I'd rather be in outer space đ¸
oozey mess
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occasionally subtle
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Peter Solarz
we're not kids anymore.
izzy's playlists!
tannertan36
Discoholic đŞŠ
AnasAbdin
todays bird
$LAYYYTER
⣠Chile in a Photography âŁ
Product Placement
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Three Goblin Art
Love Begins
Origami Around
Sade Olutola
seen from United States
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@alex-stetson
Accepted challenge from:
Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo
Passing challenge along to:
Benedict Cumberbatch, beautiful alien
Kylie Jenner, the littlest Kardash
Everyone on Tumblr
Most important thing: Donate here.
(Special thanks to alittlespace for talking while wet.)
Get Rid of Psychic Weight You've just signed up for Netflix, giving you access to all episodes of House of Cards. Finally, you think, now you can watch the full second season whenever you want. But this isn't as freeing as it seems. "I realized that this was psychic weight that was pressing me down," Hanselman says, recounting the time when he gained access to all episodes of Law & Order on TiVo. "'OK, we got like seven Law & Orders on the thing," he says as if he were talking to his wife. "We'll put the kids to bed early tonight, and we're going to bang through Law & Order and then we're going to get this thing under control and we're going to handle it. And then we'll be back on track." TiVo, it turned out, wasn't a "gift from God" as Hanselman originally thought. This "glorious productivity thing," he says, became the primary source of psychic weight in his life. Whatever is "pending" in your life, drop it, Hanselman suggests on his blog.
https://zapier.com/blog/scale-yourself-scott-hanselman/
So obviously true... this sums up the concept of psychic weight and negative effects on our psyche and productivity
Conserve Your Keystrokes Pulling a page from author and software developer Jon Udell, Hanselman encourages you to "conserve your keystrokes." What does this mean? He explains by example: If Brian emails me a really interesting question about ASP.net ⌠and I send him back an exciting and long, five-paragraph with a code sample email that solves his problem, I just gave him the gift of 10,000 of my keystrokes. But there is a finite number of keystrokes left in my hands before I die, and I am never going to get those keystrokes back and I've just gifted them to Brian. And I don't even know if he reads that email. So what should I do to multiply these keystrokes given that there is a finite number of those keystrokes left in my hands? I write a blog post and I mail him the link. Then after I'm dead, my keystrokes multipleâevery time I get a page view that's 5,000 keystrokes that I did not have to type. Conserve Your Keystrokes Keep your emails to 3-4 sentences, Hanselman says. Anything longer should be on a blog or wiki or on your product's documentation, FAQ or knowledge base. "Anywhere in the world except email because email is where you keystrokes go to die," he says.
https://zapier.com/blog/scale-yourself-scott-hanselman/
Tinderization
The Tinder app started a new trend in UX. Apparently the "card" interface in combination with the swipe right/left gesture has caused a major upshot in mobile user engagement. Other companies are quickly jumping aboard and implementing a tinder-style interface, hoping to increase mobile engagement. Here are a couple articles about this...Â
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3030477/stylect-the-tinder-for-shoes-finds-you-a-perfect-pair
http://sage.onswipe.com/mobile-house-cards-tinderization-things/
More thoughts on this later....
What can marketing learn from immersive opera, extreme kidnapping, and a bungee jumping car? As mass marketing shifts to social media marketing, there is something that both are missing. Learn how companies are starting to tap into our natural craving to engage in authentic, immersive experiences and tell everyone about it.
Love this! totally brings validation to the type of work I do and want to continue to pursue in marketing.
Not a bad Monday (at floaty bar, st john usvi)
(Update on 4-19-07: Since this appeared in the print section of the Chicago Tribune, several people e-mailed to tell me about their experiences with the Wright Institute and their personal growth retreat weekends. Please e-mail me ([email protected]) if you've attended...
Watching your favorite sports team, online shopping, checking your Facebook or Instagram several times a day, "binge watching" TV series (think reality shows or the latest netflix original series) ... these behaviors all fall under the category of soft addictions. The problem is, is engaging in these activities is not moving you toward your real goals in life, and will never allow you to achieve true fulfillment or happiness. They're just giving you that little feel good fix that's easy access and instantaneous.
