1. Context

    Dimensions to think along

  2. 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

  3. 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).

  4. Rasterizing a layer in Photoshop with the layer effects

    1. Create a new layer below the layer you want to rasterize
    2. Select both layers and merge them
    3. No step 3

    Alternative approach 1. Convert to Smart Object 2, Rasterize

    (Thanks @dj247)

  5. Innovation through the lens of the Three D’s

    Design, Development and Distribution are a useful trifecta to get right for any product. Not surprisingly, the three D’s are also a good perspective to consider for how to innovate. Take Product X, 

    Innovation through design

    What are the unmet user needs or problems that Product X does not address? What do people complain about the most when they use Product X? Is there something upstream/downstream of X that would add value? Would people be happier with a simpler X? Are they starting to outgrow X and need a more powerful version? Are there older/younger users that whose needs X doesn’t capture? What are the supporting/ancillary services that would make X even better?

    Innovation through Development

    Where does the technology driving Product X fall short? Too slow? Too manual? Too complicated? Restricted by platforms/mediums? Not scalable? Not relevant enough?

    Innovation through Distribution

    Where does Product X not have a presence? Is it available in another language/market? Is it present on mobile? How about for non smart phone users? What about when there is no internet?

  6. The Three D’s

    Products development lies at the intersection of design, development and distribution.

    Design should provide value to your user. It should concern itself with finding a real user problem and exploring a range of solutions against it. Design should be validated with field research, prototypes, and usability testing; learnings from each of which should drive the feedback loop.

    Development covers the technical infrastructure that will power the solutions for the problems you uncovered in the design phase. These include not only identifying platforms to develop against but also defining technical limitations, speed constraints, and costs. Are there underlying libraries that will speed up the process? How large is the developer community that you can hire from?  

    Distribution is getting your products into the hands of your customers. How do your customers find out about you? How do they access your product? How do you vertically integrate to increase the core strength of your product? Or diverge laterally to increase the scope of what you cover? 

  7. Centering elements using margin: auto

    Parent element needs to have text-align set to center for the margin:auto behavior to work

  8. Create not consume

    Realizing that too much of my time is spent consuming content online without capturing the response it triggered. From now on, I will not retweet, reshare or repost without succinctly verbalizing why its important.

    I will use this space as a record for things I am trying to learn, books I read, tutorials I find helpful and problems I solve along the way. 

    So, here is to synthesizing meaning and keeping wonder alive.