Posts filed under 'Design'
É o primeiro de vários eventos que o SAPO irá organizar fora de ‘casa’ e abertos a todos os que desejem participar, que é o mesmo que dizer que a entrada é gratuita.
O primeiro SAPO Unplugged é já na próxima semana em na Reitoria da Universidade de Aveiro e o tema escolhido foi Usabilidade, um tema que consideramos ser hoje um dos mais importantes para o nosso trabalho enquanto portal web.
Por isso convido todos os interessados a juntarem-se a nós, e aproveito para vos deixar algumas referências sobre os respectivos oradores:
Vemo-nos por lá 
May 13th, 2008
It took us a bit more time than we wanted, but we finally managed: The portuguese branch of
Interaction Design Association - IxDA is finally a reality, so if you’re interested in Interaction Design, User-Experience and Usability do add yourself to the
google group we’ve just created.
I honestly hope we can have the first (real life) meeting at the end of the month, begginng of June.
Any ideas for a discussion theme?
Levou um pouco mais de tempo do que gostaríamos, mas finalmente o grupo
Português da Interaction Design Association - IxDA é uma realidade. Por isso quem estiver interessado em Interaction-Design, User-Experience e Usabilidade é só adicionar o seu email à
mailling list que foi criada para o efeito.
Espero sinceramente que a primeira reunião (presencial) ocorra no final do mês de maio, início de junho. Alguma ideia para o tema do encontro?
May 8th, 2008
Singularity 2008 will gather more than 100 of the world’s top web visionaries, developers, designers, thought leaders, and celebrities on what will be the very first large-scale online web conference in the world!
Singularity is an amazing idea by Aral Balkan, which many of us know from his open-source project SWX and other amazing works as Flash developer.
The idea is all about active networking and knowledge sharing, but one of Aral intentions will probably really make the difference! Aral wants to engage local groups to setup little singularities happening everywhere around the world at the same time and in parallel with the online event!
I’m so sold out to the idea that I’ve joined the speakers ranks and will be giving a presentation on my Community Design Patterns project:
You can keep an eye out for Singularity Blog or simply by joining the ranks at it’s Upcomming Group.
As a side note, just two very quick and interesting aspects of Singularity: 1) it will represent a screenshot of the Web in 2008 and 2) by saving so many flights it will be a very green conference right?
March 27th, 2008
It’s true, SHiFT is back!. We almost died on our first ’round’ in 2006 but we decided to do it again and today we just gave the first (public) step towards it: we’ve unleashed the dates - set your calendars:
A lot of work, discussion and planning will take place in the coming months, so EVERYONE is invited to help and participate in the discussion! We haven’t closed down the speakers list and there will be space for the community to vote on who gets to go up on stage later on, but if you know an exciting speaker or you’re just wishing your secret hero to be there, don’t be shy and let us know!
Pop us an email over at speakers@shift.pt.
Don’t forget to keep an eye on the official Blog, or subscribe SHiFT’s Twitter / jaiku feeds.
See you back in October!
February 29th, 2008
As promised, here are the materials from the workshop I gave out yesterday at LIFT 08 about Online Communities Design Patterns. The presentation as I’ve said before is still a work in progress since I’ve started it for Web2Expo Berlin last November, so they share quite a lot in common.
If you’re interested, you can get the FULL VERSION of the presentation in PDF or you can simply watch the Design Patterns part on SlideShare (sorry, but the 30Mb limit on SlideShare wouldn’t let me post it in it’s full extent):
I’ve also prepared a Patterns Matrix that basically categorizes the patterns in four different classes that you can use to test or plan your own community according to the patterns use or misuse:
- Community Support Patterns: Registration, Login, Welcome Area , User Profile, Users Lists, Buddy’s List, Exit / Suspend;
- Group Support Patterns: Invitations, Shared Artifacts, Reputation, Voting;
- Communication Support Patterns: Messaging, Comments, Chat, Forums;
- Awareness Support Patterns: Neighbors, Activity Logs, Interactive User Info, TimeLine, Periodic Reports, Aliveness Indicator.
Mark Kuznicki took some pretty extensive notes from the workshop, so you might as well gave them a loon if you’re interested.
One special work to the crowd that actually stood up for the 3 hours the workshop took: Thanks
February 7th, 2008
We all acknowledge Apple as one of the iconic brands of our times, if not for anything else, for being the brand behind inspiring products like the Cube, iMac, iPhone or the just release MacBook Air. Objects that make up our dreams, objects that, subtly, crafted and enriched our collective sense of design and style, objects that used to to be designed aiming their function, rather than the pleasure or value of their use. By introducing design in such objects some brands like Apple have obviously managed to capitalize on and progressively enriched our experience in their products use.
Good ideas and in particular good design tend to foster new, better designs. Yet I’m sort of surprised to realize the influence Dieter Rams work have had on the Apple products line (especially if put together side-by-side) while reading a Gizmondo post about them:
Braun T3 and the multiple generations of iPods:
T1000 radio vs apple’s professional line products like PowerMac G5 and Mac Pro:
and you can find even more examples on the Gizmondo article about these ‘resemblences’ between these two men’s work.
Nevertheless, rather than look at them as mere ‘copies’ or ‘evolutions’, this similarities seem more like a tribute by Jonathan Ive (designer at Apple responsible for products like the iPod and iMac) to Rams life time dedication to excellent design.
Dieter Rams work was somehow unknown to me up until today and yet I’m thrilled to discover how so many of his designed objects have been an intrinsic part of my life (I just discovered that the shaving machine I use is one of his design signature products for Braun - Braun 5500). Dieter Rams was head of Design at Braun for more than 40 years, from 1955 up until 1998 when he retired, his legacy there it’s beyond impressive and many of his works during that period managed their way into museums collections as excellent design pieces.
From his teachings, I found particular interest in his powerful (and yet simple) guidelines for excellent design:
- Good design is innovative.
- Good design makes a product useful.
- Good design is aesthetic.
- Good design helps us to understand a product.
- Good design is unobtrusive.
- Good design is honest.
- Good design is durable.
- Good design is consequent to the last detail.
- Good design is concerned with the environment.
- Good design is as little design as possible.
- Back to purity, back to simplicity.
If nothing more to retain from Rams work and teachings, I would suggest that his maxim:
‘Less, but better‘
be retained on the minds of each and every software developer or user interface designer to be applied on their works. If you’d like to know a bit more about RAMS I also suggest that you read his interview for ICON Magazine.
January 18th, 2008
