Latest Thoughts

It’s now more important then ever that your sites work across many different devices, from smart-phones with screen as narrow as 240 pixels wide, to computer monitors that are 1920 pixels or larger. How do you achieve this nirvana of a design that works across all these different sized devices? You could create a different build for each device type, which would incur extra costs and an even longer time frame, or you could build one site using the responsive [adaptive] design techniques such as; fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries.

While mooching around the sales I visited Muji and discovered this little delight. Although not strictly designed for wireframe sketching it’s perfect for those initial quick scamps. The 4 boxes on each page are just the right proportions to scamp out ideas without getting bogged down with details. read more…

Following on from my mass post-it note session, Sketchboarding, a couple of hours of clarity , I retreated back to my Mac to produce a sitemap. Using the sketchboard method, learned from Leah Buley at UX London 2010, allowed for rapid and easy re-working of my thoughts. With clarity of vision, I moved to creating a sitemap using a mix of Omni Outliner and Omni Graffle. With this run out and stuck together, all 12 A3 sheets of it, I returned to our Ideas Room and stuck it up on the wall.
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Sketchboarding is a rapid, flexible design method, which delivers results fast. It’s a technique which Leah Buley from Adaptive Path teaches extremely well via Adaptive Path’s workshop ‘Good Design Faster’, which I managed to catach while at the recent UX London 2010. For a full description and great video check the Adaptive Path blog post Sketchboards: Discover Better + Faster UX Solutions.
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I didn’t make it over to the UX Lisbon event, but reading through Luke Wroblewskis’ notes from the event these comments and subsequent list from Eric Reiss’ presentation: Killer Content or Content that Kills? hit quite a few notes with me.
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“Inspirational Learning for User Experience Designers” was how the UX London website sold this event and having just returned from the 3-day event all I can say is, they were spot on. What an intense few days,  I’m suffering from brain overload. If you didn’t make it along and you have even the slightest interest in User Experience (UX), then I would strongly recommend that you book up for next years event. Thanks must go to the whole ClearLeft gang who produced a fantastic event. Their hard work bought together a group of truly inspirational speakers.
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Idea Couture have created a fun little quiz to help work out whether you’re a left or right sided brain thinker. “We all have a natural inclination towards either left or right brain thinking, while some people have a combination of both. Which of these characteristics dominate your personality?” read more…

This was my entry into the “explain IA” competition, run by IA Institute. With it I managed to win myself a copy of Search Patterns by Peter Morville & Jeffery Callender.

It’s always nice winning things and I look forward to reading my copy when it arrives.

As you may gather I’m a big fan of sketching ideas and thoughts down on paper, before going anywhere near my Mac. I’ve been asked a few times what I use for sketching out my UX & wireframe ideas. My answer is always the same, use whatever you’re comfortable with. But that lead me to consider what I do actually use, following are my basic weapons of choice. read more…

Creating a website wireframe is about making important structural, content and hierarchy choices. The result is a low-fidelity visual, devoid of visual design, that determines both what content will be present and what priority it has on the screen. A wireframe should also illustrate how a user can navigate a site, how one screen flows to another and what user interaction will be required. read more…