Author: dhilhorst

  • Design Eye for the Usability Guy

    If you have to name one usability guru out there that is in desperate need of
    a design makeover, who would you name? But of course, none other than Jakob
    Nielsen
    . Therefor, in the spirit of sharing, Andrei Herasimchuk decided to
    gather up some knowledgeable designers and help Nielsen with a little bit of design
    advice. The Design Fab Five.

    What a team we make: Andrei Herasimchuk,
    D. Keith Robinson, Cameron
    Moll
    , Greg Storey and myself. My role?
    Illustration and graphics. Time to spice up that content a little. But that’s
    not all — we’ve done the impossible: combine Nielsen and Flash (it
    even feels odd putting those two in the same sentence.) But what am I waffling?
    Take a look yourself and read
    this most entertaining and useful piece
    .

  • Guru on Paper: Edward Tufte

    As requested by Jon Hicks,
    I present to you none other than one of my favourite gurus: Edward Tufte. From
    his book Envisioning Information
    to his latest essay on
    Powerpoint
    , the man has changed my views on (information) design and has
    been an inspiration ever since I made my first chart.

    edward tufte

    Through the magic of bits and bytes I have teleported a younger Edward Tufte
    to the twenty-first century! As you can see he is giving a presentation on good
    design. Somehow that particular slide looks familiar… Can it be that Tufte
    has been notified of the latest
    revolution in blogosphere
    ? Has he come to realize that the new generation
    is ready to take on the living legends?

    So what guru shall I draw next? Mention your favourite in the comments.

  • FAST: Koenigsegg CCR

    FAST Issue no.3

    Introduction

    So, you would think Sweden is only known for producing extremely safe but dull
    cars, such as Saab and Volvo. Now, think again. Christian von Koenigsegg grew
    up with the dream of creating the perfect sportscar. After several years of
    planning he launched the Koenigsegg project in 1993. Designer David Craaford
    provided a design concept following Christian’s guidelines. The vikings
    now have a car that is going to make some noise in the supercar scene: the Koenigsegg
    CCR.

    (more…)

  • Bullish by Design

    As both an economist and designer I welcomed a report by Design
    Council
    entitled “The
    Impact of Design on Stock Market Performance
    ”:

    “Design is a critical component of business performance. We’ve
    heard designers, commentators and companies say it. But, to date, the evidence
    for the link between shareholder return and investment in design has been
    scarce and anecdotal.”

    While I strongly recommend this report to designers and managers alike I’m
    afraid it is going to make more than one economist frown. Design is a critical
    component of business performance, no doubt. That said, I have troubles linking
    design directly to stock market prices, even after reading this report. Companies
    are valued using financial metrics — factual and verifiable (behold the accountants
    and controllers do their work correctly and honestly.)

    More important than trying to link design to share
    prices, is the relation between design and business in general (not specifically
    stock market performance). In my opinion better design leads to better products,
    and eventually improved business performance. My criticism is directed at their
    methodology and the variables used to explain the relation. To use stock market
    performance as the basis for business performance is dubious. Moreover, nowadays
    share prices are predominantly determined by demand and supply. It is
    naïve to assume that share prices actually reflect how a company
    is really performing.

    I would have preferred to see research based on the link between design and
    internal business performance, such as sales, customer satisfaction and brand
    experience (i.e. better design leads to % increase in sales.) In my opinion
    share prices are too volatile and include too much noise to conclude to anything.
    That said, the choice to use stock market performance as a metric is obvious and practical,
    being freely and publicly accessible information.

    Despite the somewhat flawed methodology, this report is an excellent read and,
    in all honesty, I could not agree more with their findings. Design matters!
    The general ideas elaborated throughout this report make sense and have been
    researched extensively. Design is indeed a critical component of business performance
    — I’m just not so sure about stock market performance as a good
    and reliable metric.

  • Bits and Pieces

    Stupidity

    This morning I was reading my newspaper (NRC Handelsblad) and on the back page I came across this
    hilarious story from a plastic surgeon (translated):

    “Plastic surgery is a wonderful profession. About half a year after her
    nose job a woman comes back for a routine check. She looks fabulous, is very
    happy and has brought her husband along. She tells me that after years of waiting
    for the operation she can finally get pregnant. It’s been two weeks since
    the couple discovered she’s pregnant. To my question how this relates
    to her nose job she answered that they both decided to wait after the operation
    to have children. Both were terrified at the thought their child would end up
    with a similar ugly nose.”

     

    Lamborghini

    Peter Huwyler, an official Lamborghini employee and salesman, reacts
    to the comments
    made in the first
    edition of FAST
    . Now if only I can lay my hands on one of them cars. How
    about a sponsorship deal? Free advertising for life on this site, a Gallardo
    must atleast be worth that, right?

     

    Blogosphere

    Everybody remotely interested in Mozilla and design has heard the news —
    but I’ll personally point you to the lickable™
    drawings and subsequent final icons for Thunderbird by Jonathan Hicks.

    From Belgium, Veerle
    Pieters shares her thoughts
    on how to keep code and the final product in mind throughout the design phase.

    The folks at web-graphics
    point me to this peculiar
    article on web standards
    . Some valid points, but, in my opinion the author
    completely misunderstands the role and place of standards in web development.
    Read what Jeffrey Zeldman and
    others have to
    say and you would know why standards matter.