I've been very interested in the subject of soft addictions lately, particularly in thinking about our society and culture. The amass of technology and social media that we engage with everyday has unwittingly turned us all into social exhibitionists and dopamine addicts. We no longer have to complete long and arduous tasks to get a reward. Just post a new facebook picture and get a bunch of likes on it, and boom- your brain is flooded with dopamine.
Easy accessibility and omnipresence of WIFI and devices means that pleasure fix or dopamine rush that we humans crave is always just within reach. It's giving into these instincts that cause many of us to become stuck in an abominable cycle, caught up in distraction and temporary fixes and losing sight of what's really important. This path ultimately falls out in a pile of depression, disappointment, and self disillusion. It's the equivalent of grabbing some McDonalds every time you're hungry or bored, instead of going to the store, buying fruit, and making a fruit salad. The McD's route is provides instant gratification, is commonly accepted, convenient, cheap, and comfortable. In the long term it results in obesity, sickness, and self loathing. The fruit salad route is accompanied by extra effort, exertion of self will, and standing out from the norms, but ends in fulfillment, good health, and positive self image. If the McDonalds snack in this analogy is the soft addiction, then what is the fruit salad? How do we identify what we should be doing to progress towards our goals and what will lead us to self fulfillment? How do we find the support we need to reach these goals if our society hails the quick, easy, and unsustainable pathways?
What's even more interesting to me is the cultural and social aspect of this; that it has become widely socially acceptable to over indulge in these types of soft additions. Some of us make a career out of them. Do we find them cathartic or do they rob us of our time and happiness? Either side you fall on it's interesting to be aware of.
"People are addicted to overstimulation," says John, a Silicon Valley start-up founder. "Itâs a distraction, a detraction from more real relationships, turning to something more virtual than real."
http://www.rollingstone.com/feature/millennial-sexual-revolution-relationships-marriage
How mailchimp works with Plywood People to turn their old billboards into knapsacks and other marketable goodies, so profits can go to folks in need. really well executed video, too. music is perfect.
UX Fest Highlights, a set on Flickr.
Full photo deck from UX Fest, the first conference-sized event I pulled together for Fresh Tilled Soil.
My favorite place to run
Prometheus clock, a digital installation for #uxfest, created And installed by our friends at Skeptic
My first time at Inbound marketing summit.
Went to Future M last week - this was a session on marketing and technology. More on that later.
UX Fest on Oct 1 - Fresh Tilled Soil's first user experience design conference. Full house.
Seven Killer User Interface Designs For Gestures
Visual user interfaces have a profound impact on user experience when it comes to web & mobile apps. Here are some truly great ones to inspire you to create more of the same.
Pull/Unfold
Hereâs one posted by Cuberto on Dribbble.  This graphical user interface is designed to look like a piece of paper unfolding; slide right to pull up a hidden dashboard screen; slide left and the interface refolds to again hide the dashboard. In the example below, the left to right slide gesture is hierarchicalâ essentially, left to go back/access top nav actions, right to move forward/return to 2nd nav interface. See other instances of this how this fold element is incorporated into mobile UIs on Dribbble here.
Rotate
When you use a camera, there is a rotary that you turn in order to adjust picture taking settings and conditions. Paul Flavius Nechita has translated that physical interface into an iPad design that mimics the same usability principles using a rotation gesture. Cool. Another examples of circular UIs for gestures below.
Push/Select
I wouldnât be surprised if this twitter button (posted on Dribbble by Matt Gentile) has a pretty high click through rate because of its tactile appearance & sticky behavior. Some strategically placed drop shadows make the user experience feel like you are actually pushing a button. The âstickyâ element contributes to this experience, since once clicked or touched, the button remains inverted.
Read the original post, Seven Killer User Interface Designs For Gestures, on the FreshTilledSoil.com blog.
Life After UI Design: How to Get Your Start Up Web 2.0 App Noticed
This post was originally written for and published on SixRevisions.com in November 2010.
If you have just designed, built, invested in, or are trying to market a new web 2.0 product, how do you go about getting it the attention it needs to grow and succeed? Hereâs a list of online resources that can help your get your user interface designed web app some well-deserved attention and traffic!
Some of these websites are more difficult to get your web 2.0 startup featured on than others. In general, the more difficult it is to get featured on a certain website, typically, the more powerful a resource it is for getting your UI web app attention, traffic, and press. (notes: this is a generalization to which there are definite exceptions!)
Letâs start small and work our way upâhereâs a list of the smaller websites that take submissions for featuring your user interface web app at no cost.
