Topic

design

A collection of 631 issues

Tuesday, Sept 8th. The shoes I wore to meet the architect.

In my life, I have been told I resemble a prettier version of Allison Janney; easily passed off as Katharine Hepburn at a Halloween party; most recently been compared to Claire on House of Cards. Which is not to say that we’re doppelgängers by any means, but the concept

On being subtle but not small.

Subtle. The difference between a male and female jawline. The angle of the forehead, the curve of the brow. There’s an algorithm for that: an electronic tongue taste differences in beer. Minor. The delta between the girl and boy nutmeg trees. One bears fruit, the other, the flower. In

On Microsoft Excel, Big Software, and Brazilian Favelas.

I often telling people designing for Excel is more like urban design than anything else. Because like a city, big software is a messy, chaotic system that is constantly evolving with millions of opinionated inputs by passionate, feeling, needy inhabitants and feisty, exuberant, competent and just as often, incompetent (but

On touching data.

Touch interface design guidelines dictate that the more simple and limited the gestural language used to control a system, the better. Use only these gestures when designing for touch devices: slide, pinch, zoom, tap, double tap. The reasoning goes that first of all, there are little to no affordances in

Tuesday, January 13. The shoes I wore to meet the architect.

Design is about constraints. Technical constraints, physical constraints, financial constraints, political constraints. We are at the stage in our home design where constraints are converging from many angles. The shoes I’ve worn to meet the architect lately haven’t been worn to meet the architect. They’ve been worn

Who made that Pantone 629M?

Robin’s egg blue is my favorite color. Luckily, it looks really good with brown. I’m getting ready to place my first straw order, picking the Pantone color for Bellflower Chocolate this week: 629U and/or M. Thank you, Lawrence Herbert. Pantone Color Institute How Tiffany’s Iconic Box

On how good design makes food taste better.

I never knew I was a foodie gourmande until I didn’t have access to good food. Misery loves company, and some of my first conversations with my friend Paolo, who moved to D.C. from the West Coast about a year or so after I did, were about how

On Learnability Theory and gestural interfaces.

How do humans learn to speak the language of machines? In order to communicate with computers, interfaces embody a set of semantics and grammar that humans must learn in order to command the machine to do his or her bidding. Microsoft Gestures, Manipulations, and Interactions Learnability Theory attempts to define

On cowboy boots and good design.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who wear cowboy boots and those who don’t. I grew up one who didn’t in the land of most who did. I hated cowboy boots and western wear growing up, but now that I’ve lived away from

On the Great Works of Software and Detroit.

I have never been to Detroit, but as a lover of cities, I am interested in what happens to it. Interested to see how it transforms itself from ruin to revival. I did live in Baltimore for four years, though – a city facing nearly identical problems. I am interested in