The path of least resistance

It’s a great time to be a designer

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 20:35:00 +0000

There are 22 fake Apple stores in Kunming, China. From the wall decorations to the employee badges, everything has been copied. In the US, Microsoft and Barnes & Noble have copied the Apple store design as well.

Apple stores make 17x the revenue of an average mall store. 2x as much as Tiffany’s.

The experience being copied has been designed to extraordinary detail. It’s the design that’s creating value and being copied.

The pebble watch has raised over six million dollars on Kickstarter. The Nest thermostat sold out its first production run in a few days. Square is using design to rethink the finance industry. Mainstream business magazines are writing about the need for designers.

People at the boardroom and level are paying attention the value of design. Experience design is more mission critical than ever before.

It’s a great time to be a designer.

Одно основное действие на экран

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 14:57:00 +0000

Каждый из проектируемых нами экранов должен быть предназначен лишь для одного действия пользователя. Это делает интерфейс легким в изучении, использовании, а также обслуживании и доработке в случае необходимости. Экран, предназначенный для двух и более основных операций, легко приводит в замешательство. Как статья нуждается в одном ключевом тезисе, также и каждый экран, создаваемый нами, должен служить одному ключевому действию, являющемуся его raison d'etre(разумное основание).

Принципы разработки пользовательского интерфейса

Играться со шрифтами

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Fri, 18 May 2012 21:24:00 +0000

Я предостерегу вас от изобилия шрифтов. Дизайнеры полагают, что если установят себе тысячу шрифтов, это облегчит им профессиональную жизнь. Напротив — осложнит: бардак и расфокусировка. Дизайнеру для хорошей работы требуется мало шрифтов. Наиболее универсальные кочуют из проекта в проект, а мастерство дизайнера удерживает от однообразности проявления. Особые шрифты под конкретный проект зачастую этим проектом и ограничиваются.

Иван Богданов советует

How to Start A Startup

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Fri, 04 May 2012 10:25:00 +0000

You need three things to create a successful startup: 1) to start with good people, 2) to make something customers actually want, and 3) to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed.

Essay by Paul Graham

33 Must Read Books for Entrepreneurs

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Wed, 02 May 2012 18:46:00 +0000

Reading good books is like talking with some of the greatest thinkers of our time, and centuries past.

33 must read books for entrepreneurs by Mark Hayes form Shopify.

Just my type

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Tue, 01 May 2012 19:27:00 +0000

A collection of nice font stacks from Typekit

Just my type

What a Job Is

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Tue, 01 May 2012 13:03:00 +0000

You need to start doing something people want. You don't need to join a company to do that. All a company is is a group of people working together to do something people want. It's doing something people want that matters, not joining the group.

Paul Graham about what a job is

Ошибки в процессе работы

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:43:00 +0000

Вспомните, как работает команда доктора Хауса. В каждой серии врачи ставят диагноз и предпринимают соответствующие активные действия. Гипотеза оказывается ошибочной, выдвигается другая, третья. Каждая опровергнутая гипотеза вызывает к жизни следующую.

Важная деталь: Хаус принимает решение быстро и настаивает на его исполнении, несмотря на небезосновательные сомнения коллег. Решение вполне может оказаться ошибочным и привести к ухудшению состояния больного, но даёт новую информацию. А если бы его команда ничего не предпринимала в ожидании результатов анализов или врачебного озарения, вышел бы срок и пациент скончался.

Правильное решение, предлагаемое Хаусом или кем-то из его коллег в последний момент, выглядит совершенно неожиданным, однако оно не могло получиться без предыдущих диагнозов и лечебных действий.

В бюро похоже — мы сразу работаем с лучшей гипотезой и не тратим время на ожидание вдохновения. Очень важно разделить два процесса — собственно деланья и оценки результата. Неуверенность и сомнения не должны ни на секунду отсрочить рабочее решение. А гаденькое чувство, что получается недостаточно хорошо, заставит вас искать дальше.

Поэтому мы никогда не делаем дизайн в последний день, но часто переделываем готовый дизайн прямо перед показом клиенту.

Артем Горбунов советует

Money Is Not Wealth

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:54:00 +0000

Wealth is not the same thing as money. Wealth is the fundamental thing. Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You can have wealth without having money. Wealth is what you want, not money.

People think that what a business does is make money. But money is just the intermediate stage — just a shorthand — for whatever people want. What most businesses really do is make wealth. They do something people want.

Paul Graham about making wealth

You've Already Registered

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:39:00 +0000

I was trying to register to Gust
I forgot that i was already registered, but Gust reminded me about it right after i wrote my email.

Design with an Opinion

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:31:00 +0000

The old way: show features & benefits of your product. This is a classic marketing approach for companies. Factually describe the product and make people react to it.

The recent way: informal language, humor, and folksy language to surprise and delight. This adds personality to products and aims to make people smile.

The better way: have an opinion. Be a bit antagonistic. Presenting your product with an opinion makes people think. Thinking creates engagement.

Putting an opinion out there forces you to react. To think about it even if just for a few minutes.

