Synesthetic Sensory Stimulation with Ryoichi Kurokawa. Japanese artist Ryoichi Kurokawa generates mind-blowing performances through the unification of audio and visuals. Source

13 Quick Tips for Designers

Here’s a collection of useful tips to help save you some time. These are not big, detailed tutorials, just quick and easy tips that take a few seconds and are worth knowing – no matter how long you’ve been designing.

Tip for Sharper Circles

When working with tiny pixel shapes it’s very important to get the right sharpness on an image. This is incredibly difficult when you’re working with circles and round corners. This tip from Isaac Grant shows us one way to avoid the messy pixels. It’s simple, but I’d never considered it!

Copy Color’s Hex Code

Copy Color’s Hex Code. I only recently learnt of this feature. A very small tip that could save you a lot of time in the long-run.

Harmonious Color Schemes

Erica Schoonmaker shows us how to build Harmonious Color Schemes. She has a quick tip on Dribbble, but there’s also a 3 Minute Video that goes into a little more detail. A very useful tip for working with colour.

Enrich Colors with Gradient Maps

Enrich Color palette with Gradient Maps is a tip from Jimena Catalina that works brilliantly for photos and illustrations.

Proper Border Radius

Proper Border Radius. When placing a round corner box inside of another, it’s important that you adjust the border radius to offset the distance between them. Here’s one quick way of understanding, and doing that.

Shaping Textfields in Photoshop

Shaping Textfields in Photoshop is a tip that I wish I’d have known sooner. It’s a lot easier to do than it seems and it comes in handy a lot!

The Power of Gradient Maps

Bjango gives us a lovely run down of what Gradient Maps are, and how they can be used with a lot more accuracy and control. I’ve always loved Gradient Maps as a Photo Effect, but I find myself using them more and more lately in UI design, this post on Bjango opened my eyes for sure.

Expand and collapse all layers

A very quick tip to help you quickly tidy your layers & groups. I do this just before saving my PSD to make it easier to explore when I re-open it.

Double Exposure Photographs

How to Create Double Exposure Photographs in Photoshop. Not exactly a tip, but a very quick and easy technique to learn.

Correct Pixel Snapping

Pixel Snapping alone is helpful, but when using complex shapes, and re-sizing them, the pixel snapping doesn’t snap those transformations very well, and you get messy pixels. This simple keyboard shortcut fixes that with ease! Watch now.

Isolation Mode in Photoshop CC

A little gem that can help make your life easier when working on complex .psd files with tons of layers. Isolation Mode unclutters your Layers panel by only displaying the layers you’re currently working on.

Photoshop Tricks and Shortcuts

Photoshop Layers tricks and shortcuts is a very nice round up of time saving tips and keyboard shortcuts inside Photoshop.

Bonus: Photoshop Etiquette

Photoshop Etiquette is a complete guide of the most effective way to do things in Photoshop. Nobody likes inheriting muddy PSDs, and Photoshop Etiquette’s purpose is to help you improve the clarity of yours.

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Why a New Golden Age for UI Design Is Around the Corner

Over the past four years, the Walt Disney Company has been engaged in a secretive effort to redesign the Disney World experience. It’ll go like this: You buy your ticket online and plan all the details of your visit. Then you’ll get a wristband in the mail, which will be a passport to the experience that you’ve curated. Snug around your wrist, the so-called MagicBand will use radio frequency to communicate with sensors around the park, all orchestrated by software that effectively turns Disney World into a computer interface. You can enter the park by holding your hand up to a kiosk; you can arrive at shows with 30 seconds to spare, having already reserved your seats; you can jump onto rides you’ve selected at preselected times without waiting in long lines; you can buy anything you want with a wave. An It’s a Small World character could call you by name and wish you happy birthday. So could Mickey, who can also greet you at a preselected meeting time. This is all in the service of fun, of course, but it is also a glimpse of the future: an integrated experience, a smooth hybrid of real-world and digital interactions.

This represents a new frontier for design. Over the past 30 years, as every facet of our lives, from our shopping to our schooling, has migrated onto computer screens, designers have focused on perfecting user interfaces—placing a button in just the right place for a camera trigger or collapsing the entire payment process into a series of swipes and taps. But in the coming era of ubiquitous sensors and miniaturized mobile computing, our digital interactions won’t take place simply on screens. As the new Disney World suggests, they will happen all around us, constantly, as we go about our day. Designers will be creating not products or interfaces but experiences, a million invisible transactions.

WE ARE CONSTANTLY ADDING NEW GADGETS. 
EVEN AS THEY HAVE GOTTEN SIMPLER INDIVIDUALLY, THE CUMULATIVE COMPLEXITY OF ALL OF THEM TOGETHER IS INCREASING.

