Barker.js might provide a minute splash of glee. It also comes with a bookmarklet 1. Click and tell:
Barker is updated with a jQuery-based replacement method (we added a lazy-loading mechanism with a callback) so now it works with Chrome.
Don’t quit your day job
Word. But maybe untrue.
Even told me that it is tiresome to make a bookmarklet which works cross-platform, and upon discussing the rationale we came up with this solution. We initially thought that embedding a jQuery loaded, neé jQuerify, or using $LAB might suffice… But it seems that we could use some RegEx magic instead. ↩
Design mixes idealism and realism. Despite that there are no leather buttons “in the real world” [sic], we use it sparingly. The key, undoubtedly, is “sparingly”. Kitsch? It is necessary if it works nice.
Quoted,
The passive (or as Apple calls it: “lean back”) tablet format suggests creating limited information architecture with linear use modes. In comparison to a website, an iPad app is like a closed egg.
[This] is one of the main challenges iPad app design poses to interaction designers. How do you make navigating on iPad as easy as breaking an egg? And in particular, how do you measure information on a device without static scrollbar?
In order to make the user feel in control of an iPad app you either need a strong and simple structured overall content model that is consistent with the mental model of most users (like the brilliant Marvel application)—or you need to re-invent the way information is measured and orientation is given.
We’ll see.
Why teamwork is not always a fine choice
Depends on whether the goal is to develop or maintain something.
People who think about software frameworks ought not use the same thought pattern against consumer and practical, applied software.
That’s why the dubbed “C on Rails” is outright a joke. We can’t live without embedded software, but things start to get awry when people obsessed with embedded software start dictating how applied, consumer software ought to be done.
Perhaps because I’m obsessed with applied software. Perhaps because I love prototyping, and am bad at mass-producing. Time will tell.
Factoring Estimations
By anectodal evidence, it takes me approximately 1 week to churn out a full-fledged design, but that week is often scattered within a span of 2 or 3. That means my turnaround is not “one week” but 3. Rule of thumb: multiply the budget, and the time it takes to finish everything by 3.
A designer friend of mine goes this way:
“Two monthes of cushion time to the estimation, always.”
Get up, rinse and shower. Code. Make breakfast, have a round of tea. Do more design. Twit. Push some pixels. Email clients and customers. Do more coding. Checkout social networks. Twit. Occassionally meet people. Sleep.
Life, according to a junior
Get up, lie in bed. Twit. Code some more and twit, make breakfast while reading the Onion. […]
Generally speaking
Live according to the Maker’s Schedule if you want to ship stuff. Piss people off, play havoc with corporate drones in a non-offending way, or do whatever you could without risking your relationship with people… to fight for time you deserve for making your product.
Another test you can use is: always produce. For example, if you have a day job you don’t take seriously because you plan to be a novelist, are you producing? Are you writing pages of fiction, however bad? As long as you’re producing, you’ll know you’re not merely using the hazy vision of the grand novel you plan to write one day as an opiate. The view of it will be obstructed by the all too palpably flawed one you’re actually writing.
Rework
Read 37signal’s Rework on Kindle.app on two shortly borrowed iPads separately, once skimmingly and once immersedly. That’s it: change somebody can believe in.
Design could start to value the idea of the happy, balanced designer. I know. It sounds so wrong. The entire structure of design is against happiness and balance in its practitioners. What would we talk about if we didn’t talk about how tired we were, how overworked, how busy, how stressed? Imagine knowing a designer that wasn’t hurting himself in some way. Such a designer would turn the whole mythology of design on its head. Which needs to happen. Because, let’s face it, if a designer does not understand what it takes to sustain Self and spirit, do you really want his taking on designing sustainable things? For sustainable things, at this point, are really the only interesting design things.
