The search is over. Many have heroically tried. But a decisive winner has emerged. Behold! the most elegant and usable conference badge design ever: This badge is from The Web and Beyond 2010, held in Amsterdam two weeks ago, where I spoke and saw many excellent sessions. Let me explain the mechanics of this great … Continue reading A Book on a Hook
I just finished reading Lolita; it was my first time reading it, but it was not my first Nabokov novel (having already enjoyed Pale Fire and Ada or Ardor). It was a 1955 American hardback edition, the first year Americans got their hands on the book. I don’t understand why anyone buys new classic books … Continue reading Reading Lolita On Paper
After waiting six months on a pre-order waiting list, I finally got my Fitbit two months ago. I was really looking forward to it — as a big fan of the Nike+ running tracking system, I was excited about Fitbit’s promise to not only track my running and walking, but to track my sleep patterns … Continue reading For Sale: Fitbit. Like New.
A few weeks ago, I got an email from a young undergrad interested in SVA’s Interaction Design MFA program (where I teach a class in the fundamentals of interaction design). The student, a talented web designer, was curious about the relationship between “web design” and “interaction design” and “user experience”, and what the future holds … Continue reading Letter to a Young Interaction Designer
Whenever news of an earthquake hits, we are told that the quake had a magnitude of, say, 3.2 or 5.0. Or 7.0, as was the case yesterday in Haiti and use retin-a. We all understand that 7 is worse than 5, of course, but I fear that few of us really understand or appreciate the … Continue reading Drop the Richter Scale
Yours truly in 1989. This week is my 20th anniversary as a resident of New York City. I moved here in September 1989 at the tender age of 18, excited to begin studying art at Cooper Union but largely ignorant of how much New York itself would teach me for the next two decades. What … Continue reading 20 Years in New York City
I’ve submitted two talks for the 2010 SXSW Interactive conference. As you might know, SXSW’s selection process includes a period of public review to gauge general interest in the panels submitted (they call them “panels” even though many of the submissions, including my own, are single-speaker sessions). I would be deeply grateful if you, gentle … Continue reading Please vote for my SXSW panels!
Someone recently pointed me to an interesting book, Some Place Like Home: Using Design Psychology to Create Ideal Places, by Toby Israel. The book’s thesis is that a designers’ childhood environment profoundly affects their professional and adult design choices. The environments and objects children see and touch in their formative years will, according to Israel, … Continue reading UX Origins: How childhood experiences shape design choices
Where’s Chris been? Why, I’ve been working, swimming, biking, and running. The latter three were all brought together two weeks ago in the Philadelphia Triathlon (my second triathlon ever — my first was the New York Triathlon which I finished last summer), for which I have been cramming in a lot of training in recent … Continue reading Philadelphathon