Already we’re seeing a groundswell of new products that insinuate themselves seamlessly into users’ lives. These include personal sensors like Jawbone’s Up, the voice- and gesture-controlled Xbox One, hyper-intelligent apps like Highlight that alert you to interesting people in your immediate vicinity, and Automatic, a gadget that communicates with your smartphone to tell you when you are driving inefficiently. But this is just the beginning. Within the next five years we will be surrounded by embedded devices and services. Just as the rise of the screen challenged designers to create software interfaces, the rise of screenless digital interactions will challenge them anew. After all, it’s one thing to invent a unique kind of digital experience in Disney World, a controlled space where people expect magic. It’s altogether trickier to do the same thing in people’s houses, offices, and bedrooms—the most intimate areas of their lives—in a way that feels both natural and inevitable.

Bill Buxton bears a striking resemblance to Doc Brown from Back to the Future—more strapping than you’d expect for a mad scientist, his bald head rimmed with a snowy hedge of hair. In conversation, he can be piercingly intense. And just like Doc Brown, in 1985 he unleashed a breakthrough. Buxton, a lifelong musician who has also worked for Xerox PARC and Silicon Graphics, created one of the world’s first multitouch interfaces when he turned an electronic drumhead into a tactile synthesizer control. That drum was a progenitor of every touchscreen in use today.

In the mid-aughts, Buxton wrote a journal article that helped define a new discipline called experience design—a focus not on products or devices themselves but on the impact they have on people’s lives.As an example, he wrote about two orange juice presses—an electric model and a manual lever press called the OrangeX. The electric juicer had flimsy plastic buttons, and the motor screeched to life with an annoying whir. The OrangeX required a bit more effort but also sported an inverted rocker crank that gradually transmitted more force as you pressed down. Buxton’s point was that the OrangeX created a feeling of tangible mastery that helped him enjoy the juice more. Designers didn’t shape just gadgets but behaviors and visceral responses around those gadgets.

Microsoft Research’s Bill Buxton, holding the GRiDPad 1910, an early tablet computer. 

Matt Webb, CEO of London design firm Berg, is inventing a system that will allow multiple users to share smart connected devices. 

Today, Buxton, who is principal researcher at Microsoft Research, says that the next challenge for experience design is to create a constellation of devices, including wearable gadgets, tablets, phones, and smart appliances, that can coordinate with one another and adapt to users’ changing needs. This focus on the totality of our devices stands in contrast to where we find ourselves today: constantly adding new gadgets and functions without much thought as to how they fit together. (For instance, anyone lugging around a laptop, iPad, and iPhone is also carrying the equivalent of three video cameras, three email devices, three media players, and probably three different photo albums.) Even as our devices have individually gotten simpler, the cumulative complexity of all of them is increasing. Buxton has said that the solution is to “stop focusing on the individual objects as islands.” He has come up with a simple standard for whether a gadget should even exist: Each new device should reduce the complexity of the system and increase the value of everything else in the ecosystem.

To see what he means by increasing the value of the ecosystem, consider the phone syncing built into many cars. After you link your phone, the vehicle boots up its own voice-recognition technology so you can make hands-free calls. When you leave the car, you simply grab your phone and it blinks to life again. The car and the phone engage in a quiet dialog geared toward providing only the capabilities you actually need at any moment.

WITHOUT THE PROPER DESIGN, ANY NEW TECHNOLOGY CAN BE TERRIFYING. THE TASK OF MAKING IT CAN’T BE LEFT TO ENGINEERS ALONE.

If all our devices interacted so cooperatively, whole new possibilities would begin to emerge. For example, Frog, the company best known for the Apple IIc’s industrial design of the early 1980s, has been building a prototype lightbulb that will sense where people are in a room and project touchscreens onto walls or tables. Now imagine if a device like that could communicate with your mobile gadgets—if the lightbulb, sensing your presence in the kitchen and knowing the apps on your phone, projected your cooking apps onto the refrigerator when you began preparing dinner.

To deal with such complexity, our devices will have to become smarter. Dave Morin, CEO of mobile social-networking company Path, has a maxim to explain how to think about the coming age of experience design: “AI is the new UI.” That is, the effort and attention that designers once poured into interfaces should be extended to code that doesn’t just react to the push of a button but anticipates your actions. For instance, Path will automatically update your location when it senses that you’ve settled somewhere new. But that’s really just a proof of concept. Morin’s maxim hints at the silent conversations that our phones and wearable devices will have with the world around us and each other. For example, Apple’s new mobile operating system, which uses Bluetooth Smart to share data with devices in your vicinity, could power a number of these kinds of intelligent background features.

