Perry

Hewitt

Tag: design

Friday 5 — 4.17.2015
1. Apps without an interface provide services to users through native mobile capabilities. For example, Magic lets you text a number to order whatever you like without hassle, while Digit monitors your bank account activity and automates your savings.
2. Looking for all the narcissism potential of Facebook with the quick-hit guilty pleasure of Giphy? Try Kong, a social network consisting solely of animated GIF selfies. Bring your best ridiculous expressions.
3. The Dao of Web Design captured tensions between print and web design, and presaged similar battles over control and process that have typified digital creation since. Web design leaders share their perspectives on the seminal essay 15 years later.
4. Here’s a good collection and detailed explanation of hidden gems in Google Analytics. My favorites? A shortcut to let you save preferred views, and custom alerts you can set up to email or text you.
5. 97% of us worry about how governments and corporations are using data about us as individuals and consumers. This article looks at three kinds of customer data: self-reported, data exhaust (browsing history, etc.), and profiling data created about us, and makes the case for developing enlightened data principles to build customer trust.
Weekend fun: Attention Star Wars fans out there — once you are finished watching the trailer and reading this shot-by-shot reaction post, you can add Star Wars emojis to your tweets. I’m definitely finding a way to work Monday morning stormtroopers into the tweet rotation.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.
April 17, 2015
Friday 5 — 2.20.2015
1. Consumer feedback is crucial in building a successful product. Understanding how and when to solicit it can make all the difference. Read and learn from these 5 mistakes we all make with product feedback.
2. Marketing is now in the experience business. In a digital era, marketers need to invest in user experience as a critical competency, and embrace agile methodologies to compete. This interview explains why “Lean Product Design Is The New Marketing.”
3. How has the role of design evolved over time? Design agencies today have the opportunity to change not only customer behaviors, but the behaviors of the client companies. Read how one design firm develops a culture of collaboration that drives results.
4. Should scientists take an active role in public policy debates about issues related to science and technology? 87% of 3,748 scientists surveyed think so. New research from Pew reveals how this translates into increasingly social behavior.
5. Everyone is going mobile — The New York Times is changing its editorial processes to optimize for more than 50% mobile visitors, and others are even ditching their websites altogether. However, Flipboard is swimming against the tide by launching a full-featured website to better tie its web and mobile experiences.
Weekend fun: Gimmicky or apt? This week Modern Family chose to reflect the reality of contemporary familial communications with an episode called ‘Connection Lost.’ Related video: A Brief Look at Texting and the Internet in Film.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.
February 20, 2015
Check your normative defaults

Your software has opinions — here’s how to spot them

In July of this year, Facebook made a small design change that reflected a large shift in perspective. On both the desktop and the mobile app the globe icon in the blue bar became dynamic rather than static, reflecting your position on the planet. If you were logging on to Facebook from Jakarta, North America was no longer the default view.

Why should such a small change matter? Mapmakers have known for centuries that whoever draws the map, defines the perspective. …

Read the rest of Check Your Normative Defaults over at Medium.

December 7, 2014
Friday 5 — 11.28.2014
1. Technology surrounds us, but what do most internet users understand about it? A Pew survey on web and digital technology found that only 23% of adult users are aware that “the Internet” and “the World Wide Web” are not the same thing. And while 83% of those surveyed could correctly identify Bill Gates, fewer than half knew that Facebook started at Harvard. Take the quiz for yourself before you read the report.
2. I enjoyed this post reframing strategy as less of a blueprint, which was better suited to a predictable analog world, but more of an algorithm (rule) that helps you manage for exceptions. As digital marketers operate in an ever-changing mix of channels, tools, and audiences, it’s essential to rely less on a plan and more on an agile approach that enables flexible, distributed decision-making.
3. Twitter is launching a new feature called “app graph,” which tracks all of the apps a user has installed on their mobile device. The goal is to serve users more applicable suggestions for accounts to follow, and add relevant content (including better-targeted ads) to their feeds. Here’s how to disable it.
4. Alex Breuer gave a thoughtful interview on responsive design at the Guardian. The interview provides insights on ways mobile can influence editorial, the evolution of prototyping, and why speed is considered an integral component of design.
5. WhatsApp is emerging in some contexts as a major traffic driver for news sites — and the rise of messaging apps in the West ensures this trend will continue to grow. Site owners should start gathering data on messaging referrals, and evaluate when it’s time to add a button for WhatsApp sharing.
Weekend fun: Here are Richard Scarry’s Busy Town inhabitants cleverly re-imagined with modern-day professions, like “content aggregator” and “tech start up executive.” Beware the pathos casting of Lowly Worm.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.
November 28, 2014
How to lead a responsive web design

Web thought leaders and authors Karen McGrane and Ethan Marcotte now publish a popular responsive web design podcast. Each episode features an interview with the people who make responsive redesigns happen, and covers the various complexities from change management and organizational readiness to design optimization and monetizing mobile.

You can see my interview here, which talks about the current content strategy shift toward mobile, and a recent responsive redesign at Harvard.

