Interactive

Design Axioms

Design Axioms

(Click to enlarge) Have you ever wanted to learn interface design in a single day? Well, you won’t be able to, at least not thoroughly. You would, however, be in pretty good shape if you started that day by flipping through the Design Axioms deck. The set of 16 foundational principles contained within the illustrated [...]

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The Icon Handbook

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What do hieroglyphs, washing machines, clothes, tweeting and satellites all have in common? At one point or another they have made use of icons to communicate one thing or another. Whether it’s what temperature water to wash your t-shirt in or how to find earth amidst the other planets in the galaxy, icons are amazing [...]

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Sleepwalkers

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(Click to enlarge) Sleepwalkers was a multimedia art experience created by Doug Aitken and presented at the MOMA in 2007. The exhibition was comprised of a series of 8 moving images that were broadcast on the exterior of the MOMA buildings and consisted of the stories of 5 individuals who represented every day citizens of [...]

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Mobile Web Design by Cameron Moll

Mobile Web Design by Cameron Moll

Mobile the user; not mobile, the device. Mobile is more than just being wireless. Mobility transcends freedom from wires; it suggests an entirely different user experience. This quote from Mobile Web Design by Cameron Moll sums up the essence of his book perfectly. When designing for mobile devices, designers and developers need to think about [...]

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Thoughts on Interaction Design, Second Edition

Thoughts on Interaction Design, 2nd Edition

How often do you read a design text that impacts your life dramatically? As someone relatively new to the field of Interaction Design, John Kolko’s Thoughts on Interaction Design, Second Edition has allowed me to understand so much about the way I think, and the approach I’ve taken towards designing over the years. It’s content [...]

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Designing Web Interfaces

Designing Web Interfaces

Review by David Little Theresa Neil’s and Bill Scott’s Designing Web Interfaces (Amazon: US|CA|UK|DE) catalogues and describes seventy five design patterns – solutions to common problems – for building rich interactions on the Web. Not a book about visual design or particular technologies but rather about the whys and hows of interaction design for the Web; or [...]

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Card Sorting: Designing Usable Categories

Card Sorting

Review by Matthew Sanders Donna Spencer’s debut Card Sorting: Designing Usable Categories (Amazon US) distills several years experience applying card sorting techniques to web projects into a highly practical guide on card sorting. Some information architecture books take a general approach and cover a large range of topics in a single book. These books serve [...]

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A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web

A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web

(Guest Review by Shannon Smith) Mark Boulton just saved me a ton of money on design school. His new book, A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web, is meant to help Web designers who haven’t been to design school ‘learn the basics of graphic design and apply them to their Web designs – producing [...]

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The Advertising Concept Book

The Advertising Concept Book

What makes a good ad? What makes an award-winning creative idea? These days its easy to get distracted by fancy art direction and technological novelties, but when you strip all that away, does the idea still stand up? This is the essence of Pete Barry’s The Advertising Concept Book (Amazon: US|CA|UK|DE) in which you won’t [...]

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Subject to Change: Creating Great Products and Services for an Uncertain World

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(Guest Review by David Sherwin) Underwhelmed. We’ve all had this reaction when encountering a product or service that just didn’t cut it. Take, for example, the alarm clock next to my bed. There are two alarm switches side by side: one for me, and one for my wife. Invariably, every morning I hit the wrong [...]

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