May 2012
5 posts
4 tags
Get your button on this week at Mesh.
I’m at Mesh today and tomorrow talking internet, apps, and marketing with a whole conference centre full of smart people. Our buttons will be there too. So check the side of your cooler, and then be sure to come say hi.
4 tags
“Running a startup is like being punched in the face repeatedly.”
– That’s a lovely quip from Paul Graham, but it really isn’t as dramatic as it sounds in the context of Ragnar Sass’s 5 Accelerator Lessons.
Still, there’s valuable insight there, so dig in.
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“A startup is a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service...”
– Eric Ries, startup = experiment.
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The nastiness of e-books.
Reading large volumes of text requires effort. It’s quite simply tiring. Over the (hundreds and hundreds of) years, we’ve developed standards for reading that help us get through large swaths of text by mitigating the effort it takes to do so.
This is why prose books are as wide as they are, why there are page layout standards like the grid, margins, and line spacing. And why there...
April 2012
10 posts
3 tags
“If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched...”
– Reid Hoffman
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“Don’t believe your own story. Let others believe in it. That’s more powerful....”
– Startup lessons from William Mougayar.
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“Optimism, Opportunity, Execution.”
– Canada’s next five years.
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Toronto, tech hub of the world.
Six years ago I attended a symposium on Toronto’s roll in the tech/design landscape in North America. At the time it was said we were 3rd in north America for the volume and quality of ICT skilled workers following New York and San Francisco.
This week, Rip Empson, janitor at Techcrunch, shared Startup Genome’s findings on How The World’s Top Tech Hubs Stack Up. And it seems...
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Automating retail.
Product-free retail is interesting, but not as exciting as QR-code-free automated retail.
There’s still the point with QR codes where they don’t really work with produce, fragrances, or other things you want to touch and feel. And they’re slow for consumers. If you want to give all that up, you’d be better off shopping online and saving the trip to the store along with...
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“Apple makes its money over the long term not just by introducing disruption,...”
– Glenn Fleishman in his Incremental Change article.
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“At the end of the day, a lot of products do the same thing, but it’s the little...”
– Matthew Stasoff responds to Virtual retail hits Toronto.
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Virtual retail hits Toronto.
Well.ca has apparently opened a ‘virtual store’ somewhere in Toronto. This is particularly exciting given the fractured nature of inventory, payments, and in-store mobile adoption, and particularly following up on South Korea’s foray into the space last year.[[MORE]]
Sadly, using barcodes as the method of tossing items into your shopping cart seems rather convoluted, but...
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Tech industry infighting and the ongoing saga of...
Craig Saila just shared Readability, Instapaper, the Network and the Price we Pay by Anil Dash. In Anil’s words:
Since the success of the recent Readability app on iOS, things have gotten tense, not between the creators of [Instapaper and Readability], but between supporters, fans and enthusiasts in the community for both apps.
[[MORE]]
Case in point: John Gruber called Readability...
March 2012
4 posts
6 tags
Tradeoffs.
John Gruber gave the keynote speech at The Çingleton Symposium this past October, assessing the tech industry from his position keynoting Çingleton 5 years prior, through to the industry as it stood at the time of last October’s keynote, and looking ahead another 5 years.
Looking at the current state of the industry, Gruber reiterated Microsoft’s Windows 8 mantra, “No...
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Say Yeah in San Francisco!
Lee and Matt are in San Francisco for a few days with our colleague Mark Dowds and we’re looking to get a whole whack of Canadians together along with some other San Francisco friends.
Canadians and anyone with a fetish for Canadians and/or good design are all welcome for a casual get together, 5:30 to 8, at the Thirsty Bear.
More details and RSVP on Facebook.
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“Excess exposes the soullessness of conventional design, in the same way that...”
– Jane Sheppard commenting on blue dalmatians and psychedelia.
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SXSW, here we...are.
Scott, Cinzia, and Danielle are plugging away back in Toronto, but Matt and Lee are at SXSW for the next week before heading to San Francisco. If you’re looking to reach us directly, here’s are our US numbers:
Lee: 415.518.5961
Matt: 415.608.4814
Talk or txt, we’d love to catch up with you on the road.
February 2012
5 posts
9 tags
Tumblr's new icons. A great improvement.
Tumblr’s just updated their Dashboard blog post icons.
