Recently, on a LinkedIn discussion board, a designer asked if logo design was following the flat trend in UI design. The original post cited an article on DesignTaxi, “Top 10 Most-Talked-About Logo Redesigns Of 2013.” Most designers who responded to the discussion favored the idea that “All good logos can be written in sand with a stick.” The concept being: simplicity is better than complexity and one-color flat design is better than multi-colored three-dimensional design. I disagreed with a lot of the discussion. Though the UI design trend is flat and less skeuomorphic, logos are increasingly becoming three dimensional in look. This started with AT&T’s logo in 2005 and continues with Autodesk’s new logo from this year. Not many people favored this point of view and one comment indicated that the examples I shared were “exceptions, not the rule.” My point is that technology has changed and logos must be designed to look good in a variety of contexts and resolutions. Looking at the Autodesk logo, it has a three-dimensional color version, a flat color version, a black and white version like a stencil, and specs for literally reproducing it in three dimensions for signage. The key here is that logos are…
Contributor
Over the years, my students write blog entrees as part of their classwork. These contributing blogs tend to review articles with an eye for product design recommendations.
Contributor, Cultural Bias, Ethnographic & User Data, Interaction Design, Personality, Users
Changing Profiles: The Missing Edit Button
by Natesh Daniel •
Social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter have changed the nature of digital identities. The anonymous or pseudonymous online profiles of the 90s have been eschewed for real and “verified” identities. However, why do websites force us to conform to variables that describe our identities according to inflexible database fields? Identities are fluid by nature and change over time. We adopt nicknames and change them. We marry and change our surnames. We remarry and change them again. We endure ordeals in life and change our names to distance ourselves from threatening people or violent events. We change our names to avoid responsibilities. We even play with identity and names as an expressive art form. Though government agencies are adept at tracking the various forms of our identities, the common social media and web services that we use daily are not so willing. For example, Facebook has name standards. Their standards limit personal expression. They encourage people to use “real names” but names are subjective and contextual. In fact, the California law that governs identity recognizes that a name others use for you, even if not your “real name” can be legally valid. Furthermore, the “usage method” of the…
Contributor, Interaction Design, Interface Design, Long Term Memory, Reference, Users
The Post-Password Era Begins
by Natesh Daniel •
In November of 2012, Wired Magazine wrote a cover story titled, “Kill the Password,” in which Mat Honan retold how hackers stole his identity and hijacked his social media accounts. After some research, Honan shared just how easy it is for hackers to steal passwords, often with some fairly low-tech methods. Fast forward to October 9, 2013, when Adobe Systems emailed its users that hackers had stolen encrypted user passwords. However, the fact that Adobe was hacked wasn’t the problem. The email was sent to call attention to the real problem: “We recommend that you also change your password on any website where you use the same user ID or password.” Yikes! How many web-based accounts do I have that use the same user name? In January of 2012, I began documenting all the web-based accounts I use. 66 of 167 web accounts use the same user name. 40 use another. How many use the same password? Coincidentally, 66 use the same password. Despite how obviously vulnerable I am, I might have been complacent enough to ignore my own security negligence had two more Internet companies not emailed me about Adobe’s password breach. On November 16, Eventbrite emailed me to recommend that I change my password on their site because…
Contributor, Interface Design
Writing for App Development
by Natesh Daniel •
In the world of business, the writing process is often ignored. Complete thoughts are shortened to bullet points. Proofreading is considered a luxury, resulting in spelling errors or missing words. Content requirements go overlooked. This video for a large healthcare nonprofit started with a great vision and the outline of a several unique stories. The director created story boards with captions describing each scene but since there were no speaking parts in the video, a script was never written. The models in the video were merely supporting characters to the story’s real stars: the mobile apps. We used the app development process as a proxy for the writing process. The “script” was written into wireframes. However, the words that appeared on the mobile devices needed to be written as a separate document. But because a writing process was not followed, copywriting was done directly in the wireframes, resulting in overly complex wireframes in a format that was inaccessible to the producers. Too often, producers are more concerned with headlines and big pictures, not details. But just as in any app development process, each button needs a label, each alert needs a message, each form field needs a caption, each instruction needs…
Background Knowledge, Contributor, Ethnographic & User Data, Product Design Strategy, Reference, Scaffolding, Users
Guest Post: The Science of Study
by Olga Werby •
Science of Studying, a guest blog post and infographic by Aubree Ritter. http://www.besteducationdegrees.com/the-science-of-study/
Conceptual Design, Contributor, Interaction Design
Study: Sense of Touch Shapes Snap Judgments
by Vikas Gupta •
Keim, B. (2010). “Study: Sense of Touch Shapes Snap Judgments.” www.wire.com. Visited on October 15, 2012: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/06/touching-cognition/ The article explains the interaction between physical touch and social cognition. Through studies, experimental evidence shows that physical experience and mental understanding are related. The sense of touch is one of the earliest senses to be developed by humans in the developmental process, and is not lost as a person ages. What’s more interesting is that the sense of touch can subconciously alter the mental state and emotion of a person. A person holding a heavier object such as a clipboard may become more serious and the task at hand becomes more important. People are more generous holding a warm drink than a cold one. Harsh surfaces make problem solving more akward than smoother surfaces. The article notes that the visceral reaction to the sense of touch may fade when one focuses more on the task at hand, but this fact doesn’t diminish importance of the the initial tactile social-interaction that forms the first impression. By changing sensations, emotions, thoughts, and desires may be altered. Evaluation Conceptual Design: In design usaability is not the only consideration. Designs evoke emotion and can alter a users mental state,…
Contributor, Interface Design, Perception, Product Design Strategy, Users
Haptics and the Uniformity of Gloss
by Natesh Daniel •
For an introduction into the science of haptics, the article, “Primal, Acute and Easily Duped: Our Sense of Touch,” provided great examples about the accuracy and fallibility of our sense of touch. However, the proliferation of touch-sensitive input devices over the past 4 years since it was written didn’t provide the author with any insight into their pending popularity, or the effect they would have on our fingertips. If our fingertips can feel a bump the thickness of one micron, imagine the sensitivity they have even as they slide over a touch-sensitive glass tablet, a glossy plastic mouse, or an anodized smooth track pad. The more our fingertips are required to touch, drag, swipe, and pinch, even over smooth surfaces, the more abrasive those surfaces become over time and the more those subtle abrasions wear on our skin. Glass becomes scratched, plastic becomes scuffed, and biological stains build up on anodized aluminum along with all other surfaces. The point being that these smooth surfaces end up hurting, if not annoying, our fingertips over time. If the fingertips are the equivalent of the fovea of our eyes, why subject ourselves to these increasingly painful disturbances and not return to using an…