Adaptive Path Blog

Leopard never ceases to surprise me with all the little enhancements to the OS. Today, I was using an app (Panic’s new CandyBar) and wanted some help on the new Dock changing feature. I went to the Help menu item and entered “dock”.

I noticed a new category in the Help results called “Menu Items”. When I moused over these results, a blue arrow appeared showing me the location of these items in the Menu.

I’m not going to over analyze this, I just thought it was cool. It brings some context to help items right when you need it and is not overly obnoxious if you select it by accident. Good work, Apple.

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We’ve been using Basecamp for quite a while now. In order to make it do what we want, it sometimes takes a little encouragement and some hacks.

Things like making use of the existing CSS code to stylize your messages, or using Ajax to dynamically hide and show images to embedding Google calendars and video. Sometimes these little enhancements help you communicate your ideas more effectively.

I’ve created a free Basecamp site that has examples and the code that we’ve collected. Feel free to use and tweak as needed. If you have any others, or better ways of doing something, leave a comment here or in the Basecamp Sandbox below.

Site: Here
Log in using: guest/guest

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I’ll admit that often times when I start a new design for a logo, web site, or interface, I will look for inspiration. Sometimes I’ll look to the competitors, thumb through design books or browse websites.

Often I will see a body of work that I want to “borrow” from because I like the style or it’s already solved some of the design challenges I am facing. Truthfully, there are some design solutions out there that just work with simple adaptation.

But, what happens when you are challenged to come up with something totally new? Something that has not been done before because it’s a new product, or because the technology hadn’t existed or the interaction is original? What if you want to stay uninfluenced by past design decisions or familiar things that will force the user to recall “something else that looked like that”?

What do you do or where do you go that doesn’t remind you of anything?

How can you escape being influenced by something that has already been done? What if you don’t want your logo to look like every other Web 2.0 logo, or your interaction design to be just like the iPhone?

My immediate reaction is to look at other industries. Building architecture or landscape design can sometimes give insights to balance and structure. Fashion also provides a huge escape for me. Clothing designers find amazing solutions to everyday needs for a huge variety of consumers.

Other times, physically removing myself from my normal surroundings helps rid the influences of past experiences and projects. I love getting out to open sea whenever I can – there is nothing out there to remind me of anything. Other cities and cultures can provide a much needed cloak to things that you’re used to. I love places that can be just familiar enough so that you don’t get overwhelmed. Places like Tokyo and London, or even Las Vegas provide a different take on the reality that normally guides me.

But you don’t have to travel the world, or go shopping to escape. Sometimes, just getting up from your desk, moving your chair into the sunlight, or even outside, can provide a different view of your workspace. Find a nice, warm coffee shop, or a park bench.

Shaking things up from time to time can give you just enough different perspective so that your designs continue to be unique, continue to challenge convention and continue to provide you with the creative freedom that you need.

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Congratulations to Tim Brown from Hudsen Vally, New York for his great haiku on “Why Do You Design?”.

Here is his composition:

What else can I do
Your problems are my life’s joy
But in a good way

Tim, your iTunes gift card is on its way!

Thanks to everyone who participated. We were really inspired by your reasons for designing!

UPDATE
Here are the other submissions:

Design to feel free.
To create value and life.
Always communicating.
- Emily Chang

I draw the red fruit after listening
He says tom-a-to
She says tom-ah-to
- mycotn

Drawing crocus buds
I watched bees fly between roses
Drew the connections.
- Clay Newton

Design fills your heart
The client: I don’t love those colors
Not happy now at all
- Uzi Shmilovici

The intersection
Of art function and soul
Design helps us live.
- Rachel M. Murray

I make pretty things,
And people pay me for them.
What could be better?
- Dan Rubin

When an idea breaths
I guide its path to succeed
My last breath is gone.
- BJ Cook

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Paul Arden, an ex-creative director from Saatchi, gave a talk at the Art Directors’ club in Iceland a few years back. I saved the text and pull it out from time to time. Much of his talk is advertising-centric. But here are some universal thoughts that I think we can all benefit from.