Here’s what they looked like on Monday:
And here’s what our Tumblr Dashboard looks like today:
Wow. What an improvement!
So, what makes these new icons so great? Well, at a glance recognition, that’s what.
Previously, there was a relatively clear distinction in the colour differences for each post type....
7 tags
Patterns in mobile app design, a series of screen...
Discover interaction and design similarities and spot the differences between apps in these two categorized directories of mobile app screens.
Mobile UI Patterns
With topics such as Check-in Screens, Empty Data Sets, Maps, and many more, Mobile UI Patterns, gives you a single row of screens to scroll through. Dig in!
Pttrns
Meanwhile, Pttrns joins the fray with a two column approach...
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Survey request: A panda owl hybrid mascot.
Does this count?
And, yes, we are actually working hard over here. :-)
Have your say on our agency site survey.
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Survey results are in. And we're listening.
It’s been made clear we need lots and lots of this on our website. So we’re obliging now.
Don’t agree? Fill out the survey and let us know what’s what!
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What would you like to see on a design agency's...
We’ve been looking at agency sites to see what they’re all about. (You can see agency homepages and our general site notes on Pinterest.)
With that in mind, we’d really like to hear what you’d look for or would want to see on an agency site. What menu items matter to you and what you’d call them.
If you can spare 2-3 minutes to fill out this survey, that’d...
January 2012
4 posts
4 tags
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Design does matter.
John Gruber, today:
For years, when Apple was down, they were held up as proof that making the best products didn’t matter. The Mac is better than Windows and look what happened was the refrain.
Not any more. Yesterday, Apple recorded the second most profitable quarter of any US company, ever. Just look at these charts from Dan Frommer:
These numbers are unreal. You’re looking at a...
6 tags
Whither the TO Events Calendar.
We shuttered the TO Events Calendar late last year because we:
1. Were having trouble managing it, because;
2. We hadn’t improved the technology to help make our lives easier as curators and your lives easier as contributors.
Our plan for the past year was to integrate Plancast via their API as they were (are?) doing a pretty good job of sucking in events from most of our event sources...
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Design for living, beginning tonight at the TIFF...
From January 13 to January 17, browse to tiff.net/design for details on joining Gary Hustwit and friends in viewing his three-part exploration of modern design, the docs Helvetica, Objectified, and Urbanized.
November 2011
1 post
5 tags
Burton Kramer, Identities, chronicles an icon of...
Designers in Canada owe a debt to Burton Kramer. As Roger Remington states in the introduction of Burton Kramer, Identities:
Kramer became known as a staunch advocate of fully integrated design at a time when such an approach was virtually unknown in Canada.
Bringing this Swiss design ethos to Canada in the mid-60s was quite a revelation and, with Expo 67, gave Kramer and designers such as...
October 2011
3 posts
4 tags
Oh, wow, we totally need to find some great app...
If you’re passionate about game play, game mechanics, game theory, sports, poker, first person shooters, beer and socializing, we want to hear from you. Well, only if you can design too. Say Yeah is hiring designers with Web, mobile and mobile app experience to support our gaming clients (console, PC and mobile) in their efforts to build a stronger, more rewarding relationship with their...
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WatchThe new Playstation Video Unlimited service highlights how a responsive, animated interface can be built with Javascript and access to hardware APIs.
Access to these APIs is not something that’s generally available on the PS3 platform now, but it does point to the future capabilities of both browser and hardware developers to build intuitive interfaces with a lot of great animation without...
September 2011
1 post
2 tags
“Discernment is the hardest part of marketing—seeing the world as it is,...”
– Seth Godin, on the law of large groups:
This explains why the people you see at the gym tend to be in better shape than you are. … People who are at the gym a lot (as in the people you see the most often) tend to be in better shape because they show up more often.
August 2011
3 posts
4 tags
Iterate, baby!
Foursquare’s Mari Sheibley talks about the evolution of Foursquare design on the iPhone, from Jan ‘09 through to August ‘11:
One of the great things about working on one product is the ability to iterate; the bad thing is you never feel like you’re done.
When foursquare started there was no real visual design on the app. Naveen was coding it up alone and he used all native...
6 tags
Redesigning the browser window.
A wonderful exploration from Henrik Eneroth on the limitations of the current standard Web browser layout (tabs across the top, running left to right) when used on hi-res, wide screens.
