The beginning of a design career is so hard. You have good taste, huge potential, and you’re even scoring a few exciting interviews where you’re an obvious culture fit. But they say you’re too junior, need more experience, and should get back in touch after you’ve done more work. But how will you get more experience if that’s exactly the thing blocking you from getting hired?
Category: Design
The most evocative, emotional, and intense hue on the spectrum is also the hottest in temperature. It stands out brightest on an interface making this color an attractive option for both logos and error messages. Working with AAA, Macy’s, Toshiba, and Twilio helped me see how users can create anegative association between the brand and making mistakes when both components are red.
I don’t have an easy solution for you. But after dealing with this problem over and over again, I hope this post will help you think more carefully about color, messaging, and placement in a way that fits your brand.
Trust, personalization, and data were the three themes outlined Airbnb’s Openair engineering conference’s opening talk. The event followed two tracks: Machine Learning and Global Scale. So what’s a kindly designer doing somewhere like that? I’ll tell you.
I believe the future of technology will be invisible, less interfaces, smarter computers, and more face-to-face time. Perhaps physical, perhaps digital. So it makes sense the home sharing travel company would create a conference about scaling human connection. It’s all about the systems designed behind the experience that help people spend more time together.
I went to Openair to broaden my understanding of what is possible so I can build better services for people. I wanted to improve the quality of my technical conversations with developers. Naturally, I also wanted to peep at their branding collateral and interior design: it was on point and cozy like a home. I’m also focusing my attention on smaller conferences and festivals for more niche experiences that go deeper instead of wider. This one was a homerun.
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Protecting Yourself During User Research
Last week I ran a user research session that went sour and felt unsafe. I almost never recruit from Craigslist and now I remember why.
The Craigslist Creeper
My team and I sat by the elevator doors waiting for our participant sourced from Craigslist to show up. Let’s call him James. When James finally arrived we moved to a conference room to begin the session. Also in the room was my research wingman, a developer on the project. The rest of our team was in another room watching the session via Google Hangout.
James and I chatted for awhile about what he uses his three different cellphones for. One a free “Obama phone” the other he shares with his girlfriend and the third an Android. It didn’t really add up. We moved on. I showed him photos our team is considering using for an iPhone welcome screen. I laid out flashcards with different emotional words printed on them. I asked him to pickup the cards that described how he felt about the photos.
Out of nowhere, Craigslist James told my wingman I was sexy. I froze. Did he really just say that outloud? James nearly apologized by saying “I shouldn’t talk about you like you’re not in the room.” I collected myself and reminded him I was in the room. We continued the session with my Spidey Sense on alert. Looking back we should have ended the session right then.
James got weird said the photos reminded him of suicide, murder, rape, gloomy, death, etc. He also kept talking about being sleepy and I eventually figured out he was probably also high. James then locked eyes with my chest and low-hanging jewelry and said he liked my necklace. By then, everyone was independently racing to figure out how to end the session.
At that point a teammate from the observer room texted us to with a fake story about a fake meeting. Time for my Craigslsit Creeper to go home. While walking James out of the office he insisted several times I should call him if I needed anything at all. No thank you.
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We better pay attention to Serial
People. Regular ol’ people, all around the world, actually, more than 5 million people, are actually interested in journalism.
Well, Serial to be specific.
No podcast has ever reached that many downloads from iTunes so fast according to Apple. It’s even harder to ignore the podcast considering the 17k Soundcloud listeners Soundcloud and 37k Reddit subscribers.
When newspapers, television, and radio’s old business model didn’t fit the new world, it was easy to blame the selfie generation. It seemed like all kids wanted was sugary-sweet linkbait without any leafy green news.
It’s not very hip to care about your birthday.
It’s even less cool to want presents.
But it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.
Instead of taking my year down in flames, I practiced twenty days of self love and self care leading up to tomorrow, my birthday. I bought myself meaningful gifts and focused on a better diet, sleep, exercise, and relationships during my one-woman party.
I experimented with my lifestyle by doing several intensely positive activities to help me see where my happiness comes from. Here’s to more of the good stuff next year!
Categories
Gentrified San Francisco as a Disney story
The second coming of techie invaders in San Francisco is a story decades old. A milestone in this saga was the Google Bus fiasco symbolizing new money pushing out longtime locals and artists. Ten months ago I stitched together quotes from Disney movies that embellish this story.
