Daniel Foré making the case for elementary OS (a Linux distro):

“elementary OS is for noobs or dumbs down their apps”

I think this stems from the idea that features require complexity. It’s a cultural belief in poor design. But we think that clear, easy-to-use apps are good for both new users and pros. Usability is for everyone and truly usable apps help, not hinder. Keyboard navigation is an example of something that is a priority both for pro users and users with special accessibility needs. An interface works best when it is transparent and empowers users to get things done.

I think Linux community need to pay more attention to usability, accessibility, and ease-of-use for their platforms. elementary OS have a pretty sweet HIG though, gotta love it.

Steven Brykman:

But how intuitive is any of this? Ideally a mobile app shouldn’t require any instruction at all but should instead rely on established mobile interaction paradigms. Though device/platform specific, native interaction guidelines are rules we should all adhere to, particularly in the enterprise space. This is the common language of mobile. But if any interaction or functionality seems potentially confusing or ambiguous, better to err on the side of over-informing the user as to its correct usage or intent—via button labels, brief explanatory copy, help overlays, etc.

People comfortable using your app when it’s familiar to the construct of their mobile OS of choice. So don’t force them to change their habit.

Like a good joke, a user interface is good when you don’t have to explain it —I totally stole that sentence by the way.

Khoi Vinh:

Answering the question of how much to emulate desktop apps will likely take some time to sort out, but for me, it‘s self evident that the way we want to work on an iPad—even on a theoretical, professionally augmented iPad—is clearly not the same as the way we want to work on a Mac. Rather than providing full access to the work done on a desktop, especially when it can be as complicated as what desktop design apps produce, what’s needed is to give the user the most meaningful access, the subset that will yield the most productivity for designers working on the iPad, without all of the baggage of the desktop.

In Macs you can only have one cursor, in iPads you can have up to eleven fingers! Also keyboard shortcuts will be an unnecessary interaction model, because you can almost physically interact with your work on the screen.

Ryan Singer:

What is at the core of an interface design? I think of the design not as a collection of screens or buttons or pixels, but as a collection of jobs that the user wants to do. In this article I want to give you a feeling for how to think of interfaces as made up of jobs, each with a beginning, middle and end.

I first read this in his site Felt Presence, now he repost it in Medium. Medium have been killing it lately, so many smart people started publishing their writing there.

37-minute that I will never forget, ever. Please, do watch the documentary. So good.

(via Daring Fireball)

Paul Scrivens:

I’m coining the term Minimum Usable Design, and that is when you reach your 50% mark for your design. If you can’t use your design after you have reached 50% (or a person can’t understand at least 50% of what is going on) then you haven’t reached the 50% mark yet.

I have been thinking about this, how we can treat a design project not as a linear process from brief to goals, with a set of deliverable, but as a perpetual flux to maintain. And here’s Paul Scrivens summed it up beautifully along with the term – which he coined also – MUD: Minimum Usable Design.

Over at The Telegraph, along the line of the aforelinked, here’s Dieter Rams’ regards on Apple:

I have always regarded Apple products – and the kind words Jony Ive has said about me and my work – as a compliment. Without doubt there are few companies in the world that genuinely understand and practise the power of good design in their products and their businesses.

I have always observed that good design can normally only emerge if there is a strong relationship between an entrepreneur and the head of design. At Apple this situation exists - between Steve Jobs and Jony Ive.

Apple has managed to achieve what I never achieved: using the power of their products to persuade people to queue to buy them.

I am troubled by the devaluing of the word “design”. I find myself now being somewhat embarrassed to be called a designer. In fact I prefer the German term, Gestalt-Ingenieur. Apple and Vitsoe are relatively lone voices treating the discipline of design seriously in all corners of their businesses. They understand that design is not simply an adjective to place in front of a product’s name to somehow artificially enhance its value. Ever fewer people appear to understand that design is a serious profession; and for our future welfare we need more companies to take that profession seriously.

100 Ideas That Changed Graphic Design

Heller and Vienne write in the introduction:

Big ideas are notions, conceptions, inventions, and inspirations — formal, pragmatic, and conceptual — that have been employed by graphic designers to enhance all genres of visual communication. These ideas have become, through synthesis and continual application, the ambient language(s) of graphic design. They constitute the technological, philosophical, forma, and aesthetic constructs of graphic design.

Sold, where’s the add-to-cart button?

Neven Mrgan:

Simple ideas like this will naturally occur to many people. A small percentage of those will have the ability to execute on them. A small percentage of those will then actually do so. And an even smaller group will combine it with an otherwise interesting product, thus making it into something.

One single paragraph above eloquently argue about the value of idea, which is null, unless executed. Lukas Mathis chime in with a well-put comment around this topic:

People often assume that ideas are where value is created. In reality, ideas (even non-simple ones) are plentiful, easy, and often generated by more than one person at the same time. Ideas are essentially worthless. Value is only created when people actually make stuff.

See also Everything is a Remix a web video series by Kirby Ferguson, just in case you aren’t already know about it.

There’s a lot more to be considered other than just the initial ideas, so make stuff happens. Great stuff.

Kern and Burn interviewed Jim Coudal; don’t know him? Google him.

As curious people who love to learn, the idea of jumping into the deep end of the pool and learning about various businesses is very satisfying.

And:

He ended his talk with a quote from Dan Gilbert’s book, Stumbling on Happiness, and said, “The reason that most of us are unhappy most of the time is that we set our goals—not for the person we’re going to be when we reach them—we set our goals for the person we are when we set them.” It’s a great point. It encourages us to dream big, and think about what will truly make us happy. Jim, like many other design entrepreneurs, has taken his career into his own hands and now controls his work, and his “destiny.”

He’s one of my heroes alive today in design and also business field.