<p></p><p><a href="http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/317/6/3/blackberry_1_by_sevraj-d5kwngp.jpg" target="_blank" title="Large"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_md8iakvoLO1r2eag3.jpg" /></a></p> <p><a href="http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/314/7/e/blackberry_3_by_sevraj-d5kk73r.jpg" target="_blank" title="Large"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_md8i7iLLE51r2eag3.jpg" /></a></p> <p>I believe RIM has one of the most valuable brands in its hands, and could have been the Microsoft of smartphones..the model of a leading corporation that has little soul but astronomic income. Long story short, <a href="http://i.thestar.com/images/57/e8/fb6bf2cd4013805f19c243dcc466.jpeg" target="_blank">things have changed </a>,and while clinging for a long time on plastic keys, they struggle to get back into the scene with their infamous (and probably last hope) <a href="http://youtu.be/OfHLjlogDS8" target="_blank">Blackberry 10</a>.</p> <p>All aside, crisis is nothing more than opportunity, as the Chinese wisely put it [<span> ? w?i (danger) and ? j? (opportunity) ] , and Blackberry could choose to stay <a href="http://youtu.be/9PdkcJobt_s" target="_blank">among the living</a>, if they set out to do what no other Apple competitor out there is doing: create a culture!</span></p> <p><a href="http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/314/6/9/blackberry_2_by_sevraj-d5kk6o1.jpg" target="_blank" title="Large"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_md8hvvxnB91r2eag3.jpg" /></a></p> <p>Shape-shifting BlackBerry`s core characteristics may seem counter-intuitive, but what (I believe) many big brands do not understand is that there IS life outside Apple`s “<a href="http://www.adafruit.com/adablog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/20110302-11112379-img4765.jpg" target="_blank">technology married with humanities</a>” approach, one that lies inert because everyone is to busy blind-copying their model without substance.</p> <p>Let`s start with its undecided logo. BBry has many iterations of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology" target="_blank">Gestalt</a> generated icon (comprising of many negative space B`s that happen to look like a berry if your imagination allows it), and i must admit they are all nifty ideas . But most non BBry`s users are unaware of it, so they are deprived of the eureka moment that creates psychological impact . Inserting another element not only pops out the fruity composition, but also adds another negative element that further defines the letter B. I also feel that the lack of symmetry adds a dynamic effect that works great with letters. It is not a must have, but I feel every new beginning needs a new symbol.</p> <p><a href="http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/314/2/1/blackberry_4_by_sevraj-d5kk80q.jpg" target="_blank" title="large"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_md8ikkNkgq1r2eag3.jpg" /></a></p> <p>Now lets bring in the big guns. It`s no secret that a smartphone`s heart and soul lies in its software. Blackberry is <a href="http://www.7boot.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/120206-30-blackberry-be-bold-ad1.jpg" target="_blank">bold</a> enough to invent one from scratch, in an industry that is already too crowded , and light years in front of RIM`s baby OS. But it needn`t be so.</p> <p>A big advantage Android had over Apple was the possibility of starting fresh. And that turned out great. Windows 8 is doing it right now and they were brilliant in creating a superior OS altogether.  Blackberry can use its late arrival to adopt changes that otherwise Android , Apple or Windows cannot afford to do anymore due to the perils of inconsistency. What about apps? Apps are an outcome of a <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/11/this-is-what-developing-for-android-looks-like/" target="_blank">superior system</a>, not a target in itself.</p> <p>So let us use the OS wisely, and understand just a couple of its key characteristics.</p> <p><a href="http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/318/c/6/blackberry_10_by_sevraj-d5l1153.jpg" target="_blank" title="Large"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mddup00T8m1r2eag3.jpg" /></a></p> <p><a href="http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/317/3/4/blackberry_5_by_sevraj-d5kwnsx.jpg" target="_blank" title="Large"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdduq0heTk1r2eag3.jpg" /></a></p> <p>Now…if you are lucky enough to be different on some areas, why on earth should you do what everybody else is doing. The  -> big product / simple layout <- thing that we are bombarded with every day was popularized by (you guessed it ) Apple! and when promoted, it relied on the fact that people understood Apples values, and products were just a manifestation of that vision. That`s why they could get away with minimal advertising, or even <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_III" target="_blank">crappy products</a>. As I was saying earlier , by copying the style without a belief framework, stuff just turned into visual schizophrenia!<a href="http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/317/a/a/blackberry_6_by_sevraj-d5kwo2y.jpg" target="_blank" title="Large"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mddurhl3is1r2eag3.jpg" /></a></p> <p>Blackberry can use both the absence it had lately (and the new beginning they strive for) to set things right.