September, 2011

Links for September 23rd

Experimental Theology: Love Wins: Part 6, Winning, But Not Like Charlie Sheen

Richard Beck explains where he disagrees with Rob Bell's Love Wins, and the conditionalism that Bell, C.S. Lewis, and countless others have espoused. As I've said before, he makes a compelling argument and it needs to be properly understood if universalism is going to be a real discussion, regardless of agreement or disagreement with it.

tags:

psychology

theology

eschatology

universalism

rob-bell

richard-beck

Links for September 21st

Editing tips for designers : Cennydd Bowles

"Designers know well that we often miss problems until we review our intended solutions. Similarly, we may think we have a clear argument until the blank page forces us to find the right language to describe it. Therefore, just as we appreciate the power of iteration in design, we should embrace the power of editing."

tags:

writing

design

Links for September 20th

A List Apart: Articles: Demystifying Design

"Mystifying design with jargon only we understand makes us feel like heroes and creates a sense of job security. But it also creates an 'us and them' atmosphere which excludes non-designers, obscures the true value of design, and generates antagonism when only cooperation will yield the best product. By revealing our process and inviting others into our world, we can create a team that is invested in the success of our work, and deliver better design."

tags:

business

design

a-list-apart

A List Apart: Articles: Banishing Your Inner Critic

"The inner critic is an unconscious deterrent that stands between the seeds of great ideas and the fruits of achievement, making you hate your designs, giving you 'writer’s block' as your deadline looms, keeping you stuck in a project’s initial thinking stage because something isn’t quite right. "

tags:

creativity

design

a-list-apart

Links for September 19th

Interface Design is Copywriting « Bokardo

"I humbly submit that there is no single element more important to your interface than the copywriting. There is nothing that makes or breaks a positive experience more than the simple set of words that you choose to communicate with. In a world in which we have to simplify as much as possible, nothing matters more than the small vocabulary you end up with in your final work."

tags:

writing

content-strategy

design

Following the Leader | Wendy McCaig

"He then started to invite people to join him with the simple words 'come follow me.' (Luke 5:27) Jesus did not send them to a bible study class or question them about their beliefs. He simply invited them to go on mission with him."

tags:

ministry

leadership

church

Links for September 16th

Usability Testing With Card Sorting

"Card sorting is a usability methodology that has been used by information architects for years to organize web designs and web content more effectively. It involves placing content, groups, keywords and the like on physical note cards and allowing study participants to move the cards into groups to see how the cards can be organized into categories."

tags:

information-architecture

usability

design

Links for September 15th

LukeW | Breaking Dev: Faster Mobile Anyone?

"In his Faster Mobile Anyone? presentation at Breaking Development in Nashville, Steve Souders discussed the importance of performance on the Web, why it is even more important on mobile, and a set of emerging best practices for faster mobile Web site."

tags:

performance

design

mobile

Creating ways to digest online content

September 13th, 2011

One of the defining things about the experience of reading online is that it is completely impossible to read everything, or even everything that would be interesting to any specific person.

The 9/11 Narrative

September 11th, 2011

I didn't plan on writing about 9/11 this year. I wrote about it last year (and in 2001, linking to the article I tracked down last year, though my thoughts from back then are lost in a Comic Sans archive of messiness), and I assumed I wouldn't have more to say this year. But while I still believe that the September 2001 article I reposted from the vocalist of Ballydowse is the best response to the event, I think there are words to be said about our national response since then, and it is those I decided to give attention to.

Links for September 9th

Leveraging UX Insights to Influence Product Strategy :: UXmatters

"Many UX researchers and analysts aspire to influencing not only design implementation, but also product strategy. However, it is rather difficult to effect this kind of influence because user research insights tend to center on design and fail to speak to a company’s overall strategy for a product."

tags:

business

user-experience

product-design

Links for September 8th

Mark Boulton on layouts and grid systems | Interview | .net magazine

"The idea is a very mature way of thinking. It’s almost ingrained as a designer: this is how we approach layout. But we’ve tried to make it work on the web by basically inventing a page, like a best fit. We’ve created a page in a medium where there are no edges, there is no page. The web is different. So I’ve thought up three rules, which I think we need to apply to modern web design. It’s a complete reversing of the way of thinking about it."

tags:

responsive-design

layout

design

The shape of our future book — Satellite — Craig Mod

"The notion of a 'new,' digital kind of book scares a lot of folks because there is such a rich fabric of romanticism, nostalgia and myth built up around the physical book. These qualities — romantic, nostalgic, mythical — are really indicative of emotion. And we don't want to lose that emotion. It's easy to forget this; I know I do. I forget how the weight of those myths (some real, some imagined) can and should be informing the work I’m doing now."

tags:

publishing

design

books

Books in the Age of the iPad — Craig Mod

"With the iPad we finally have a platform for consuming rich-content in digital form. What does that mean? To understand just why the iPad is so exciting we need to think about how we got here."

tags:

ipad

books

design