thesixtyone, a Y-Combinator funded music exploration community, launched in early 2008. The service began life as a pretty typical web-based social networking site. Over the last couple of years, it has gone through some interface updates and improvements, but for the most part it seemed to toe the social network line with its user interface.
The image below shows the service immediately before the latest redesign. It was definitely clean, well organized, and functional. There are even some sweet keyboard shortcuts to make controlling the music easier!
Last week thesixtyone distinguished itself from the web's pile of music recommendation sites by completely redesigning their service. The new design is bold and immersive. While a song plays, the…
A few months back I revisited a favorite game of mine — Portal. Portal is an extension of Valve's Half-Life series. In it, the player controls the protagonist from a first person perspective (you know, a first person shooter…). You begin your adventure locked in a cell in some kind of testing environment/laboratory. After being released from the cell, you're directed through a series of increasingly complex puzzle situations in which your goal is to progress through one test chamber and move to the next. Here's where the "portal" comes in. The solutions to these puzzles require the use of a portal gun, which creates two interconnected portal ends. Here's Wikipedia's description of…
Recently I was fortunate enough to become certified in Landing Page Optimization (LPO) after attending a one-day course presented by Dr. Flint McGlaughlin of MarketingExperiments, an internet-based research lab that conducts experiments in optimizing sales and marketing processes. The primary goal of LPO is to optimize the content and appearance of landing pages to make them more appealing to a target audience, in order improve the conversion rate of website visitors that become sales leads or customers.
Having been a designer for nearly 12 years I’ve designed my fair share of websites and landing pages, and I was skeptical about how much I could really learn from this course. However, as we dug deeper into the science of LPO I…
A curated collection of blog posts and web links that address branding, user experience, and interface design.
William Poundstone has written a great book on pricing practices called – Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value. For anyone interested in crafting brand experiences pricing strategies should be an area of deep study and reflection.
Below is a presentation on Personal Branding that I presented at the Notre Dame Campus Communicators Summit on January 7, 2010, in South Bend, Indiana.
Let me come right out and say that I think the term "personal branding" is pretty lame, but there does seem to be some common understanding as to what the term means. So in the interest of fostering continuity and establishing a shared vocabulary, that's what I'm running with. I hope that in 10 years, I will still be using…
Lately we've been talking a lot about the elements of a successful design project. We thought it would be interesting, and helpful to other readers, to hear a bit more about other folk's successes and how they were achieved. Tell us about the client, the challenge, and the solution.
A curated collection of blog posts and web links that address branding, user experience, and interface design.
Check out Mag+, a concept video on the future of digital magazines by BERG. This concept is killer in its own right, but what really impressed me was the quality of the product visualization itself.
Pentagram is hard at work proving that "traditional" design firms can compete in the user experience arena. Check out the work they did for litl.
UserPlus.org has created a pretty cool forum for web designers, developers, information architects, interaction designers, and usability specialists to share their design best practices.
I recently read a post on Fastcompany.com winning proposal at the WPA 2.0 competition, to design a series of Algae Pontoon Parks in New York. The parks will connect Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Governors Island and employ algae to capture carbon emissions along urban arteries.
Below is a brief description from Port Architects and their plans to capture these emissions, through their project, Carbon T.A.P.
1. ) Algae is one of the most robust classifications of life on earth. Thriving on every continent, it is highly adaptive to any physical environment where it is able to derive energy from photosynthesis and the uptake of organic carbon, particularly in the form of CO2.
2.) Unfortunately though, atmospheric CO2…
One Small Project is a movement initiated by Wes Jans, PhD, RA associate professor of architecture at Ball State University, through which he seeks to connect fellow architects, students, artists, and designers with "Squatters" and the world's working and urban poor. By building small projects, Wes provides an opportunity for these two group to work alongside one another.
I had the honor of working with Wes during my time at Herron by helping him create a visualization of his One Small Project for an upcoming exhibition titled "small architecture BIG LANDSCAPES". The exhibit – scheduled to open at the Sheldon Swope Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana, in the spring of 2010 – will showcase the works of various artists…
CAN SOUND BE EXPERIENCED WITHOUT HEARING?!?!?! I believe it can. I recently listened to a presentation on TED.com given by Julian Treasure over the four ways sound affects us.
The first way in which we experience sound is Physiological. Sounds are affecting our hormone secretions all the time; our breathing, our heart-rate, and our brainwaves.Examples of this can be waking up from our alarm clock in the mornings, a doorbell being rung, or a more pleasant sound such as waves crashing that can help us to get to sleep at night.
The second way in which sound affects us is Psychological. Music is the most powerful form of sound that affects our emotions. However, it is not the only form that affects our emotions. The sound of…
