nortypig

There are some excellent resources again in Smashing Magazine’s Best of March 2008.

Corey Doctorow’s The Pleasures of Uninterrupted Communication discusses how he deals with interruptive media (Instant Messaging, emails, phone calls) which get in the way of his work day. Turn it off, sidestep email apnea, and don’t let these intrusions interrupt your real communication.

Jamie Owen on Boxes and Arrows has a lengthy and well researched article on the use of cues in interaction design - Cues: the Golden Retriever. How our natural responses to stimuli can inform the design process. As designers we can’t be too interested in this topic.

101 Five Minute Site Fixes that should almost be mandatory.

Eric’s well written suggestion about taxing plastic bags reminds me of a book I reviewed recently - Cradle to Cradle. We need to start seeing this as a design problem.

Clay Shirky discusses his new book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (Note: the site may have issues with IE6 so try a better browser) where he looks at the dynamics behind flashmobbing and the new paradigm of ridiculously easy group forming (sharing, conversation, collaboration, collective action). Its particularly a very interesting video presentation for anyone interested in social media, group dynamics or developing Web 2.0 applications.

Cloaca Makes Art Poo in very bad taste for an artist with limited interests - entertaining, shocking and contemporary. Don’t watch this installation with a weak stomach.

Luke Wroblewski on A List Apart says Sign Up Forms Must Die and I’m with him all the way. Sign up forms suck and nearly always drive me away from bothering to find out what your new Web 2.0 Company has to offer. And if they suck so much why do you keep throwing them at me like a cyclone fence that I need to hurdle. Use the situation to capture my attention and show me what you offer before worrying about sign up forms. So why is Jumpcut so smart and the other guys so dumb? OK why are the other guys so dumb? I’d call it the panic mode - hey someone’s here so quick demand all their information! Ouch and goodbye from me.