Responsive Web Design and Mobile Context

“Let me be clear—I’m not saying that there is never a need to tailor the content of a mobile site. I’m also not saying that responsive design and one web is an end all be all for mobile. It’s not a black and white issue—there are many, many shades of gray. We shouldn’t ignore the unique needs and characteristics of mobile devices and their users—it would be irresponsible to do so. However, we should be very careful not to assume too much. Mobile context is important, but first we need to figure out what the heck it is.”

A Richer Canvas

“Binding content to the book is what all good book designers do. To do this, they use Canons of Page Construction, or other principles to design grid systems that, when populated by content, create that connection. But with all paper-based design, they start with paper. Paper that has edges, ratios that can be repeated. A canvas. And here’s the thing. Creating layouts on the web has to be different because there are no edges. There are no ‘pages’. We’ve made them up.”

What’s Next in Web Design?

“While web sites need to become simpler, simplicity is not a matter of dumbing things down. In contrary. Simplicity is when someone takes care of the details. Take Google for instance. It looks simple. As a user you are not bothered with the technical details of the search. The machine figures it out for you and displays them in a manner so thought through, that doesn’t make you think about design matters.”

“User Experience is in the interface, not in the surface. [– –] I am pretty sure that the future of web design will be less concerned about the visual style. I am sure because web sites that care less about visual and more about interaction sell better. And that’s what web site owners care about.”

UX Lisbon: Jakob Nielsen

“• Circular renewal: the usability practice started with software applications and physical interfaces. Now we have come full circle. We are once again focusing on applications and physical devices.

• Linear path: there used to be just a few people practicing usability. Now, there is serious business attention paid to user experience. Design used to be done as a side effect of implementation by programmers. Now we have tens of thousands of professionals doing research and design. The growth has been immense -a factor of a thousand in 25 years.

• This linear growth will continue for some time. The differentiating factor between products will be user experience. Usability is more business critical because it is product first, payment second. [– –] ”

Ten Rules for Web Startups

“One of Google’s biggest strengths—and sources of frustration for outsiders—was their willingness to say no to opportunities, easy money, potential employees, and deals.”

“Many dot-com bubble companies that died could have eventually been successful had they been able to adjust and change their plans instead of running as fast as they could until they burned out. [– –] Pyra was started to build a project-management app, not Blogger. Flickr’s company was building a game. Ebay was going to sell auction software. Initial assumptions are almost always wrong. That’s why the waterfall approach to building software is obsolete in favor agile techniques. The same philosophy should be applied to building a company.”

Five and a Half Habits of Highly Effective Designers

“As Seth Godin writes in a little book about quitting called The Dip, “Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.” [– –]

““Design is subjective” is one among many prevailing distortions of reality — ideas that have gone unchecked for so long that they parade around as facts — in our organizations. You might recognize these other distortions: “Data and logic trump intuition,“ “Design is decoration,” and “More feedback leads to better designs”. [– –] These clichés seem benign but, in fact, are extremely harmful. They are the proverbial elephant in the room at the heart of dysfunctional organizations.”

Behind the scenes: 37signals.com Redesign

“I always like to throw in a “from left field” design just to see where it goes. This isn’t thematically related to the “manifesto” idea. I thought it was worth exploring and seeing next to the other options. Professionals might also see this as the design you hope the client won’t pick, but is there to divert attention to the other options. It shows some range, but ultimately its main purpose is to fail.”

“What if the site was a clear statement of what 37signals was? Just simple type. Such a design would be antithetical to what many people think of a software company’s website.”

What Separates Good Designers from Great Ones

“No compromising on process. Whatever that process is, they stick to it. IDEO is great about this. If a client doesn’t want that process, they are told to look elsewhere for business. You hire us because we follow our process, which we know produces better results.”

“Time. Enough time to do the work well, including the hidden cost of thinking that has to happen. You need enough time to do brainstorming, iterations, prototyping, testing, and to focus on the details. Some products simply take years to get right; all of Apple’s products do.”

“Details. Sweating the details: [– –]. The tiniest of changes, done well, can affect a product greatly. Yves Behar and Jonathan Ive are known for this kind of detailed design.”

1960s Braun Products Hold the Secrets to Apple’s Future

“When you look at the Braun products by Dieter Rams—many of them at New York’s MoMA—and compare them to Ive’s work at Apple, you can clearly see the similarities in their philosophies way beyond the sparse use of color, the selection of materials and how the products are shaped around the function with no artificial design, keeping the design “honest.”

”This passion for “simplicity” and “honest design” that is always declared by Ive whenever he’s interviewed or appears in a promo video, is at the core of Dieter Rams’ 10 principles for good design:

• Good design makes a product useful.
• Good design is aesthetic.
• Good design helps us to understand a product.
• Good design is honest.
• Good design is as little design as possible. [– –]”

How Close Are We To An Adaptive Web?

“In an adaptive Web scenario, the Web will truly come to life and become self-learning. We’ll see the Google way of determining linkages between sites and content go by the wayside in favor of an approach that’s based entirely on what the Web community at large and like-minded users within it found useful. An adaptive Web experience would represent a dramatic shift in how we interact with the Web (or more accurately, how the Web interacts with us). [– –]”

“In many ways, it’s in step with the democratization of the Internet: In the first phase of the web, only people “in the know” could publish content. In web. 2.0, everyone could explicitly contribute to the community via social networking and self-publishing tools. Naturally, the next step is for all users to be able to contribute to building and organizing the Web in its entirety, organically shaping our individual relationship with it based on our collective experiences.”