Gay rights visualization is a beauty!

The Guardian published an interactive and colorful dataviz on gay right on US states. One thing that strike me about this visualization is how properly color coding is used. Many times, you see a visualization that colors are only used to cherrify the piece. Designers at the Guardian used faded color to indicate limited support and full opaque color for maximum support for a specific gay right in a state, which allows us to look at the overall picture and answer visually the generic question of “How much this country/state is supportive on gay rights?”.

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The clock question

For years, I have been looking for a clock for my apartment, but couldn’t end up buying one.

I have a very weird relationship with clocks. It started after I realized wearing Casio G-Shock Digital watches weren’t that cool and switched back to analog clocks after listening to my dad’s advice. He didn’t explain why, he simply said “Analog clocks are better..”.

Something I started enjoying with analog clocks was that, they don’t indicate only the current time, but also provides a spatial area for you to imagine how much you have until the class ends, how long did you talk on the phone. Although we are pretty quick about it by now, still analog clocks don’t require you to do math to calculate how much time it will take for you.

This is how much time
I spent writing this post

This is how long
I talked to Asli on Skype

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Next OS X and desktop ?= mobile

In user experience design, it is very common to approach desktop platforms different from the mobile platforms. On the technical side, desktop brings larger screen space, faster cpu, continuous internet connectivity, and a mouse/keyboard based interaction. On the user behavior side, users are assumed to be more focused and less in a rush, and spending more time, surfing, working, designing, etc…

But since the introduction of iPhones and iPads and Androids, we are seeing that the differences above that are taken for granted seem to disappear. Today, Apple released the developer beta version of its next OS X release, OS X Mountain Lion, and the new features list proved to be a very significant example of how the boundaries between mobile and desktop platforms are disappearing. The features that will be adapted to OS X are below:

• Applications like Messages, Notes, Reminders: These basic functionality that are unified between iPad and iPhone is now coming to desktop.
• Notifications: MacOS never had a decent notification system and there were 3rd party applications like Growl to fill that hole. Now the notification system that was introduced first in iOS 5 is being ported to the next version of MacOS (note that, Apple dropped the ‘Mac’ from the name, but I will use both versions for clarity).
• Twitter integration: Self speaking.
• Game Center: another integration with iOS devices to enable social gaming features.

You can read more about these features in the Gizmodo article.

What is interesting? The desktop inheriting mobile features

It is very interesting to see that the mobile platforms used to be pushed to its limits to do the tasks and provide the features that their desktop counterparts used to do. Feature list which started only with making calls grew as new features added: send email, listen to music, check calendar, etc… They used to be a stripped down version of desktop platforms.

In this OS X example, now we see that the features that are designed for iOS being added to its desktop counterpart, blurring the borders between mobile and desktop platforms and I believe this is more than just unifying their OS experiences. I believe this is also the result of mobile platforms taking the lead on innovative design in operating systems. In the 4 years, iOS had seen 5 major releases whereas MacOS had 3. On OS X Lion release, it already imported many of the iOS features including LaunchPad, fullscreen mode for apps and touch gestures.  The Metro interface from Microsoft is first introduced with Windows Phones, and now it is being implemented into the next version of Windows Operating System.

I am quiet enthusiastic to observe the effects of this shift, as minimalist designs in mobile applications and operating systems can have great effect on simplifying today’s operating systems.

recent works

Silverback Guerilla User Testing

Card sorting – online editions

Here are couple of sites for doing card sorting interactively and online. Best part is you can invite participants online to contribute and provide their input. This list is provided by the very awesome UX blog Sixrevisions.

OptimalSort

OptimalSort offers a quality card-sorting and usability-testing service for a monthly fee. Create cards and options, and then send a link to the study to chosen participants. Or tweet the link and get random participants who are willing to help you out. The application offers real-time results and graphs, and the interface is sleek and smart.

WebSort

WebSort is another online application with which designers can create card-sorting usability tests and send a link to the public or to chosen participants. It also has a great interface and calculates results and graphs just like OptimalSort. WebSort, however, has a unique drag-and-drop interface to simplify organization.

