Don’t Forget: User Interfaces for Physical Spaces

MAYA Design, in preparation for the User Interfaces for Physical Spaces event, has just published a fabulously detailed case study, annotated with copious illustrations. It makes even clearer just how cool the workshop will be. The case study outlines their process, which we’ll get to walkthrough in detail — literally, as we make trips to [...]

Thoughts on walking

I am reading Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust: A History of Walking. Since I was little, I’ve been a walker. I walked to school from grades 3 through 12 (I lived within a mile of both schools I attended, a rarity in Los Angeles). I would walk weekends to the mall, and then I’d walk all around [...]

I think this is major.

Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of the once-again relevant Wired magazine, writes on his blog that he very rarely engages in mainstream media directly, instead utilizing RSS and the blogosphere as a set of editors to point him to what is relevant. Obviously, Chris is an early adopter, but he’s also the lead guy at a major [...]

37Signals on Fast Company on Simple

Jason nearly dislocates his shoulder patting himself on the back writing about Fast Company’s “The Beauty of Simplicity” cover story. One of the things that Jason writes is, “The big guys have to force simple. The small guys are simple by default.” Which, of course, is not true. *Everyone* has to force simple. At Adaptive [...]

Innovation through accretion?

A long time ago, after attending a design and business conference, I wrote a post lamenting innovation fetishization. Such an obsession with “innovation” worries me. It worries me because I live in a world where the things that already exist typically don’t work as well as they should. More time should be spent bringing existing [...]

Zen is not for value judgments

A blog called “Presentation Zen” has generated a lot of buzz for a couple of posts that smugly satisfy what an audience wants to believe: Bill Gates and Visual Complexity and Gates, Jobs, and the Zen Aesthetic. Readers feel righteous in the easy digs at Microsoft’s busy PowerPoint slides, particularly when compared to Jobs’ spare [...]

Lodging in Minneapolis: The Wales House

I just spent a few days in Minnesota for work, and on Friday, I lodged at the Wales House. I found the Wales House through Trip Advisor, and, I must say, I was very pleased. I’m not a fan of Big Hotel lodging. I don’t usually need concierges, and lobby bars, and exorbitant fees for [...]

What about business informing design?

There’s been a lot of talk in “design thinking” circles about how the practice of design needs to do more to inform business. You won’t get any disagreement from me. But I haven’t seen a lot of talk of this being a two-way street. We seem to think business folks should appreciate the value that [...]

Workshop – User Interfaces for Physical Spaces

I’m very excited to announce a workshop that I’m helping put together in my role with the Information Architecture Institute. It’s called User Interfaces for Physical Spaces, and it’s a one-day case study of some fascinating work that MAYA Design did to improve the visitor’s experience of the Carnegie Libraries in Pittsburgh. It takes place [...]

Yahoo creates the first decent road trip mapping program

Yahoo has released a beta of their new super swanky mapping program, clearly a salvo fired in the direction of Google Maps. It uses Flash (instead of Ajax), and it by-and-large feels like Google Maps, except for one key exception: the ease of creating road trip itineraries. I love road trips. I love the web. [...]

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Links, thoughts, and essays from Peter Merholz