Design Sapling

Death to Sapling

Design Sapling — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:52:26 +0000

Sapling wilted
I’ve found out specifically what I want to do. I meandered into Interaction Design …so I’m killing Design Sapling. Besides a few months of constant activity, I never updated it much. I don’t like the look of it. I’ve really focused in on where I want to take my career, so instead of just updating the look of the site, I’m going to create a new one: a portfolio site under a new domain name. Eventually anyway. I need to figure out how I’m going to advance my career.

“Design Sapling” is all wrong
The word “Design” is a bit too broad and some people only think of graphic design.
“Sapling” seems a bit self-deprecating now. I know what I’m doing in interaction design. Sapling screams neophyte.

Dusty articles
Several articles I started but never finished might be released in their unfinished state. Why the hell not?

The glorious future
Design sapling will remain up as I frequently use the server for testing other projects and I host a private website for project management with it.

My new website will showcase examples of interaction design. Maybe case studies and examples of deliverables. There will probably be some visual examples, though that’s not really the point of interaction design. I may include a blog, similar to this one, just to show I’m interested in the field, but nothing too personal. Facebook can handle that (although I hardly ever use Facebook).

Be sure to check out Secondhand Storytime. I’ll be contributing more stories in the near future. If you’ve got a few minutes and a good story, you should contribute too.

European Design

Design Sapling — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:54:34 +0000

Recently went to the Indianapolis Museum of Art where Modern European Design is featured in a special exhibit (no photography allowed). Works from people like Phillipe Starck, Marcel Wonders, Ron Arad, and Marc Newsman.

This lead me to research some of the art I saw.

Which lead me to this cool bag found on designboom:

I’m tired of disposables…

Design Sapling — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:33:03 +0000

…because everytime I turn on the TV, I see an ad for a new “disposable” razor or a flushable mop head.

They say “disposable” as if it’s a feature….but it’s just irresponsible design.

Throwing something away doesn’t make it go away.

Get Rid of the Ugly Dock

Design Sapling — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:43:08 +0000

With Mac OS X 10.5, the new look of the dock makes it hard to see what programs are open, however you can get a nice high contrast dock if you place it to the sides of the screen instead of at the bottom. But, if you’re like me, you prefer the dock at the bottom of the screen.

To get the look of the side dock at the bottom, open up terminal and type the following:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES

then type

killall Dock

If you want the low contrast dock back, repeat the above, replacing YES with NO.

GOOD.is Transparency: Making Sense of the Financial Mess Submission from Liam Johnstone

Design Sapling — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:35:19 +0000

GOOD Magazine has an easy to understand graphic describing why we’re in a recession.

GOOD.is Transparency: Making Sense of the Financial Mess Submission from Liam Johnstone.

Seems to me that getting into statistics and visualizations of data is a smart career move. There’s so much information available these days. We need to package it in a way people understand. Maybe that will help avoid recessions like this in the future.
I’m starting to learn some open source statistic packages, including R and GGobi.

Fixing Stupidity: Cheap User Interface Hack Finally Solves TV Remotes Stupidity

Design Sapling — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 23:54:56 +0000

Here’s a simple, easy way to fix the stupid, cluttered design of remote controls.

Design Seed: Email Enhancements

Design Sapling — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:52:51 +0000

A few months ago, I wrote about how to use Gmail as your To-Do list.

I just came upon some email innovation ideas from Lifehacker.com.

Good suggestions for better email usability.

CNN Reports: Entrepreneurs = Juvenile Delinquents

Design Sapling — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:37:26 +0000

CNN released this article about entrepreneurs featuring the Segway inventor, Dean Kamen.

It’s an interesting piece about entrepreneurship, with quotes from Kamen and popular entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki.

In brief, the article says entrepreneurs’ strength is their ignorance: they don’t know that the odds are stacked against them. They don’t know when to quit.

I think that’s a little off base. Knowing at the beginning of a project whether or not you have the passion to stick through it is hard. Seth Godin understands that knowing when to quit is a strength. And pushing through a project when the odds looked stacked against you isn’t evidence of a character flaw. It’s a sign of passion, guts, and creativity.

Godin has a name for those early days of the project when things aren’t fun and easy anymore: the Dip. In his book, The Dip, he shows readers what it takes to push through and the rewards that follow if you do it right. Like the rest of his books I’ve read, it’s well-written, concise and intelligent.

DesignSapling Getting Hacked

Design Sapling — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:16:51 +0000

There’s a security hole in WordPress, the blogging platform running this site.

For the last two entries I posted, and probably this one, the comments somehow get turned off and there is a huge list of hidden links added to the entry.

My server host, Bluehost.com, seems to keep WordPress up to date. Not sure what I can do. I know next to nothing about WordPress.

If anyone knows of a solution, let me know in comments (if you can)!

Getting a “Yes” Response

Design Sapling — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:31:22 +0000

I just received an email asking me to volunteer my time. I didn’t want to do it.

It asked for an RSVP “Yes” if you were coming; all you have to do is click a “Yes” button. The request was sent to hundreds of people; easy to ignore.

But this email asked that you also RSVP “No” if you are NOT coming.
Why would they need that? Whoever didn’t reply “Yes” isn’t coming!

The trick is, people don’t want to disappoint.
An explicit “No” option makes it less likely you’ll ignore the request since you can easily just click the RSVP button instead. It’d be rude not to respond.

But now you’re in the position of actively saying “No“. And you don’t want to be the bearer of bad news.

I don’t have any studies at hand that back this up, but I’m guessing the tactic they used increased response rates and increased the number of people saying “Yes” who would have otherwise ignored it.

[ For the record, I clicked "No".
They sent me to a page asking for a donation. ]