YakShaving

Here’s a quote from a Steve Jobs interview from 1995: Many companies get the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90 percent of the work. And if you just tell all these other people here’s this great idea then of course they can go off and make it happen. And the problem [...]

We all (should) know by now using Apple’s examples that it’s all about sweating the details and getting everything. just. right. This blog post and lesson by Aaron Swartz is a great reminder that details that impede your user tend to overshadow details that delight your user.   I think he hit the nail on the [...]

Flickr: Rambouillet shellac beausage, Gino This article Aged to Perfection reminded me about the notion of “beausage” in physical goods. Beausage is shorthand and refers to “Beauty through usage”. I was reminded by the author of the article that most products live in the “raw/worn” state for a majority of the time they’re in use [...]

So. Good. “We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.” Walt Disney (via redcact.us, via daringfireball.net)

If someone came to me this second and asked me what the two most important books to read are in creating new software services, I would easily and emphatically state two books by Fred Brooks. Our professor in undergraduate senior design class, Elliot Soloway, made us read “The Mythical Man Month,” and the “Cathedral and [...]

A designer makes things. … Typically his making process is complex. There are more variables—kinds of possible moves, norms, and interrelationships of these—than can be represented in a finite model. Donald A Schön, The Reflective Practitioner Understanding how people learn (and improve skill level) is complex. Designing elegant stuff is also complex. Put them together, [...]

The rock garden at Daitoku-ji In December, I visited Japan. Japan is an wondrous country if you’re interested in the roots of zen, Buddhism, and the roots of modernist design.  You can’t really walk around Kyoto without coming across temples or shrines filled with peaceful rock gardens. Perfect spots to sit down and think for [...]

It’s the little things. I love this: when you forget your Apple password, you go to “iforgot.apple.com”

Tim Brown raised interesting questions on the ideo blog: “Firstly, why is the design of tangible things so reliable and secondly are there lessons from attempts to design in the abstract world of economics that may be useful to all design thinkers?” I had to stop and think about it for a while to ask [...]

Everyone knows that our country suffers from an obesity epidemic. We’re becoming increasingly aware, as Marco Ament of Instapaper fame points out, that we’re also suffering from information obesity. The money quote by Arment: People love information. Right now in our society, we have an obesity epidemic. Because for the first time in history, we [...]

Dan Hill, noted author of City of Sound wrote about this Breville Toaster and applauded the design of the “a bit more” button. The post was commented on hacker news quite a bit and I’ve thought about its design in general a bit more. Breville Toaster, flickr: Dan Hill Dan says, regarding the “Bit More [...]

Yesterday, I was helping a friend and colleague at ID work on an exciting new platform for eBooks delivered on a backlit display and was shocked and pleased with how easily I was able to provide feedback, give and receive ideas and inspiration. Not only was this (hopefully) helpful to Dan, but also to myself [...]