Chanpory Rith
Oct 2, 2007
I have a confession. The reason why you’ve heard barely a peep from me isn’t because I’ve been Tasered by zealous cops or abducted by aliens. Truth is, I’ve been fiendishly playing Scrabble Scrabulous on Facebook. I swear, It’s like a Krispy Kreme donut with sprinkles of crack on top.
How did I become so addicted?
Chanpory Rith
Sep 24, 2007
After seeing pics of Samsung’s new slim and sexy printers, I fell in love. Exclusively sold through Apple, the ML-1630 ($200) and multi-function SCX-4500 ($300) feature an unconventional design with a high-gloss black finish and slim form. After wiping off the drool off my face, I dashed to the Apple store in San Francisco and picked up the multi-function version.
Here are pics from the unboxing and my initial raves and rants:
Chanpory Rith
Sep 19, 2007
Hate spending time keeping track of where your money goes? Check out Mint, a new and free money management tool for people who hate managing money.
Mint allows you to view all of your banking and credit card transactions side-by-side, making identifying all of your transactions much easier and faster than ever before.
How does this help you? We make it easy for you to track down erroneous charges or bank fees, and keep a closer eye on your money.
Mint even lets you label your transactions so you know what bills you need to split with your friends or roommates, know which ones need to be reimbursed for your company, and more.
I’ve been in the private beta for two weeks (it’s now public), and it’s become my favorite financial tool.
Will Chen
Sep 12, 2007
The continuing growth of Web 2.0 startups means designers can expect to be approached by a lot more clients with five-figure budgets who are virtual novices to the web design process. Without proper handling these clients can be extremely difficult to work with.
I know, because I was one of those clients.
I was recently put in charge of redesigning my startup’s website. The only thing I knew about design was that I had a vague distrust for the color orange. I was not a good client. I asked lots of dumb questions and made a lot of unreasonable demands.
If you are interested in working with design neophytes like me, here are some suggestions on how to attract and manage novice clients:
John Wesley
Sep 5, 2007
Everyone experiences the desire to procrastinate. For one reason or another, nothing is harder than doing the one task that needs to get done. People go to great lengths — create excuses, find other work, or even hide — to avoid a dreaded task. Usually time spent procrastinating is simply wasted, but it doesn’t have to be.
When managed effectively, the desire to avoid one job can be used to get other things done. This strategy is called structured procrastination. Rather than doing nothing at all, take care of business that normally gets forgotten. This is a great way to deal with mundane chores. Use your desire to avoid real work to force yourself to work harder at something else!
My favorite structured procrastination activities include:
Of course, structured procrastination doesn’t always work. There will be times when you can’t stand to do anything work related. Usually this is a sign that you need to take a break and recharge.
Rather than forcing yourself to work when you aren’t up for it, embrace procrastination completely. These activities cure procrastination by rejuvenating energy and creative mojo:
Of course, there are many other excellent alternatives for both structured and unstructured procrastination. The key is experimenting until you find what works for you. Hopefully these suggestions will help you think of new ways to get things done even when you don’t feel like it.
Written for LifeClever by John Wesley, who writes at PickTheBrain.com about self improvement, motivation, and building self confidence.
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Glen Stansberry
Sep 4, 2007
Designing navigation may be one of the most critical parts of a web layout. Yet it always surprises me how many websites seem to put little effort into their navigation. Even websites that put every element together just right except for the navigation will have a hard time creating a positive experience for the user.
Jakob Nielsen seems to have made an interesting discovery concerning web design and navigation. When designing a layout, it is critical to make sure the navigation doesn’t look like ads. While this may seem like a no-brainer to LifeClever readers, even Uncle Sam can get it wrong upon occasion.
Nielson found that the U.S. Census Bureau’s homepage had a dismal 14% success rate for it’s most important task. Why? Because the the key area looked like an ad. 86% of the users failed to find their country’s current population (even though it was the most prominent feature on the page) because it was bolder, different in text and ultimately resembled an ad.
Check out the screenshot below of the eyetracking studies done by Nielsen. You’ll notice that in the top-right corner of the layout, the user typically only read 1/3 of the population clock, which was meant to be the most prominent part of the page.
