Category: Design
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Class and Web Design, Part 4: The Vicious Circle of Desire
(This is Part 4. Please check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 3a) Earlier, I talked about the markers of class that surround us every day. A person’s cultural immersion in a narrow range of class markers can create a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, a vicious circle of desire: Poor people can’t…
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Class and Web Design Part 3a: Tabloid vs. Broadsheet
What’s wrong with this picture? (This is Part 3a. Please check out Part 1 , Part 2, and Part 3) There’s a fascinating debate at Subtraction about the design of the new New York Post web site, between the AIGA’s Liz Danzico and the New York Times‘ (and Subtraction’s) Khoi Vinh. The discussion, I think,…
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Class and Web Design, Part 3: As Seen on TV!
(This is Part 3. Please check out Part 1 and Part 2) Does the “AS SEEN ON TV” badge tell you that a product is good? Or does it have the opposite effect on you? My guess is that, if you’re anything like me, the little red badge indicates “cheap crap” to you. But to…
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My Aeron Chair
This is not an Aeron chair. I’m quoted in the September 25 issue of New York Magazine about my thoughts on the Aeron chair. Because, you know, I’m an expert and all. It may not be clear from the article, but I’m really not among those who find the Aeron to be the world champion…
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Class and Web Design, Part 2: What Class are You?
As I discussed in my previous post, class is one of the few things Americans simply don’t like to talk about. Paul Fussell discusses this reluctance in the introduction to his excellent Class: A Guide Through the American Status System (a classic book I read many years ago and just picked up again to help…
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Class and Web Design, Part 1: The Class Struggle
Three ugly ducklings by zefrank. In the last year or so, hundreds of articles, blog posts, and conversations in the web design world have revolved around the question of “Why does bad design succeed?” MySpace, eBay, Google, and craigslist are usually cited as examples of “bad design” (or even “ugly design”) that works. And everyone…
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Elegance through Nomenclature
New York design firm Giampietro+Smith hits a little information architecture home run with their design for the magazine the revealer, a very interesting web site about media and religion. The problem of how to structure the presentation of breaking news, current-ish articles, and “evergreen” always-interesting material is something information architects face all the time but…
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in Art, Artificial Intelligence, Design, Images, Personal, Reviews, Science, Technology, TV & Movies, Web -
User Research Smoke & Mirrors, Part 5: Non-Scientific User Research isn’t a Bad Thing
(This is Part 5 — the final part. Please read Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , and Part 4 first.) I would certainly agree that more rigorous methodologies can’t hurt in our field. But at the same time, I think that we need to be a little more honest about the value…