</p> <p>I am proposing a communication campaign that uses BB10 to reinvent and restate blackberry`s beliefs. Technology married with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science" target="_blank">social sciences</a> is the niche I tried to aim for . RIM needs to be humanized while retaining the premium , high class DNA. And it can do that in three simple steps :</p> <p>1. Create anticipation, <a href="http://www.takebackyourbrain.com/2007/the-psychology-of-persuasion-scarcity/" target="_blank">exploit scarcity</a>.  Use semiotics to hint the user into the new interface and break the pattern by not introducing the product.</p> <p><a href="http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/317/9/c/blackberry_7_by_sevraj-d5kwo9g.jpg" target="_blank" title="Large"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdduthM5ju1r2eag3.jpg" /></a></p> <p><a href="http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/317/4/c/blackberry_7_by_sevraj-d5kwv7n.jpg" target="_blank" title="Large"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdduv5lYJN1r2eag3.jpg" /></a></p> <p><a href="http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/317/b/2/blackberry_6_by_sevraj-d5kwvkr.jpg" target="_blank" title="Large"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mddv02nFnK1r2eag3.jpg" /></a></p> <p>2. Use the awareness the ad campaign generated to further mystify the product. State beliefs that will associate with the brand , create a vision that empowers current users and makes potential ones want to associate with it. Stay true to the DNA and generate subtle controversy.</p> <p><a href="http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/317/5/2/blackberry_8_by_sevraj-d5kwvv3.jpg?1" target="_blank" title="Large"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdduxltjsX1r2eag3.jpg" /></a></p> <p><a href="http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/317/3/f/blackberry_8_by_sevraj-d5kww94.jpg" target="_blank" title="Large"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mddwbuSuQ01r2eag3.jpg" /></a></p> <p><a href="http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/317/8/2/blackberry_9_by_sevraj-d5kwwos.jpg" target="_blank" title="Large"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mddv6lzFlR1r2eag3.jpg" /></a></p> <p><a href="http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/317/5/7/blackberry_9_by_sevraj-d5kwwxq.jpg" target="_blank" title="Large"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mddv7kDwly1r2eag3.jpg" /></a></p> <p>3. If one must show the product, obsess on details, hide the product behind curtains, reveal just enough to let the viewer associate a form to a strong reference he already has (like the premium <a href="http://sfcitizen.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Capture1.jpg" target="_blank">black card</a> that has strong links to a certain social status). Making the buyer curios about getting his hands on products is crucial! Stores are experience incubators , they have control of perception and hold immense power. Ads must just get them in there.</p> <p><a href="http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/317/2/1/blackberry_9_by_sevraj-d5kwx8h.jpg" target="_blank" title="Large"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mddv8fLQdo1r2eag3.jpg" /></a></p> <p>P.s. I have no idea what RIM was thinking when they named their beloved tablet Playbook. It`s wrong in so many ways I could not resist giving it a different identity..makes me sleep better with myself at night. The moral of the story is : stay consistent with the product line , do not split personalities!</p> <p><a href="http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/317/2/f/blackberry_10_by_sevraj-d5kwxi9.jpg" target="_blank" title="Large"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mddv9bdZW81r2eag3.jpg" /></a></p> <p>P.s.s. There is a pattern in people holding on to boxes after buying a device. Be it for practical reasons (one might want to sell it in the future) or pure status symbolism , there is huge potential in this!</p> <p>Re-defining packaging could add tremendous value to the product , brand identity, and even attenuate product value loss on the long term. Making the user feel like there is a higher cause for him being brand loyal is what companies spend billions for. This small collection of bright minded, high class, and prosperous entrepreneurs of the past century speaks for itself, it is the perfect blend of blackberry’s current DNA and what it needs to become, in order to generate a culture.</p> <p><a href="http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/317/9/e/blackberry_11_by_sevraj-d5kwxrk.jpg" target="_blank" title="Large"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mde699ox4p1r2eag3.jpg" /></a><br /> <em><strong>About the author:</strong> Julian C. Caraulani is a British-romanian designer who recently graduated from Coventry University, UK. His design approach relies on an interdisciplinarity that seeks to gather people with shared beliefs, passion and visions towards professional, meaningful projects. His website is www.caraulani.com and email [email protected]</em></p>

