Today the BBC formally launched their new homepage, which had been in beta testing for a few weeks before. The site now has a customisable layout, similar to iGoogle.
Generally, I like the redesign, but I can’t help but think that a few of the fonts are a little too large. There’s also a lot of unnecessary space at the top of the page. I guess it makes sense because it has to cater for users of all abilities, but it would be nice to see an option to slim down the interface and shrink some of the larger buttons. The iPlayer widget is also currently just a logo, which isn’t very useful. I imagine that it’ll become a preview of the site’s content at some point, but for now its static nature sticks out like a sore thumb amongst all of the other dynamic boxes.
Published in Design, Websites, tagged BBC on 27th February 2008. 2 comments.
I only subscribe to two podcasts and one of them is TED. Technology Entertainment Design conferences take place every year and videos of talks are now available online for free. Apart from having an awesome website design, the speakers are what makes TED worth paying attention to.
People who have given talks include Al Gore, Richard Branson, Philippe Starck, Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), J.J. Abrams (Lost, Cloverfield), Bill Clinton, Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com), Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), Steven Levitt (Freakonomics), Sergey Brin and Larry Page, amongst others. The list alone tells its own story!
Some of the best talks are those where the speaker doesn’t talk directly about what they do, but about something entertaining but enlightening. Malcolm Gladwell’s (Tipping Point, Blink) talk is particularly good, for example. If you’ve ever got a spare twenty minutes or are looking for something interesting to watch, then TED.com has an endless amount of inspiration.
Published in Websites, tagged inspiration on 26th February 2008. No comments.
“It’s possible for a person to have an overwhelming number of things to do and still function productively with a clear head and a positive sense of relaxed control.”
The core premise of David Allen’s book Getting Things Done is ambitious to say the least. Yet believe it or not, it is entirely possible and I’ve experienced the benefits of following a few of his basic rules since reading it for the first time. I’m normally very sceptical of any book which you might classify as ’self-help’, but Getting Things Done is actually well worth a read. I now have a system which I’ve been using for a few months, but I thought it would be worthwhile revisiting the book to see if I’d pick up any other nuggets of useful information.
As I read the first part of the book, it seemed that I had made use of most of his advice in some form or another. I use my calendar and task management programs to organise all the stuff I need to do, leaving my mind fairly clear at any one point. Here’s on excerpt that I particularly enjoyed:
…you’ll need to get in the habit of keeping nothing in your mind. And the way to do that, as we’ve seen, is not by managing time, managing information and managing priorities. After all:
- you don’t manage five minutes and end up with six;
- you don’t manage information overload - otherwise you’d walk into a library and die, or the first time you connected to the Web, or even opened a phone book, you’d bow up; and
- you don’t manage priorities - you have them.
Instead, the key to managing all of your ’stuff’ is managing your actions.
A lot of the book goes into the fine detail of implementing this sort of system, but you don’t have to read it all. In fact, the first part alone is all you really need to take in. I found that once I had the basic principles and methodology, I could work out how it fit together with my life. The most surprising thing that you don’t realise until you read the book is actually how easy all of his guidelines are to implement. You don’t need any new skills, just a logical way of using them.
I meet quite a few people who are a lot more stressed out than they need to be, mainly because they have trouble keeping track of their lives. Others have sporadically implemented systems which don’t cover all of their bases, so they end up worrying a lot anyway. If you fall into either of those categories and are curious about improving things, then I’d highly recommend picking up Getting Things Done. It might take a while to get used to, but as I’ve found over the last few months, the benefits are huge. Ever wondered how I manage do do Thunderbolt, Impact, university work and all the other stuff I commit to? Well this book is my secret.
Published in Book reviews, Productivity, tagged Getting Things Done on 25th February 2008. No comments.
