Posted inReposts2016-03-05
How Google Ventures Uses Design Sprints to Ship Great ProductsThe brainstorming meeting, as we know it, is broken. Opinions fly around the room and the “solution” chosen can often rely more on power dynamics than the facts. As former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale once quipped, “If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.” Enter the design sprint, an effective means of testing the potential of your next great idea in a five-day, high-stakes challenge.

What I Saw Inside Apple’s Top-Secret Input Lab — Backchannel

Posted inReposts2015-10-14
What I Saw Inside Apple’s Top-Secret Input Lab — Backchannel Insiders call it Vallco Parkway. The nondescript building, just a quick hop down 280 from Apple’s Infinite Loop headquarters in Cupertino, houses a nerve center crucial to the fingers of everyone who uses a Macintosh. This is the Input Design Lab, where Apple designs and tests the prototypes for new keyboards, trackpads, and mouses. It’s stuffed with a treasure trove of precision machinery that would make geek hearts patter like a pneumatic drill. Until now, no reporter or press photographer has crossed the threshold. But to mark a new set…

Configuring App Transport Security Exceptions in iOS 9 and OSX 10.11

Posted inReposts2015-07-26
Configuring App Transport Security Exceptions in iOS 9 and OSX 10.11 App Transport Security (ATS) lets an app add a declaration to its Info.plist file that specifies the domains with which it needs secure communication. ATS prevents accidental disclosure, provides secure default behavior, and is easy to adopt. You should adopt ATS as soon as possible, regardless of whether you’re creating a new app or updating an existing one. If you’re developing a new app, you should use HTTPS exclusively. If you have an existing app, you should use HTTPS as much as you can right now, and create a…

Mathematical Web Typography

Posted inReposts2015-07-15
Mathematical Web Typography When it comes to designing for the Web I like to follow a handful of general principles. First, design for the medium, or as Frank Chimero puts it, follow “the grain of the Web”. The Web is fluid - based on screens and devices of varying sizes – and typography on the Web should reflect that. Second, design content-out, which usually means designing around a strong typographical base since the large majority of Web content and UI is text. And last, design with modular scales. Things built on the Web should be fluid and infinitely scalable. Using…

Ex Machina – Easter Egg

Posted inReposts2015-05-19
moviecode: In the movie “Ex Machina” (which is really great BTW) this code can briefly be seen:    #BlueBook code decryption    import sys   def sieve(n):       x = [1] * n       x[1] = 0       for i in range(2,n/2):               j = 2 * i               while j < n:                       x[j]=0                       j = j+i       return x    def prime(n,x):       i = 1 …

Invisible animation

Posted inReposts2015-02-28
Invisible animationThere’s no doubt that animating user interfaces is a rising trend. Risen enough that the emphasis is often put on the animation itself, rather than on improving the user experience through subtle and functional animation. Pasquale D’Silva gave some good advice in his talk at Web Direction South in 2013, including: Good animation is invisible. You shouldn’t notice that you’re looking at animation. It’s great advice that we — the team behind Campaign Monitor’s email builder — have been trying to apply with a few principles in mind: animation must improve the usability, feel natural and subtle, and give feedback to the user.…