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Nine hours and fifty-five minutes of mad design clean up and deployment begins. Now.
Speaking of busy people, Michael Heilemann has been sneakily building what looks to be a fantastic user interface for Habari.
… a few weeks back, I went AWOL and started crunching away on a complete design for the administration interface for Habari, in an effort to create a set of blueprints, from which this thing can be built in proper.
He provides a good run-down of the where and whys via a screen-cast showcase of the design and there is also a snazzy flickr set — which is in stark contrast to the totally abortive drive-by-design wordpress 2.5 is still currently sporting.
Lovely work by a sharp-as-tacks pixel pusher — and it’s great to see community involvement habari being taken in the spirit it is given.
Bill Israel comments on the fascination that is layer tennis:
First, I like some narrative to the match. I don’t mean that each volley must necessarily continue a story, but I like to see the competitors get into a groove where they seem to be telling a story with their volleys.
The October 12 match was the highlight for me; each new volley contained elements from the previous serve. The result was a true match of skill and talent, where the goal wasn’t so much in developing something entirely new in each serve, rather utilising the existing layers to build a new scene of an ongoing story.
After looking at the last match, with it’s recurring themes and motifs, it’s clear the designers are devouring previous matches for guides on good technique and each serve really did stand up and add something to the last.
Thank you Coudal, for introducing such an amazing, vibrant and entirely creative event — even if it’s a very, very late night for those watching live from down-under.
Jeff Atwood has recently written a little on how your desktop is not a destination:
“The desktop background, as I see it, is completely superfluous. My desktop “background” right now is plain black. And that doesn’t bother me in the least, because none of it is visible.”
I agree with Jeff on this point. The background shouldn’t define how we get things done.
Perhaps a little show-and-tell is in order, to illustrate. This is my current home-based workspace. I don’t have too many applications actively running right now and the desktop is pretty much devoid of all but the drive icons — it was taken during the creation of this article.
For the more curious among you, the two Kanji characters represent Ninja. From time to time I enjoy cycling out desktop imagery that doesn’t have English typography. It reminds me to think outside the square and not continuously seek the comfortable, or the known, to take risks and try new things.
Back to the subject at hand. The desktop shouldn’t be a scrap yard, where tens of dozens of icons, folders and random cruft congregate waiting for something to happen, be it recycling or eventual destruction. In such a chaotic environment resources can easily be lost, or accidentally purged.
Any gains in the ’single basket’ approach to storage are lost if the basket goes missing. Rather, the desktop should act like a lobby, providing the launch point to your next destination. Jeff observes the following:
“The desktop is like an aesthetically pleasing airport we must occasionally pass through before arriving at our real destinations: a web browser, a word processor, an IDE, a graphics editor, etcetera.”
Which neatly dovetails into a piece I wrote recently, regarding experimenting with minimalism and plain colour backgrounds. Although Jeff mentions that he has “browser windows and programs — the things I’m actually doing — covering all three monitors..” I find that keeping applications minimised when not in use frees up resources for those applications that you are using, improving the response times and resulting efficiencies.
Given Jeff has three monitors in action, the numbers of open applications that he can run concurrently without overcrowding is obviously greater than if one uses one, or even two monitors. In my case, I have a wide-screen display at home and use two at work.
When you take a break1 save your work2 and minimise any focused applications. Those two actions help improve the break quality as you won’t be tempted to worry about any current activity to the same degree. It’s saved and stowed away safely.
When you return, you’ll be greeted with a tidy workspace and a system ready to respond to your needs, not as a user forced to bend to the will of the system. I have written more in the last three days alone than in the last two weeks. Much of that can be attributed to a renewed sense of achievement that a better work space can provide.
I’ve found increased enthusiasm in using the tools I presently have and, well, I feel as though I’m getting more done, without any additional stress. And there really is nothing quite like sitting down to a system just as refreshed as it’s user, that isn’t overburdened with several applications all vying for attention and is ready to spring into action.
Exercise the inner voyeur and post or discover secrets.
Takes the term "human interface" to a whole new level. Remarkable.
A wondrous array of extremely short live action, animated and 3d films.
London based design collective — of note is the Fiat 500 presentation piece, something about the lighting makes it quite evocative, almost bordering on voyeur.
Bill Israel notes a salient point about
grid-based design:
I, admittedly, have a soft-spot for the clean, crisp look a grid-based layout provides, and grids can be an excellent way to lay out visually pleasing information, but do all these layouts1 have to look so similar?
There-in lies the inevitable conundrum regarding grid-based content.
At a […]
Finally, the appropriate "gift" to send when that someone special posts yet another ill-defined, crudely written, grammar challenged and assumption rich sudo-expert how-to-blog article.
∞
"Readymechs are free, flatpack toys for you to print and build. They are designed to fit on an 8.5"x11" page and printed with any printer." — there is just something about these charming little ink-and-fold designs, that really captures the imagination.
