Design, Arts, Life: The Blog of an Interactive Designer1-800-867-5309
On August 3, 2010, Abhishek Baxi and Manan got Karsten Januszewski and I on Skype. Abhishek and Manan were in India and Karsten and I in our respective offices here in Redmond. It was a pretty good interview with Karsten and throwing it back and forth to each other, talking about design, development, Microsoft culture, [...]
To correspond with the TechEd North America 2010 conference held in New Orleans June 7 – 10, I was tasked with stewarding the redesign of the TechEd Online site. This site is the home for thousands of videos from TechEd N.A., and past events, and will continue to grow as TechEd makes its way around [...]
Okay, the title of this Opinion (Design for Tables) is purposfully a little misleading. When I’m talking of tables in this Opinion piece, written for visitmix.com, I’m talking of desiging for actual tables, or, more specifically, Microsoft Surface and other tablet/touch devices. Honestly, I to think I’d talk about desinging with actual HTML <tables> is [...]
As a web designer/developer for years, I’ve been working in xHTML and CSS2 to build sites for clients and myself. Currently, though, there’s a movement – as many of you know – to develop and approve the working standard of HTML5 and CSS3. I’ve been working a bit with both of these emerging standards and [...]
I recently posted a new Opinion on MIX Online entitled “How We Work (and sometimes skip some steps)”. It’s basically a short essay outlining in the broadest terms the process we go through here at Microsoft when creating a new website. Oftentimes creative assets, whether they be visual comps or individual assets, are “handed over [...]
So, there was a problem with using images of the Iranian election protests, as one of the charities that Juice was planning on supporting with the proceeds from the evening had to back out at the last minute. The Iranian American Community Alliance is still featured as a benefeciary of the evening, but, honestly, I’m [...]
So, I’m still working on the latest Juice flier. DJ Rythma likes this one better than the last, but still has revisions …
I have a friend, DJ Rythma, who I make posters for every once-in-a-while. He runs a night of music called Juice, to raise money for charities. Rythma’s a super-smart guy, and fun to work with. However, my most-recent flier was rejected. Back to the drawing-board.
I’ve posted a new Opinion to MIX Online. This one speaks to the design considerations when designing out the PDC09 experience. http://visitmix.com/Opinions/Designing-the-pdc09-Experience Throughout the lead-up and through the conference itself, I’ll try and provide insights into “the sausage-making” of an event like this, specifically geared toward the designers PDC09 Since 1991, the Professional Developers Conference [...]
I just got pinged from a co-worker, giving me kudos for a WPF time-tracking application I had the opportunity to design last year. This was a “demo” application for use with one of the the CRM team here at Microsoft. All designed in Blend 2, the demo has been well-received and may even be used [...]
For way too long I’ve had a simple redirect from thunderkick.us to thunderkick.us/blog, as the blog was really the only thing I was updating at all. Over the last few weeks I’ve spent some time, though, putting together a new homepage that aggregates some of the various content found in the blog, and surfaces it [...]
Karsten Januszewski recently sat down and wrote a WPF application that will search the Twitter archives and allow users to save the search results as an XML file or export to Excel.
During the initial exercise in working out the I.A. for the PDC09 site, we used the process of “card sorting.” It had been a while since I had gone through that exercise, and remembered how very useful it can be.
One of the most interesting happenings this week was the release of Glimmer. Glimmer allows you to easily create interactive elements on your web pages by harnessing the power of the jQuery library. Without having to hand-craft your JavaScript code, you can use Glimmer’s wizards to generate jQuery scripts for common interactive scenarios. Glimmer also [...]
Glimmer: a jQuery Interactive Design Tool is a prototype from the Mix Online Labs which makes jQuery accessible through a visual tool. The objective for Glimmer is pretty simple: to enable the power of jQuery through an interactive design surface. If jQuery is the “write less, do more” JavaScript library, then Glimmer is the “write none, do more” jQuery design tool. Glimmer has three core audiences: power users, designers and developers.
I thought this write up about the online experience for MIX09 was particularly flattering. Microsoft are doing a terrific job of demonstrating how to run a conference with their Mix09 conference … A live feed of keynote content – speakers and what appears on the projection screens – is right there on the front page [...]
This interview’s been up for a little while, but thought I’d at least get an archive of it as a reference point for later. I thought it was a good interview revolving around the developer/designer workflow and what I thought would be good design-oriented sessions at MIX09 Tim Aidlin, is a User Experience (aka "UX") [...]
I got in touch with a friend recently, kinda randomly. He’s an incredible motion-graphics designer, and I’ve always admired his skills. He recently wowed me with not only a beautiful short-reel, but some User Interface work he’d been doing for mobile devices. I was surprised: our worlds were converging in a way I hadn’t anticipated. [...]
A few months ago, I was approached by a group at Microsoft Labs to help with the user-experience and user-interface for Microsoft Songsmith. Songsmith is an application – written in WPF, and exclusively for Windows – that allows you to sing into your computer’s microphone, and it “magically” creates the backing musical track to your [...]
I was recently asked to sit down with some of my friends here at Microsoft and discuss the thinking behind the MIX09 Conference aesthetic and message. This week we invite Tim Aidlin, the creative director of MIX09, to tell us about the design philosophy behind the MIX creative. We know if we’re going to hold [...]
Along with desktops, poster downloads, and logos, the MIX09 team has released the Blog Bling for MIX09, and hope you’ll add it to your site with a link to http://2009.visitmix.com. We look forward to seeing you at the conference!
Future of Web Design November 3&4, 2008 New York The Future of Web Design conference is in its second year and has a solid following. Armed with engaging and influential speakers, the conference seeks to provide guidance and inspiration to the audience (maybe 1000 people?) to which they speak. I attended this conference, held in [...]
Today we launched the MIX09 Conference site. Our goal is to connect with designers, developers and web-technology enthusiasts to share knowledge and create community around “The Next Web Now.” “There’s something different in the air at MIX09. Some might call it love – love of the interaction between designers and developers; love of inspiration and [...]
I thought I’d post the latest flier I did for JUICE, a night of music benefitting globally-focused charities.