Transitions and Kineticons

Spent a few hours building out new ways to show notifications and transitions in CSS,

http://meekalbajaj.com/labs/flipping-over/flipping.html http://meekalbajaj.com/labs/kineticons/kineticon.html

How do you measure value?

I am a huge proponent of design providing value beyond a cosmetic facelift. Good design not only provides aesthetic appeal but it is fundamentally driven by reason. So, how do we know when something provides value and how do we measure it? The simplest way to know when something provides value is when you see people willing to exchange something for it. “Something” usually takes the form of money or attention, but it could be less subtle things like the things they talk about, the things they remember later on the day, the things that get recommended to others.

Fundamentally, value is when you minimize the following 5 things for the user: 1, TIme, reduce the amount of time it takes for the user to do a task. Make the experience faster by reducing the number of steps and improving technological performance.

2, Money, lower how much something costs.

3, Brain Cycles, cut down on how much the user needs to process before they can complete their task. This depends on the level of clutter on the page, the complicatedness of the flow, the logical structuring of information, the legibility, and the language used to describe the content.

4, Physical Effort, cutting back on how much physical effort needs to be expended to get to the completion of the task. In the software world, this involves thinking about how to reduce the number of steps it takes to get to your app in the first place. If all I want to do is take a picture on a smart phone than having it as a repurposable physical button cuts down on the physical effort

5, Social Deviance, make your product the norm rather than the exception. People respond positively when there is social proof for what they use and they are not seen as the only ones doing it (hipsters excluded).