Reading between the screens

I ran into the flight status screens below at an airport in New York City on my way home to North Carolina. My husband and I stared at these screens for several minutes, looking for our flight and trying not to panic that it had been canceled. Then an airport employee walked past and pointed out that they were not in service. How did both of us miss the NOT IN SERVICE sign taped prominently between the two screens? The sign was right in front of us, but it wasn’t near our place of focus, the actual TV screen, and the writing in pen was hard to see from a distance.

There are so many things that could have made this better: write with a marker, stick it to the middle of the screen, cover the screens with paper, perhaps even turn off the broken screens, if that’s not too much to ask? When something like this happens at home or in a small office everyone just knows to ignore it, but in a public setting a sign like that has to scream so that even idiots like me will notice it.

No Comments »

Sustainable Olympic Medal Design

I am always fascinated by the design the Olympics. From the environmental graphics down to the tiny icons of each individual sport they all have a special relationship to every host city. The 2010 winter games in Vancouver do not disappoint. See the design process of the first sustainable Olympic medals made from electronic waste.

No Comments »

Lulspeek 4 awsum error mesage

I’m always on the lookout for a good error message. I love the one I saw on Sesame Street’s website [blog], but even better is the one for the lolcats (or I Can Has Cheezbuger?) app for the iPhone. If you’re not familiar with lolcats, it’s silly pictures of cats with captions, and the idea is that since your cat is talking, the captions have lots of spelling and grammar errors. If you’re not a cat fan, there’re also loldogs and lolrus. The image below is the error message I get on my iPod Touch if it’s not connected to the network.  I love it because it keeps the spirit of the app, with the same misspellings and references to cats wanting cheeseburgers and being mischievous. Even if I can’t see any new lols, at least I can laugh at the error message.

P.S. The full text of the lol is: After a busy day of orchestral rehearsals, the horn section takes a break

2 Comments »

There’s a market for resistive touchscreens

Do you have long fingernails? Do you live in a cold climate and often wear gloves? Well, device manufacturers may be ignoring you.

There are two popular types of touchscreens: capacitive and resistive. Capactive touchscreens (e.g. iPhone or iPod Touch) work when a conductive object (e.g. finger or stylus) touches the screen. Resistive touchscreens (e.g. Garmin or TomTom GPS unit) work when pressure is applied to the screen. Digitimes reported on February 12th that most Taiwanese touchscreen manufacturers are not going to manufacture resistive touchscreens anymore.

Read more »

No Comments »

Good design from limited functionality: corn husker

In the fall I took my nephew and niece to Ganyard Hill Farms to pick pumpkins, get lost in the corn maze, and go on a hayride. An unexpected bonus of the trip was the corn husker. I grew up in New York City and had never seen one before, and I thought it was the coolest device ever – just a few moving parts were enough to get the job done.

Read more »

No Comments »

HumanCentric sets the mood for PartyLite

Come see some of the new ‘sophisticated and sleek‘ home decor accessories HumanCentric designed with PartyLite.

You will find traditional objects with a modern twist. Keep an eye out for lotus-inspired flourishes and obelisks that have found new life in new materials.

No Comments »

Poor Logo Design – NC Education Lottery

One symbol which represents NC in the worst way is our current lottery logo. The mountains and lighthouse are child’s scribble. Our beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains are mushy mounds of dirt. Our beach coast is a stack of bobby pins. North Carolina Education Lottery you are a winner in poor graphic design. Please play again.

1 Comment »

Cheap Interactive Prototyping with HTML

An interactive prototype is a useful tool for a designer to relay and test their vision.  Send a prototype to your stakeholders for their approval.  Have participants use it during user testing.  Give it to your developers so they understand the final product.

There are many prototyping tools out there, from Visio to iRise, OmniGraffle to SketchFlow, Flash to Expression Blend, all with widely varying costs, features and limitations. Might I suggest using HTML, CSS and JavaScript?  Often used for web development, they can also be used to create your interactive prototypes.

Read more »

No Comments »