Thoguh we still have a lot of social and legislative work to do in this city, I hope you’ll just enjoy this fictional startup-kid story for what it is:
Discovering San Francisco
Something is calling you to the West Coast. That one cool friend you kind of know from college insists you visit. So break your bank and book a flight.
Peter Pan: Come on
Wendy: B b but where are we going?
Peter Pan: To Neverland
Wendy: Neverland
Peter Pan: You’ll never grow up there
Falling in Love
One suitcase and a magic carpet ride later you’re here in SF. Your friend shows you a weekend of costume-themed street parties, boutique coffee and endless lounging in Dolores Park. This city promises another decade of joyful youth you want.
Aladdin & Jasmine: A Whole New World
Aladdin: Don’t you dare close your eyes
Jasmine: A hundred thousand things to see
Aladdin: Hold your breath it gets better
Jasmine: I can’t go back to where I used to be
Luxuries
You move to SF and land a dream job job at a startup that’s going to truly change the world. They buy you a Macbook Air, feed you every day and let you come into work at noon. Does life get any better? Well, maybe kinda yea.
Ariel: I’ve got gadets and gizmos a plenty. I’ve got whosits and whatsits galore. No big deal. I want more.
Your first company
Time goes on and you’re tired of working on someone else’s dream. You’re being told what to do and how to do and are not sure if the next round of funding is even coming. You could do it better. So you start your own company and become the boss.
Simba: I’m gonna be the main event, like no king was before. No one sayin’ do this.
Zazu: Now when I said that–
Nala: No one sayin’ be there
Simba: Free to do it all my way
Self-awareness
You believe the work you’re doing is good but for some reason people you don’t know are angry about it.
Ariel: I don’t see how a world that makes such wonderful things could be bad
And maybe the city actually doesn’t need you or even have space for you.
Alice: Afterall, we haven’t been invited
But, you’ve now spent enough time in San Francisco to learn it hasn’t always been a city of new money hackers.
Pocahontas: You think the only people who are people, are the people who look and think like you.
The Premonition
And some long-time locals throw bricks through bus windows and protest your pure existence in their home.
Gaston: They’ll wreak havoc on our village if we let him wander free. So it’s time to take some action boy!
This is some kind of warning. But you, a kind, thoughtful, sometimes wide-eyed twenty something never meant to hurt anyone is now a target of social politics.
Scar: Even you can’t be caught un aware. A shining new era is tip toeing nearer. And in justice deliciously squared. Be prepared!
Hyena 1: Yeah be prepared.
Hyena 2: yeah we’ll be prepared.
Hyena 3: For what?
Kindness
At this point rent prices, space for artists and social equilibrium is not yet met in San Francisco. The story is to be continued but you start to realize how small this place is.
It’s a world of laughter and a world of tears
It’s a world of hopes and a world of fears
There’s so much that we share
That is time we’re aware
Its a small world after all
If you’ve seen one Darren Aronfosky film you’ve seen them all, and you’ve seen none. Since the days of watching math psychothrillers in my friend’s parent’s basement, I find his movies to be unmistakably his and like nothing else I’ve seen. He’s like a folk-singer. He repeats themes, shots, and patterns in ways that are always innovative but beautifully familiar. Look for these themes in his work:
Clint Mansell writes the score for every feature film Aronofsky directs. He writes a beautiful theme around the narrative and characters that can transcend throughout the film. And like the stories and imagery, the score is always rich, dark, heady, open and somehow both sad and hopeful all at once. The score for The Fountain is undoubtedly my favorite. But Mansell’s work on Requiem for a Dream might be the secret sauce that makes a story about addiction and desperate hope stay with us longer than we’d like. Here are the themes from each of his films in order of my favorites.
The Fountain – Death is the Road to Awe (2006)
Requiem for a Dream – Hope Overture (2000)
Black Swan – A Swan Song (for Nina) (2010)
Pi – r^2 (1998)
Noah – Make Thee an Ark (2014)
The Wrestler – Theme (2008)
Recurring images are woven through each of his films in ways that are specific to the stories, but if you’re watching you’ll see it. Look also for images of trees, pools of water, crosses, and characters making extreme demands of their body. For example, in both Noah and The Fountain, the main character plants the seemingly exact kind of seed (that will breath in new life).