If you work with images, chances are that you use Photoshop. When it comes to photo editing and digital art work, there really is very little competition for Adobe’s product. Sure, for basic touching up and resizing, Picasa, iPhoto and co will do a fine job, but for creative professionals there really is only one option on the market. While no-one’s likely to topple Photoshop from its lofty position anytime soon, the products available directly below it in the software hierarchy are very interesting indeed.
Pixelmator is one such program, a Mac-only image editor and a new one at that. Released last year by two brothers, it has two main selling points. First of all, it looks stunning and secondly, it takes advantage of Mac OS X’s built-in technology to make editing super fast.
The program has all the usual tools that you’d expect - burn, dodge, crop, layers and so on - as well as a number of filters which are powered by Apple’s Core Image technology. Because Pixelmator is built for OS X alone, it can and does use all of the fancy effects that’d you’d come to associate with a Mac exclusive product. On looks alone, Pixelmator is a fantastic advertisement for the platform and in terms of aesthetics, puts Photoshop to shame.
However, when it comes to actually using it for everyday tasks, Pixelmator lacks numerous basic features which make up your image editing workflow. For instance, you can’t save an image size and resolution as a preset to use later and the colour mode (RGB, CMYK, etc.) can’t be altered. There’s no action history, magnetic lasso or magic eraser, to name a few. When I’ve tried using it to edit images for Thunderbolt or Impact, these shortcomings are immediately apparent and I’ve gone straight back to Photoshop.
Pixelmator is a fine program, but one with more potential than substance. What it does, it does well and makes it look fantastic to boot. If you’re looking for a program that provides more flexibility than iPhoto and fits in well with Leopard’s aesthetics, then this is definitely worth a look. At only $59, it’s certainly tempting. As for the creators’ intention to “give Photoshop a run for its money”, they’ve still got a long way to go.
Published in Software, tagged Pixelmator on 22nd February 2008. One comment.
In a world with countless choices, presenting people with relevant information should be one of the most important aspirations for any designer. This can be achieved on the web and in software in a number of ways, but let’s begin with a more mundane example. Many shoe shops organise their displays by type - hiking shoes here, trainers there, heels that way - but this is a fundamental mistake.
When I walk into a shoe shop, I may or may not know what type of footwear that I’m after, but one thing I know for sure is my size. Organising shoes by type might be more aesthetically pleasing, but in practice all people need to be presented with are shoes that actually fit them. Grouping shoes by design is natural because our minds like to associate things that look the same, but in fact the most logical way is to organise shoes based on the single criteria that the customer will almost definitely know.
This idea translates directly on to the web. T-shirt site Threadless has a stock chart page whose title is “Tell us your size, we’ll tell you what’s in stock! Fo REAL!” Once you know your size, you can quickly view a selection of shirts which are only relevant to you. Rival site Busted Tees doesn’t have this option and suffers for it, only alerting you to a lack of stock once you get to a product page.
Another good example of using the correct criteria to organise products is IKEA. They first present you items for each room, then later give you the option of seeing similar products. When you walk into a store, you go through model bedrooms, kitchens and so on, then only later are shown all of the beds, lights and tables together. The idea behind this is that the one thing that the customer knows is what rooms they have. They may arrive looking for a table, but you can be certain that they know where they’re going to put it.
So the next time you visit somewhere that presents you with choices or design something that does the same, think for a second what your most basic criteria is. The best methods of organisation are not necessarily the most obvious ones.
Published in Design, Usability, tagged IKEA, organisation, relevance, Threadless on 21st February 2008. No comments.
I’m quite a fan of minimalist design in print and on the web. A lot can be achieved with clean lines and simple colours, and ManyBooks is a perfect example of this. The site offers nearly 20,000 free eBooks, which are available to download in countless different forms.
Like the books that you can download, the site itself is as legible as they come. Aside from the mysteriously small text in the navigation menu, ManyBooks is extremely easy to find your way around and is consistent throughout. Many websites opt for designs that confound the user with brash colours, but ManyBooks shows that more usable and elegant results can be achieved with very little.
