Adobe’s Flash, user interface and the iPhone
A great article that discusses why Adobe’s Flash will struggle to happily coexist on Apple’s iPhone – and not for technical reasons. The key issue is that Flash does not use native controls (buttons, drop-down lists, etc.), but instead lets a designer reinvent them. In terms of usability this is a major problem on computers, but when it is transferred to the mobile world, it creates an even larger issue.
The Prince’s Charities Community site launches
We are delighted to announce the launch of The Prince’s Charities Community website. The site brings together the work of The Prince’s Charities – a diverse group of not-for-profit organisations of which The Prince of Wales is president. This work spans a broad range of areas, from giving young people in the UK an opportunity to change their lives to helping an Afghan village maintain their traditional pottery skills.
We worked closely with Clarence House and the charities to develop a site that educates visitors about the work of The Prince’s 19 charities and social enterprises while also providing them with an opportunity to get involved.
The site focuses on the people and organisations that make up the community behind the charities. It features profiles of charity employees, supporters and beneficiaries, as well as inspirational stories, blogs, news and events. Visitors can show their support by signing up on the site to join this community.
A fantastic project to be involved with, we developed the site from the ground up – from initial design concepts through to a full PHP/MySQL CMS backend. Many thanks to all who helped us to put it together.
4 June, 2008
Dyslexia Teaching Centre site goes live
This week saw the launch of the new Dyslexia Teaching Centre website. We designed a bright and colourful online presence for this site and built it using WordPress so the DTC staff can update it themselves with the latest news, events and publications surrounding London’s dyslexic community. The project also gave our very own Christian a chance to dust off his camera and produce the imagery for the site. Our thanks go again to our partners over at Zebra Crossing for their help on this project.
29 May, 2008
The making of Monocle
A fantastic article about how the website for the magazine Monocle came about, the thinking behind it, the design and the style. Written by Dan Hill who has worked for the last year on the site, it goes into great detail about the challenges staying true to the style and brand of the magazine while also working in the medium of the web. There are many good insights made, many that remind me of our projects. For example, while discussing whether user-generated content should be in the Monocle site: “my view was that we didn’t need comments on the site as people increasingly have their own spaces to talk, discuss, comment – whether that’s blogs and discussion fora, or the social software of Facebook et al.” — an insight many organisations could learn from and feel comfortable about. Monocle, the magazine and website, are also recommended.
The Obama brand
Newsweek on the Barack Obama “brand” – including a reference to how Hillary Clinton is actively copying it, typeface and all.
Star Wars vs. Saul Bass
Imagine if Saul Bass had designed the Star Wars intro. Via Jason Kottke.
Top 10 Application-Design Mistakes
“Usually, applications fail because they (a) solve the wrong problem, (b) have the wrong features for the right problem, or (c) make the right features too complicated for users to understand”. Read Jakob Neilsen’s Top 10 Application-Design Mistakes.
Context and designing applications
While we work on complex web applications, such as for CBD/TPdb or Faculty of 1000, we have to consider the balance of ease-0f-use and creating context for users so that they can understand what they are looking at. Cathy Shive discusses ‘Computer Administrative Debris’ in applications (found via John Gruber).
Obama vs. Clinton, a question of design
The New York Times (login required) compares the relative website design of US presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, to the debacle between Macs and PCs.
“But how good is the work?”
Adrian Shaughnessy for the Creative Review visits Wolff Olins, the company he was critical of due to their Olympics 2012 logo… and has his expectations confounded.
Edward Tufte on the iPhone
“Small screens, as on traditional cell phones, show very little information per screen, which in turn leads to deep hierarchies of stacked-up thin information–too often leaving users with ‘Where am I?’ puzzles. Better to have users looking over material adjacent in space rather than stacked in time.” One of the leading lights of the design world, Edward Tufte, has casts his eye over the iPhone and how it deals with information on a small screen.
The robots really are taking over
How the cheap and plentiful technologies that power ‘Web 2.0’ may be leading to a drop in the job market. The early paranoid fear that computers and robots are taking our jobs might finally be coming true. Between 2001 and 2007 “online employment had actually dropped 29%”. This is Nick Carr’s thesis as explained in The Guardian.
Things we like: New York Magazine’s events interface
Recently on our CIH Housing and Global DataPoint projects we have been investigating best practices for presenting and explaining events – a deceptively complex issue. Via the 37 Signals blog we came across New York Magazine’s Agenda interface.
New BBC homepage… update
The BBC has launched a beta version of its new homepage, and we at FoxLand Towers are quite excited about it. We love how you can customise the information it displays and then move your “info widgets” around the page. Some of us aren’t so sure about the use of a large Verdana font and the buttons may be a bit too Web 2.0, but the general concensus is that it looks great. And those of us who are old enough to remember get a twinge of nostalgia from the retro clock. Shame they couldn’t find room for the noughts and crosses playing test card girl…
CIH Housing: building communities…delivering more
This week saw the launch of the CIH Conference and Housing Exhibition site we created for the Chartered Institute of Housing. The event – taking place in Harrogate next June – boasts a strong line-up of speakers, including Rt. Hon. Michael Portillo, Diane Abbott MP, David Smith – Economics Editor of the Sunday Times and leading US Economist David Shepherdson.
The CIH is the professional body for people working in housing across the UK and its conference and exhibition is the UK’s ultimate housing event. With Gordon Brown announcing an £8bn investment in housing in his first spending review, the conference will look at how the sector can deliver the government’s objective of decent and affordable housing for all.
Working closely with our partners at Zebra Crossing, the site was built using WordPress and includes online booking functionality. More exciting functionality will be added to the site as the event draws closer – so watch this space!
19 December, 2007