Green Label Design

In case you didn’t know, this week is beer week in Philadelphia, I’ve been trying to enjoy some of it, though I’ve cut down my beer consumption quite a bit in the recent months. There’s lots of great stuff going on, including a Monday night with Flying Dog brewery at the P.O.P.E, which I ventured out to. Pretty cool place, nice neighborhood bar, great beer selection. For this special event, they were playing a Hunter S Thompson documentary, and of course all the Flying Dog brews were available. I happen to be reading a Ralph Steadman book right now, so I had to go.  It also inspired me to pick up a Flying Dog variety pack (along with a shiney new beer fridge) for a UX team brainstorm I scheduled for tomorow…who doesn’t love brainstorming with a tasty beverage?

Tomorow night, it’s to the Caribou Cafe for some french food, paired with some select Biere de Guard. Should be awesome!

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, so I figured I was due for an update. A lot has happened in the past 3 months….among other things - I’ve settled into a new fulltime gig with Avenue A | Razorfish as a senior experience architect, which is going well. I’m learning a ton, and I’m getting exposed to some great people and projects - including re-architecting a new philly.com website.

I took a weeklong vacation to Roatan, Honduras to do some diving. Roatan was awesome - the diving was incredible and I logged another 18 dives. The island of Roatan is beautiful, with great people, and much to do for someone who prefers to avoid the typical tourist destinations.

In contrast to diving in the tropics, I also finally tried skiing for the first time in my life, and a good time was had. After falling on my face a few times, and taking a lesson, I started to get the hang of it, and enjoyed it. Hopefully I get to go once or twice more before the season is up and hone my skills a bit.

So, I finally broke down and purchased an iPhone. Guess I’m kind of late to the bandwagon, as most anyone who is hip to web design probably has one these days, but I’m the kind of person who usually waits until some of the bugs are worked out of these kinds of things before I jump in. But, after messing with some of my friends’ iPhones, and seeing how cool they were, and the imminent fact that my 2+ year old Razr was soon going to take a dump, I decided I had to have one.

All I can really say about this thing is that it is awesome. All the hype is well deserved. Back around 2001 I had a Palm IIIc, and while I thought it was pretty cool, overall it didn’t serve much use for me. The iPhone, I can see that I will probably use every day. The interface is so intuitive, that I was really able to fluently use it in minutes. Live the gestural zoom in and out functionality. If you’ve used a laptop touch pad, this will be second nature. Apple has stayed true to their less-is-more design philosophy, in the tradition of the ipod. The fact that it can link up to a wifi connection is awesome too, I can see myself sitting on the couch with it, browsing the web, instead of using my laptop. Despite the fact that the screen is a bit smaller than a business card, it is so sharp that I can read text on a website that is sized to fit within those dimensions. I’m looking forward to messing with and actually using this thing.

A lot of my ideas seem to come when I’m driving around in my car, I have a love hate relationship with driving, as it can be a mundane task - getting from point a to point b, especially if it is a daily commute, and it can be annoying - other drivers, traffic jams, bad weather, etc. But it can also be relaxing, sometimes even fun on a nice sunny day with a good cd cranked in the stereo.  I almost always have something on my mind when I’m driving, sometimes diving too deep into my head, and sometimes diving deep for something I wouldn’t have found otherwise. As of late I find myself thinking a lot about the user experience, in many contexts, as us humans are almost always using something, and usually that something was designed by someone. Why is that so fascinating? Most people probably never think about it, unless it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to in which case it’s design becomes blatantly obvious as we curse the object and wish it did what we wanted it to do. (more…)

Watching the Cowboys/Buffalo game tonight, I started thinking about the NFL Game Center on nfl.com. They developed a nice little application in flash that lets those who aren’t able to watch the game follow the action in nearly real time. I marveled at this little app the other week when I was following the Broncos game which wasn’t televised. Shows a visual history of the current drive, as well as providing other data like weather, game clock, current down and yards to go, all wrapped in a cool, interactive flash interface. Not to mention the rest of the page contains every game stat you could imagine (if you’re in to that sort of thing).

I have to give the NFL props, great use of an interactive technology, providing a real time option for those who can’t watch the game. Unfortunately, the Cowboys somehow managed to pull off a win tonight…