A Great Tip for Giving Feedback on UI Details

As some of the commenters have pointed out, this method of illustrating differences in spacing between an element is very Edward Tufte.

The Impact of Confidence

There’s a great piece on idsgn about Steve Jobs, Paul Rand and design culture.

My favourite part is this quote from Paul Rand:

The designer who voluntarily presents his client with a batch of layouts does so not out prolificacy, but out of uncertainty or fear. He thus encourages the client to assume the role of referee.

Not Just Another iPhone Template

Although there are a bunch out there, Marshall Bock’s iPhone PSD template is the best I’ve come across. Not only is it constructed from vector artwork but it contains every combination of iPhone 4, 4S, black, white, portrait and landscape you could ever want.

Brilliant.

Today’s Ugliness Won’t Last Forever

Frédéric Filloux on the state of advertising on news-related websites:

The exponential rise of inventories coupled to fragile economic conditions have pushed ad agencies to ask more (space) for less money. And, for the creativity, the encephalogram remains desperately flat.

The challenge of digital advertising on news sites is something that fascinates me. I can’t help feeling that there’s a better, more effective way of generating revenue for these sites. A multitude of gaudy adverts, bolted on to the outside of the content doesn’t appear — outwardly, at least — to be the most effective solution, yet it’s what most sites seem to do. Is it because it’s the only thing that works? Surely there’s a better way? (I ask those questions in a positive way — I do not pretend for one moment to understand all the pressures & restrictions facing purveyors of digital news.)

The only part of Filloux’s article that I’m not sure about concerns how the increase in mobile device usage will affect this trend:

Thanks to the rise of mobile internet, the pendulum is likely to swing back: smaller screens will result in fewer ads carrying more value.

There’s nothing in today’s digital news landscape that makes me believe this will be true. At the very least, it’s going to take some time to get here — news sites are still going to try & shoehorn adverts into their mobile offerings.

Take the CNN news iPhone app as an example. The main reason I don’t use it is that they interrupt the flow of the content — surely a cardinal sin — with a banner ad. Every story has the same, interruptive advertisement smack bang in the middle of the flow.

The pendulum for advertising within mobile digital news offerings would appear to be over the ‘interruptive’ end of the spectrum at the moment. Hopefully it’ll swing back — both for mobile and desktop — in time.

I Wish I Didn’t Notice This Kind of Thing

Skype 5 for Mac

Lukas Mathis on Skype 5 for Mac:

Unfortunately, instead of making the Windows version of Skype better, they’ve decided to fix the discrepancy by making the Mac version of Skype more like the Windows version.

Totally agree. The new Skype for Mac has completely thrown out the old UI for something that’s much larger and arguably more complex. The Skype blog post that announced the new version is full of rationale of why things changed but, for the life of me, I can’t understand why the Skype team changed the things they did.

Skype 2.8 wasn’t broken. Isn’t broken. One of the reasons I’m sticking with it.

The other reason? Skype 5 for Mac.

Amen

Josh Clark, on mobile apps vs HTML5 web apps:

Fact is, we all use both. According to Comscore, 37 percent of mobile users browse the web, and 35 percent use downloaded apps. Presumably those are basically the same people, since about 35 percent of mobile users have smartphones. So it’s not that one is winning over the other in terms of usage; we use both.

This is basically what I’ve been meaning to write for weeks (lesson learned; get off one’s arse sooner). There’s been too much hyperbole recently about native vs web and precious little about appropriate, technology-agnostic solutions.

Speaking of Consistency…

There’s much hullaballoo about Apple’s decision to change the purpose of the hardware switch on the side in iOS 4.2. Up until now the switch has locked the orientation of the screen. In iOS 4.2 it mutes the sound.

For the record, I think this is change for change’s sake. The reasoning behind the change seems to be one of consistency — the iPhone has a switch on the side to mute it and it appears that the powers-that-be decree the iPad should tow the line — but I think this is an example of consistency being considered over appropriateness. Having the ability to mute your phone in an instant is a good piece of functionality to have, for a variety of obvious reasons. However I think the use-case for iPads is different — you’re unlikely to walk into a meeting with your iPad and want to mute it. It’s not going to ring (well, perhaps with a VOIP app it might, but certainly nowhere near as often as your regular cellphone would). My view is that you’re far more likely to want to read your iPad laying down, so having the ability to lock the orientation is a good thing.

But, I digress. The change is happening and I’m sure we’ll all get used to it. However, whilst we’re on the subject of consistency, it drives me nuts that the iPhone version of iBooks has the buttons in different positions to the iPad’s version of iBooks.

Above: the iBooks app on the iPad. Note how the ‘Store’ button is on the left and the ‘Edit’ button is on the right.

Above: the iBooks app on the iPhone. The ‘Store’ button is now on the right and the ‘Edit’ button is on the left.

A small thing, maybe, but my muscle memory betrays me when I switch between the two. I use the iPad version most often but, on occasion, I’ll want to use the iPhone version. If I want to browse the store, I always find myself mid-Edit — my brain remembers that the Store button is on the right. ¹

I hope this gets fixed in iOS 4.2.

Typographic Chicago Map

Wonderful typographic map of Chicago.

Me wanty.

So You Want to Be a Designer?

Awesome post from Aza Raskin on what it takes to be a designer:

“If you don’t have dozens of little projects you’ve created, learned from, and even discarded, you are doing it wrong.”