Aim beyond what you think you can achieve.
Most of us are content to compete locally, with our neighbors. Change your scale of thinking and compete with the world’s best.

Energy.
It’s 75% of the job. If you haven’t got it, be nice.

Don’t look at the next opportunity, the one you have in hand is the one.

It’s all my fault.
Blame no-one, but your self, if you have touched something accept total responsibility for that piece of work. If you accept responsibility you are in the position to do something about it. If you are involved don’t blame others.

Don’t seek praise, seek criticism.
When you show somebody a piece of work, ask them what is wrong, not what is right. It might help improve it. Note how most people simply want praise, what good is that to the job?

Know your clients aims.
We are trained to think advertising is all about selling products. That is often not the case. The motivation may be quite different. Always find out what a client wants to advertise for.

Do not covert your ideas.
Give away everything and more will come back to you. They are not your ideas anyway they are God’s.

Do it first, don’t ask and be prepared to take the consequences.
A new idea, is either silly, unfamiliar or both. It cannot be judged by description, it cannot even be judged as a storyboard. It needs to be done to exist. No one will sanction the cost, therefore you have no choice but to do it whatever the cost.

Draw with different pen.
Magic markers and Pentels are not the only ways to make marks on paper. Change your tools, it may free your thinking.

Compose your ad from the weakest point.
If you know a logo or a pack have to big don’t hope it will fit in the corner somewhere unobtrusively, it won’t. Start your layouts knowing that is a problem to be solved as an integrated part of the idea. Remember God is in the details.

Suppliers are only as good as you are.
Don’t hand work over to a suppliers hoping they will provide the magic. They won’t. You are the magic.

Storyboard in detail.
Every cut, every action, every angle, every word. Once you have a base you know works, you are free to make clear decisions on further input from directors.

Attend to every single detail of a commercial.
Every edit, every recording session, every dub. Trust no one. You are the only person who knows what you want or should know.

Do not ask people to like you. Earn their respect.

Find out what the client means by creativity

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Okay, here’s the deal. You have one week to write a haiku about why you design. Submit the haiku via direct message on Twitter. Whichever one makes us cry (or laugh) the most receives a $10 iTunes gift card. (It’s really more for fun, but free music is nice, too.)

Submissions via comments to this post will not be accepted. It needs to be via Twitter. You can sign up at here. Follow “adaptivepath” or just Message us (d adaptivepath).

UPDATE: Some people are having trouble with sending Direct Messages. Alternatively, you can submit using “@adaptivepath” in the beginning of your message. To Twitter, that becomes a Reply. We’ll see them and add your submission to the collection.

Rules for Haiku are found here. We’re looking for the more modern version of Haiku in the 5-7-5 pattern.

You have until midnight on Friday, September 14, 2007.

UPDATE: Entry is closed. Thanks to all who submitted. We’ll announce the winner on Monday, 9/17.

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We’ve submitted a few panel suggestions for SXSW 2008. If you’d like to see these topics discussed, log into the SXSW Panel Picker and let them know.

Do You Have to Disappear Completely to Get Things Done?
Ryan Freitas
With all the work of managing your identity and presence online, how is anyone supposed to get any actual work done? We’ll talk to a number of accomplished designers and entrepreneurs about how they keep up their appearance online while managing to stay focused and get things done.

Vote >

Is Usability a Strategy for Mediocrity?
Todd Wilkens
Usability is an important component of successful design. But it’s just one out of many. Great products must also be desirable, delightful, engaging, meaningful, etc. Can “usability” be a successful strategy and rallying cry to meet these ends? Is ‘usability’ as a profession up to the task given its general focus on evaluation, efficiency, tasks, and errors?

Vote >

10 Tips for Managing a Creative Environment
Bryan Mason & Sarah Nelson
Stage Managers wrangle directors, designers, writers, and actors every day, under strict union guidelines. Editors cajole writers into producing on time(ish) for each week’s publication. Conductors balance the needs of dozens of musicians while staying true to the needs of the music. These disciplines can teach us how to set up and support creative environments that are conducive to excellent design and development.

