design, innovation, mobile, social and emerging tech links for you
The makers of some of the consistently most impressive infographics out there, Good Magazine, have created an archive of their work on Flickr for all to see, and be inspired by.
If you go through those and you still need more infoporn, check out (and bookmark) this list of 50 Great Examples of Data Viz.
Here’s one of my all time favorites from Good on Vampire Energy in the home:
Check out the whole set.
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With just a snippet of extra code, get a great looking report on how mobile users are accessing your site. Here’s a look at a full report. (via teendrama)
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An amazingly poignant paragraph that captures the subtle nuances of a solid UXer. This is just one of the many great slides from InspireUX. I highly recommend dropping it in your RSS Reader and checking it out when you need the occasional jolt of inspiration.
ps: It’s also an excellent resource for presentation-worthy design + process quotes.
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The Digital Experience Group at the New York Public Library recently launched Infomaki, a “rapid-testing usability research laboratory” (check it out here). What does that mean you might ask? Well, here you go…
It’s not groundbreaking technology. Built on a Rails back-end (my rapid-prototyping framework of choice), it currently supports two kinds of tests: standard multiple choice (with optional “Other:” box) and a “Where would you click…?” screenshot (see image above) that records click locations. But it’s a bit different from the other tools mentioned above in that:
1. Each question is free-standing
2. The user can answer as many or as few questions as they want
3. It’s incredibly easy for the team to insert questions immediatelyThe main idea is to have a pool of dozens of independent questions available at any given time, from which a respondent will see a random selection.
I was presented with that very choice (pictured above) and answered not one but seven questions about their site. Not bad, eh? Granted, I’m someone who finds great satisfaction from rating countless Netflix movies with the hope of it someday knowing exactly how I feel about a movie before I even have a chance to think about it.
Anyway, i think there’s something to this new trend of quick hit usability testing rather than hitting people with a “Do you have 10 minutes to spare to answer questions about our site?” surveys. With this approach, people might end up spending 15 minutes helping you and they won’t even know it.
Try out the test here.
Read more about Infomaki here.
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My mind = blown.
If you’re into this kind of stuff, please go check out the rest.
On that note, Information Aesthetics looks like a mighty fine data viz blog. Gonna give it a home in my Google Reader Purgatory folder and see how it fares.
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Turbo Milk has an illustrative piece on 10 common mistakes in icon design.
Designing icons has always been an art I admire and respect as one of the more difficult challenges in graphic design. Not only do they have to look good and accomplish a specific goal (or else!), but they have to do so in an incredibly limited amount of space.
This piece does a great job showing all of the complexities that go into well-excuted icons, which sadly I think suffer a similar fate to umpires in baseball – if they’re doing their job, no one notices, so people only end up talking about the bad ones.
Update: If you’re interested in seeing an icon designer walk through their workflow, check out this presentation by Jon Hicks
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A huge thanks to Lisa E. for sending this site my way. Konigi.com presents Digg-like visual way to browse best-of-breed UX design broken down into five main categories: function, interface, design, notebook (general UX commentary and blog posts) and overall (all categories).
Clicking on an example takes you to a clean detail page that breaks down what’s interesting about that particular piece, allows you to comment on it, rate it, tag it, etc. making it that much easier for someone else to find it later on
There seems to be a lot of good info here – the easy navigation, search (you can even search by color!) and browsability should make a great stop if you find yourself looking for inspiration. I’m going give it a shot in the RSS Reader for a bit but I’m thinking this one will be good (providing there’s an active enough community).
Konigi | Knowledge Sharing & Competitive Research for User Experience Design
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