Category: Language
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Designing the Bottle: Opening the Wine, Unboxing the Brand
In a recent interview, Michael Beirut noted that wine labels are one of the purest branding experiences: All wine bottles contain the same basic product (wine), so if you don’t know anything about a particular bottle of wine the graphic design of the label and the shape of the bottle are quite often the only…
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User vs. You
There’s a huge debate going on in the UX community about the use of the word “user”. Some argue that the word demeans the people we are trying to help, that it distances us from them, and that it makes us unable to truly empathize with their wants and needs. Words like “people” and “humans”…
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BIKEZ MY RIDIN / TRAIL RAIL UR ON I’M
Quick, what does this sign on the bike trail say? If you’re like me, you will probably initially read it as saying “XING ROAD”. Then, maybe after a fraction of a second, your brain kicked in and told you that maybe you should reverse the order. You do this mental correction because you’ve probably grown…
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A Peek into the Sausage Factory (IA Summit Presentation Post-Mortem)
My IA Summit presentation was an experiment in what is a new presentation style for me. I have long admired the rapid-fire presentation style of Lawrence Lessig (aka the “Lessig method“) and in particular the example of Dick Hardt’s keynote at Identity 2.0. Also, I’ve always wanted to achieve the same aesthetic and pedagogical dazzle…
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Interaction Design Style (My IA Summit 2007 Presentation)
It’s been a little less than a week since my IA Summit presentation. To my great surprise, it went really well. I mean really well. In the next day or so I will be posting a summary of my experiences preparing and discussing my topic, which was, in a word, style. Many people came to…