Category: Design
IA conference 2010
I am at the IA Konferenz 2010 in Cologne (my hometown). Would have been a crime to miss this conference here. Met James Kalbach , Søren Muus, Jason Hobbs (I owe him a written commentary to his talk) and others… I need to write more but until I find the time to do that I suggest to look…
Fast Company: Is Information Visualization the Next Frontier for Design?
This article asks wether or not Information Visualization is a field on its own in Information Design: If we’re going to live in a world driven by data, the thinking goes, we need a simple means of digesting it all. We are increasingly a visual society, and our understanding of the world is increasingly made…
Copenhagen UI concept
Via blogblog: Here is a user experience concept study that is a mockup of a new Windows UI – and it is not designed by Microsoft but by a guy named Cullen Dudas. Looks good. Would love to see more. I hope Microsoft comes up with some UI innovations in Windows 7 that really serve…
Seminar on »Slowness«
Here is a teaser for a seminar next semester: Read a more detailed (german) description here. Also: Overview about my teaching activities with links to other seminar weblogs.
Two Red Dot Design Awards for Hobnox
I forgot to post this here: Hobnox won two Red Dot Design Awards for the website and the Hobnox Audiotool. Unfortunatly the Red Dot website does not list the achievement – and there is no statement from the Jury either. The Audiotool also recieved the Flashforward Award 2008 – which is rewarding the best Flash…
John Maeda the new president of RISD
I just learned that John Maeda is now the next president of the Rhode Island School of Design.
Design podcasts
As there are more and more programs offering podcasts I think there is more interesting content appearing in this subscription format that is interesting for design: DESIGNsuisseA german/swiss language series from swiss television mostly with portraits about designers and/or design agencies. These are spotlights about design processes and help to demystify design as a service…
Luke Wroblewski on Design thinking
On the »SHIFT« conference Luke Wroblowski presented his ideas about »Design thinking« (see his post here). I think there is a lot of refreshed awareness in die business community about what »design thinking« might be and if it can help to improve business processes, services and products. Right now it seems there is a lot…
Design and organisations
I had a phone conversation with a friend who works in a planning department of one of the largest corporations in the world. We were discussing the experiences of many employees in large organisations (she is a fan of Dilbert therefore). I was reminded of the »Design and organisations« seminar I did five years ago.…
Simplicity in Linz
Tobias, Tim and Konstantin visited the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz. The topic was »simplicity«. They have provided some insightful comments. With the exception of a presentation of John Maeda (video, website) there seemed to be little progress in the discussion about the notion of simplicity. Obviously the term »simplicity« is a term that can’t…
ScoutPress
Tobias Jordans finally finished his diploma thesis: ScoutPress. It’s a system based on weblog software (WordPress) that allows foundations and fragmented organisations to effectively communicate and organize the scattered and distributed information. Tobias used the German Scout Association (DPSG) as a live example (therefore the project name) but it is in no way limited to…
GK VanPatter at Zollverein
GK VanPatter (co-founder of the NextDesign Leadership Institute) will be speaking at Zollverein Design School in Essen next Saturday. I can’t be in there that day, but I am sure here are others that would like to attend that event.
New seminar weblog
I started a new weblog about the project seminar titled »Sound«. It’s a seminar covering sound design, corporate sound, sound in film, sound art, etc.
The rediscovery of function in product design
The ACM IT magazine publishes an article written by Andreas Pfeiffer titled »Why features don’t matter anymore: The new laws of digital technology«. He lists ten fundamental rules for the age of user experience technology. The article begins with this: The iPod was never sold on the grounds of its technical merits: Apple hit a…
Visual explanations
A very nice example of visual explanations: the wave vs. matter paradox of quantum physics.
Design Sites
I just want to raise the attention to these invaluable sites (some of which have been in my Blogroll for years): A list apart Boxes and Arrows Column Two Corporate Identity Portal (german) Digital-Web Functioning form Future Feeder Guuui.com IDblog IAslash.org/blog IAwiki Information aesthetics Informationdesign.org Jeffrey Veen OK/Cancel Signal vs. Noise xBlog I recommend theses…
3rd International Design Research Conference in Brazil
Next week there’ll be another conference on Design Research in Rio De Janeiro. Unfortunatly the conference website is extremely lousy. I can’t even remember a conference website with so superficial and useless information. Obviously the organizers don’t want to get too international. First of all I was suprised to read “3rd international conference” in the…
Podcasts from thePreparedMind.com
Christopher Gee is running a weblog subtitled »a blog about the graphic design industry«. He is doing interviews with people from the design profession about various topics. It is very helpful that Christopher listed some issues raised within each interview. So you get an overview before listening to the audio. I quote from an interview…
Density, Simplicity and Continuity
I am currently working on defining three seminars that lay out a foundation for design education. These courses are not oriented towards the formal and technological aspects of media, but rather focus on the psychological and cognitive questions involved with almost any design work. This is what I came up with: Density: Designing for effectiveness…
Ecolanguage.net
Ecolanguage.net uses visual animations to explain economical and ecological processes. The animations are planned for a common visual code to represent all issues involved with economy and ecology. They have just three types of transaction: yellow represent energy, red represents money and black represents information. It comes pretty close to what I intended with the…