1.   killerstartups.com-- This site ranks fairly well according to open site explorer, earning a 77/100 in terms of page authority. This site is a social bookmarking site specifically for listing, rating, and reviewing new web-based startups. You can submit your own web app by filling out a simple form on the site. Itâs not too difficult to get listed, and votes and comments from users provide you with user feedback about your product. Donât expect too much link juice from your listing through, because they have tons of followed external links on there. Plus, like most other social bookmarking sites, new submissions pile up quickly, so the attention you gain will be somewhat fleeting. It is, however, a pretty highly trafficked site that focuses specifically on start up web apps.
2.   www.feedmyapp.com/-- This site is similar to killerstartups.com but is less of a social bookmarking site and more of a way to get your web app showcased and drive traffic to it. Open Site Explorer ranks this site lower than killerstartups.com in terms of page & domain authority, and shows it has more link juice (based on the # comparison of external followed links to it compared to killestartsups.com). However, this site seems to be much more specifically focused on user interface web 2.0 applications, so even though it has a small user base and âweb presence,â it may be directly more relevant for web 2.0 users.
3.   Mixx.comâGood âole mixx.com is a social bookmarking site whose user base is designed to appeal more to businesses compared to other social bookmarking sites. Mixx prides itself on providing more relevant content than other social sharing sites. With enough âmixxxâes votes, if can get you some solid traffic and even a followed link to your site.
4.   Web.appstorm.net/ -- This is a well-designed web site that specifically focuses on featuring and reviewing new cutting-edge web applications! This site is much more targeted for the application user, so the audience is typically more experienced & tech-savvy (compared to other sites that relate more generally to entrepreneurial readers). The site welcomes visitors to submit their own web apps, and is all about featuring the most fresh & innovative web applications relating to everything & anything computer-based; web app categories run the gamut from business invoicing apps, social media apps, project management apps, gaming apps, web design apps, web development applicationsâŚthe list goes on!
5.   Reviewme.comâThis is a paid service that is built to help developers, marketers, user interface web app designers, prototype owners, etc submit their user interface web app product (for a given fee), and receive a publicly posted review from an âapprovedâ affiliate blogger. Since the bloggers conducting the reviews are pre-screened by the reviewme site owners, Iâd assume that the reviewers all have a decent amount of knowledge & expertise to impart, as well as a certain amount of clout & readership in the web-tech community. (I have personally not used this site service, though, so I encourage anyone who has to tell us about their experience in the comments section of this post!) This site offers a unique service, since it delivers a combo of user testing feedback and media attention/online traffic. It would be an ideal tool to test, iterate, & market a product simultaneously. For this reason, Iâd imagine user interface web design clients & investors would be the best fit for this kind of web app promo site service.
Now for the big hitters:
1.) Mashable.com-- If youâre reading this blog post, then youâre probably quite familiar with mashable.com, a very well known source for web-based tech and media news. Did you know that you can submit some information and a description about your new web 2.0 app to have it be considered as the main subject for a feature story? The odds of actually getting listed here are slim, but boy would you get some serious attention for your UI web app!
2.) crowdspring.comâLike mashable, crowdspring.com is a hugely popular and well known online media source for web and tech news. The competition is stiff, but every week the crowdspring blog has a feature article about a new small business called âSmall Business Spotlight of the Week.â The blog gets a lot of entrepreneurial readers so is an especially good place to get featured if you are looking for start-up partners or even angel investors. Since it is small business and start-up oriented (and they have a weekly start up feature story,) I would guess that your chances of getting listed here are better than on Mashable.
3.) TechCrunch.comâTechCrunch is a huge, interactive tech news forum that has something to interest every web userâthe social media addict, mobile stalker, web entrepreneur, software geek, angel investor, web design guru, internet marketer, Farmville addictâyou name it. The spectrum of content that Tech Crunch has to offer site visitors is awesome, covering everything and anything thatâs a buzz on the web from eye catching e-commerce campaigns to the latest developments in green tech. If you have a start up web app, the section youâll want submit to is the video elevator pitches: http://pitches.techcrunch.com/. The range and breadth of content that this site has to offer will clearly draw the attention of tons of web & tech-enthused spectators. Plus, you actually get the chance to pitch your web app product with a videoâ a multi-media marketing opportunity that could give you a serious leg up!
Good luck with your web 2.0 startup!
