Blue Wednesday

In keeping with my main blog the design for isUseful has been updated. I’m hoping this keeps things cleaner and easier to follow – please let me know by clicking on the comments link below this post.

One other useful side effect of no longer using a Blogger default template, is that the site doesn’t rely on graphic elements that have to be pulled in from their server. Given some of the slow server issues they’ve been having recently I’m sure they’ll appreciate this small kindness.

Colr Pickr

I’d already posted this on my photo blog, but I realised it was indicative of a number of new interface paradigms rising to the surface on the Web 2.0 pool simply to help you wade through all of the user generated gold/dross that has been created.

flickr gamma

Flickr have just released their ‘gamma’ update to the traditional beta site. This seems to be mostly a UI revamp – moving stuff around and adding in dropdown active menus to everything in sight. To be honest my instantaneous response was dislike – but then I’ve been a hardcore flickr user for a while now and had fallen in love with it’s clean, simple behaviors and visibility of functionality. Everything was just right.

Here’s a more detailed breakdown/list of gripes (because I can’t see much positive at the mo):

• The new interface feels more cluttered to me, even though they’ve tried to hide everything under dropdown menus. Everywhere.
• There are now dropdown menus for all the main section heads. Ick. What a predicable ‘solution’ to a problem that wasn’t even there. Can I hear you say ‘committee’? The problem with dropdown menus is that you have to know where something is before you look for it. Or go off searching to find it. Do I click on the click ‘You’ or hover to get a menu? too much choice! Observe Amazon – they use very few (1?) dropdown menus, everything you want to do is there and obvious.
• The nice light highlighting they had before seems to have been replaced by something more solid, clunky and heavier. This seems to distract from the photos whereas before they were the central focus (as they should be).
• Your home photo page has changed from a one column display of photos to two columns. This creates relationships that were not there before between random pairings of photos rather than the simple flow. Do I scan down then across, or across down back and so on.

In summary I’m not convinced this is a step forward. What was a beautifully clear and simple design now seems harder to use and more obstructive to the core goal of sharing amazing photos. Fingers crossed the ‘epsilon’ release is better and I can go back to being in love with flickr again…

Old-school TV Design

The animation archive has some great scans of original guidelines on how to create storyboards for commercials and the like. The concepts are still strong, even if the style and the storylines are dated – nowadays advertisers cut out story rather than add in walking to the store to buy the product!

Hygge for you life

The latest MoMA Design Store catalog has a combination candle/matchbox which they describe as follows: ‘The Scandinavian custom “hygge,” meaning cozy togetherness, inspired Walton to create this paraffin candle with a convenient matchbox built in at the bottom.’ Hygge. It’s always interesting when words start to spread beyond their land of origin and describe concepts more succinctly, or even concepts that aren’t described at all.

Searching around it transpires that ‘hygge‘, pronounced ‘hooga’, is more used to express people getting together or cosy situations rather than objects. Either way it strikes me that hygge would be a good adjective for most interfaces to aspire towards.