Vote >

Bringing Your Web-Based Service to Mobile
Ryan Freitas
The iPhone launch put a magnifying glass on applications that are serving (and growing!) their audiences via mobile offerings. From SMS to widgets to full-fledged applications, we’ll discuss what makes sense when bringing ostensibly web-based applications to mobile, and what it takes to get them launched.

Vote >

Feeding the Creativity Beast
Dan Saffer
We talk a lot about methods and techniques in design, but not enough about creativity and sources of inspiration when coming up with design concepts. This panel will look at how some successful designers draw inspiration from sources such as architecture, comic books, objects, nature, and everything in between.

Vote >

Agile User Experience — Bigger! Better! Faster! More!
Dan Harrelson (with Austin Govella of Comcast Interactive Media)
Agile development likes to move fast. Sometimes design and IA seem to move s-o s-l-o-w. With experts from each camp, we’ll discuss how user experience and design fit with agile development, when they need time apart, and how to organize cross-functional, agile teams that deliver outstanding products.

Vote >

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Dan Saffer spoke to the crowd at UX Week 2007 in his Keynote on Day 4. His talk, entitled “New Sources of Inspiration” invited us to look to sources of inspiration that we normally do not when we design.

Here are the notes from the talk. You can also download the slides here.

Where do our sources of inspiration come from?

When we think inspiration, we think WWAD? (What Would Apple Do?)

Or perhaps we look to Jennifer Tidwell, Designing Interfaces for Patterns or the Yahoo pattern library for sources of inspiration. But sometimes you need more than what’s out there in the digital space.

The world is our pattern library. We can look around us at the world with fresh eyes for inspiration.

Look to architecture and film and mechanical objects. These things can teach us about sources of inspiration that we can gleen things from them. For this presentations, we’ll look to the products and not the processes.

To design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light or turning on a tap.
Alain de Botton

Look at the world with beginner eyes.

ARCHITECTURE

Winchester Mystery House
Example of what you don’t want to be inspired by. It’s a mess, not thought out.

Houses
* Houses are the operating software for life.
* What is it about these that we can look at and learn from

A building must do two things: it must shelter us and it must speak to us of the things we find important and need to be reminded of.
John Ruskin

* Must be useful and usable and have a voice that speaks to us.
* Compared modern houses to old houses…space allocation tells us something about the importance placed on design

In essence, what works of design and architecture talk to us about is the kind of life that would most appropriately unfold within and around them…They speak of visions of happiness.
Alain de Botton

* Design of a building shows us the architect’s voice (different levels of happiness)

Best practices are a place to start, not a place to end.

Showed an image of Jakob Nielsen as an example of an architect that would put a bathroom in one place always. That architect would have to be insane or a control freak.

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
William Morris

The Gamble House
* The lighting for the stairs also has the house number. Seamlessly integrated and becomes multifunctional. Yahoo task bar is an example of using space well.
* The lines of the ceiling held to define zones or rooms
* The dishes are placed in built in cabinets. Not far away, easily accessble. InDesign CS3 has this dilberate panel with drawers of tools you need.
* The kitchen has a triangle of work space. So do some of our modern day desktop apps - Apple Mail
* Even the corners of your design can be made beautiful. The straps in the attic are not seen often. These are functional, yet beautiful.

FILM

* Lots of pieces of film (visual effects and transitions) that can inspire us.
* Showed an example of Indiana Jones airplane travel tracking. Jeff Veen had a dream about the movie and became inspired by this movement to design in Google Analytics
* We viewed an Apple commercial as an example of showing transitions of character of the iPhone.
* The movie Birds is an example of using sound to indicate something - it’s an effective tool.
* Props and sets - Blade Runner’s colors and and feel.
Minority Report inspired many touch screens and interaction in product design.
* Title Sequences - convey two pieces of information - mood and credits. Look for timing and movement
* Stamen Design did Digg Swarm in a very visual and different way - information design
* Movement can set the tone.

