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This week in Twitter

A few of this week’s 37signals staff posts at Twitter. jasonfried: The reason you can’t get it done in one day/week/month is because you’re making it take two days/weeks/months. rjs: For fans of Christopher Alexander’s recent books, Nikos Salingaros’ “A Theory of Architecture” is a must read http://amzn.to/cGOdBg longstride: Calling in GMail is pretty cool. Add it as one your Google Voice lines and you get inbound calls, too. Read more...

‘UX Professional’ isn’t a Real Job

‘UX Professional’ is a bullshit job title. It’s just a way to over-charge naive clients. All web designers should be UX prosless than a minute ago via Twitter for iPhoneRyan Carsonryancarson A web site or web app should not be the result of a production line of people. A web site or app should be the product of a Web Designer and a Web Developer (who occasionally are the same person, as demonstrated by Shaun Inman). Read more...

Good, cheap screen recorder for usability testing?

I'm starting an effort to do "least you can do" usability testing in a company that currently does none. I will need to fight hard for any budget at all. I have a Windows PC and a mic. I will conduct the testing myself, in person, with manual questions and produce a video of the screen capture plus the audio commentary. I have must have, nice to have, and don't need criteria for the screen recording software. Read more...

Is customer experience a chore or a passion?

From the current New Yorker, James Surowiecki writes about customer service: C.E.O.s routinely describe service as essential to success, and they are well aware that, thanks to the Internet, bad service can now inflict far more damage than before; the old maxim was that someone who had a bad experience in your store would tell ten people, but these days it's more like thousands or even, as in Carroll's case, millions. Read more...

Drag/Drop Thumbnail Manager

Hi folks, I'm looking for a little bit of advice on how to implement a fairly specific drag and drop interface requirement. My question is partly about the experience and partly about the actual implementation (which may or may not be appropriate for here). Scenario: I'm working on a document management system which uses thumbnails to give a quick view of what's available in a document. It is possible for a user to create new documents using pages of one or more existing documents. Read more...

Web Design Checkmate: Using Chess For Success in Web Design

  The business of building websites is one of constant change, adaptation and strategy. The way designers and developers build websites is often informed by the methods of others and their own trial and error. In light of this, we can draw a number of parallels — some philosophical, to a certain extent — between Web professionals and one of the oldest and most popular board games of all time (counting traditional and digital games). This game is chess. Read more...

[Podcast] Episode #20: Programming roundtable (Part 1 of 3)

Time: 19:38 | 09/02/2010 | Download MP3 Summary Three members of the 37signals programming team — Jeffrey Hardy, Jamis Buck, and Jeremy Kemper — answer questions from readers of Signal vs. Noise. Topics include Rails, Git, Mocha, Vim, nginx, Passenger, and more. More episodes Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or RSS. Related links and previous episodes available at 37signals.com/podcast. Read more...

Naming categories/features

Hi, I'm working for a site that is basically a regional/provincial hub for everything from events to classified ads. When you first get on the homepage you get provincial news, events, classified ads and many other things. The site slogan is something like My province in one click. Based on that slogan the categories are named as follow: My events, my content, my classified ads, my news, my weather and so on. Read more...

Five UX Research Pitfalls

Avoiding the growing pains and pitfalls associated with becoming a user-driven company. In the last few years, more and more organizations have come to view UX design as a key contributor to successful products, connecting teams with end-users and guiding product innovation within the organization. Though it’s fantastic to see this transition happen, there are growing pains associated with becoming a user-driven organization. Read more...

QUOTE: Sometimes the problem has to mature before…

Sometimes the problem has to mature before the solution can mature. Read more...

A couple of interesting UI techniques at Flickr

1) Interesting use of unicode characters for the UI on Flickr: That triangle up top is actually two triangle characters side-by-side. Sucks that we still have to resort to such hacks for such a common UI shape — but this is a smart solution. 2) Also interesting is this inline tour of the new photo pages. Rollover a number and bubbles pop up to show you what’s fresh for that section. More... Read more...

Showcase Of Appetizing Restaurant Websites

  They say the first bite is taken with the eye. If so, these appetizing restaurant websites succeed in whetting our appetites, inviting us to a savoury next bite. In these designs, color scheme and introductory copy show vastly different aspects of the restaurant experience. Moody warm tones create atmosphere, vibrant greens underscore freshness, and earthy colors communicate a relaxed, friendly attitude. Read more...

The Hidden Magic in TextMate

TextMate has become an essential part of my development arsenal over the last few years. When you first open up the application, you may be wondering what all the fuss is about- at first glance it looks like any other text editor. The true beauty of TextMate is the plethora of bundles, add-ons, keyboard shortcuts and tab triggers available. I’m going to go through some of my top tips on how to get the most from TextMate and increase your development productivity. Read more...

Gmail's Priority Inbox and email overload

Several people have asked my opinion of Google's Priority Inbox, the newly announced Gmail feature that promises to help users "identify your important email and separate it out from everything else, so you can focus on what really matters." (See Google's explanation.) I haven't used the feature yet, so I have to offer a grain of salt along with my comments. Read more...

FOWA. Las Vegas. Baby.

Feb 7-9th 2011 Get ready for the best event you’ve ever experienced. Sign up to get notified when Early Bird tickets go on sale. Read more...

Format: a brief history of data storage

I'm just missing the SyQuest disks I used to haul around when I first started doing some - very amateuristic - graphic design. And of course Zip Drives. And DVDs. But ok, it's nicely visualized. Read more...

Around the Web: 37 Signals, Apple, & @Beep

Hey there! It’s Wednesday, so this mid-week roundup is devoted to all things business and development. Some links are newsworthy, some retweeted across Twitter, and others just meet our “awesomeness” requirement, and regardless we hope you’ll enjoy them. Without further delay: How do you measure your customer happiness levels? 37 Signals built a little app “Smiley” for that, and blogged a good story. Write PHP without coding? Yep, and here’s how to do it. Read more...

iCandies Icon Set: 60 Free Icons For Your User Interfaces and Apps

  Today we are glad to release iCandies Icon Set, a set with 60 high quality icons in 64×64px, 48×48px and 32×32px, available in .EPS, .AI and .PNG. The set is designed by the talented folks from IconEden on a sole purpose of giving your projects a sleek and geeky style or provide crisp, attractive icons for your modern and fashionable-looking interfaces. All the icons in this pack — 60 icons in total — are designed in Round Rectangle shape. Read more...

The UI15 Lineup – Gettin’ Better Every Year

The User Interface Conference is a 15-year tradition of building up the designer’s skill set. Each year our team of expert instructors gets better and better. These are people so rich in experience, we could just sit around for days listening to their stories on how they’ve achieved their success. This year’s topics are an eclectic collection that really says a lot about the current state of online web and software design. Read more...

Informing Smartphone App Design

An overview of three complementary user research techniques that are well suited to mobile design. All smartphone app ideas start somewhere—an entrepreneur starts scribbling on some napkins at the local coffee shop, a visionary sketches on a whiteboard, a team has a brainstorm. Regardless of how your app begins, most app ideas are relatively vague at first, perhaps a basic drawing or a few bullet points of things you want the app to do. Read more...

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