No Funny Hats

The Mac OS X standard icon for a “generic PC”

rossbelmont — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 21:49:00 +0000

This icon, built into Mac OS X itself, is used to depict a “generic PC.”

Seems accurate to me.

You’ll find this (and many others) in /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/. As Fraser Speirs points out, it’s a gold mine for your slide decks.

Transparent justification for a price increase

rossbelmont — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 21:09:00 +0000

App Cooker is an iPad app that helps you design other iPhone and iPad apps. Here’s a screenshot from their web site:

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a company do a better job of explaining why prices will be going up. They clearly chart out the increase in value at every stage.

I suppose it helps that they’re actually delivering an increasing amount of value. Contrast this with the rising prices charged by wireless phone carriers, which delivers the same (or less) value as your costs go up.

Annotating wireframes in Balsamiq Mockups

rossbelmont — Thu, 05 May 2011 22:17:00 +0000

I was inspired by a recent post on the Balsamiq UX Blog to find a better way to capture annotations in my wireframes. The Sticky Note component takes up too much visual real estate, and I’ve gotten feedback that the notes are hard to read.

I dove into Russ Unger’s book for some ideas, and ultimately borrowed an approach from Will Evans. The images shown here illustrate that Balsamiq’s Treat As Markup feature can be applied to any component, making it easy to show/hide annotations.

Even better, Balsamiq’s export features respect the Show/Hide Markup setting, allowing you to easily add or remove the annotations from the resulting PDF or PNGs.

I’d love to hear from anyone who’s used a similar approach.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Persona avatar in the corner of every mockup?

rossbelmont — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 02:41:00 +0000

Many people I work with aren’t familiar with personas. For their benefit, and to keep everyone’s eyes on the prize, I got the idea to put a small persona avatar in the top corner of each mockup.

I’m hoping it will be harder to design (or sign off on) a poor experience, since you’d have to “look the person in the eye.” Also, I’m thinking this will be helpful for the developers, who are more likely to be confused if the project contains many different personas.

In this example, “Kelly” is a busy mom. (Please forgive the cliché.)

Has anyone tried this? Is it commonplace already? Are there any downsides? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Photo credit: Sean Dreilinger

Yes, I love their products. But what’s your company about…in one slide?

rossbelmont — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 02:40:11 +0000

A good lesson in storytelling, whether or not you give a crap about computers.

Ralph Lauren’s stunning classic car collection

rossbelmont — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 09:11:00 +0000

If you missed the January issue of Vanity Fair, do yourself a favor and check out this slide show featuring Ralph Lauren’s unbelievable classic car collection.

Here’s a sample.

Upload to YouTube “securely” straight from your iPhone

rossbelmont — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 08:36:00 +0000

I’m not sure when this feature was added, but I’m almost positive it hasn’t always been there. The YouTube API didn’t expose this setting for a while.

Either way, I’m happy now.

My first colored picture

rossbelmont — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 02:02:12 +0000

Definitely a keeper.

I could see the Microsoft Store doing well with…Xboxes maybe? Xboxen?

rossbelmont — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 04:37:51 +0000

Fun with CableCARDs

rossbelmont — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 22:43:00 +0000

I set up my new TiVo Premiere last night, and luckily everything went off without a hitch.

The interface is beautiful, though here’s a shot of TiVo’s ugly underbelly…the CableCARD setup for the installers.