October 14, 2014
Friday 5 — 10.10.2014
1. Google has enhanced its search results with an “In the News” box. These results include blogs and other content sites that are not traditionally indexed as news. This would explain the travesty above, where a Chelsea blog is listed related to a search for Arsenal F.C.
2. Here’s a thoughtful recap and lessons learned from the NYTNow and soon-to-be-shuttered NYT Opinion apps. Being smart about mobile can draw in new and younger audiences, but it’s still a challenge to figure out what users will pay for, and to avoid cannibalizing existing channels with lower priced offerings.
3. Did you ever wonder what the advertisers know about you based on your web habits? Data researcher Jer Thorp paid 10 users $5 each to profile him based on the ads he’d been shown, and shares the results. If you are curious about the data online advertisers are gathering about you, download this Chrome extension, Floodwatch.
4. Creative types proficient in Photoshop or InDesign can make anything look good. For the rest of us looking for ways to improve our graphics, here are 23 useful tools to create images for social media.
5. Diehard location check-in fans may like the new Swarm widget for iOS 8, which lets users check in with a single tap. Foursquare is taking another run at serendipitous in-person socializing with a “nearby friends” feature.
Weekend fun: Jimmy Fallon runs down the pros and cons of Ello, the new ad-free social network.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.
October 10, 2014
Friday 5 — 10.3.2014
1. Pageviews and clicks provide some insight into your content’s performance, but understanding if and where your users are paying attention is far more valuable for content producers and advertisers alike. Chartbeat announced that it’s been certified by the Media Ratings Council for a new way of measuring reader attention: active exposure time.
2. Are we actually reading the articles we share on social networks? Buzzfeed’s new data blog has some encouraging news: on average, users who share spend 68% more time on page than users who don’t.
3. Google Ventures shared these five rules for creating great interface copy. The rules offer designers and developers a useful reminder of the importance of well-crafted microcopy, and how all those little, big details add up in interface design.
4. Reddit received $50 million in funding, to be used in part for product development, community management, and mobile tools (maybe an app, finally?). Reddit also announced plans to share back 10% of equity with the site’s users via crypto-currency.
5. Overwhelmed by your inbox? Try Eric Schmidt’s 9 rules for email. I’ve been rescued by the LIFO strategy more times than I can count.
Weekend fun: Anyone else remember using an SE/30 for wordprocessing or playing Dark Castle? A team working at the Harvard Innovation Lab has visualized the evolution of the desk (see the original video created by bestreviews.com) from an old-school Mac with accessories to your laptop today. Spoiler alert: there’s an app for that.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.
October 3, 2014
Friday 5 — 9.26.2014
1. Even with the meteoric rise of social media, search remains a significant driver of traffic for most sites. Google released a helpful, scrolling infographic reviewing the basics of how search works.
2. Visual social network Pinterest is a treasure trove for publishers. Not only a resource for trendspotting, Pinterest can in some cases drive more referral traffic to publishers than Facebook or Twitter.
3. Social media anxiety most often takes the form of FOMO (fear of missing out) — that feeling you get when you realize all your friends are on a fabulous ski weekend while you’re home in your pajamas binge watching True Detective. A new site aims to ease the pain of a different form of social media anxiety — when you fret over your unliked Instagram photos.
4. Are messaging apps taking over your mobile device? Here’s a breakdown of the trends that are sticking (e.g., disappearing messages, ambient messaging) and leading to the app proliferation.
5. If you work in marketing or publishing, chances are you spend some of your time sourcing digital design. 8 tricks to selecting a design partner underscores the value of a designer who understands business goals, and who will stand up to you and your bad ideas.
Weekend fun: The time-honored geek ritual of unboxing a new tech product is re-imagined in Blue Man Group’s video of the iPhone 6. But once unboxed, will it bend? Here’s a roundup of internet reactions to #bendgate.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up to get a weekly email.
September 26, 2014
Friday 5 — 9.5.2014
1. Wondering why your iPhone app was rejected from the app store? Apple has revealed the top 10 reasons that submitted apps don’t make the cut. Placeholder copy is among the offenders, which provides good fodder for longtime foes of Lorem Ipsum.
2. A common first step toward finding out what your website users value is to dive deep into existing quantitative and qualitative data. Why not also build your redesign in an open process alongside your users? The Guardian’s release of the beta version of its site, and its process of open and iterative change, has allowed them to engage its user base in the redesign process.
3. Thinking of signing up for Twitter, but feeling daunted? At long last Twitter has improved its onboarding process, and made first steps for Twitter users easier. Now the process features compelling, visual tweet content, and points you to other users whom you might actually know.
4. Apparently, men use the phrase “my zipper,” while women refer to “my yoga.” Language tells like these are among the ways that a Twitter algorithm determines your gender.
5. With hacked celebrity photos in the news, it pays to brush up on basic ways to keep your accounts and files safe. TL;DR: enable two-factor authentication everywhere.
Weekend fun: As I type this, some 80 million of my fellow Americans are sleeping. This clever visualization based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics provides an interactive and sortable view of what other Americans are doing.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up to get a weekly email.
September 5, 2014
Friday 5 — 7.25.2014
1. The New Yorker has updated its web presence to take advantage of the internet’s love affair with quality, longform reads. The mobile design gets it right, with smooth interactive elements like a fly-in hamburger menu. This Guardian review credits the re-design for avoiding looking “like a middle-aged man dropping the ends of his words in an attempt to be down with the kids.” One quibble: given that their goal was to increase readership, I’m surprised they buried their email signup at the bottom of the page. But the best news of all? The archives since 2007 are free for three months, so dig in.
2. The most important product design work is usually the ugliest, according to this Intercom post on The Dribblisation of Design that kicked up a kerfuffle online a while ago. It’s still a good summary of why the most interesting part of design is not the PSD, but the problem-solving.
3. Remember back when Facebook was going to die because they were too old and uncool to get mobile? Yeah, me neither. Now they’re making money, handheld over fist.
4. Reddit launched a new Live feature for unfolding news to better serve and reflect the high activity on the site when news breaks. The updated format makes the story easier to follow, and allows users to add content without starting a new thread and fragmenting the conversation.
5. Should you buy an Amazon Fire phone? Unless you’re an Amazon-loving, domestic-only-traveling, early-adopter type who adores AT&T, Engadget suggests you hold off.
Weekend fun: Emoji karaoke is a thing, and the folks who came up with the one below are undisputed masters. Read more via Nate Matias, and try it yourself.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
July 25, 2014