Music I’m Digging Lately

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DJ Touch Screen Interface

It’s rare that a multitouch app truly excites me beyond mere novelty. GREG WERK has concepted and designed the next generation DJ interface using a multitouch light table. The light table DJ setup is controlled by sophisticated hand gestures to produce a simplified DJ experience. Aside from the well designed interface, I also admire the idea of standardizing club DJ systems to use multitouch gear instead of clumsy setups riddled with cables and heavy equipment. No more hauling turntable coffins, crates of records, cases of cds, laptops or mixers. All you need to jockey a light table is a jump drive. I can also envision integrating online music libraries to eliminate the need for DJ’s to carry any gear at all. Just prep your set list at your home studio (or anywhere) and show up to a gig with nothing more than your birthday suit. Watch this video for a more detailed explanation of the concept and interface.

Also, be sure to check out the concept sketches to see a little of the process behind the interface and interaction design. view process »
DJ touch screen interface and gesture interaction concepts

Sucker for Quotes

It’s true, I’m a sucker for good quotes. I recently read the inspirational book Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris, which was pleasantly enriched with many of the quotes listed below. For more inspirational antidotes you can also graze my previous post Words of Wisdom or check out a few of my favorite programming related quotes.

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.
- robert frost


It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.
- thomas h. Huxley


Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
- george bernard shaw


All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger, but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.
- niccolo machiavelli


The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.
- warren g. Bennis


Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
- mark twain


Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
- oscar wilde


An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
- Niels bohr


Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.
- heinrich heine


Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
- albert einstein


The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
- richard p. Feynman


I can’t give you a surefire formula for success, but i can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.
- herbert bayard swope


Many false step was made by standing still.
- fortune cookie


Named must your fear be before banished it you can.
- Yoda


Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.
- benjamin disrael


I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
- mark twain


The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
- george bernard shaw


The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom.
- viktor frankl


One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.
- bruce lee


Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away.
- antoine de saint-exupery


What gets measured gets managed.
- peter drucker


What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention if its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the over abundance of information sources that might consume it.
- herbert simon


Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits if thinking.
- albert einstein


There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.
- ralph waldo emerson


Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.
- Robert j. Sawyer


Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece.
- ralph charell


Meetings are an addictive, self-indulgent activity that agencies habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.
- dave barry


A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
- henry david thoreau


Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.
- malcom x


The first rule of technology in business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
- bill gates


The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods ignoring principles is sure to have trouble.
- ralph wlado Emerson


Genius is only a superior power of seeing.
- john ruskin


I not only use all the brains that i have, but all the brains i can borrow.
- woodrow wilson


Creation is a better means of self expression than possession; it is through creating, not possessing, that life is revealed.
- vida d. Scudder


This is the very perfection of man to find his own imperfection.
- st. Augustine


To be free, to be happy and fruitful, can only be attained through sacrifice of many common but overestimated things.
- robert henri


If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake.
- frank wilczek


Being busy is a form of laziness-lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.
- Timothy Ferriss

Thoughts on User Experience

Understanding what users want to do, what they actually do and how they feel about using a system defines the effectiveness of any digital experience. Function and interface are the core ingredients for most digital projects, but there are many more intangible elements that help dictate a user’s actions and perceptions. An awesome user experience is much more than data, pictures and buttons. It’s the transition between views, how a button animates, knowing when to emphasize the interface and when to hide it. Ultimately, all of these ingredients add up to form an emotional reaction that determines the product’s overall success.

There are endless approaches to planning digital experiences. Some teams place these decisions on various designers, developers, researchers and directors. Sometimes the user experience is drafted in a silo by information architects months in advance of any design work, and sometimes it’s improvised in the middle of a project’s creation. I can say there’s no single formula that works for every project. The best projects seem to achieve a delicate balance of planning, reflection and iteration. Predicting human behavior is arguably the most powerful skill you can have as an interaction designer, architect, engineer (insert title here). You can draft a 300 page functional spec document, with use-case flows, personas, and wireframes annotating every detail of every view, but if the final outcome doesn’t result in a positive emotional reaction then all you’re piles of strategy will be perceived as a failure.

It’s the balance of dreaming big and being pragmatic that that will help you reach meaningful goals. Big dreams tend to incur big production costs, and pragmatism often limits creativity. So it’s important to have a reliable set of tools that helps you to not only dream big, but also get the job done fast.

Here are a few resources to add to your UX toolbox to help you draft, sketch, research, revise and execute ideas faster.

1. Smashing Magazine: Sketching Templates

Smashing Magazine is pretty much a no-brainer for web designers and developers looking for round-ups. Here is a great round-up of printable sketching, wireframing and story boarding templates.
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2. Balsamiq Mockups: Wireframes

Balsamiq is an Air app that allows for easy drag-n-drop interface wireframing. It provides a robust asset library, generates xml, and also has a pretty nice presentation mode.
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3. UX Magazine: Psychology

UX Magazine is a community of gurus from around the world that publish articles on the psychology of users and much more.
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4. UX Booth: Tips & Trends

UX Booth showcases tips and ideas dedicated to user experience professionals.
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5. UI Patterns: Interface Parts

UI Patterns hosts a collection of categorized interface components that not only lists different ways of solving common design problems, but also rationalizing about how, when, and why such solutions should be used.
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6. Slideshare: Presentations

Slideshare has a plethora of presentations from other industry professionals on user experience.
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WordPress Theme Galleries That Rock

If you’re like me then WordPress is your publishing engine of choice. There are many reasons to love WordPress and many resources to help pimp your WordPress site (WordPress.org first and foremost). However, every time I install a new WordPress site I find myself searching the same old resources like Smashing Magazine, InstantShift and Tutorial 9 to quickly grab a decent theme. I love scrolling through those articles, but after jumping through the same hoops to end up at the same boring broken themes, I finally started keeping a log of other independent sites dedicated to designing and distributing hi-end themes. Some for free and some for pay. So here’s my latest collection of WP theme galleries if you need a quality theme fast or if you’re simply just looking for inspiration.