Elapsed Time Film Techniques are used in almost all of his films and most famous in Requiem for a Dream to show when the characters are high or getting high. He uses the same style in Black Swan and leans on a choppy but rich elapsed time technique to show nature changing over time. A good example is the scene of the slithering snake crawling through the Garden of Eden.
Immediate and unnatural growths shift the plot for the main characters in The Fountain, Black Swan and Noah. Without introducing any spoilers, I can tell you to look for organic natural activity happen in an unexplainable, mystical, transformative way. Aronofsky of course also uses the same, and beautiful, filming and editing technique in all three of these scenes.
Rebirth shows up in nearly all of these films. The Fountain and Noah most explicitly explore these concepts as Tom is searches for the fountain of youth in three parallel stories. Whereas, Noah builds an Ark so nature can start anew post-apocalypse. In Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan, however, the characters struggle with addiction to either drugs or perfection. These films resolve not with a warm, nurturing hope for a better future but as an expression of what it looks like when we go too far.
Strong, still, female leads play a role in almost all of his stories. They coincidentally tend to have long brunette hair, milky skin and can probably make a man feel 3 or 13-feet tall in one glance. He writes their roles to soften the edge of their male counter-parts while remaining pillars of strength. They are strong, reliable, sensual partners that walk with grace, talk with intimacy and of course playing dual roles.
A once young 90s indie actress Jennifer Connelly in Requiem for a Dream returns to Aronofsky’s screen as Noah’s wife. In between Rachel Weisz plays Queen Isabella of Spain and Natalie Portman as a transforming ballerina in Black Swan.
Obsessive, righteous, male leads like Max Coehn in Pi are extremists. Cohen is beyond obsessed with expressing the natural language of the universe through mathematical patterns and hopefully the stock market. Of course, like all Aaronfsky films, he doesn’t quit until he’s gone too far. Noah, too, builds an enormous Ark and is willing to let his family die and slaughter his son’s offspring in the name of what he believes to be a righteous cause. And again, all version of Tom in the Fountain are obsessed with impossible goal to solve the “disease of death” so he can be forever with his wife. Who could forget how far Harry will go (and let his friends and girlfriends go) for a fix?
Our beautiful universe is a place of wonder for almost all of his characters. Scenes are often set underneath the night sky early in during the films. As the story progresses and time elapses we later see the sky, stars, light or water, like small golden charms, behind silhouetted characters, coming down from the sky. That’s an easy way to tell if the story is about to resolve.
FUN EXTRAS
Toy Story 2: Requiem
Buzz and Woody get wasted
The Children Watch Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain
Pretty smart, analytical 9-year-olds break down this three-part love story searching for eternal youth
The Simpsons Requiem for a Dream
Homer tragically eats too many rib sandwiches
All images are screencaps from Youtube videos and obviously belong to the rightful owners
I’ve been traveling to Detroit every Memorial Day Weekend since 2009 for the annual Electronic Music Festival. You may have read my post last spring about why it’s the best festival of them all. But as I’m maturing, I get tired faster and want to spend my travel dollars going other places, so I was on the fence making my pilgrimage this year.
— But real quick, before we go any further, I’ll give you the miles I had, the miles I bought and the miles AA gifted me for an extremely fair price. please tweet or message if we can help each other. —
While flight scanning, AA sent me a very kind email about how some miles of mine were about to expire. It felt like an omen to make the trip. I spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out this UI, then parsing out which flights didn’t have two connections or require me to change airports. I did eventually figure out I could uncheck flights from San Jose and Oakland, that was a win. While of course having no concept of the differences between a 12K flight and a 25K Economy AAnytime or 25K Economy Business First, I just tried to pick flights furthest to the left.
There’s some glitch in the system where after I choose my dates and select the seats, my flight on May 24 would shift to May 10. After 30 minutes of finding a loop hole around that bug, I was finally ready to book the flight and get on with my life.
It’s difficult to know how many miles I have, how much they cost, what that means about the minimum miles I need to have (or use?) and that I couldn’t pay the balance of the flight in cash. Upon expecting to purchase the flight, they tell me it’s on hold and I need to buy more miles. I’m so frustrated and ready to buy the flight I maybe want at this point, I just buy the miles. A few dropdowns and fields that don’t auto-complete later, I see the total is $10 less than how much it would cost to fly on United Airlines. Great!