User Zoom

Pre-organize data into groups and sub-categories. With User Zoom you can have unlimited participants, and there is an option to include your own questions (such as, Why did you choose to place this content here, or Why did you group these items like this?). Tailored questions will get direct answers from participants and help you analyze their thought processes and improve the user experience.

xSort

xSort is an application for Macs that creates a drag-and-drop interface for card sorting that mimics physical cards. It also calculates and presents the results for you to use on screen or print out for future reference.

CardZort

CardZort, a standalone application for Windows, Mac and Linux, offers a simple approach to digital card sorting. Two programs are available: CardZort, the standard drag-and-drop card-sorting application, and CardCluster, which works with CardZort to create a detailed cluster analysis of the results. This lightweight tool is a great free option that gets right to the point of traditional card sorting.

photographer vs. youtube…

photo by Sally Mann (via Ayse Matay)

youtube post by kicesie

History of the Button

Flash is the technology, HTML5 is the adaptor.

I wanted to write down my thoughts upon reading the Smashing Magazine article on the gradual disappearance of Flash on the web. Along with the recent discussions rising from Apple’s moves on clearing Flash from the face of the earth, web and  iDevices, it stimulated many of us to think if HTML5 can really replace Flash.

Without drilling into technical details, I think holistically:

Flash (and Adobe as a company) had always been the graffiti guy of the leading technology for the web. It led the technology on the web.

HTML5 and CSS had always been the catching-up standardization officers. They adapted the technology.

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A visualization master

Moritz Stefaner is a visualization artist, holding a B.Sc. in Cognitive Science and an M.A. in Interface Design. Currently, he is employed as a research assistant at FH Potsdam on the MACE project and work as a freelance information visualizer. His slides on data visualization are an amazing summary for where we are right now, what trends are out there, and how cool working with visualization is.

Eigenfactor is a non-commercial academic research project by the Bergstrom lab in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington. The goal is to map the structure of science. Together, we are developing different visualizations based on citation patterns between scientific journals.

taken from his website.

Ten Commandments of User Experience

Nick Finck and Raina Van Cleave’s presentation slides from the SXSWi talk are up. Here’s a summary:

User experiences are your everyday experiences—anything from operating a car, to making a pot of coffee, to ordering a pair of shoes online. User experience is the result of your interactions with a product or service, specifically how it’s delivered and its related artifacts according to the design.

In this presentation Nick Finck and Raina Van Cleave will explore the ten characteristics of a great user experience. They will cover all aspects of user experience design such as user research, information architecture, information design, technical writing, interaction design, visual design, brand identity design, accessibly, usability and web analytics. Nick and Raina will also explain how following the ten commandments can boost your web sites, web app, or mobile app’s ease of use, appeal, conversion rates, and more.

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SXSW, beautiful Austin, and lots of inspiration

Finally this year, I was able to attend a SXSW which I was interested in since I heard about it the first time. And against all the negative comments in the blogosphere (eg. TechCrunch), I really enjoyed it! I attended more than 20 panels on interactive, met many many people, and even enjoyed a quick chat with Bruce Sterling on OpenProcessing (he blogged about it couple of times, this time he even took a photo of me). I will post my thoughts on the panels separately, but here is what I think and liked in general.

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Dialog box fail

Oh Entourage for Mac, are you supposed to be the perfect design disaster of the computer world?

Let me click “Yes” and see what’s going on..

Interview on OpenProcessing

Recently, I was interviewed on OpenProcessing, its origins, collaboration with Rhizome on the Tiny Sketch competition and it’s future. Below is a first couple of paragraphs; read the full article on Rhizome’s site:

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50 Free UI and Web Design Wireframing Kits, Resources and Source Files – Smashing Magazine

Smashing Magazine gathered a collection of wireframing kits: utencils, indesign libraries, omni graffle stuff, iPhone templates…. No excuse for us to wire an idea any longer than 5 mins.

50 Free UI and Web Design Wireframing Kits, Resources and Source Files – Smashing Magazine.