Innovations like this present great challenges for designers. Today’s app and software designers already have a deep understanding of how customers interact with their products. They know down to the pixel where to place a button, how fast a screen should scroll, and how to make an app simple without making it simplistic. But as designers move off of screens and into the larger world, they’ll need to consider every nuance of our everyday activity and understand human behavior every bit as well as novelists or filmmakers. (Otherwise they may engender the same kind of backlash as Google Glass, a potentially cool product that has unleashed a torrent of privacy concerns.)

That will require a shift in how tech designers view the world. Matt Webb, CEO of Berg, a London design firm that has created forward-looking prototypes for clients such as the BBC, Google, and Nokia, says it will demand thinking beyond today’s standard scenario of a person working on a computer. For example, he says, “our technology can’t understand what it means to be in a room of two to six people. I find it totally nuts that when you sign in to something, no one else can use it. Imagine having to sign in to a lightbulb before turning it on!”

Berg is trying to solve that problem by inventing a system that will allow multiple users to share smart, connected devices that can adjust to their individual tastes and preferences. “That’s the world we actually live in,” says Jack Schulze, Berg’s cofounder. “But it’s a massive challenge for software.”

Just consider how these challenges apply to Netflix: If your spouse watches something on your account, it probably renders the company’s super-sophisticated recommendation engine worthless. Netflix is trying to address this problem by creating a feature allowing multiple user profiles on one account. “But even that’s the wrong solution,” Webb says. “When we watch TV together, that group isn’t just multiple people added together. That group is something more.” It’s easy to imagine a smarter, future version of Netflix—one that uses, say, an Xbox Kinect camera to recognize who’s in the room and can determine everyone’s overlapping interests.

The true potential of experience design comes as that kind of sophistication gets applied to all of our interactions. “We have all of these incredible benefits to our online life,” says Jake Barton, founder of Local Projects, a media design firm, “and they’re suddenly being applied to physical space.” Take the example of Warby Parker, the online eyewear retailer that has begun opening retail storefronts. Imagine if the store automatically brought up your online profile—which you’ve already filled with your favorite styles—allowing you to focus only on the glasses that the company’s computers know you already like. Or look at Nespresso, whose physical stores offer its customers an RFID card that allows automatic billing and personalized service based on purchase history. Barton believes that the next step will be to create a universal, portable electronic identity that allows all of our experiences to be that customized. Companies like digital-payment pioneer Square are already working to build just that.

In the wrong hands, this is a dystopian prospect—technology’s unwanted intrusion into our every waking moment. But without the proper design, without considering how new products and services fit into people’s day-to-day lives, any new technology can be terrifying. That’s where the challenge comes in. The task of making this new world can’t be left up to engineers and technologists alone—otherwise we will find ourselves overrun with amazing capabilities that people refuse to take advantage of. Designers, who’ve always been adept at watching and responding to our needs, must bring to bear a better understanding of how people actually live. It’s up to them to make this new world feel like something we’ve always wanted and a natural extension of what we already have.

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Stationery required to design software

My software design training (as much as it could be called that) was in a mixture of strategic design thinking and graphic/communication design. 

I ended up designing software by a mixture of choice and accident. After a foray into management consulting with a design twinge at Engine, I’ve ended up spending the last seven years involved in different kinds of software design companies at EMC Consulting, Sidekick Studios, and now Makeshift.

Along the way I’ve been lucky enough to work with some amazing software engineers, and very talented interface designers who’ve introduced me to many useful digital tools to help me design better software includingcode management services,  product management apps, wireframing softwareand interface design things. 

The non-digital toolkit

But, as my digital toolset has evolved and grown, one part of my design toolkit has remained pretty static and actually become more refined - the stationery I use.

Now physical bits of stationery are not the first thing that come to mind when you think about designing software, but in my experience printing stuff out, drawing and talking as a group around a design are essential to collaboration and new ideas. And if you are going to physicalise your digital designs, you should use the right tools.

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“Physical bits of stationery are not the first thing that come to mind when you think about designing software”

So, here’s my list of stuff that I use, and some notes on what I use it for. Below I’ve taken a picture of my full toolset, and I’ll go through each one in turn. I’d love to get your feedback on these choices and what you use.

Pens.

There are only two pens I need. PaperMate Flair in black and red, and standard Sharpie in black. I use pens for writing, of course, and for drawing simple wireframe interfaces - the PaperMate Flair is best for this, and the sharpie is best for writing on Post-its. The sharpie is also great for highlighting bits of interfaces. 