1. Pro Theme Design

wordpress themes

2. Obox

wordpress themes

3. Pliable Press

wordpress themes

4. Elegant

wordpress themes

5. Empire

wordpress themes

6. Press75

wordpress themes

7. Proud

wordpress themes

8. Slimmity

wordpress themes

9. Template Sold

wordpress themes

10. Theme Forest

wordpress themes

11. Theme Hybrid

wordpress themes

12. Theme Shift

wordpress themes

13. Mojo

wordpress themes

14. Woo

wordpress themes

15. WP Best

wordpress themes

16. WP Zoom

wordpress themes

17. WordPress.org

wordpress themes

Words of Wisdom

I started collecting words of wisdom in my journey to become a wise man. Perhaps I would be further along in my journey if I would have written down all of my father’s advice throughout my life. I hear and forget, I see and remember, I do and understand. It’s often that you hear a quip stream of syntax but don’t know how it applies to your current goals. It was difficult for me to know the importance of my father’s advice the first time he told me “if you don’t know where you’re going any road will do“. Over time it seems like everything “father-Confucius” once told me has become useful. Perhaps we are unable to appreciate good advice until we’ve experienced a wrong decision. Maybe one day I will be able to pass on my collection of advice and help someone else make a wise decision before a wrong one is experienced.

Here are a few words of wisdom that I try to follow:

  • If you’re not proud of it, don’t serve it.
  • Know your strengths and your weaknesses.
  • Be aware of what is not obvious.
  • Don’t do anything useless.
  • Find the simplest way it can possibly work.
  • Never ask anyone to do anything you are not willing to do yourself.
  • Don’t talk about what you’re going to do. Show what you’ve already done.
  • There is an answer for everything if you ask the right questions.

Experience Design Slides

Evoluce Multitouch Display

The Evoluce One is probably the best multitouch display surface I’ve seen. It’s hi-def LCD screen supports unlimited touch points and gesture controls that can be detected from up to half a meter away. That’s one step close to minority report! (And Steve Jobs thinks we have no need for hover-states on multitouch interfaces.) Evoluce makes a strong case that sometimes it’s better to NOT touch the screen simply because it’s more sanitary. Do you want to touch your expensive screen when your hands are messy in the kitchen, in surgery, in the gym, in a restaurant, etc. I also really like that it supports apps built in Flash, Silverlight, HTML as well as OS-specific gestures.

read more: Evoluce One product description

Creating Web Apps for iPad + iPhone

If you’re like me then you enjoy the freedom of creating web apps rather than device-specific native apps. There are tons of devices and platforms to juggle, but you should certainly ramp up on Apple’s Safari mobile platform if you haven’t already. If you want your website to look sexy on the iPadz then you need to get on-board. It’s an exciting time to start creating mobile web apps. There’s a lot of momentum behind a “better web” and light-weight mobile web-apps are paving the way. Several different groups are really pushing the needle by requiring strict semantic web markup to take advantage of Webkit and help define a new era in “web standards”. The truth is that it’s not all that hard to optimize your website for an elegant mobile experience. If you already write standards-compliant markup then it’s just a matter of expanding your vocabulary a little. Look at all the big players that made “iPad ready” websites in such a short time:

iPad ready

There’s a lot of documentation to dig through if you’re trying to target web apps on mobile devices, so it’s important that you choose a good starting point so you know what’s possible and don’t waste time doing things the hard way. To speed up your research visit the following resources in this order to learn how to get started creating web apps today:

1. Apple Web Apps

Apple Web Apps

2. Oreilly’s Building iPhone Apps by Jonathan Stark

Oreilly's buidling iPhone Apps

3. Preparing Your Web Content for the iPad

Preparing your web content for iPad

4. Safari Dev Center

Safari dev center

5. jQTouch

JQ Touch

Other Resources + Inspiration:

Designing for iPad: Reality Check
iPhone Web Dev on Google Groups
Well Placed Pixels
29 Sexy iPhone App Designs
25 Great Examples of iPhone Optimized Sites from Abduzeedo
38 iPhone Sites from Web Designer Wall
CSS iPhone

Sonar Music Visualization

This Flash animation by Renaud Hallée showcases the rhythmic beauty of music.

Expand you music library ♫

When you’re done searching Pitchfork, Alarm, iTunes or Last.fm for legitimate music, where do you go for good music? I try to keep my eyes and ears to the ground, but quality downloads can be hard to find. Luckily there are a few sites that share quality tunes for free. Gotta love free music. Especially when it rox!

The Music Ninja

Music Ninja

We Are Hunted

We Are Hunted

Big Stero

Big Stereo

Disco Dust

Disco Dust

Gorilla vs Bear

Gorilla vs Bear