Topic

White Space

A collection of 150 issues

The Secret Life of My Passwords

In 2012, it dawned on me that I had lived on the East Coast for four years. My promise to myself was that I would return to Seattle after five years. We had a beautiful house in Baltimore and life was very comfortable, even though I had a love/hate

Cities and the quiet interface.

She walked by just as I was taking the shot. This little old lady next to the tall, glass, modern building in SOHO, filled with architects sitting down for a presentation, those builders and definers of the urban space. While in New York last week, my senses were heightened of

Urban interaction.

In my ongoing thinking about the city as an interface – as an operating system, if you will, of this thing we call Earth – I picked up a book I bought while in grad school: Universal Principles of Design. It lists a multitude of various design elements and principles to consider

If NPR were a typeface....

Today we had another presentation of design iterations for the new NPR.org. Well, it was actually just for the new NPR.org homepage. The rest of the site templates will be worked out later. We're working on getting the homepage nailed down first. And trust me when

Here comes trouble. Her name is Ada.

“Good designers make trouble.” – Tibor Kalman Ada Louise Huxtable wasn’t a designer, but she made trouble. About design. For designers. Sometimes, I’m ashamed by how much I don’t know. I think I’ve heard of Ada Louise Huxtable, but would never have been able to place her

BMW Isetta 300.

Last night, Will and I went to his company picnic which was at the home of the company’s COO. He collects cars and one of his prize gems is a vintage BMW Isetta 300. I’m not sure what year it is exactly, but it’s older than I

For the laid-off designer.

Luckily, my job has not yet been affected by this nightmare that is our current economy; I count myself very fortunate to be among the still-employed (knock on wood, or fake wood stickers, as the case may be). But for those of you who have been shit-canned, here’s something

Square one.

I have no idea what I’m doing. But that’s the fun part. One of the main reasons I took this new teaching gig was because of the opportunity I have to start a design lab. I worked for about 10 years as a visual/interaction designer in industry

Flaxen alabaster.

Dark brooding silver sway. Her hair behind the camera, laughing. She’s smart, that one. And more spirited than five-star Thai. Cropping, framing, reading into the inked cravasses of the night. Could you find my Holga? Forgotten compositions that need to see the light. Her eyes the color of a

Rhetorical appeals in interaction design.

Once you start looking for connections, connections spontaneously pop up to say hello. For my presentation last week in Boulder at Interaction Eleven, I talked about Donald Norman’s three levels of cognition that designers need to know about in order to create great products: visceral, behavioral, and reflective – found