Out of the box – book from adrian333 on Vimeo.
One could argue that “No Manual” needed is the pinnacle of product design but if you’re going to make a “manual” you could do far worse than this. So much nicer to help people experience your product in order to learn rather than just telling them how it works. Just lovely. (ht @adamwohl)
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How did it take civilization this long to come up with something that makes SO MUCH SENSE? Sadly, you can’t go out and buy one yet but hopefully someday soon you will be able to.
Speaking of economy, it unfortunately looks like you can’t buy these yet, but now that the idea is out there someone will be marketing them soon. Nothing that’s invented ever dies. Especially not when it’s this cute and immediately useful.
Read more here.
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My friend Abhishek shared this photo of a smartly-designed lock & key system. What makes the lock special isn’t the result of groundbreaking technology but rather a desire to make it easier for those using it to be successful.
What kind of subtle changes could you make to your product/website/application/service/business that would discretely help your customers succeed, thereby feeling better about themselves, and in turn, your brand?
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I love these whimsical decals from the folks at The Smart Vinyl Laboratory geared at instilling good habits in people. Be sure to check all of them out. How rad would they be for a child’s room?
Bonus: Dr. Jay Parkinson has a thoughtful follow-up on exploring how the principles behind these “Beautiful Reminders” could be applied to the Health Care Industry.
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Both of these are a few weeks old but I still wanted to call them out because I like them so much, for different reasons.
Chiquita Bananas: A Beautiful Brand Refresh
What I love about this was that they took branding that was already iconic and took it in a new, playful, and ultimately really memorable, direction.
Chiquita will always remind me sharing an office with Dennis, who’d eat a banana a day and cover his laptop with the Chiquita stickers from said bananas. Clearly he’s not alone in that endeavor and Chiquita is showcasing that behavior on the new site in support of this new campaign.
Just look at these things. They’re so f*cking cute I want to collect them all and nom the crap out of them.
Think rebranding bananas isn’t exciting? Here’s a great quote on finding that angle to build on when helping brands rebuild their identities:
Many times as designers we are tasked to help brands build or rebuild their identities. We may initially think that a clean slate is required to achieve a better identity, and in some cases that can be true if the existing brand identity has little to no value. But in most cases, there is always something that can be built on, discovered, or championed with any brand. It really just requires spending as much time as you can with the product, immersing yourself in it. Like method designing, you just have to live it and the work will flow through you.
The Heinz ketchup packet : A User-centered product redesign
Heinz’s effort is impressive because it improved both form and function, making the brand feel newer visually as well as functionally, addressing their major use cases, referred to as the “dippers” and the “squeezers.”
This is a redesign that just makes so much sense you wonder how it took so long to get here. Technology wasn’t holding it back. It was a matter of really looking at the problem from a user’s point of view and then making a change. Bravo.
+ The Art Director responsible for the Chiquita redesign process did a great interview about the process.
+ Read more about the Heinz redesign here.
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The team at Panic have rigged up this amazing (and beautiful) real-time display of the data immediately relevant to their team. Projects that fall in the cross section of dataviz and productivity really interest me. It reminds me a bit of the dashboard that Crispin Porter + Bogusky set up to visualize the health and status of their ongoing projects.
Here’s some info from the team at Panic:
What’s on the board?
The idea quickly grew beyond “Project Status”, and has become a hub of all sorts of internal Panic information. What you’re actually looking at is an internal-only webpage that updates frequently using AJAX which shows:
- E-Mail Queue — number of messages / number of days.
- Project Status — sorry for the heavy censorship — you know how it is!
- Important Countdowns
- Revenue — comparing yesterday to the day before, not so insightful (yet).
- Live Tri-Met Bus Arrivals — when it’s time to go home!
The Panic Calendar
- Employee Twitter Messages
- Any @Panic Twitter Messages — i.e., be nice! They go on our screen!
I highly recommend you head on over to their blog and read all about it.
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| I love design. I'm particularly partial to the intersection of mobility & social behavior. Years ago I co-founded dodgeball.com. I'm currently Head of Product at foursquare working hard to make your mobile life better. |
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