The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda By Nic Price on 23 February 2007 — 1 min read Every now and then I read something that seems to coincide with my life so perfectly I imagine there must be an Amélie-like character who has placed it in my path. This is certainly true of John Maeda’s book The Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life). Maeda is a world-renowned graphic designer, visual... More
Creating Passionate Users: Dilbert and the zone of mediocrity By Nic Price on 21 October 2006 — 1 min read Just read this brilliant and incredibly timely (for me anyway!) post from the always passionate Kathy Sierra. To avoid the Zone of Mediocrity, you must suspend disbelief. You must be willing and able to turn off (temporarily) The Voice inside that says, “We’ll never get away with this. People will hate it.” That doesn’t necessarily... More
Great British Design Quest By Nic Price on 30 January 2006 — 1 min read Vote for your favourite British design icon from 1900 onwards. The Great British Design Quest is a vote to discover the public’s favourite British design icon. Organised by the Design Museum and The Culture Show, the vote opens with a shortlist of 25 and is narrowed down to a Top 10, Top 3 and a... More
Your site may never get a second chance to make a first impression By Nic Price on 16 January 2006 — 1 min read It’s an aura thing. Internet users make up their minds about the quality of a website in the blink of an eye, a study shows. Researchers [from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada] found that the brain makes decisions in just a twentieth of a second of viewing a webpage. They were surprised as they believed... More
Thigh Tech By Nic Price on 16 January 2006 — 1 min read Just wondering… Was this intentional? Does it bring in more business than if they’d placed their logo somewhere else? More
Is “one size fits all” ever true? By Nic Price on 21 November 2005 — 1 min read Can you think of an example of something that exists in one size and one size only and is manufactured for one purpose? I can’t. Yet. Some suggestions talking to colleagues (and my uber-pedantic reasons why they don’t count): Red Nose – they make them for cars too Earrings – I reckon they do different... More
Food4Thought campaign from the British Heart Foundation (BHF) By Nic Price on 7 November 2005 — 1 min read With junk food giant visual design treatment. Frightening food facts about what’s really on your plate. More info on the Food4Thought website. More than one in three children do not know what chips are made of, a survey for the British Heart Foundation reveals. A worrying 36% of 8-14 year-olds could not correctly identify the... More
Dodgy information design By Nic Price on 3 November 2005 — 1 min read Here’s something to mark World Usability Day. Boots does a thing called Meal Deal which means for a fixed price you can get a sandwich, drink and snack/dessert. There are two types of meal deal, one where the products are marked with a red circle and the slightly more expensive option which uses a green... More
WYSIWYG is dead, long live WYGIWYS By Nic Price on 10 October 2005 — 1 min read Macintosh-style interaction design has reached its limits. A new paradigm, called results-oriented UI, might well be the way to empower users in the future. In his latest alertbox, Jakob Nielsen explains how the concept of what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) is no longer useful or valid and is evolving into what-you-get-is-what-you-see (WYGIWYS) or “results-oriented UI [user interface].” He... More
Matt’s notes on the first Cognitive Design Congress … By Nic Price on 23 September 2005 — 1 min read … have really whetted my appetite for his long-hand interpretation coming soon. More