Graham C. Morley

UX: Recommended Reading

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 12:03:40 +0100

A few people who attended the SuperUX talk at Supermondays asked if I could recommend any books. Joanne listed some great resources, some of which I repeat. Here are mine:

Books

Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

Elements of User Experience: User-centered Design for the Web

Thoughts on Interaction Design

Blogs/URLs

http://www.uxmag.com/
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/
http://uitrends.com/
http://www.uxbooth.com/
http://www.interaction-design.org/
http://37signals.com/svn

Lovely stop motion video by Patrick Boivin

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 20:43:52 +0100

Lovely stop motion video by Patrick Boivin

The Couch: It's a Shiny New Store for Adobe Air

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 20:54:38 +0100

The Couch: It's a Shiny New Store for Adobe Air:

Yesterday, we mentioned that the Adobe Air app was going to get an update and wow, what an update it received! You’ll notice right away when you login that the store has gotten a complete overhaul and the user experience has been enhanced.

Let’s take a look:

When you first bring up the…

Volcanic Ash over UK 2010

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 09:48:15 +0100

Volcanic Ash over UK 2010

A Day in the Life of a UK Startup

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 18:04:00 +0100

I thought it might be interesting to document a day of work at Graphic.ly. Here it is, in all its candid splendour:

7am
First thing I do when I wake is check my email on my phone - after a Sunday in discussion with Charley on our US team there’s alot to be done this week - all exciting stuff!! Email breakfast sets me up for the day ahead. I also catch up on my favourite RSS feeds over a bowl of cereal. Have some time with my wife and two girls then off for the day.

8am
Grab my laptop and phone, and I’m on the A19 for my 40 mile commute to the office. Gives me the chance to think about what I’m doing for the day ahead.

9am
Get into the office, log in to skype and grab a starbucks with our technical lead Tom. Catch up on last weeks progress and talk about the work for the next week.

10am
Straight into the repository for an update, then knee deep in xaml – today I’m building the store UI put together with Kevin Mann in photoshop the week before.

12pm
Noodles! After a 2 hour coding sprint I’ve made great progress with the UI. Can’t wait to hand it to Tony in our dev team to add in the functionality layer. Tom calls noodles for lunch, and you don’t want to pass up on that! :) Lunch over its back into the UI.

3pm
Starbucks II - Than takes some time out to get some cappuccinos in for the office, pace lifted! Also take time out to catch up with Kevin and Tony - making sure the UX is working, and that what we’re doing is workable in the timeframe.

5pm
Team meeting on skype with the US team. Going over the past month, targets and exciting news. Was great to get everyone on the same call, everyone enthusiastic for the next month.

6pm
Take some time to review the code and clean it - making sure the styling is all taken away from my structure documents and into external stylesheets. Just because this isn’t css/html doesn’t mean we can ignore separation standards.

8pm
Dive out for some food, only McDonald’s is open so that will have to do! Back in the office with Kevin, Tony and Andrew Hyde, TechStars community director from the US who is visiting this week. He is a popular guy, he has an iPad.

11pm
The store UI is ready for development. Check everything in to the repository and review some of the days interesting links.

http://kin.com/ - New social device from MicroSoft

http://www.wacom.com/cintiq/ - Awesome graphic’s tablet which would speed up our processing kit

http://blogs.msdn.com/surface/archive/2010/04/12/launch-microsoft-surface-toolkit-for-windows-touch-beta.aspx - A new toolkit for touch interfaces on desktop computers

12am
Just enough time to catch up with John Bradford and the guys at The Difference Engine, then its back in the car for the drive home.

The lonely A19

Well Placed Pixels

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:54:00 +0000

Well Placed Pixels:

A collection of beautiful interfaces on desktop and mobile. Some good stuff in there.

Lovely infographic

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:02:36 +0000

Lovely infographic

Kuler Clock (iPhone App)

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 13:56:06 +0000

Kuler Clock (iPhone App)

PUMA to release solar powered phone, with pretty...

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 02:15:07 +0000

PUMA to release solar powered phone, with pretty UI!

http://pumaphone.com

graphicly: Awesome Pulp Fiction poster.

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:22:43 +0000

graphicly:

Awesome Pulp Fiction poster.

Google Slopeview

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:41:10 +0000

Google Slopeview:

Streetview comes to the slopes in Whistler courtesy of Google Snowmobiles

Lovely concept bike from Peugeot. Via Bikerumor

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:37:10 +0000

Lovely concept bike from Peugeot. Via Bikerumor

Going to see Etienne de Crecy on Thursday night, looks like an...

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Going to see Etienne de Crecy on Thursday night, looks like an amazing show.

Realism in UI Design

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:07:59 +0000

Realism in UI Design

Lovely visual treatment and soundtrack from Form+Format

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:04:47 +0000

Lovely visual treatment and soundtrack from Form+Format

Really liking this tune from Warpaint - “Elephants”

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 14:23:52 +0000

Really liking this tune from Warpaint - “Elephants”

Design by Community

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:31:53 +0000

It’s important to engage with your users as soon as possible. Complex sign up forms, account activation and verification, captcha are are useful tools, but also obstacles to a user achieving site goals.

A lot has to be said for gradual engagement as a way to overcome that. The idea is simple – get your users using your product as soon as possible, and if they love it, they’ll sign up

At Graphic.ly we took that process little further. We didn’t just get the users using our social app before signup. We got them involved before we’d released anything. This is by no means the first time this process has been attempted. I followed closely as Mark Boulton and his team worked on the community-lead redesign of drupal.

But this isn’t a redesign. We are engaging with users to craft something they will love. And its going to be an exciting journey along the way. Some of the feedback we’ve had at this early stage has been overwhelming – this is a community with a lot of passion.

You can follow the progress we make by:

Signing up as a beta tester
Reading our company blog
Following us on Twitter

Downloadable Wireframing Tools

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:23:00 +0000

Downloadable Wireframing Tools:

And some which you can purchase.

Philip Bloom has some nice toys. He also knows how to compose a...

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:35:37 +0000

Philip Bloom has some nice toys. He also knows how to compose a shot.

I can’t wait to see @graphicly running on this

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 12:30:00 +0000

I can’t wait to see @graphicly running on this