<p></p><p><strong>There is an elephant in the room and you may be sitting on it.</strong></p> <p>The energy that goes into manufacturing our material world is the largest component of our energy consumption and something designers have a direct impact on. Yet few people understand this embodied energy or actively design with it in mind.</p> <p>This struck us as a little scary, so a couple of years ago we started researching our own embodied energy footprints, visualising the data and creating tools that could integrate this data into our design process. The result is an energy driven design process and our <a href="http://www.agencyofdesign.co.uk/energytrumps/" title="Energy Trumps page">Energy Trumps</a> design tool, we wanted to share some of our insights from this exploration to encourage other people to start designing with energy.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><strong><a href="http://productdesignhub.com/?attachment_id=1656" rel="attachment wp-att-1656"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" height="337" src="http://productdesignhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Image-1.jpg" width="550" /></a></strong><span style="color: #808080;">The Energy Trump design tool in use</span></p> <p><strong>Reducing our energy consumption must tackle our largest energy segment; stuff.</strong></p> <p>The largest energy consumption sector in the UK is embodied energy ( <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2010/apr/21/national-carbon-calculator">The Guardian’s National carbon calculator</a>, <a href="http://www.withouthotair.com/">Sustainable energy without the hot air</a>).This is the sum energy from extraction to production that goes into making our material world. This is the energy that went into making the house you live in, the bike you ride, the phone you talk on and the coffee cup you drink out of.</p> <blockquote><p>“The real issue is not our direct consumption of energy but the greenhouse gases embodied in the goods we buy”</p> <p>Monbiot (2010)</p></blockquote> <p>Energy has been invested in making almost every element of our material world. We need to start looking carefully for ways of delivering these functions for a fraction of the energy.</p> <p><strong>Understanding the energy properties of materials can drive low embodied energy design.</strong></p> <p>Embodied energy data tells us how much energy it typically takes to manufacture a kilogram of a particular material. This data enables us to analyse and interpret the impact of products, leading to a more informed design process.</p> <p>Our own understanding of embodied energy started with a very personal exploration. Having realised I knew next to nothing about the energy implications of all my belongings I attempted to catalogue and calculate the embodied energy of everything I owned. The calculations were very crude but they forced me to get hold of as much embodied energy data as possible and sparked an interest in what could be achieved with this data.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #808080;">Embodied energy catalogue</span></p> <p>The data itself can be confusing as you need to factor in material density to understand the implications for a given material. We found one of the best ways to look at the data is to show the volume of the material that can be produced for 1 megajoule of energy. This gives you a more tangible idea of the energy intensity of a material.</p> <p><a href="http://productdesignhub.com/?attachment_id=1750" rel="attachment wp-att-1750"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1750" height="252" src="http://productdesignhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Image-21.jpg" width="550" /></a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #808080;">Cubes showing the volume of each material that could be manufactured with 1 megajoule of energy.</span></p> <p>The data can also be applied to simple mono-material products, multiplying the embodied energy figure by the weight of the product to give you an estimate of its total embodied energy.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><strong><a href="http://productdesignhub.com/?attachment_id=1654" rel="attachment wp-att-1654"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" height="474" src="http://productdesignhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Image-3.jpg" width="550" /></a></strong></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><strong></strong><span style="color: #808080;">Estimates of how much energy it took to manufacture each product.</span></p> <p>Embodied energy data can equally be used to calculate the energy in more complex products, giving you the energy break down of a product’s components. The video below shows one of our studio experiments scaling product components relative to their embodied energy, this allows you to ‘see’ a products embodied energy.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #808080;">Augmented reality experiments to ‘see’ embodied energy</span></p> <p>These approaches to visualising and analysing products using embodied energy data have given us a much richer understanding of the numbers. They allow you to quickly understand the impact of materials and assess where there is the greatest potential for change.</p> <p><strong>Simple tools to make energy part of the creative process.