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Signposts for the Week Ending August 28, 2009

by Adaptive Path on August 28th, 2009

Songbombing through data flows: http://flowingdata.com/2009/08/28/total-eclipse-of-the-heart-flowchart/

Top ten UX myths: http://carsonified.com/blog/design/top-10-ux-myths/

Social media companies “doing it right”: http://www.netpromoter.com/netpromoter_community/blogs/paul_marsden/2009/08/20/social-media-10-brands-doing-it-right

Veen on Cargo Cult Design mentality: http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/08/ignite-show-jeff-veen-on-great.html

Kate at BayCHI: http://chi.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail4165.html

Design iteration process: http://www.taptaptap.com/blog/convert-design-evolution/

Tiny sketch: http://openprocessing.org/collections/rhizome.php

LG Islamic phone: http://www.experientia.com/blog/lg-launches-islamic-phone/

Do want MakerBot!: http://makerbot.com/

Personas shows you how the Internet sees you: http://personas.media.mit.edu/

Signposts for the Week Ending July 31, 2009

by Adaptive Path on July 31st, 2009

This week, Adaptive Path’s first ever client, National Public Radio (we worked with them in 2001), launched a newly designed site. It’s pretty boss.

Dr. Temple Grandin will be the first UX Week speaker ever portrayed by Claire Danes — but not the last.

When a building facade is a screen.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Really.

Designers imagine the world they way it should be. And that often means they proclaim their visions. 100 years of design manifestos.

David Simon (creator of The Wire and former writer for the Baltimore Sun) lays out the argument in favor of newspapers charging for access to their web sites in this detailed essay for Columbia Journalism Review. And Daring Fireball dissects his argument.

The robots, they are getting faster and smarter. We will lose.

Anyone in product design and development will appreciate this dissection of the anatomy of a feature.

We’re becoming retail experience design junkies over here, so we gobbled up the concepts presented for the new Microsoft Store.

You can’t innovate like Apple. (So, figure out how you can innovate.)

Signposts for the week ending July 17, 2009

by Adaptive Path on July 17th, 2009

A great assortment of service design tools (many with examples) collected for a grad thesis on communication design.

McKinsey does deep research to prove that people don’t really follow a purchase funnel when they buy. Le shock!

Another wonderful example of digital and real world blurring: robot chalks tweets on Tour de France route.

A live stream of what’s being posted on Twitpic. Hypnotic.

Autodesk attempts a user experience version of the Agile Manifesto.

Music critic and friend of Adaptive Path, Mike Fortes launches a new couch-surfing / local-band-discovery series, Parlour to Parlour. Congrats, Mike!

Submit an awesome idea. Get $1000 in cash from the Awesome Foundation. Awesome.

Wondering what AP emeritus Dan Saffer has been up to since leaving us to start his own studio? Read all the harrowing details in this Fast Company blog series, Design in the New Economy.

Check out this fascinating “sociological imagination” blog. Our favorites? The Tampax ad campaign about a boy who wakes up with “girl parts,” the chart of books correlated with being “dumb” or “smart,” and the photographs of “fallen” Disney princesses later in life.

Finally, don’t miss the work of our very own Christian Palino in the new book LogoLounge 5. Pages 72, 149, and 157. Go!

Signposts for the week ending July 10, 2009

by Adaptive Path on July 10th, 2009

wow! G1 Google Phone Designers Reinvent the Automobile.

Case study of a developing an experience-led organization.

Truly Space invading.

The story behind the revisions of the firefox icon.

Matt Jones makes the New York Times Sunday Magazine with the discussion of remixed messages and the Get Excited and Make Things print.

Dollar ReDe$ign Project winners announced.

Bruce Sterling – reboot 11 closing talk.

Open web tool dictionary from Mozilla.

There, I fixed it

The (condensed) history of graphic design.

Whiteboard Clock Clears Your Schedule For You!

Signposts for the week ending July 3, 2009

by Adaptive Path on July 3rd, 2009

Happy 3rd of July!

We think this visualization of UX diagram creates more questions than it answers…which makes it interesting.

Yea! Whitney Hess has captured the best and brightest of resources in her post So you want to be a UX designer.

We’re hip on these magnetic pieces of wireframe goodness

Sticky Note fruit. Really, there’s nothing more to say about this…except AWESOME.

How many of these tools do you still have? Check your standing at the Museum of forgotten art supplies.

And now we’re all waxing nostalgic about the Sony Walkman.

Got a great idea for a mobile app or business? Enter the sidewalk.com / Citysearch contest.

Our dream is to host UX Week 2010 in this amazing thing.

Speaking of Love Boat, what was missing from your last sexual experience? If your answer was “charts, graphs, and other quantitative data,” then this application is for you.

What’s the shape of your ‘hood? Flickr photos reveals the emerging boundaries of where we live.

GOOD asks “can augmented reality finally make it easy to do the right thing?

Which prompts the rest of us to ask “what the hell is augmented reality?” Here’s a look at two augmented reality experiences, and why they might matter.

For super-duper alternate-reality, check out Keith Loutit’s Little Sydney project, which has us oooing and ahhing over the tilt-shifty view of life.

And as a compelling alternative to the hustle-and-go, Dave Gray’s been making pocket universes on Flickr.

