Recently I started working on a theme for the haphazardMEDIA website. I enjoyed mashing it together in photoshop, however the lack of thought I put into design left me feeling stuck. Something just isn’t right.
After reading a brief amount about web design on Mark Boulton’s Blog, I did a quick little experiment in photoshop to help me break free from the haphazardMEDIA theme.
What are your thoughts on these designs? Particularly the first one? It would be really helpful to hear other peoples points of view.
I cant quite believe I haven’t mentioned Ubiquity in a blog post yet. It’s a really exciting innovation in the way we could(should) be using the web.
Its all about connecting the web with language. Check out this short presentation by Aza Raskin.
This is really cool, and completely turns the philosophy on how we get to Internet services on its head. I installed the Ubiquity prototype a couple of months ago and now I use it all the time.
You see a phenomenal amount of bad design on the Internet. A good user interface shouldn’t interrupt you or ruin your train of thought, distract you with flashy effects or with clumsy design. It should sit idly by, unnoticed, ready to show itself when your need it. Ultimately a good user interface, is pretty much invisible. In addition, a good UI should allow you to call apon services and functions in the most natural way, and with the least steps required to get there.
Ubiquity fulfills all this criteria. It brings services to you, so you don’t have to go out of your way to get them, and it does this using natural language. It is also completely hidden unless you invoke it with a very natural key combination (CTRL + Space).
Using Ubiquity I can spend more time focused on what I’m doing rather than on how I’m doing it.
