Marty February 14th, 2007

I’m currently working on a project for a hemophilia product from a major pharmaceutical company. In the midst of working on it, there is a reference to another product that triggered a memory of a past project - one that I did when I was working for Waresoft. Back then, it was a project coming up with a combination of Flash, HTML and JavaScript tools for Humate-P, made by ZLB Behring.

In this project, I was tasked to do three things:

1. Update a flash animation comparing Humate-P and other products
2. Create a dosing calculator that allowed a user to put in their weight and the amount of Van Willebrand factor (VWF) they wanted in the bloodstream
3. Create handy chart for the doctors to see a complete list of comparable weight and VWF levels

Well, since I was thinking about the old project, I went to see how it was looking - and it’s up and running on their site. It works pretty well, too. You can see the different aspects of it here:

Humate-P Densitometric Analysis - click on the “Click here” link at the top of the page to launch Flash.

Dosage Calculator

Complete Dosage Chart

Granted, I only adapted and improved the first, and got a TON of help from Van in creating the JavaScript for the Dosage Calculator, but I think it turned out pretty well. I remember that trying to sync up the voice and animation in Flash was a major nightmare; ironically, knowing Flash 8 a little better now, I realize that there was a much easier way to do it than I did. Oh well, stuff happens.
Aahhh, the salad days…

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Marty February 7th, 2007

Well, I’ve been working on this for a while, and I’ve finally gotten my first t-shirt design up. Granted, this is not a mass market t-shirt, but instead one that will have a very limited audience. But it’s the basest for a (slightly) broader line of t-shirt ideas directed at Information Architects and Designers, which have been given the short thrift in the Tech Geek t-shirt world. It started out about 6 months ago when my former/current boss was leaving GSI, and I thought it would be cool to get him a funny IA t-shirt. But in looking on Cafe Press, Threadless, Think Geek, Veer and others, I couldn’t find any. None. Lots of IT shirts, lots of programmer shirts and even a good number of design t-shirts, but nothing that was specifically for IA. So I set out to come up with one. Continue Reading »

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Marty February 6th, 2007

Wow, Wal-Mart really screwed the pooch on this one. If you visit their new Video Download beta site, you get a somewhat nice experience - not great, but not too bad - provided you are using Internet Explorer:

If, however, you are using a modern browser such as say, Firefox, your experience is somewhat … shall we say, different?

Notice anything wrong? Obviously, no one mentioned that over 10% of the country uses Firefox, including what might be a disproportionate number of the users who might use a download service like this. Of course, we are talking about Wal-Mart customers…

I sure hope that someone loses their job over this - this is sloppy and a REALLY poor example of what happens when you don’t do proper QA (or use qualified designers). I could go to town on the code itself, but could I really do worse than what they already show here?

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Marty January 23rd, 2007

Is there any good alternative to Microsoft Visio (for the PC)?

Continue Reading »

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Marty December 25th, 2006

This is what happens when you combine a non-studio photographer with the urge to do something artistic - Gummi Art.

Merry Christmas to everyone!

• Design , Family , Photography , Play
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Marty December 6th, 2006

For a while now, I’ve been trying to figure out how to copy text, etc. from one page to another page in Visio. I found the basics in one of the Boxes & Arrows tutorials, which squeezed down comes to the following:

The key is the SHAPETEXT command in Visio, which pulls the text from one shape and puts it into another. For example, if you wanted to keep your annotation and footnotes synced up, you would: Continue Reading »

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Marty November 27th, 2006

Some of the best usability and accessibility articles I’ve found this month.

Accessibility for Blind People

A good interview that shoes implicitly how the blind use the web - and the web at large

from PingMag.jp

Resolution vs. Browser Size vs. Fixed or Adaptive Width

Roger Johannson puts up another great article

from 456 Berea Street

Fangs - The Screen Reader Emulator

A Firefox extension to show how a screen reader sees your site.

from Standards schmandards

User Experience Calendar

A great set of examples of design usability, in a calendar form.

from Netlife Research

User Experience Poster

A nice poster of how User Interaction should work.

from Experience Dynamics

and other related fun

Beyond Wireframes

A good article (and related media) on the future of IA and RIAs

from adaptive path

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Marty November 16th, 2006

On Tuesday, I had the good fortune to go to a seminar by Edward Tufte. I was interested becasue of his reputation and the amount of design I’ve been doing. Even though my designs are mostly IA-related (wireframes, user flows), I thought the conference would be a good experience. I underestimated it’s impact.