</strong></p> <p>Through our own explorations into an <a href="http://www.agencyofdesign.co.uk/projects/designing-with-energy/">energy driven design process</a> we could see how valuable embodied energy data was as a design driver, but also knew how little it was currently used in the design process.</p> <blockquote><p>“We need numbers, not adjectives“</p> <p>MacKay (2009)</p></blockquote> <p>Adopting <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._C._MacKay">David MacKay’s</a> approach, we wanted to move environmental design decisions away from popular opinion or aesthetic associations and put the numbers at the heart of the design process. To do this we created the Energy Trumps, a visual design tool that integrates environmental data into the creative process. The cards allow you to quickly assess and compare materials, enabling you to make more informed material choices early in your design process. The video below shows the cards in action, detailing why we made them and showing some of the products we designed using the data.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #808080;">Energy Trumps video</span></p> <p>Through our <a href="http://www.agencyofdesign.co.uk/energytrumps/AR/app.html">web app</a> the cards also allow you to explore the data in 3D, showing the different volumes of material that can be produced with 1 megajoule of energy.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><strong><a href="http://productdesignhub.com/?attachment_id=1655" rel="attachment wp-att-1655"><img alt="" class="aligncenter" height="311" src="http://productdesignhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Image-4.jpg" width="550" /></a></strong></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #808080;">The Energy Trumps augmented reality web app.</span></p> <p><strong></strong>We originally developed the cards to use in our own design process but they became such a valuable way of explaining embodied energy and the impact of design decision that we developed them into a <a href="http://www.agencyofdesign.co.uk/energytrumps/">commercially available version</a>.</p> <p><strong>Moving towards a low energy future</strong></p> <p>With a better understanding of the energy properties of materials we can use embodied energy to drive design decisions and deliver low energy solutions. However, if you are looking for the products with the lowest embodied energy, look no further than the cheapest items in bargain stores. These products are almost a miracle of cost reduction, reduced to the most minimal amount of material to stay functioning. By their nature they have used the smallest amount of energy to be produced, but they are also prone to failure and very challenging to repair giving them very short life spans.</p> <p>Our future design approach needs to integrate embodied energy with existing design criteria; functionality, aesthetics, longevity and disposal to create balanced solutions that minimize their impact. In our own projects we use embodied energy as a filter through which to assess designs, looking carefully at how much functionality and value is being delivered per megajoule. This pushes us to look for elegant and creative uses of materials that radically reduce energy impact.</p> <p><em><strong>About the author</strong>: Rich Gilbert is a Co-founder of <a href="http://www.agencyofdesign.co.uk" target="_blank">The Agency of Design</a>, a London based design studio helping organisations design a better future by re-thinking our digital and physical worlds.</em></p> <p><em>For more information on the project see;</em></p> <p><em><a href="http://www.agencyofdesign.co.uk/energytrumps/">The energy trumps home page</a></em></p> <p><em><a href="http://www.agencyofdesign.co.uk/energytrumps/pdf/The_Agency_of_Design-Designing_with_Energy.pdf">Our PDF on designing with energy</a></em></p> <p><em><a href="http://www.agencyofdesign.co.uk/projects/designing-with-energy/">The design project that sparked the cards</a></em></p> <p> </p>

<p></p><a href=" <p>How great are the big consultancy firms in the world! These guys operate spreadsheets 24/7 (keyboard shortcuts only!) and their analysis and reports do magic for big companies who are in need for just that little bit of extra revenue (and/or the need of solving bigger problems, of course). I think we can assume, that when the consultants are done with a company, better times will come. And it just got better, because they found out about the value of design.</p> <p>The treasure was revealed in the latest issue of the McKinsey Quarterly. <a href="http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Designing_products_for_value_3023">This article</a> ends in a great apotheosis: “<em>By combining deep insights about customers, competitors, and cost, a few leading companies are finding the “sweet spot” in product development: lowering costs while designing better products that customers value more.” </em>I think it is great that smart consultants are starting to think out-of-the-box. I see it as a compliment for the design industry. However, the advice from a designer’s point of view would be to give the consultants a small design-workshop.