via courtneybolton:
Facebook published their Design Principles. Not sure why it took them 8 years.
- Universal: Our mission is to make the entire world more open, and this means reaching every corner, every person. So our design needs to work for everyone, every culture, every language, every device, every stage of life. This is why we build products that work for 90% of users and cut away features that only work for just a minority, even if we step back in the short term.
- Human: Users return to our site to be surrounded by friends and other people near to them. This is a central promise of our product, that the people you care about are all in one place. This is why our voice and visual style stay in the background, behind people’s voices, people’s faces, and people’s expression.
- Clean: Our visual style is clean and understated, to create a blank canvas on which our users live. A minimal, well-lit space encourages participation and honest transparent communication. Clean is the not the easiest approach to visual style. To the contrary, margins and type scale, washes and color become more important as we reduce the number of styles we rely on.
- Consistent: We invest our time wisely, by embracing patterns, recognizing that our usability is greatly improved when similar parts are expressed in similar ways. Our interactions speak to users with a single voice, building trust. Reduce, reuse, don’t redesign.
- Useful: Our product is more utility than entertainment, meant for repeated daily use, providing value efficiently. This is why our core interactions, the ones users engage daily, are streamlined, purged of unnecessary clicks and wasted space.
- Fast: We value our users time more than our own. We recognize faster experiences are more efficient and feel more effortless. As such, site performance is something our users should never notice. Our site should move as fast as we do.
- Transparent: Users trust us with their identity, their photos, their thoughts and conversation. We reciprocate with the utmost honesty and transparency. We are clear and up front about what’s happening and why.
A UX case study of Google Maps
via tangentsnowball:
An exhaustive, extensive article about how the little-known maps website has been refined over years, from colour palette to interface.
via userflow:
Not all website visitors are created equal. Users come from different sources, with varying levels of knowledge and engagement, and with different goals. It’s up to you as a user experience designer to map those in-bound user flows to conversion funnels that provide value to the user as well as the business.
The 7 Iconic Patents That Define Steve Jobs
via pixelturf:
Steve Jobs is a man who lives in the minutiae of details. He, with his loyal staff, perfects what others would pass off as perfect. He has 313 patents to his name, which range from the Apple III to the iPod’s acrylic packaging. Almost all of them are notable but only a few are iconic…
(Source: TechCrunch)
via enochliew:
Tapi Tap Squeeze Drink Fountain by Dreamfarm
Nice. I like owls. I dream of keeping them as pets. :)
Art That Interacts if You Interface
The Museum of Modern Art’s “Talk to Me: Design and the Communication Between People and Objects” is one of the smartest design shows in years — by which I mean that it’s intelligent but also that it’s made for the texting, tweeting, social-networking, app-downloading, smartphone-wielding museumgoer.
via typepaintbook:
The Meaning Behind the Sony Vaio Logo.
Untitled (Hello World) by Valentin Ruhry. A huge board with a lot of switches.
(Source: bindall)
Break Your Routine by Mikey Burton
Max Bill Chronoscope for Junghans
Now, this is one watch I don’t mind spending on. But apparently this particular version isn’t sold anymore.
(Source: coolhunting.com)