Thinking about heading out into the stratosphere? Start by reading about spacesuits.

What’s the difference in Pixar vs. Dreamworks Story Development? The secret revealed.

And finally, we leave you with some hot and spicy library porn…sure to put the fireworks to shame!

Happy Independence Day!

Signposts for the week ending June 26, 2009

by Adaptive Path on June 26th, 2009

Are you working to develop your child’s inner rhetorician?

Farson’s thoughts on management, design and future of leadership.

Maira Kalman wants to tell you everything.

Busy? Then you’ll want to avoid Hobnox’s Audiotool.

For those that like their humor with a bit of darkness, The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9!

Future Perfect insights around technology use in regard to issues of privacy, security and trust.

What happens when a girl gets a chance?

Both beautiful and frightening, 26 million individual road segments defining the “lower 48.”

Tonchidot has plans to help us tag the world around us.

Navi Radjou on how Microsoft Reinvents Its Global R&D Model.

And of course: the white glove.

Signposts for the week ending June 19, 2009

by Adaptive Path on June 21st, 2009

This week, the revolution was twittered.

OXO takes a “Charmr” approach to syringes

A little bit of stop-motion fun

An experiment playing a homeless family in Sims 3 by a student in the UK. He follows their story over a series of blog posts.

Seed Design Series has some great videos from Natalie Jeremijenko, Lisa Strausfeld, Neri Oxman and more…

The Adaptive Path SF office door fits nicely into Dave Gray’s “Doors I have known” compilation on Flickr

The Incredible Century Old Color Photography of Prokudin-Gorsky

We’ll leave you with words of wisdom from Seth Godin.

Signposts for the week ending June 12, 2009

by Adaptive Path on June 12th, 2009

Apple’s massive wall of pulsating app icons entranced us, as did Oliver’s simple fluid dynamics simulator.

Monster’s new tabletop universal remote control scared us.

Matt Jones’s presentation on the convergence of products and services echoed some of Brandon’s thoughts from earlier this year.

Rebecca Blood passed along a list of recent design books from Design Observer as part of her annual roundup of summer reading lists.

Controversy raged at Adaptive Path this week on these questions:

Does Hugh MacLeod offer insights on creativity or just amusing doodles?

Do netbooks truly inhabit the zone of suck?

Do we really need fewer engineers and more anthropologists, or do we already have plenty of both?

Is Twitter really “the preserve of a few”, and if so, does it matter?

How much of the short film Deadline was done with real sticky notes, and how much was Photoshop?

Is The Uniform Project an inventive approach to a public art project, or narcissism masquerading as awareness-raising?

Signposts for the Week Ending June 5

by Adaptive Path on June 5th, 2009

If you need to explain venn diagrams, or sporks.

McDonald’s figures out how to integrate web memes into their business.

An open letter to American Airlines about their website design sparks a discussion about large organizations’ difficulty in making real change.

It’s a whiteboard! It’s a toaster! It’s the WHITEBOARD THAT TOASTS! Wireframing was never so delicious!

Clay Shirky on social media and the emotional dimension of news.

DataIsNature blurs the line between science and art.

Get ready to connect. The FT on connectivity.

A non-visual interface for mobile phones is being developed by Google, lead by a blind research scientist.

Philip C. Bolger, 81, Dies; Prolific Boat Designer.

Rethinking the mall.

Eric Karjaluoto: Drones at the karaoke lounge of design.

UX Week 2008 speaker Johnny Lee has been working on the compelling Project Natal hands-free controller for Xbox.

GOOD Magazine has created an archive of their excellent infographics.

Vote on this Wired article which reviews the safety of Internet voting.

A reliable and trustworthy platform for Mobile Banking.

The Flimsy Doorknob and a Forgettable Receipt – Two stories about how even the greatest experiences can be turned on their head by poorly considered details.

A great new branding/typography/interactive design blog.

Signposts for the Week Ending May 29

by Adaptive Path on May 29th, 2009

From McKinsey&Company: In less than 20 years, the Internet has transformed the way we shop, socialize, and communicate. What’s next?

Friends introduce more type for the web through Typekit

Vintage IDEO videos resurface from ABC’s Nightline. “You’ve got to hire people that don’t listen to you!”

Ian Delaney: Surrender! Foucault and Twitter.

The Pursuit of Happiness by Maira Kalman.

When in doubt, be inspired. Olivetti.

Tinkering to the future.

Nokia’s Ovi and the need for more user-centeredness.

Open-Source Data Models?

From the New York Times: Pentagon Plans New Arm to Wage Cyberspace Wars.

Two interesting looks at border redistribution, courtesy of Strange Maps: Russia to US: You’re Breaking Up (Too) and  My Kingdom for a Beer? Heineken’s “Eurotopia”.

Our amazing Dan Harrelson harnesses Yahoo’s Placemaker to create mapZING.

The hush hush Mecca redesign gets leaked and is not a disappointment.


Where do great ideas come from?

At Adaptive Path, our ideas are driven by the work we do. We do consulting for user interface and user experience design, and offer conferences, training and education for UX designers.

From field ethnography, UI wireframes and task flows, to visual design and implementation, we do it and we teach it.

Learn more in our video, Adaptive Path in 2 ½ Minutes:

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