Social Networks, Small and Smaller

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 09:38:00 +0000

Newer social networks, like Path, FamilyLeaf and Pair, offer a range of constraints. A Path network, available only on smartphones, has a maximum of 150 friends. FamilyLeaf is restricted to family members. And Pair, which like Path is for smartphones only, is as small as a social network can be: just one other person.

The average Facebook user in United States has 245 friends, according to a study published in February by the Internet and American Life Project of the Pew Research Center. That figure, however, well exceeds the “Dunbar number,” the 150 meaningful relationships that Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist, has suggested is the effective neurological limit the human brain can handle.

Social Networks, Small and Smaller on New York Times

Robin Dunbar: we can only ever have 150 friends at most…

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 09:28:00 +0000

Evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar tells Aleks Krotoski why even Facebook cannot expand our true social circle: our brains just aren't big enough to cope.

Not many people have a number named after them, but Robin Dunbar lays claim to the Dunbar Number. Confusingly, no precise value has been attached to this figure, but a commonly cited approximation is 150 – and this is the number of people with whom we can maintain a meaningful relationship, whether in a hunter-gatherer society or on Facebook.

On My Bright Idea series of Guardian.

The Top of My Todo List

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:53:00 +0000

Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy, you son of a bitch

Dropbox

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 09:49:00 +0000

Мне очень нравится дизайн Дропбокса

Dangerous Ideas

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 03:19:00 +0000

If you are spending a lot of time in rooms with other people trying to convince them of your ideas, you probably have a lot less influence than you think.

We like to believe that is we have a good idea it will convince others to go do it. This never happens.

Talk to people you don’t like. If you want more power, you have to do this. It’s easier to stay with the people similar to you. But you need the conviction to talk to people you don’t like about your ideas.

Most of our ideas are too conservative.

We often opt for the safer stuff and then complain about it. We feel protective about our ideas. Success for us is not about getting better ideas or skills. It is how we get accepted. Instead, give yourself a chance to get rejected. In creative work: who will ask the tough question, do the extra work, be willing to fail and learn, put their reputation on the line, commit to a crazy idea.

Dangerous Ideas

Кнопка в PSD

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 07:55:00 +0000

Скачать бесплатно

Mobile Site vs. Full Site

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 06:55:00 +0000

Good mobile user experience requires a different design than what's needed to satisfy desktop users. Two designs, two sites, and cross-linking to make it all work.

— cut features, to eliminate things that are not core to the mobile use case;
— cut content, to reduce word count and defer secondary information to secondary pages; and
— enlarge interface elements, to accommodate the "fat finger" problem.

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox

«Российская Федерация» или «Россия»?

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 14:29:00 +0000

Наименования Российская Федерация и Россия равнозначны.

Максим Ильяхов советует

Ex-Facebook insiders building next wave of Silicon Valley firms

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 07:35:00 +0000

An elite group of Facebook friends, most still in their 20s, have already helped change the world. Now they're working together to do it again.

"If we are all going to be hanging out anyway, why not be productive and change the world? It's a whole lot better than sitting around and saying, 'Remember that time at Facebook?' We're all way too young for that."

"I believe after Asana, after Path, after Quora, there will be another company, and then another one, and another one," Colleran said.

LA Times

Redesigns

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 07:10:00 +0000

Redesigns can be a disaster. A major retailer launched a 100M redesign and saw conversion drop 20%. A law firm had to shut down. Doctor’s offices and airlines experience significant delays. Their site was no longer intuitive for their most important users.

Redesigns can increase the gap between current and target knowledge. People know how to use things and we switch things up on them.

An average conversion rate for large (billion dollar) Web sites is 1.6%. 20% of the users spend 80% of the revenue on a site. Out of every 1 million visitors, 16,000 are buyers, and 320 are the top buyers.

It’s the top buyers/users that are most effected by redesigns. They know how things work and we change it on them. This is the source of redesign disasters.

Little changes to a site over time are often a better approach than major redesigns. “We’ll be successful if the day we go live, no one notices.”

An Event Apart: Properties of Intuitive Web Pages

Silicon Valley’s New Secret Weapon: Designers Who Found Startups

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 07:44:00 +0000

If you want to ship great products, writes The Designer Fund's Enrique Allen, consider having a designer in your founding group.

Here’s why design is important to the tech world today:

1. As the consumer tech market becomes more crowded, brands and experience design--not just technical capabilities--are becoming critical to success.

2. Innovation is about radical collaboration. The critical mass of combined design, technical, and business skills enables product iteration to happen faster and at a higher resolution.

3. Designer founders have unique skills (not just visual) to understand human needs and discover unarticulated opportunities.

Silicon Valley’s New Secret Weapon: Designers Who Found Startups

This is how design works

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 21:19:00 +0000

Design is the link missing from your founding team. The perfect balance of business, tech, and design is an incredibly powerful tool…and an even more powerful business model.

Startups this is how design works

Бесплатный шрифт Silverfake

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 19:14:00 +0000

Бесплатный шрифт Silverfake.
Сделал Алексей Фролов.

Memography

noreply@blogger.com (Almazbek Temirbaev) — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 10:14:00 +0000

Они никогда не поймут, как нам было печально в тот день, когдо обрезали нижние ветви… для нас это было больше, чем просто дерево.

Оля и Настя.
memography.ru