The usual selection of things I have seen and absorbed in the last few days around the internets.
Innovation
The laundrette that emails you when your clothes are done. Rather obvious idea that makes you wonder 1. why hasn’t someone done it before? 2. who still uses laundrettes?
Social Commentary
Daniel Pink questions what it means for (American) society now that the data shows for the first time that more people aged 25-34 have never been married than are married. He looks at Economics, Culture, Politics and new business opportunities.
Apple
According to Apple Insider (and probably two minutes earlier/later by Mac Rumors), the new Sharp phone has a display that matches the Retina display on the iPhone 4.
UX
One from the ‘No shit, Sherlock‘ school of UX insight. UX Movement alerts us to the news that right-aligned buttons on web forms work best. It suggests that you might use left-aligned buttons on single-page forms because: “it creates a clear and direct path to the button that users can’t miss” but doesn’t sufficiently explain why having it on the right in this instance wouldn’t be just as good. Because right-aligned buttons work best on multiple page/section forms, users have got used to them being on the right – such is the way conventions work. Why swap it around for the single page forms? This sort of article is potentially useful for a real newbie in UX design but it isn’t really telling me anything a lot of comparitive research and common sense wouldn’t. Not to mention the complete ignorance of languages that aren’t read left-to-right.
However, redeeming themselves, there is also a cute post from UX Movement about New York City reverting to Title Case on their signage to improve readability from the previous capitalised approach.
Moleskine
I am generally quite critical of hipster trends but I concede to loving my Moleskine and my Apple portables. This has made a bit of noise this week on the web, but in case (ahem) you missed it: Moleskine case covers for iPad and iPhone incorporating notepads.
Health & Fitness
As someone who has dabbled in dietary supplements (Chrondoitin, Gingko Biloba, Glucosamine, Omega 3) and who lives on a meat-light diet, I am struck by a conflict between believing marketing hype about supplements and knowing the evidence is light. David McCandless & Andy Perkins’ active infographic on Information Is Beautiful “Snake Oil?” helps sort the supplements by evidence. Multiple bubbles exist for supplements depending on the number of health benefits associated. Very compelling visual and (amongst an awful lot of info-graphic noise recently) one with a genuine enlightening purpose. I don’t think the concept is new, it was a static graphic before no? but i believe the interactive element is.
Design
37 Signals admit on their blog that their site is much-imitated and that this may be a part of why they attempt a redesign every 6 months. The new look is a bit of a “back to basics” for them. There is a real emphasis on copywriting and on using colour sparingly for highlighting. It was interesting that their summary didn’t mention IA or structure as such – perhaps that is because it is a given in their processes.
A bit of a lightweight piece on Six Revisions about single-page websites. The accompanying text is a little frothy but it is notable for the showcase of attractive examples.
Finally,
As if to underline the point above about frothy analysis, 90 Percent of Everything had a great post earlier this week about why we should return to a little more academic rigour in our sharing of knowledge and testing of hypotheses. It suggests a few approaches including:
:: Returning to primary sources, not relying on second-hand re-telling of material
:: Ensure enough detail is included to allow the test or experience to be reproduced and re-evaluated. This includes sharing all the data.
:: Be honest about shortcomings. There aren’t enough examples of failure shared in the Information Architecture and User Experience community.
The author acknowledges the difficulty in achieving this in commercial and sensitive situations (client confidentiality for example) but it is a welcome piece of advice for us to avoid issuing sanitised soundbites for instant sharing. Very much worth a read and I wholeheartedly concur (even if I am guilty of just this fast food ux snacking on this very blog).
John Gibbard 