Somewhere I missed the taxes and fees. I’m sure they clearly stated the numbers somewhere, but you can see how after and the clicking and guessing, I just wanted the task done. Afterwards, I see the extra fees and see that I still have to pay $10 to book a flight with miles. This was not the cheaper option.
So of course I call them on the phone and kill them with kindness. You know I listened to static elevator music for a long time before the representative told me she could not do refunds. I asked if she could put me in touch with someone else who could help me feel better. More static muzak. Same explanation.
But with honest candor I explain to her what my experience has been like. And that I’m sure it clearly stated the costs but this is my first time buying miles and I had a holistic stressful experience that led me to make mistakes. I told her I knew she does not work on the website and that I know AA cares about their customers. I told her my experience starts from the moment I decide I want to go somewhere until this phone call. I asked “what can you do to help me?” She asked what I had in mind and I explained she had more experience helping people like me.
She offered me 2,000 in miles. Naturally, I explained I was hesitant to accept them because it would just return me to this stressful miles loop. Since she absolutely could not offer a refund, a free flight, vouchers or first class upgrades, I accepted. Of course, I cannot actually purchase the flight for 3 days until the miles I bought online can appear online.
The lesson here is to
- Be patient and careful with old websites
- Be very kind to associates on the phone. It’s just not their fault
- Don’t stop til you get enough
But really, will someone please buy my AA miles?
Open up your hand-sized glowing rectangle. traverse a glorious landscape of stories, messages and photography anywhere in the universe. It’s really quite Incredible.
Taps, swipes and drags take us anywhere we want to go. However, these views, navigation structures and transitions are still organized analogous to how we interact with paper, windows and physical objects.
Pull to show the refresh spinner hidden behind the Instagram photos. Tap on a Twitter link to add a layer on top of the feed. Drag your homescreen to the left to show more apps on the right. We know the content is not actually behind, on top of or beside one another.
We once needed skeumorphic graphic design to help us understand digital interfaces. That’s also how I see today’s designers relying on animations and transitions to do the same. That’s not to say this a wrong thing to do, it’s where consumers cognitively are today, but still is the case none-the-less. Let’s look at some apps I’m into these days that are handling transitions and animations quite well.
Moves step counter and distance tracker
Scroll down to travel the path of your day. As you tap on the green circle, it bounces and responds to the impact of your tap. Doing that changes the display to time, calories, steps or distance. I love this little animation detail, it feels good and transitions me between unit types which could otherwise be data overload.
If I swipe down hard, the circle hops up into a calendar view. I can then pan left and right to compare progress. It’s delightful and helpful. This is a remarkable app all around.
Secret posts for and from people you know
This itty bitty app is a scrolling feed of secrets from friends, friends of friends and saucy strangers. Here I can share a private tidbit about my life to a big audience. It’s fun, too. The apps says 16 of my friends have joined but I don’t know which.
This app is not only about the secrets about about how it feels to tell them. The screens and letters fade in, giving a ghostly and invisible feeling. When posting a photo I can swipe to right to blur photos. This is a nice example of interaction design that doesn’t rely on an analog from the physical world (like smudging your screen to create a blur effect, for example). Nicely done. Look for my secret from today 😉
Paper stories from your friends
Facebook’s launch of their news reader is exciting. We cannot critique the quality of a social app on the day of its release. How it feels to use it will emerge over time and only then can we make a sound judgement.
However, the designers here use a navigation style similar to Moves, where we travel up and down to move in and out of the detail of content and from left to right to traverse across content. They also have some animations that I’m seeing other folks call “flipboardy”, which is, I think, a good thing. I can be easy to lose context of where you are in this app, but there are escape hatches everywhere in case you can’t find your way home.
Automatic device to help you drive better
This little guy plugs into a port on my car and lets me know the location of my car and how I’m driving. It also makes a little beep when I break or accelerate too hard. Also like the Moves app, I travel down a stream that is my timeline of activity. In fact, a little car drives down the timeline. When it’s next to an activity post, the car’s headlights turn on. It’s a very tiny detail that’s easy to miss and some people may even find cheesy. But in the age of cold, flat, graphicless interfaces, I find it endearing.