I find these two pens give me the full range of line quality I need. I can go to a pretty high resolution, but also keep things open and indeterminate in order to invite feedback. A note on pens not to use: Biros - no. Not clear enough. Other colours - no. Unnecessary distraction and they don’t show up on coloured Post-its.

Paper.

A3 and A4 + cheap sketch books. That is all the paper you need. I like to take a big stack of new paper when I sit down to do interface sketching, as it makes it feel like there’s lots of potential. 

A3 is best as you can draw a reasonably ‘screen sized’ box, but still have space for annotations or a smaller mobile view concept. I’ve finally settled on the 99p sketch books (ruled, squared or plain I don’t mind) as I draw so many big pointless doodles that Moleskines felt totally over specified.

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“Sketching interfaces on paper is an essential part of software design”

I think that sketching interfaces on paper is an essential part of software design - its often where you come up with really new ideas, and its also the only place you can really conceptualise an entire app in one go (this normally requires sticking stuff on the wall).

Record cards.

These are essential to designing software. I use the 6” x 4” and 3” x 5” record cards for all sorts of things, but mainly for writing tasks / to do items for sprints (we then pin them on to large foam boards). They are also really useful for drawing tiny low resolution screens to illustrate key information required during stages of a user journey.

Post-its.

Only use Post-it branded Post-its. Cheaper Post-its are a false economy - they fall off the wall, and the colours are annoying. I prefer the warm neon and cool neon sets (I’d pick warm over cool generally) as this gives you a good range of colours to play with. I generally like to have all four main sizes available - tiny, square, letterbox and the ‘super sticky’ large size ones.

Cutting and sticking.

Once you’ve drawn your wireframes, printed off your graphics ideas you have to stick it all on the wall. 

Sticking things on the wall is a very important part of the design process - it gives you a huge canvas to visualise large flows through an app, lets you identify visual design inconsistencies and provides a way to get a group of people to feedback on an idea via notes, post-its and so forth. 

I like to use scotch / magic tape for connecting together pieces of paper, and then use coloured artist tape to highlight things or draw large grids on the wall an so on. Its also helpful to have a cutting mat, and a scalpel to hand.

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“Sticking things on the wall is a very  important part of the design process”

Making it real helps make it better

In addition, sticking stuff up is just a great way of ‘socialising’ ideas around a company - the value of having something that people can see is huge, as it gives them something to ask you about. 

It’s often the ‘what are you working on’ unexpected conversations that lead to the big ideas, and having stuff up in and around your team’s space is a big catalyst for these moments.

So, that’s my stationery stack. What’s yours? Let me know on Twitter, and if you liked this post sign up for our newsletter below to get more of the same in your inbox once a week.

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All of Earth’s Air and Water

This is one amazing visualization by the U.S. Geological Survey: a picture that gives you a perfect idea of how much water there is on Earth compared … Read…

I’ve seen Earth compared to all its water before, but this image really gives you a perfect idea on how fragile our planet is by adding all the air in another sphere. The density of the air pictured here corresponds to its density at sea level (one atmosphere.)

Here’s the high resolution image made by Globaïa’s Félix Pharand-Deschênes, based on a concept by Adam Nieman for the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg:

SEXPAND

Source Reference: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120524.html

Inspiration is the feeling you should get after watching this video. Apple always has a special way of inspiring me to want to push the limits in what I do on a daily basis. They continue to prove why the products they make have a purpose in our daily lives. The simple message that other companies just cannot seem to deliver.

Over the past three years, iPad has helped people transform business, education, entertainment, health, and many other fields. We wanted to document those changes. During three weeks in September and October of 2013, we traveled the world to see how people are using iPad. Here are some of the examples we found. Source

Helsinki World Design Capital 2012 Kruunuvuori Light Art piece. The art piece will convert a disused oil silo into a wondrous light display and a civic space. Public will gain access to the vast interior of the 35m diameter 16 meter tall steel silo which will be dark red inside. Sunlight will fill the space with dappled shadows creating a spectacular daytime space. At night 1280 white LED´s flicker and sway on the surface of the silo controlled by a bespoke software mimicking swarms of birds in flight – a reference to silo´s seaside location. The prevailing winds, well known to those living in Helsinki, are used to trigger different light patterns in real time. ‘The enduring fascination of the complex movement of light and the amazing location by the sea will make this a captivating experience for the visitors and the residents of Helsinki’ Tapio Rosenius the Director of LDC say. Source

Staples is an installation composed of an array of 256 helium balloons. The balloons are equipped with LEDs performers of a musical composition and light. Turning into an aerial kinetic sculpture over 700m2, Cyclic changes in the wind and takes viewers on synesthetic artificial landscapes. Source