When writing an application in which user-submitted data can find its way without review into the public view, it’s awfully nice to be able to automatically staunch the flow of profanities at least a little bit. We needed such a thing for a recent social media widget we built but oddly couldn’t find anything in our brief searches. So we wrote our own.
Everything we think we know about the world is a model. Every word and every language is a model. All maps and statistics, books and databases, equations and computer programs are models. So are the ways I picture the world in my head–my mental models. None of these is or will ever be the real world.
–Thinking In Systems by Donella H. Meadows
Mental models are one of the fundamental elements of interaction design. If there is a usability problem with an interface, it is often the result of a breakdown between a user’s mental model of the system (ie, how she thinks it works) versus the way it actually works.
For every conceivable interface there is then at least one, if not a variety, of mental models that go with it. However, when it comes to designing for the web, I believe there are two models that supercede all others.
Simply put, those two models are the ideas of going and getting something yourself versus having something brought to you. For the sake of economy, I will refer to these simply as “Get” versus “Bring”. Let’s start with two real world examples and then see how they map to the web.
“Well, the field itself is dominated by fashion and by the idea of selling stuff, so you have to be concerned with what’s currently being done, and the economy is based on the idea of change and new styles, and this year’s whatever. Unfortunately, that’s not the real basis for serious work. If you’re more serious about it, you have to be more concerned about durability and ideas that go beyond the moment, so I think the best designers around are always designers that have had a kind of broader look and don’t change with the prevailing wind. If you find that all you’re doing is copying what is already being done, you’ll have no position in the field. You’ll have nothing to offer and, after 20 years of doing it, you’re nowhere.”
Note: If you’d like to hear more from Milton Glaser, he and Chip Kidd will be speaking at the Cooper Hewitt.
Over the past seven years BASIK has designed and built over fifty websites and online marketing campaigns for luxury real estate developments. Our clients in these projects are both developers and sales teams.
I was recently in a meeting where I heard someone say that the investors behind the project didn’t want to, “waste money on print”. I thought this was significant. We are finally seeing that investors are no longer willing to blindly spend money on print media and are demanding better return on their marketing dollars.
It has taken a long time for institutional real estate investors to realize the transformation that digital technology has brought to marketing. We have been on the front line and witnessed many other changes. We wanted to share some tips. This is the first article in a three-part series.
At BASIK we’ve built social media widgets and integrations several times. And as with any task that involves multiple, changing technologies, there have been headaches every time. So in the interest of helping out others faced with similar tasks, this article describes our recent project with Attention for Barbie and The White House Project.
This is a follow up to the Client Bill of Rights post from last week. The main purpose of this companion document is to explain to the client that they are also active participants in their project and are in many ways just as responsible for its success or failure.
“Free Slippers at Airport Security”, “A Hand Warmer App: The Phone Heats Up”, and “Antibacterial Doormats” are just a sampling of the user-submitted free ideas you’ll find on our new site for Epoch Films. What, you got a better idea? Then go ahead and share it. (And In case you are wondering, yes, those are our hands in the videos.) We collaborated with writer, director and maker Todd Lamb on this one.
We were really excited to collaborate with the very clever and very social folks at Attention to create a social media widget to support a great cause. The White House Project and Barbie have been partners since 1992 and now they’re asking women and bright young girls today to sign a declaration to “Ignite a National Movement to Inspire Girls”. The goal is to gather one million signatures which will then be presented to First Lady Michelle Obama.
Attention asked BASIK to design and build a compelling widget that would showcase this outstanding cause and encourage sign up and sharing. It was a fun challenge for us – naturally the first instinct was to make everything Barbie pink, but with a little restraint we were able to express Barbie’s voice with a visual and typographic treatment that speaks to the aspirational nature of the cause itself.
So whatever your age, make your voice heard now and sign the petition!
This talk by designer Michael Bierut on clients reminded me of an experience I had a few years ago when my office had the opportunity to work with the seriously smart people at Bain & Company. (Bain, Mckinsey & Co. and Boston Consulting Group are considered the “big three” strategic consulting firms).
At the time, we were working on a redesign of the Bain & Co. corporate website. It had started off well enough, but we began to hit some snags and bumps as the design and development went along. As in so many cases, the client and the agency had different expectations going into the project, and frustrations began to mount as these expectations were not met. Continue reading…
What I like so much about this video isn’t just that it’s good (which it is), or that it’s a reminder of how frighteningly proficient today’s design students have become (it was done by a student in Singapore). No, I thought it was worth noting because it’s also a really fine example of the merits of imperfection.
Had this short piece been done seamlessly, without any visual hiccups or irregularities, it wouldn’t have been nearly as beautiful or arresting. It would have been slicker, more “professional”, but far less approachable. The beauty of this piece lies in the fact that it feels made, and not just produced.
It’s almost too easy to quote Tibor Kalman here, but at the same time it seems wrong not too. So here’s Tibor:
“We live in a society and a culture and an economic model that tries to make everything look right…But by definition, when you make something no one hates, no one loves it. So I am interested in imperfections, quirkiness, insanity, unpredictability.”
ps: As I was putting together this post, Kevin Dutra, one of our designers, sent around these videos, which also have a great kind of wabi-sabi to them.
