Chris Griffin

It’s Not You Portland, It’s Me

Or the working title:

Sorry Portland, I’m Breaking Up with You For the Hot, Tanned, Busty Blonde that is Los Angeles, Although I Typically Go For Wavy Haired, Glasses-Wearing, Tatted Up, Scarf-Wearing, Intellectual Brunettes Like You, Portland, the Thing is It’s Been 4 Years and This Relationship isn’t Going Anywhere, Time to Move On, Smooch Smooch, Love You, Bye

Spring of 2005, I decided that I needed to leave Florida. Living there my whole life, I felt life there became rather stagnant for me. I love my Florida friends, most of whom I have remained in contact with, but I wanted to experience something completely different — something that would be impossible to do in Orlando, a cultural wasteland centered around family-friendly fun. Fresh off of dropping out from the University of Central Florida, I thought this was a good opportunity as ever to live up to my already nomadic lifestyle by leaving Florida and moving to the West Coast.

40+ Helpful Resources On User Interface Design Patterns

Excellent compilation of all the interface design patterns & libraries out there.

Housekeeping

Pardon the meta-post, but I wanted to share a few improvements I made here on the blog:

Wolfram Alpha and Hubristic User Interfaces

An excellent write-up on the difference between control and intelligent user interfaces, the failure of natural language search in Wolfram Alpha, and the “demo illusion” (i.e. a person having success with a system they have created may not lead to success among the masses).

(via Signal vs Noise)

User Experience Deliverables

20 user experience deliverables, along with resources and examples. These deliverables are only a means to an end, but user experience designers spend a good chunk of their time creating these artifacts.

I love seeing how other designers present information and ideas in a easy to digest format.

The One About “Look and Feel”

Andrew Crow of Adaptive Path explains why we should do away with the phrase, “look and feel” when referring to visual aspects of a design:

Visual design is often subjective and can be difficult to describe or judge. Often, people lack the language or understanding of the work to accurately express their opinions. Consequently, we use simple terms of the way an object “looks” or how it “feels”.

Speaking in terms of these qualities does a disservice to the design. We cheapen the value of the work by paying attention only to the superficial aspects.

When I refer to the visual design of a website or a web application, I tend to use “aesthetics” or “style layer” but those words don’t do visual design any more justice than “look and feel”.

Also, don’t forget to read the comments.

Designers Do It in Groups

Robert Hoekman writes:

I recently began working with a client whose staff doesn’t design together. When they walk into the office in the morning, they plug in their headphones and stare at their screens, hardly speak to each other, and forge product plans by way of short, infrequent conversations about what needs to be implemented next and when. The conference room has only a table and a projector. The front room is filled with broken-down boxes, presumably leftover from setting up shop in a new place, but the company has been in the space for months.

The people on this team are smart and engaged, but they’re nowhere near doing their best work. They’re not taking advantage of each other’s ideas and passions. They’re not having any fun.

I’ve worked in a couple of environments similar to what Robert describes here. In both environments, I did not work at an efficiency I would consider to be productive. More importantly, I did not produce what I would consider to be my best work.

What I’ve taken away from both experiences is the work environment of any job will always set a threshold on the potential enthusiasm (and fun) you will have for the duration of your time at said job. In other words, focus on evaluating the team you will be working with, not the work you will be doing. Enthusiasm and attitude is contagious.

A bit of a tangential thought from Hoekman’s point, but thought it was worth noting.

Choosing a Monochromatic Color Palette in Photoshop

Once upon a time, when I started a design project with a monochromatic color palette, I would choose colors based on instinct. I would pick a base color, and if I needed a different shade of said color, I would “eyeball” it in the Photoshop color picker by moving the eyedropper slightly in a direction that would give me the result I needed. This approach worked well enough, but the more detail-oriented perfectionist side of me was put off by the arbitrariness. There had to be a more systematic approach to a monochromatic color palette than just picking and choosing. There is, and with a basic understanding of color theory, specifically, how saturation and brightness works, you’ll be creating monochromatic color palettes in no time.