Thoughts & Deeds

I’m a firm believer in design process, in taking the right steps to create an interactive experience that is audience and brand appropriate. It’s tough to get clients on the process boat, since they usually want the work done yesterday/cheaper/ASAP. To a lot of clients, or even internal teams, process = s l o w + $$$. Even if you swear that process improvements (more research time, better planning) will speed up the project, reduce errors, and ultimately spare the budget, you’ll probably be greeted with “I think she’s a witch, shall we burn her?” looks. … more

After going to the annual Web Visions conference here in Portland, I started thinking about the future of interactive design as a discipline. Who are we and what are we doing?

Things have changed so much since I created my first web page in 1996 back when I hand-coded everything using emacs. Now there’s real design on the web. Sure, there’s a lot of “bad” design out there, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the smorgasbord of animated GIFs, blinking text, and ugly background textures that made up the entirety of your web experience a decade ago. … more

Paul Arden is totally right. I picked this book up at SFMOMA last month because it was entertaining and on sale, but it turned out to be an inspiring read. I brought it to work for my art director to read, and over the weekend both he and his wife finished the book. And then another coworker bought himself a copy. … more