Could this be directly related to the fact that people are wising up to CPC ads like Google Adsense, which thrive on the fact that people mistake it for navigation? I’d have to think so. This is even true for a government website, which of all the sites on the internet is least likely to have ads.
Nielsen gives a quick tip for all you designers out there: Don’t get too fancy with different colors and text. By keeping the text and color schema fairly simple, users will scan the site more thoroughly. And a user that has a positive experience navigating a website is a happy user.
Writen by Glen Stansberry of LifeDev.
Chanpory Rith
Aug 31, 2007
Summer’s almost over. Have you taken a vacation yet? If you haven’t, will you?
Acccording to a 2006 survey by Harris Interaction and Expedia, 36 percent of workers don’t plan to use all their paid vacation days, and 37 percent never take more than a week off at a time.
So to convince you to take a much-needed break, here’s my list of how vacations can benefit your health and mind. While relaxation and exposure to culture are obvious benefits, there’s a wealth of other rewards too:
Chanpory Rith
Aug 28, 2007
In a recent interview, Jason Fried from 37 Signals tells us why working closely together destroys productivity.
Proximity is an invitation to interrupt somebody. And interruption is the biggest enemy of productivity that there is. When everyone is sitting together, everyone’s at the same desk or nearby. It’s really easy to shout something over to somebody or tap someone on the shoulder or whatever. That can be useful at times, no doubt. But for the most part, it’s interruption.
Interruption destroys your zone. If you’re working on something and someone taps you on the shoulder, you gotta stop working on that thing and answer their question and whatever you need to do. And that just takes you out of your zone. It takes you out of that mind set of getting stuff done. And you don’t fall right back into, it takes awhile to get back it it. So we’ve just found interruption is something that gets in the way most of the time. So that’s why we try to stay from one another. If we need together, we get together. But it should be at the last resort, and the exception, not the rule.
After hearing Jason’s argument, I’m officially over my fetish for open-plan offices. I know they look deliciously beautiful in designer furniture catalogs–everyone’s smiling and sitting facing each together on one long giant table. But real life doesn’t imitate staged catalogs.
Chanpory Rith
Aug 26, 2007
I’m a pretty easy-going guy, but I just got off the phone with Helio, and I’m pissed. On May 11, I bought a Helio Ocean to replace my beloved Sidekick 3. After trying out the Ocean’s terrible interface, I decided to return it and get my money back. Returning it was easy, but after two months, I still haven’t gotten my money back.
Helio promises a “Total Happiness Guarantee”. So far, it’s an empty promise:
I returned my Helio Ocean via FedEx on June 20, 2007. Helio receives it two days later on June 22. After two months without seeing a refund on my credit card account, I call to see what’s going on. The operator tells me that for some reason, a refund request was not put in. She then puts in a refund request for $295 and tells me I should be getting a refund in about a week.
Chanpory Rith
Aug 24, 2007
David Pogue: Computers make you less productive
“Are you ready for a shock? According to a study from the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T., computers actually make you less productive. By the time you’ve finished stumbling around your software and fiddling with your formatting, you’ve spent more time than you would have had you just typed the thing on a typewriter…There is a solution: macro programs that memorize steps, which are then replayed with the touch of a keystroke or a click on a toolbar.”
**Merlin’s guide to better presentations**
Dr. Merlin’s advice on a skill I totally suck at: giving presentations. His tips reference wisdom from Guy Kawasaki, Cliff Atkinson, and Stephen Colbert.
**Stéphane Mallarmé: 19th century poet and experimental typographer**
David Carson was late to the experimental typography genre. Stéphane Mallarmé beat him by about 100 years. “Mallarmé’s fin-de-siècle style anticipates many of the fusions between poetry and the other arts that were to blossom in the Dadaist, Surrealist, and Futurist schools.”
Type the Sky
Another addition to ever growing number of photograph-based alphabets. This one’s made by looking up at buildings and the sky.
Blueprint Grid CSS Generator
“This tool will help you generate more flexible versions of Blueprint’s grid.css and compressed.css and grid.png files. Whether you prefer 8, 10 or 16 columns in your design, this generator now enables you that flexibility with Blueprint.”
How to do Deconstruction
“Using Deconstruction to Astonish Friends & Confound Enemies (in 2 easy steps)”
Chanpory Rith
Aug 21, 2007
Tomorrow, Interaction Design Association (IxDA) and Cooper will be hosting a free public talk in San Francisco called, Communicating Concepts with Comics.