MECHANICAL OBJECTS

* Look to mechanical objects for inspiration as well.
* We’ve already stolen our buttons and sliders from mechanical objects.

As a caveat:

Don’t replicated Mechanical-Age artifacts in user interfaces without Information-Age enhancements.
Alan Cooper

Dashboards and Control Panels
* We’re always being asked to design them.
* Displays show the necessary information for users to make informed decisions, while controls allow you to manipulate the system. Labels expaine what the controls do.
* In order to control a system, you need to understand the state of the system, the display helps with this. You see this in “Executive Dashboards”
* Crane controls show an example of direct manipulation and feedback.
* Browsers also show controls and direct respose. No invisible state that needs to be exposed further.

Learning from Elements

* Vespa Scooter dashboard is an example of form and layout (so are toys)
* These are examples of possible digital device inspiration
* Typography shows how you can affect feel and labels should connect to controls.
* Icons are hard to do, but when done are very powerful.
* Anticipate how users are going to use your products and then design for it.

What not to do
Don’t label the labels - if you have to, to you’ve designed it wrong

When you’re stuck on your next design, get up, walk around, see what’s available for inspiration in the world.

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I’ve been thinking about this all weekend (as I am sure many others are). If Mac OS X Dashboard widgets are simply HTML, Javascript and CSS, AND you can test them in Safari, wouldn’t you be able to host these widgets on a web server and access them from your iPhone as an online application?

I read through Apple’s documentation and there are some hurdles. It looks like the JS for the widgets is coded to look to the Dashboard server. I am not a coder, so I’ll seek guidance from others for help with that. But, I was able to successfully “port” one widget.

I took the Tile game, copied out all the package contents and put them in a directory on my server. It’s only a test, but it worked.

See here. (Seems to require Safari web browser.)

Screenshot

Video

This is simply a test. It works, but there is a lot of code in the other widgets that may prevent this from being any kind of viable solution. But, if widget developers could develop 90% of the same code for both a widget and an iPhone app, it would be pretty cool.

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Our friend Will Tschumy at Microsoft has extended an invitation for me to be a judge at their upcoming Express Yourself event here in San Francisco.

For those of you who know me, you’re scratching your heads wondering why I am taking part in a Microsoft event. It’s true, I have not been a Microsoft fan, nor am I an apologist for them in any way. But there is something about what they are trying to do right now that has caught my attention.

So why take part in this event? Well, two reasons. One, Will Tschumy. After speaking with him, I noticed a passion for actually making a change for good in Microsoft. This was not only refreshing, it was oddly exciting. If there are people who are fighting the good fight and trying to make a shift in thinking, then I want to be involved with those people. If the environment at Microsoft is able to support evangelists like Will and his associates, things may improve.

Second are the products. Microsoft’s new Expression Suite is interesting. While I’ve not yet heard anyone switching from Adobe’s offerings to Expression, there are some aspects about the products that are truly unique. Namely, Expression Web and the way it attempts to facilitate improved interaction between designer and developer. We’ve been experimenting internally with rapid prototyping and trying to ease the pain of the designer/developer conversation. Expression takes a decent stab at this. Though we haven’t employed it, I am curious to see if people find this useful, and how this sort of product type evolves.

But, to the point of this post…the event!

Microsoft is hosting “Express Yourself” at 111 Minna on June 22nd starting at 6pm. They have asked five design firms to send their best designer / developer pairs to compete. Each team will have already been trained on the new software and will come together to build a solution based on a design problem given to them on that day. The four judges are:

* Bill Scott of Yahoo!
* Andrew Crow of Adaptive Path (that’s me)
* A representative from Microsoft
* A representative from another major valley web firm (TBD)

Check out more here.

The ultimate prize for the winning designers is an Xbox 360 with a full complement of games. There will also be door prizes for attendees.

I’m not giving Microsoft a thumbs up just yet. But, provided there is no evil ulterior motive on their part, I might actually admit that I am intrigued by what they’re doing.

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