Published in Design, Websites, tagged minimalism on 21st February 2008. One comment.
As you may know, I’m quite an Apple fan and my interest in the Californian company began a few years ago when I got a second generation 10GB iPod. I then replaced this with a 60GB iPod Photo and added a MacBook Pro to my collection 18 months ago to complete ‘the switch’. When the iPod Touch originally came out, it was a tempting proposition, but it was lacking in a couple of departments; capacity and features. With the January upgrade and 32GB of memory, the new version was enough to get me to open my wallet and order one. So one week later, how does it live up to expectations?
Even though I got to play with the iPhone just after it came out in the US, I was again surprised by the iPod Touch’s size and weight. Simply put, it’s an engineering marvel. It’s thinner and slightly lighter than my relatively new Nokia phone, and much slimmer than my last iPod. The form factor is ideal and it fits in your pocket like a hand in a glove.
The first negative thing to note is the device’s startup time, which comes in at about 15 seconds. Once it’s up and running, it’s extremely quick because of the flash memory, but you can’t expect to switch it on and off at will. Aside from that, I have few other complaints. Each application works as expected, with Safari and Maps particularly worthy of note.
The built in browser is well tailored for use with a touchscreen, allowing you to surf the Web effortlessly. It doesn’t support Flash yet, but otherwise it’s exactly like using another computer. Maps is extremely cool and will no doubt prove extremely useful when I travel next. Having the ability to search locally in a strange city is priceless.
As a music player, the Touch excels. I’ve always been a huge fan of the click wheel interface and was slightly saddened to see it go, but its replacement is more than worthy. Finding artists in long lists is now a lot easier and although Coverflow can’t be used on a per-artist or per-playlist basis, it’s a useful novelty.
A couple things take some getting used to; multi-touch and the text input screen. Typing on a screen with no physical feedback is odd at first, but as the week’s gone on, I’ve found that I’ve quickly adapted to a new way of typing. It’ll never be as fast as using a proper keyboard, but it’s a well designed alternative.
Covering the entire device would take forever, so I’ll wrap up the review here. Even though I’m an Apple fan and am bound to be biased having paid so much money for it, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the iPod Touch. Its design is superb, both physically and in terms of the software on it. If you weren’t impressed by the Touch’s capacity and features when it first came out, but were somewhat curious, then this is well worth a look.
Published in Design, Tech, tagged iPod Touch on 20th February 2008. One comment.
The BBC’s fantastic iPlayer website has seen a slight redesign today, adding ‘most recent’, ‘last chance’ and ‘most popular’ sections. Each video also has a ‘more like this’ column down the side of the page. While it detracts slightly from the site’s minimalistic style, it makes finding content a little easier. iPod users might note similarities between it and the iTunes Store, which also has very similar features.
Upon closer inspection, there are a few other new tweaks. The buttons on the left now expand when clicked to reveal options, rather than producing a large menu as before. A couple of new buttons also make browsing channels and finding shows by name easier.
It’s nice to see the iPlayer’s first tune up since launch. I use it almost every day, so it’s a welcome redesign.
Published in Design, Websites, tagged BBC, iPlayer, iTunes on 20th February 2008. No comments.
So welcome to my new blog! I’ve finished adding all of the old content that I could find, so from here on in it’ll be fresh and written primarily for this site. I intend this to be a place for random thoughts and observations, mainly on design, productivity, travel and the web. Hopefully what I’ll post will be of some use or interest to you, not just the ramblings of another guy in today’s crazy world.
I’ve set PhilipMorton.net up on Media Temple (mt), which I’m probably going to use to host other websites of mine in the future. Their Grid-Service seemed ideal; great value for money and the ability to handle huge surges of traffic. The blog itself is powered by Word Press, which I’ve found surprisingly flexible and best of all, free!
Published in Websites, tagged blogging on 19th February 2008. No comments.
