Dan Rubin's SuperfluousBanter

Year: 2003

  • Design and Usability: Part 1

    Not surprisingly, as a designer I value aesthetics highly. However at a certain
    point aesthetics clash with functionality – or more specifically usability.
    Sometimes I wish I were a painter. No constraints, no font size issues, no low
    contrast color combination problems, no accessibility or usability concerns
    and no angry users to face. You either like my work or not, no strings attached.
    But I’m not a painter, I design websites.

    The difference between a painting and a website will be obvious to most. A
    painting does not require interaction, at least not on a functional level. I
    can not use a painting. I can nevertheless enjoy or dislike
    a painting (the same analogy is to some extend applicable
    to motion pictures    ). A website, on the contrary, has a function that carries
    beyond its visual attractiveness. Websites generally require (functional) interaction
    of some form. The most feared and tenacious embodiment of interaction being
    the homo interneticus.

    You know what? Humans are nasty mammals. Humans developed to perfection their
    aptitude to bitch, whine, moan, complain, nitpick, nag, criticize, grumble,
    protest and disapprove. Ironically though, without users (thus interaction) my job
    is rather useless. Designing websites is (unfortunately?) not exclusively about
    visually pleasing users, it is also about limiting interference to effectively
    deliver content and enable efficient interaction. The latter is of course a
    simplified statement; the process is more complex and constituted of more factors
    and elements.

    In “Design and Usability: Part 2” I will dig a
    little deeper and try to discern some of the factors and elements related to
    usability and functionality. Last but not least, providentially, humans can
    also adore, cherish, care, appreciate, value, understand, realize and love.
    It is with these thoughts that I leave you and wish you a Merry Christmas and
    a Happy New Year. See you in 2004!

  • The Art of Navigation

    When building a website there’s an inevitable moment when it is required you think hard about navigational elements. I’m not talking about information architecture here. Information architecture usually helps answering the question: “How will this function?” (among others). Nope. I’m trying to answer the question “How will this look?” – purely from a graphic design perspective.

    The above mentioned stage of the design process is one that I spend a considerable amount of time on and particularly enjoy within any project. In this post I want to share my latest experiment on navigation design.

    CSS based navigation!In my quest for elegant, clever and nice navigation design I decided to let go of certain requirements. In this case I decided to ignore a few usability (and accessibility) best practices (note: this should of course be avoided in real life implementation).

    However, I’ve set myself a few constraints which make perfect sense, even in an experiment. This design should of course be constructed using the sounder XHTML and CSS combination, as opposed to tables. Furthermore, once CSS is disabled, a nice unordered list should remain. Other than that the sky is the limit.

    The main purpose of this design experiment is to see how far we can push CSS. Is it possible to create the most complex navigation (in terms of graphic design) and have it marked-up as an unordered list? The answer of course is “Yes!”. And there are a few designers who elegantly proved this point in the past.

    As said and proved by many before – CSS can handle your wildest dreams. Unfortunately we are currently only limited by the pace of web standards implementation in modern browsers (specifically one browser, no names of course). This small experiment should work in most modern browsers, but your mileage may vary. Comments are more than welcome, but keep in mind that this is only a trial in design, not in practical implementation as such.

  • The Old Technology Giveaway: Contest Results!

    Finally, after carefully reviewing every entry (read: drooling for hours over old junk I wish I had), I have selected the two winners of this oh-so-close-to-tongue-in-cheek contest, and they likely come as no surprise to those who have been keeping up with their respective entries:

    • 1st Place: Grant Hutchinson — Grant’s submissions were all terrific, and a little scary at times, but what won me over was his BeBox, a machine I’ve still yet to see in person, but wish I owned so I could play with it night and day (ok, getting a little freaky now…)
    • 2nd Place: Emilio Vanni — While there were a lot of great submissions, I only have two prizes to award, and I just kept coming back to the Apple Baseball Cap hidden at the bottom of Emilio’s list. “But wait!” I hear you scream, “that’s a hat, not a piece of old technology!” My answer is simple: Tough noogies! Keep in mind, this is my contest after all…

    I will be contacting the winners to arrange delivery of their prizes (remember: Grant gets first pick…), and hopefully they will be nice enough to send in self-portraits with prizes in hand.

    Thanks to everyone who entered, commented, linked, or otherwise contributed to the OTG. More wacky contests will come as I think them up…

  • Old Technology Giveaway: Update

    It’s time for an update regarding the Old Technology Giveaway, as it’s deadline looms near.

    If you haven’t submitted your entry, now’s the time (that is, if you think you can beat Emilio and Grant :-) — the contest will close no later than November 30th, but I might just decide to end it sooner…

    Good luck to all!

  • ReUSEIT! Entries Posted

    The entry deadline has passed, so as the judges get to work reviewing the submissions, we get to see them as well, and there is some fine work to be seen.

    Some of my colleagues do not think the entries are very inspired, and I agree, but I’m looking at them based on their real-world application, using my personal “would Jakob use this design?” meter, and by that unit of measurement, there are some real winners.