Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.”
Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”
Wikia Labs, a new feature introduced by Wikia last week, was one of the most exciting features I designed during my time with the company. If you’re familiar with Gmail Labs you’ll understand how it works. Users (specifically admins) on Wikia can turn features on and off – the set consists of Top Ten Lists, Gallery Exhibitions, and Article Comments. This new ability gives administrators a greater level of control over their own wiki. Additional it provides a limited environment for Wikia to launch new features and gather feedback from users. For Wikia’s devoted user base, change can often be scary and invoke a backlash from the most passionate users comfortable with infrastructure currently in place. Wikia Labs serves as a bridge to acclimate users to new tools and gather feedback to ensure the the company is delivering features that are needed and wanted by the community.
Well worth the read whether your a designer or in a position where your providing the feedback. It just might save your next project from looking like a mullet.
“John in marketing wants to be able to log in directly on the home page, but Tim in Engineering would prefer it on its own page. Can we compromise?”
No. We cannot compromise.
If you tell your barber that you like it short, but your significant other likes it long, you’re gonna get a mullet.
When the Knight News Challenge put out a call seeking innovative digital projects, Austin Ellis and I jumped at the opportunity, applying with a plan that would make campaign contribution data more transparent on the web. Now in its fifth year, the contest funds projects that focus on the advancement of news reporting in the digital age that fall in the categories of mobile, authenticity and sustainability. Our proposal titled “Financial Footprints” would use a browser extension to display campaign contribution information to users on relevant web pages. A short quote from our application sums up the basic premise:
Earlier this year the team at Wikia started down the path to redesign their product – a popular wiki hosting platform. Over the summer they brought me on the project as an interaction and visual designer. And just last month we let the redesign loose to a passionate community of select users. Our redesign effort concentrated on making the experience of using a wiki, where a community of users contribute the content, easier. It’s still too early to judge if we accomplished our goal of attracting a larger audience, helping them discover content, and engaging them as editors. However, after a couple weeks, the reactions that we are getting from users are encouraging and we’re excited to continue improving the site.
This bit of work began as a postcard and made its way into a banner hanging from the San Francisco Ferry Building on the occasion of Wikia’s Food & Tech event. The logo was a piece of work we put together for the Healthy Recipes team at Wikia a few weeks ago. The event, which took place on Sunday October 10th, saw a handful of local chefs serving up their culinary delights and an esteemed panel discussing technology’s role in shaping the food we eat. It always puts a smile on my face to see my work placed in the context of tangible moments like these.
At 2 Out of Three designing websites is our specialty. We enjoy taking on every aspect of a project because it means we’ll have the ability to translate our creative vision from the early stages of wireframes all the way through to the last line of code. We’re extremely proud of our latest work for the niche travel experts Best of Both, where our vision extended not only to the imagery present while browsing, but also to the tools that the team at Best of Both will implement for updates.
The initial design for 2 Out of Three was over three years ago, an eternity in the web world. As new technologies and design methods appeared over the years the flaws I kept seeing on the site were magnified, even if it was only in my mind. So it felt like the right time for a redesign. What started out as a fresh coat of paint quickly snowballed into much more and in the end I found myself overhauling the entire foundation of the 2 Out of Three’s website. Now, a couple months after kicking off the project, it’s ready and I’ve got a brand spankin’ new website that I’m excited to show off and get feedback from you all.
I’m excited and proud that Armchair Revolutionary launched the Beta version of their website Armrev.org earlier this month. The project has been percolating for some time now with ambitious goals: to change the world
2 Out of Three is pleased to announce the launch of it’s latest project, a health care consulting website for Dr. Chris Carruthers. It’s shiny and new, the code is valid, the images are optimized, it’s ChrisCarruthersMD.com.
Logos have always fascinated me and so I get excited when I learn more about how the great ones get designed. These small symbols often made up of simple shapes or even the intersection of letters can take on a very large meaning.
It took longer than it should have, but we’re excited to announce the launch of our most recent creation CulturalImages.com. Cultural Images is a jewelry collection created by my Mother nearly three decades ago.
It’s exciting to see artist and designers break the boundaries of traditional media. These new and creative ideas do more than just entertain us they help humanity evolve. Ideas and creativity are at the center of what makes a society unique.
The first time I got a credit on a video game I could barely hold in my excitement as I ripped off the plastic wrapping, dropped the disc into my PS2, and quickly navigated to the credits screen to see my name scroll by. I still get that giddy feeling when I get my hands [...]
2 Out of Three is the website of Abraham Wallin. It serves as a design canvas, photography repository and home to occasionally coherent scribblings. more →
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