</p> <p>Do they really need a workshop, or is that just the ego of the designer getting nervous by arrival of the new kid on the block? To be honest, maybe it’s a bit of both. But the main topic in this article is not just good design; it is cost reduction (the word “cost” is in the article 37 times). Co-written by a McKinsey principal, director and consultant, I can see where that comes from. Costs do play an important role in the return on the investment on design, but in order to get people to buy your product, you need to design a product that people will love to use. So, here are 3 tips for our consulting friends.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>1. Consumer insights</strong></p> <p>Getting insights from consumers is the perfect start for product development. McKinsey acknowledges this, but they miss an important factor. Designers read between the lines when they listen to consumers sharing their needs. But the focus is on retrieving needs that consumers don’t know they have (yet). This requires a good focus-group setup; don’t confront consumers with engineers and management, but with designers.</p> <p><strong>2. Interaction is key</strong></p> <p>Cost-effective design is important for the company behind the product. Interaction design is important for the success behind the product. Without losing the perspective of cost-impact on design (and other product properties), the focus should be on a perfect interaction between user and product. If you improve this, you’ll improve their life. And that’s worth quite a lot.</p> <p><strong> 3. Study the competition AND the context</strong></p> <p>A thorough analysis of your competitor’s product is a good reference to improve your own product. But there are much more products your consumer uses. What can we learn from the context of the user? For example, when designing a microwave, let’s not only tear down the microwaves of competitors, but also look at other products this target group uses everyday. For example, if the target group uses a smartphone, shouldn’t a new microwave be equipped with a touchscreen and cooking-apps? Or even better, that you can operate the microwave <em>with</em> your smartphone. Saves the costs of a display, here you go!</p> <p> </p> <p>In my opinion, product development is the perfect start for designers and consultants to join forces. From the designer’s point of view: let’s work together, I’m sure together we can achieve a lot for companies struggling with innovation. But let’s focus on our specialism. The consultant needs to consult companies about developing cost-effective products and the designer needs to design good products for consumers that will be successful. In this case a product that people love to use, day after day.</p> <p><em><strong>About the author:</strong> Jelmer Riemersma is co-founder of <a href="http://veeel.wordpress.com/author/riemersma">Veeel </a>designers in Amsterdam with an ongoing interest for innovation and its underlying processes and models.</em></p>

<p></p><p><img alt="" class="alignright" height="381" src="http://productdesignhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Eddy-Yu-and-Hung-Lam-famous-local-designers-look-foward-to-Business-of-Design-Week..jpg" width="253" /></p> <p>Since 2003, designers Hung Lam (left) and Eddy Yu (right) worked together under their company, <a href="http://www.codesign.com.hk/" target="_blank">CoDesign</a>. A few years ago, they started CoLab. CoLab is a result of a lunchtime discussion of finding a way to use their design skills to benefit society. With the chance to spend some time with Eddy Yu and Hung Lam, I found out that at the time, they had encountered social enterprises growing in Hong Kong and were shocked by the (lack of) branding of these groups and organizations. With this revelation, they saw a big opportunity to improve services through brand design and asked themselves, “How can design improve and change society?” The pair founded CoLab which stands for “collaboration” and “laboratory”. Now, with their CoLab platform, young designers are encouraged to provide input on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/codesign.colab" target="_blank">CoLab’s Facebook Fanpage</a>, where CoLab uses “Facebook to engage young designers to participate in design”.  Young designers are excited to get involved.</p> <p>CoDesign is your traditional design studio, branding, and consulting firm which provides services to any client with a budget. CoLab, however, is the organization in which Yu and Lam work together with local, young designers and social businesses or non-profits. With CoLab, Yu and Lam oversee the projects and provide a platform and system to connect the non-profit or social business with young designers to generate new design solutions. Rather than thinking of their projects as “giving back” the two gentlemen really see themselves as educators trying to elevate design in the local community and improve the design quality of younger designers. Using CoLab as a platform for “collaboration” and  as a “laboratory”, they partner with young designers to address projects and solve problems brought to them by their partners (they prefer to form partnerships, rather than “client” relationships).</p> <p>CoLab screens for potential young talent to team up with. Yu and Lam saw the need (not only to give back), but also to provide a hands on and practical experience to young designers. Yu elaborates that CoLab “needs passionate, young designers who can really dedicate themselves to our [social] projects without being too eager to earn money, but to be eager to learn something real”.  “We need their creativity”  said Hung Lam. CoLab manages the young team members on a project to project basis, as if they were freelance designers. CoLab provides structure, guidance, and business sense from their years of experience with CoDesign, while the young designers provide a fresh perspective and design inspiration for the direction of CoLab projects. However, they encourage and embrace a close working-relationship. Past experience has told Yu and Lam that “the outcome of working remotely is not always as rewarding [as working closely].” “We want to have that kind of relationship that explores and discusses in a more casual way to try different things. For that, we need to work very closely,” says Eddy Yu. CoLab plans to expand this platform through some sort of internship program as an extension of university studies. Yu and Lam aim to provide training as needed, but they currently need more resources, time, and space to make it happen.</p> <p><a href="http://productdesignhub.com/2012/11/colab-hong-kongs-collaboration-laboratory/print/" rel="attachment wp-att-1699"><img alt="" class="aligncenter wp-image-1699" height="467" src="http://productdesignhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Imperfect_2-1024x731.jpg" width="655" /></a></p> <p>Not only does CoLab work with young designers, the company is also proudly creating a movement around the idea of “imperfection equals perfection”, through a project called <a href="http://www.i-mperfect.org/concept" target="_blank">I’mperfect</a>. With the theme of imperfection, Lam and Yu partner with other organizations to fully rethink projects and products. One I’mperfect project was teamed with a ceramics company. Seeing that the ceramic mug manufacturer discards ‘defected’ production pieces, CoLab was able to rebrand these ‘defect’ products under the I’mperfect (i’m perfect/ imperfect) theme and create desirable products rather than more waste. Sold at the local Hong Kong ceramics shop <a href="http://www.loveramics.com/blog/story-imperfect-mug" target="_blank">Loveramics</a>, each mug is unique and special. No two mugs are the same. They are trying to spread this movement beyond product design and branding, they are creating an experience with I’mperfect. The I’mperfect movement has hosted yoga sessions and art making. Another I’mperfect partnership resulted from working closely with a local publisher in Hong Kong to make premium gifts and bring old books back to life with a simple design of the book jacket. With the book jacket, instead of the typical cover design and title, the new cover has one statement about the essence or contents of the book. The goal is to encourage people to see beyond the cover. As the I’mperfect movement grows, Lam and Yu aim to make the general public more aware of our waste and also show that imperfection is the same as uniqueness, which we all should and seek to embrace. Hung Lam explains that it’s “not just making something from imperfect to perfect, we want to change people’s perception of how they see the world. How to see perfection inside imperfection. This is our main core vision — to change mindsets.” Eddy Yu adds, “to see imperfection as uniqueness, rather than defects. Everything is unique, just like people.”</p> <p>In addition to ironing out details of a potential 1-year internship program, CoLab has most recently partnered with Hong Kong’s PMQ (Police Married Quarters) project. In fact, it’s a perfect partnership. The PMQ is a government initiated project to revitalize the old government police married quarters in Central, Hong Kong to provide a space and studio for young designers to explore and expand their creativity, CoLab offers access to young talent and a bridge of communication between the young design community and the PMQ project. The goal as Yu puts it is that they would “like to see PMQ become an iconic place for the Hong Kong creative industry, instead of a government project with usually rather restricted policies.” There will be a kick-off for this partnership and the next step of the PMQ project at this year’s Business of Design Week. The duo of CoLab, Eddy Yu and Hung Lam will also be <a href="http://www.bodw.com/2012/index.php?lang=en&page=speakersDetail&content=eddy" target="_blank">making a presentation</a> for the “Design for Society” track of the conference. Hope to see you there Dec 3-8, 2012!</p> <p> </p> <p><em><strong>About the author:</strong> Tiffany Wan is a designer based in Hong Kong. Her experience includes user-research, industrial design from concept to production, and graphic communications. She is also a correspondent for <a href="http://www.designmuseumboston.org" target="_blank">Design Museum Boston</a>. Connect with her <a href="http://www.twitter.com/tiffanywan" target="_blank">on twitter</a> or through <a href="http://www.tiffanywan.com" target="_blank">her website</a></em>.</p>

