In preparation for UX Australia, I recently read keynote speaker Alex Wright's 2007 book Glut. Beyond the obscure title, Wright's book is an entertaining history of what we now call information architecture (even if...
This visualisation from Andrei Michael Herasimchuk is not only a beautiful interactive visualisation in its own right, but also a great example of how javascript engines like JQuery (used here), Mootools and Scriptalicious now allow designers to create dynamic data visualisations without having to resort to Flash or Silverlight.
When I was at design school, I remember one of my lecturers complaining that the majority of design students were "idiot savants", unable to describe in any coherence what they did. Truth is, many designers went through school far too busy wanting to draw to pay attention to other forms of communication.
Even though a lot of people talk about 'Death By Powerpoint', I've found over the course of my Master's that a well done presentation with slides can be incredibly useful and compelling. (It's not easy though: finding big images to talk to is usually the hardest part!). If more people read Garr Reynolds' Presentation Zen or Nancy Duarte's...
While statistics can have impact, often it gets to a point where the numbers are meaningless. One of the most poetic efforts in counteracting this is the work of Chris Jordan. His collection "Running the Numbers" takes disturbing stats of American culture, and shows them in a zoomed out infographic.
I've been a fan of Dan Saffer's commentary for a while, having first come across his great comments on design theory on his site site, and then getting his book Designing For Interaction. So it's great to see that NYC IxDA have posted his recent talk "Tap is the New Click
This is one that popped up via Infosthetics. The following movie uses PICOL icons (short for Pictorial Communication Language) to show the history of the internet, going back to 1959. (I have to admit, at over 7 minutes, I started to skip after a minute...
This has to be exciting. Gary Hustwit, the director of Helvetica, has done another movie, this time looking at industrial design. Take a look at the movie preview, featuring Jonathan Ive, Dunne and Raby...
While it's bad reporting to discuss a book based on the reviews, arguably if you were going to do it to any author, it'd be Malcolm Gladwell. Why? He has an uncanny knack for pithy catchphrases that jump out of the pages. In The Tipping Point...
As the recession bears down on us, at times in the design world it's hard to avoid the worry that our roles will be the first to go. However, maybe the one thing in our favour is the thing that gives us a job in the first place ... that people are understandable, but not entirely rational. Take the report from the...