I’ve had Tufte’s book, Visual Experiences and thought that while useful, it seemed to be from a little authoritative and arrogant. After seeing him speak, however, I had to reevaluate my impressions.

Tufte is a good speaker, animated and active. But more than that, his knowledge delivered in a clear, concise way. Suddenly, his books made sense in a way that showed not arrogance but experience through frustrating experiences. From the poor design of Power Point) to his advocacy of good design in all forms of information design, he gave compelling and vibrant examples that supported what I’d often thought about when I had read his books.

The seminar was relatively short (10 - 4:30, with an hour-long lunch), but packed with a lot of good information. The seminar included all four of Tufte’s books, which are beautiful tomes to look through and learn. But coupled with Tufte’s speaking, they were even better - full of great examples, insight and, of course, great design. Tufte is an expert for good reason, and most of his ideas are solid principles that formed the basis for a good number of information designers’ ways of doing things. I didn’t always agree with some of his statements, but there was no denying that he’s probably forgotten more than I ever knew about design.

The seminar would have been worth much more than its $360 cost, and that was made even better by all of the books being included. Additionally, the trip to D.C. to see him gave me the opportunity to have dinner with Blair at Union Station - always a good bonus. I just have to transfer his notes into a presentation for the group now, but it can only help me better understand and use those principles.

related »
Edward Tufte.com
Upcoming Tufte seminars

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Marty November 2nd, 2006

IjAD - Information (Inside joke) Architecture Document

Recently, much of my design work has been involving tools work and CMS, back-end systems, etc. I like the challenge of solving design problems and throwing in U/A standards where I can, but there’s not a whole lot of room for creativity. So, to add a small bit of humor to my designs, I started adding small ‘easter eggs’ (for a lack of a better term).

It’s always subtle things that avoid being overtly ridiculous or NSFW. Must of it has been relegated to finding better usernames: instead of J. User or John Doe, I’ve taken to A. Lien, B. Cirius and D. Lishus. Sometimes it’s a subtle joke word or phrase in the Lorem ipsum… text:

“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nulla ligula ligula, tincidunt vel, insert nifty web twopointoh phrase here gravida ut, gravida consequat, justo. Curabitur sit amet quam ac enim viverra interdum…”

So, aside from amusing myself and the rare notice by anyone else, it’s harmless. But is it professional? I understand that it does have a childish element to it, and that it might be considered so by others, but the outlet after 8 hours of staring at Visio, Dreamweaver and Photoshop is something that I’ve enjoyed.

So, I’m wondering if there are any thoughts out there among the 4 or 5 readers I have about this? Anyone else put in hidden/secret things within their designs? Many artists have done things like this for ages, such as Shepard Fairey and his “Andre the Giant has a posse” graphic which found it’s way into other pieces of art, or the old Iron Maiden album covers by Derek Riggs, who hid his personal Riggs Logo in the drawings of Eddie, Maiden’s mascot. Programmers are notorious for their Easter Eggs, although they are usually hidden; IADs - being a visual medium - aren’t that complex.

I’m just curious how normal this is among IA’s and related design fields.

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Marty September 15th, 2006

Last night, GSI Commerce hosted a seminar for AIGA Philadelphia and Phi Chi (the Philadelphia branch of the ACM SigCHI) members, along with Avenue A/Razorfish. The topic was The Visual vs. The Usable, and we were presenting two cases of how we managed to mesh top-notch creative with functional, usable design. Avenue A/Razorfish did the same, talking about how the two groups - often at odds - collaborated on projects to create a better end result. Continue Reading »

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