<p></p><p>Product design can mean many different things to different people, depending on your circumstance and your perspective. In this article we have looked at it from both sides, creating a product that will help others create their products.</p> <p>You may already know we are creating a Computer Aided Design (CAD) application for the iPad called <strong>cado</strong>, the first we believe that will actually deliver an effective interface coupled with functionality that allow users to fulfill all of their creative and productive needs; remote from their desktop.</p> <p><a href="http://productdesignhub.com/2012/11/product-design-why-cado-looks-as-good-as-it-does/cado_appicon200/" rel="attachment wp-att-1685"><img alt="" class="aligncenter wp-image-1685" height="240" src="http://productdesignhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/cado_appicon200.png" title="cado_appicon200" width="240" /></a></p> <p>If you don’t know about <strong>cado</strong> – have a look at the <a href="http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=06a3131a3140830d9108e3e5d&id=c7b7c353b1&e=087cccd1f9" target="_blank">development video</a>.</p> <p>So lets look at our product design process in delivering <strong>cado</strong>.</p> <p>Our design process started with identifying the need for a CAD app on the tablet format when we couldn’t find a good alternative already available. From there we moved onto the project brief which outlines the functions we wanted to see in the application, with various categories ranging from essential to ‘nice to have’ and those for future iterations.</p> <p>The next step was agreeing the formats, functions and storyboard to define the scope of the project. At this point we needed to recruit the right people to be able to develop the code for the program, and this proved to be one of the hardest parts of the entire process for us. It took almost 6 months of interviewing, testing and trawling on contractor websites before we found our Developer, who is now part of the team at Orange Juice Studios.</p> <p>One of the things we realised very early on in the process is that people who would purchase this application would expect it to just work, and work well. The way in which it worked, how efficient the coding was or the thought processes behind the design decisions would be superfluous to the user – the majority would not be interested in those distractions, but rather how easy it was to use and if it did what it claimed to do.</p> <p>That meant the user interface is critical to the success of the application, the way in which the user will draw, select functions, interpret and use visual or audible feedback requires as much thought as the code development. Here is a typical example of the process we went through. During our development we anticipated the need for a co-ordinate system on the drawing space; this began the design process of where to locate the visual feedback of the system, accounting for when the user would need it in the drawing process, ergonomic factors for the user using their left or right hand, landscape and portrait orientations of the hardware whilst ensuring is was cohesive with the look of the rest of the program. A simple task you may thing, below are some of the design iterations we explored before settling on the final option, exploring the location of the X & Y coordinate bar, and what is visually looks and ‘feels’ like.</p> <p><a href="http://productdesignhub.com/2012/11/product-design-why-cado-looks-as-good-as-it-does/fig14/" rel="attachment wp-att-1677"><img alt="" class="aligncenter wp-image-1677" height="43" src="http://productdesignhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/fig14.png" title="fig14" width="516" /></a><br /> Figure 1 Co-ordinate bar on the left, without X & Y designation</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://productdesignhub.com/2012/11/product-design-why-cado-looks-as-good-as-it-does/fig21/" rel="attachment wp-att-1678"><img alt="" class="aligncenter wp-image-1678" height="43" src="http://productdesignhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/fig21.png" title="fig21" width="516" /></a></p> <p>Figure 2 Decision made to have the Co-ordinate button on the right hand side and double rows to save space.  Also X and Y description is added</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://productdesignhub.com/2012/11/product-design-why-cado-looks-as-good-as-it-does/fig31/" rel="attachment wp-att-1679"><img alt="" class="aligncenter wp-image-1679" height="43" src="http://productdesignhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/fig31.png" title="fig31" width="516" /></a></p> <p>Figure 3 Experimentation with colours</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://productdesignhub.com/2012/11/product-design-why-cado-looks-as-good-as-it-does/fig41/" rel="attachment wp-att-1680"><img alt="" class="aligncenter wp-image-1680" height="43" src="http://productdesignhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/fig41.png" title="fig41" width="516" /></a></p> <p>Figure 4 Co-ordinates are given more room for legibility, and made to feel ‘pressable’</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://productdesignhub.com/2012/11/product-design-why-cado-looks-as-good-as-it-does/fig51/" rel="attachment wp-att-1681"><img alt="" class="aligncenter wp-image-1681" height="43" src="http://productdesignhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/fig51.png" title="fig51" width="516" /></a></p> <p>Figure 5 Some more exploration on the theme</p> <p>…….. Phew! We’re getting there… promise!