24 9 / 2011
Empathetic Design
I come across people making assumptions and decisions every day that are based solely on their personal perspective.
In the design and interactive industry, this is a major problem.
Some people are really good at designing things for themselves, or people of a similar perspective. This is great, if you make up the major and only audience for whom you are designing for.
When I say design, I mean anything that someone else interacts with: website copy, API, UI, information architecture, etc.
It’s an easy mistake to make. We naturally want to create things that resonate with ourselves. It’s enjoyable and self gratifying. But, it’s very easy to forget who you are audience is composed of; what their preferences, limitations, skills and perceptions are.
It’s also very easy to justify your decisions by making a sweeping assumption that you are part of the audience, or that if you have a preference, certainly the rest of the world must!
Following trends
Some like to design everything with a specific style. This is not very affective, and hardly good “design” even if it looks good aesthetically.
Do you really need to give a retro-worn look to that website you did for your trucking company client, because that’s your style?
Should you create a minimalistic design for a children’s daycare service, because it resonates with you personally?
Talent
A skilled and talented designer is versatile. They can empathize with their target audience and understand what makes sense for them. They deploy the aesthetic and functionality design that resonates with their audience, and not necessarily them on a personal level.
I believe naturally talented designers have the ability to go outside of themselves, and empathize with their audience. Walk in their audiences shoes. And if they deploy methods and tools like proper research, personas and scenario testing they can create things that are a joy to use and look at, for their intended audience.
12 6 / 2011
Super 8
Just got back from watching Super 8 at the local theatre.
I didn’t have many expectations going in. Didn’t read much about it. Just saw a few previews while seeing other films in the last few months. Looked to have some sci-fi elements, so I figured I would check it out.
I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Goonies meets ET meets District 9?
The film focused on a group of 5 boys that were working on their own amateur film project. Joe was dealing with some problems that would be tough for anyone, especially a boy, and his father wasn’t much of a crutch. He mostly relied on his group of buddies to keep him occupied.
The group takes you through a lot of adventure, and there’s some good humor sprinkled throughout as well. A little pre-teen / teen love (nothing corny) and friendship trials that they all go through.
The sci-fi aspects were quite suppressed. If you’re looking for deep insights into the mechanics or back story of a science fiction storyline, you won’t find it here. But, that’s OK. The film was entertaining, human, fun and serious all at the same time.
Overall, it’s a great film. I liked the characters and was able to relate to most of them, the acting was well done, CG was good and the cinematography was done well and perfectly captured the time era (late 70’s) it was based in.
Check it out!
30 3 / 2011
Heading south before I’ll be too busy to
This Friday morning my wife and two friends of ours will be heading down to the Yucatan Peninsula area of Mexico. Going to enjoy the sun and find a little clarity before diving back into the busy time of work.
At LemonStand we just brought on another enthusiastic soul and some very exciting things are bubbling to the top of our internal roadmap. More exciting is the fact that our people power is growing and we’re able to push forward faster than ever.
We’ll be moving into a new office on May 1st too. It’s only a block away, but it’ll give us the room to bring on a handful more ninjas of various kinds in the next year.
17 3 / 2011
StackLayout - A flexible width, component based CSS layout system
Really liking the concept behind this CSS grid system. It’s fluid and adaptive. Good stuff.
17 3 / 2011
jQuery File Upload Demo
Really like this jQuery file upload plug-in. Works great. Has some cool queueing features too.
12 3 / 2011
Humans TXT: We Are People, Not Machines.
What is humans.txt?
It’s an initiative for knowing the people behind a website. It’s a TXT file that contains information about the different people who have contributed to building the website.
26 2 / 2011
We’re Giving Away $8738 Worth of Prizes
Yesterday, we launched the LemonStand Giveaway. It’s in celebration of having been released for 1-year (since Alpha).
A bunch of great companies came on board to sponsor prizes. Companies like Typekit, Media Temple, Site5, MailChimp, Freshbooks and more.
We also had a bunch of great folks create custom themes for the giveaway. 3 different themes in fact.
The top 3 prizes consist of a complete package for starting an online store: LemonStand license, hosting package & custom theme.
Launching the giveaway on Friday made for a great day. But next time, I think we’ll do it on a Monday or Tuesday and compare results.
24 2 / 2011
Apple intros MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt, quad Core i7 | Electronista
Was waiting for this upgrade. Very nice.
My early 2008 MB Pro has been terrific. It’s powered on a really big chunk of the day, and I haul it from home to office 5 days a week. Great little workhorse that looks pretty as well.
