VIB is a life sciences research institute, based in Flanders, Belgium. They perform basic research with a strong focus on translating scientific results into pharmaceutical, agricultural and industrial applications. For their fifteenth anniversary, we did the entire event branding, for which we used only chalk and a huge blackboard. For this event we also designed a box with nine books in it. For the books only we made more then 200 large chalk drawings.
Branding for a life science research institute! Great layout, typography and especially the mediums used, emulating blackboard and using chalk to manually draw graphics of atoms & science related objects! Even guerilla campaigns around the compound of the venue of the conference talk! There are also wall displays & installations!
Named Apple's iPad App of the Year and one of TIME's top 50 innovations of 2010, Flipboard is a fast, beautiful way to flip through the news, photos, videos, and updates your friends are sharing on Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Flickr, and Instagram. See your social media in a magazine layout that is easy to scan and fun to read.
Share articles and photos, comment on posts, and like or favorite anything. Customize your Flipboard with sections created from your favorite news, people, blogs, and topics.
Reviews:- "Flipboard is a fantastic iPad app that makes everything you read on the Web better than it is by itself. I can't recommend it highly enough." Macworld- "Flipboard offers iPad users an entirely original alternative to browsing the Web for news; its magazine-style layouts and breathtaking use of photos and white space show the way forward for digital media." PCMag.com- "Flipping for Flipboard: The brilliant iPad app that has changed the way I read the news." SLATE- "Flipboard begins to imagine an entirely new way of accessing the social Web." New York Times- "Stop. Put down this computer, go pick up your iPad and come back here. Now go get this app: Flipboard. Why? It's pretty awesome." Wired.com- "I am thoroughly impressed from our first run with Flipboard. It is simply gorgeous and a pleasure to browse." Mashable - "Flipboard turns Facebook updates, tweets into digital magazine" USA Today
What if I could link my e-portfolio to Flipboard? And even view others' e-portfolios for a given topic on my Flipboard - all automagically arranged to look like a glossy magazine? How would that inspire our teachers to update their e-portfolios accordingly?
There is no point in having a beautiful layout where the user simply can’t achieve basic tasks. If a system is difficult to use, users will leave and probably won’t return.
Stop focusing on getting exposure, and start focusing on making your system usable and engaging for your visitors.
App of the week
Denso
Free, from the Apple App Store
Denso is a couch potato's dream. It is an easy way to discover and organise interesting Web videos.
It works like Instapaper, except that instead of saving text, you are saving videos for future viewing. Sadly, the app will not work with YouTube videos, but it works with many other sources. It has compiled a list of videos to help you find topics that interest you.
You can also watch, share and comment on videos shared by your friends on Facebook and Twitter.
This is a universal app for both the iPhone and iPad but, as with most apps which handle video, it looks best on the iPad.
Perhaps the best thing about this app is that it was made in Singapore.
Well,
that was quick. Right after yesterday's surprising announcement,
Sony flew its yet-to-be-released NEX-VG10 camcorder into London just in time for
today's showcase event. Naturally, we had to get our hands on this shiny baby,
and boy we were impressed. In case you missed the news, this snazzy device is
the world's first consumer HandyCam with interchangeable lens, meaning you can
share E-mount lenses with your young NEX DSLRs, or take advantage of
the abundant A-mount lenses with the help of an adapter (which will cost you
extra, mind you). Likewise, there are also hot and cold shoe mounts on the mic
shaft to cater your current camera accessories. Read on for our thoughts on the
rest of the camcorder -- we've put together a little sample clip for you at the
end as well.
There
isn't much to complain about with this $2,000 (and, sadly, possibly £2,000 for
the Brits) piece of kit in terms of appearance and ergonomics. We like being
able to hold it by either the seemingly solid body (using the strap) or the mic
shaft, and both ways provided comfortable grip without much fatigue due to the
light weight (even with the bundled lens). We were also able to quickly master
the jog-dial control next to the 3-inch screen, but for this price, we expected
a touchscreen interface as well to make life easier. As for the bundled F3.5-6.3
18-200mm lens, we found that zooming required a bit more effort than we liked,
so thankfully there's auto focus mode -- just like any ordinary camcorder -- to
save us from further wrist work with the focus ring. We must also point out that
unlike the Olympus PEN,
this Sony camcorder didn't pick up any mechanical noise from its lens auto
focussing; otherwise, this kit totally wouldn't deserve such price tag.