Often, wireframes, requirements, personas and other documents have yielded unsatisfactory results – that is, when they are read at all. At Yahoo!, Kevin Cheng has been experimenting with using comics as a technique for communicating the core concepts behind a design’s intended user experience.
In this presentation, Kevin will share how this technique has worked well to get teams informed and on the same page, without fixating on interface details too early in the project. He’ll demonstrate an in-depth walkthrough of his process and the advantages he’s found using comics over other methods. Best of all, you won’t even need to take an art class to use this methodology.
I know it’s short notice, but if you’re in the area and itching to schmooze with San Francisco’s design scene, come check it out.
Here are the details:
Cooper
100 First Street, 26th Floor
San Francisco, California 94105
(map)
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
6:00 – Social Hour
7:00 – Presentation
No need to RSVP, just show up!
I’ll be there, so say hello if you see me.
Glenn Wolsey
Aug 20, 2007
Editor’s Note: I’ve been a fan of Glenn Wolsey, a young up-and-coming blogger for quite some time. I’m still amazed he’s 15 years old! I’ve asked Glenn to contribute a guest post to this fine blog. And here he is with his five favorite productivity tips.
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Not many people are going to work well without some structure. Waking up in the morning without any sense of direction for what needs to be done, or what you’re going to do that day is a recipe for disaster.
Start scheduling or setting daily milestones. If you don’t work best on a “hour based plan’”such as writing a guest article from 1PM to 2PM, set milestones for the day–one guest blog post, two blog posts on my personal site, complete client design, etc.
When you’re juggling half a dozen projects at once, you’re just asking for trouble by keeping a to-do list in your head. Don’t you want to be able to sit down in the evening and have a few worry-free hours from your workload? If you’re not keeping a to-do list somewhere other than in your head, you’ll be heading straight for burnout.
The solution is simple. Buy a moleskin notebook or pop open TextEdit on your computer, then spurt out all the tasks and actions you need to achieve. Don’t worry about the order, just pump out everything that needs doing. Once these are on paper, focus on organizing them. It’ll feel much better having a visual action list you can look at to see what needs to be done.
Chanpory Rith
Aug 17, 2007
It’s no surprise that Apple’s new sexy keyboard packs a lot of eye candy into a waifish body. Apple just loves sleek, minimal design. So why does the keyboard ship in a box a billion times its size?
Sean’s new keyboard just arrived and here’s what the crazy amount of packaging looks like:
Chanpory Rith
Aug 16, 2007
Ever had to rename a bunch of files one by one? It’s tedious, time-draining, and soul-sucking. Next time, use Renamer4Mac.
This powerful utility lets you rename any number of files or folders at once. Features include all sorts of naming voodoo: search & replace, insert & overwrite, enumeration, and capitalization. Advanced geeks can rejoice, because it also supports regular expressions. All this and an elegant live filename preview of make this freeware app a necessity in every designer’s arsenal.
Windows users, I haven’t forgotten you. Check out Rename-It!
Leo Babauta
Aug 14, 2007
This guest post was written by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits.
It was just a short 20 months ago when I discovered a very simple key that allowed me to finally quit smoking and become a runner.
It was such an easy but powerful key that I then used it to eat healthier, double my income, become an early riser, run a marathon, become a vegan, lose weight, reduce my debt, save money, write a novel, complete a triathlon, and start a successful blog.
What was that simple key to success? It was this: flip your thoughts.
Chanpory Rith
Aug 13, 2007
Who says type on the web has to look wretched? Sure, there are annoying constraints like low-resolutions, limited font choices, and browser incompatibilities. But with the right tools and a little bit of guidance, you can absolutely make on-screen typography beautiful.
Here’s 46 resources to help you create, find, and code great looking type for the web. This list is geared towards web designers and developers, but print designers will also find many of the resources useful:
LifeClever is Chanpory Rith's website on how to live and work better as a designer. You can check out the archives, grab the RSS feed, or send me a love letter. ;-)
All posts, comments, images, and code are copyrighted by their original authors. Everything else is copyrighted by Chanpory Rith, © 2006-2008, and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works License. Now, ain't that a mouthful?
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