This reference image sums up the dilemma presented when all of your controls are in thin little rows at the top of the page and yet the pages of the site you’re browsing are generally designed at 960...
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“It’s all about removing the unnecessary.”
– Jonathan Ive, Senior VP of Industrial Design at Apple.
From Five Low-Hanging UX Tips.
July 2011
6 posts
3 tags
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OSX Lion: Form over function highlights.
The two skeuomorphic apps which ship with OSX Lion, iCal and Address Book, offer some frustrating form over function compromises which obscure content.
iCal has relegated your list of Calendars to a recessed button top left. Clicking this pops up a semi-transparatent overlay with a list of your calendars which you can then toggle on/off, but there’s no way to make this list of calendars...
3 tags
“Think of it like this: jumping in a Mario game is very simple. You hit a button,...”
– Oliver Reichenstein in a footnote comparing Facebook to Google+.
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“Make everything that CAN be alike as alike as possible. Let the differences...”
– Mike Monteiro talking about simplifying a user interface so the differences in your content stand out, rather than trying to make every element look different.
Making every element look different inherently makes it more difficult to discover new content since you destroy easy to scan visual...
7 tags
Making searches more convenient on touch screens.
Here’s a fantastic new interaction Microsoft’s just introduced with their updated Bing app for the iPad.
The skinny:
From our research, we know that many searches are inspired by things people see on the web. Today, it can be somewhat painful to search on a tablet when you’re engaged in reading something; just copying and pasting pieces of text from a webpage to a search box can...
5 tags
Startup apps and competition from heavy hitters.
For a startup the biggest problem is almost never a competitor. The biggest problem is typically non-adoption.
Dan Moral rightly points out at StartupNorth that Apple introducing iMessage to the iPhone should help companies like Kik who up until now have been serving a space that only a small percentage of people likely knew or cared about, private messaging.
Nobody knows there is something...
June 2011
4 posts
7 tags
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We're hiring! We're looking for a hyper organized...
Things are happening at Say Yeah that are making the business development and creative director’s heads spin.
So much on the go, so many projects with so many emails to sift through, blog articles to write, and people to connect with.
If you’re the kind of person who has a passion for design and loves playing with apps, while slightly OCD about being organized, we want to hear from...
6 tags
NXNE Interactive and the black hole of Facebook.
I’ll be at NXNE Interactive tomorrow with an exceptional panel talking about marketing your brand on Facebook and beyond. The Black Hole of Facebook talks about how marketers are spending all of their dollars on driving users to Like brand pages, but then what…?
Jay Goldman and I originally set this up as a dual presentation but he’s off to Boston on business…sooooo,...
4 tags
Patio Friday 2011 kickoff, this past Friday at...
This past Friday we kicked off the Patio Friday season with a great crowd at Margaritas. Our gracious hosts at Margaritas let us take over the top floor patio as we grew to over 30 strong.
Photo taken by Chris.
Conversations were had around graphic design, Nat & Marie, the trials of post-CIA job hunting, finding your own summer place in Toronto, and much more.
Photo taken by Rannie.
...
May 2011
2 posts
4 tags
More innovation from the Windows Phone 7 team.
Microsoft is continuing to innovate with Windows Phone 7. It’s great to see something from Microsoft that carries with it some excitement around features and design. Beginning with Metro, Microsoft has shown great care in their use of typography, motion, and a simplified aesthetic, which they describe as content not chrome.
Now with the upcoming release of Windows Phone dubbed...
4 tags
See you next week at Mesh!
You know, we’d love to talk about some of the stuff we’re working on, we’ve just been so swamped with work we haven’t had much chance to write.
So, track us down at the perennial Mesh conference next week, May 25 and 26, and ask us what’s up (Matt, Danielle and I will all be there!). We’re happy to share some project highlights with you and even more excited...
April 2011
2 posts
3 tags
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It...”
– ~ Albert Einstein talking about the virtues of simplification.
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A little about blog navigation.
Here’s a terrifically confusing navigational element that seems to be the default on many blogging systems. You get to the bottom of the page and you have the option to browse to the Previous or Next pages. But does Next mean the next entries that were added (ie, newer posts) or does it mean the next page that you haven’t read (which would mean older posts).
When you’re...