Of
course, what we really care about is the picture and sound quality. All is
revealed in our sample reel below (remember to enable HD playback mode), but in
brief: stunningly accurate colors, sharp 1080/60i picture, and impressive audio
sensitivity (notice how the mic was able to pick up conversations from afar; you
can also enable just the front mics to minimise background noise). You may
notice some shakiness while we were adjusting the lens -- we'll blame it on our
lack of practice from the little hands-on time we had. Regardless, the NEX-VG10
certainly lived up to our expectation, and we look forward to hear what the
filming hobbyists think of this prosumer-level camcorder when it comes out in
September.
Update: commenter
aim120 dropped us a link to Sony's own sample clip. Enjoy!
designing for a mobile device can lead to a solution that is worlds different than its desktop equivalent.
Context of Use
Users have a very specific need and desire to accomplish their goal in the easiest and fastest way possible. This fact alone helps explain why mobile interfaces are designed the way they are
Feature sets are optimized to streamline common use cases
Use typography to show hierarchy and importance
Features are progressively displayed
Large buttons are used to make interactions actionable
Designing with awareness to context will yield a more atomic design that instead of introducing users to a proverbial blank canvas, will guide them toward accomplishing important tasks. Having to deal with slow data speeds, high network latency, smaller screens, and an unpredictable mode of use only reinforce the need to isolate an application’s essential features and offer access to them when contextually appropriate.
Next time you design an interface for a mobile device, remember to consider context of use and context of the medium as part of your design strategy.
Dealing with phone numbers and other mobile friendly data
Displaying information on a smaller screen
Not using a cursor
Device speed and network latency
Context of the medium
To design an experience that can gracefully coexist with others tools, one needs to understand what kind of media can be processed by specific mobile internet browsers, and when onboard applications are launched.
need to find out hows web app can interact with other apps... especially how we can integret that into harmonia and dropbox feature...
Using traditional web development techniques of creating fluid designs that scale horizontally is the fastest way to deploy a single design to many different mobile devices.
While reading for ideas on doing mock up mobile interface, i stumbled this.
very interesting read on designing for usability for mobile devices and why it is not just a scale down version of your actual desktop website.
CIT used to have an e-Portfolio service that did not have a high take up rate. There are several reasons for this that I can think of:
It was provided under the build it and they will come model. I believe not enough was done to convince students and teaching staff about the benefits of building e-Portfolios.
Consequently, no one was willing to integrate this into their course, as part of reflective learning.
Keeping an e-Portfolio was seen as extra work, which neither students nor staff were keen on.
Perhaps the software itself was not very conducive to building e-Portfolios. One key area with users seem to be that the e-Portfolio should have a customisable design and layout (at least on its public face). Our system was not flexible in that aspect. In fact, in the latter years, the option to publish the e-Portfolio was taken away entirely.
The e-Portfolio service was a walled garden. It wasn’t easy to bring in digital artefacts, which may have resided on other public services, nor was it easy to repurpose that information into useful formats – personal reference, actual resume, showcase of work.
No one figured how students would access the e-Portfolios after they graduated as it was all based on our single sign-on system.
A reflective commentary by one CIT staff in NUS on his dept's attempts to implement an ePortfolio service - and why it didn't have a high take-up rate.
There are all sorts of new trends that have hit the world of viral marketing over the past year. People are doing cool things with HTML5, creating interactive YouTube videos and interactive games, creating cool YouTube takeover campaigns, response campaigns and more. These ideas are still relatively new and surprising, but if you don’t act now they’re going to be old hat. Get into web video in 2011, while its still approaching its apex and you’ll have more of a chance of standing out and not just fading into the piles of copycat campaigns.
Online video is everywhere and it is only going to go further in 2011. This year we’ve seen Facebook become a major online video engine with viewers watching 16 minutes of video on Facebook per month and growing; the New Twitter launched, allowing users to watch videos directly from their Twitter feeds; more and more television viewers are cutting the cord and making the switch over to online video; and connected television services like Google TV and Apple TV are bringing web video to the television set
more and more people getting smartphones, but network speeds are also increasing and more and more online video sites are launching HTML5 video players to allow for mobile video viewing. With so many people watching online video, and the number growing exponentially, you must understand why you have no other choice than to cater to this market.
Miren Browser is a super quick, lightweight web browser that packs some serious
browsing speed on both Android phones and tablets. With its minimalistic layout
in full screen mode, it leaves you with an uninhibited view of your websites and
rss feeds.
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