</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://productdesignhub.com/2012/11/product-design-why-cado-looks-as-good-as-it-does/fig61/" rel="attachment wp-att-1682"><img alt="" class="aligncenter wp-image-1682" height="43" src="http://productdesignhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/fig61.png" title="fig61" width="516" /></a></p> <p>Figure 6 Some refinement of text positioning</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://productdesignhub.com/2012/11/product-design-why-cado-looks-as-good-as-it-does/fig71/" rel="attachment wp-att-1683"><img alt="" class="aligncenter wp-image-1683" height="43" src="http://productdesignhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/fig71.png" title="fig71" width="516" /></a></p> <p>Figure 7 Text is given some hierarchy</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://productdesignhub.com/2012/11/product-design-why-cado-looks-as-good-as-it-does/fig81/" rel="attachment wp-att-1684"><img alt="" class="aligncenter wp-image-1684" height="43" src="http://productdesignhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/fig81.png" title="fig81" width="516" /></a></p> <p>Figure 8 A little pixel adjustment for aesthetic balancing, and voila! The end result</p> <p>So, now lets look at how tools can influence product design.</p> <p>Being a CAD program, by definition there were a selection of functions that were essential to be called a CAD program. Further to that, various design decisions were taken on what other key features and functions we wanted to include which would assist the user.</p> <p>Drawing is an exercise where the importance of tangible feedback is sometimes overlooked. A great example of this is that most designers and draftsmen always seem to prefer a certain instrument for their craft. This may be a lead pencil or pen of choice; HB, 2B, 4B, Biro and Rotring pens of various thicknesses and certain types of paper to sketch their ideas.  We believe this is based on a mixture of feedback, tactile experience and accuracy. Given the constraints of the touch screen hardware, some of those elements were either not possible or out of our control, hence the ones we could control became that much more important, the most important being accuracy, visual and audio feedback.</p> <p>Another perspective to consider is how we use tools such as <strong>cado</strong> to influence our design process. By interfacing with hardware through the touchscreen device, we feel there is a benefit in the tangible feedback, latency and accuracy of the drawing device and program. However this is balanced by the potential of the hardware hampering or impairing the design process by providing incorrect or un-useful feedback. Frustration does not take long to set in and the program or hardware is quickly resigned to the bin.</p> <p>So what would product designers want with CAD on a mobile hardware platform? Well we think this will give the designer the freedom to sketch on the fly and reduce time moving from sketch through to full CAD mark ups. It’s the step between hand sketching and CAD drafting at your workstation that we feel this CAD tablet program will fit in.</p> <p>Have a look at our website and be sure to subscribe to be kept informed regarding release dates, pricing and included functionality – we look forward to hearing from you.</p> <p> </p> <p><em><strong> About the author:</strong> Vimal Bhana is an engineer and the co-founder of <a href="http://www.orangejuicestudios.com" target="_blank">Orange Juice Studios</a></em></p>

<p></p><p>The importance of Outsourcing Product Design (OPD) and the inherent challenges in entering an emerging market continue to be discussed in multiple forums. Given the overwhelming benefits of OPD, engineering managers and business owners have come to firmly believe that outsourcing is the strategy for addressing some key business challenges.</p> <p><a href="http://productdesignhub.com/2012/11/six-steps-for-a-successful-opd-engagement/6steps/" rel="attachment wp-att-1622"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1622" height="311" src="http://productdesignhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/6steps.jpg" title="6steps" width="400" /></a></p> <p>However, not many organizations have taken the next steps to develop the substantial benefits of OPD. Research has made it clear that most organizations have not had successful outsourcing engagements in the past.</p> <p>This is evident from the article titled <strong><a href="http://www.outsourcing-center.com/2004-08-what-causes-outsourcing-failures-article-37826.html">“What causes outsourcing failures?”</a></strong> This article details nine principal causes of failure that are common across outsourcing. Upon closer analysis, it is evident that these apply to OPD as well.</p> <p>With over a decade of experience and expertise in handling product design projects coupled with a robust six-step OPD engagement process, we have demonstrated proven success to our customers.</p> <p>Our six-step OPD engagement process successfully addresses these nine causes of possible failure as explained below. Though this may sound obvious, but to ensure success, both the outsourcing organization and the OPD partner need to spend substantial quality time and energy during both the pre and post engagement stages.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>What to Outsource?</strong></p> <p>Firstly, the outsourcing company should understand what part of their product design process can be outsourced. To decide this, the company should ideally complete an internal engineering assessment based on the product diversification strategy adopted for the entry into the emerging market.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Defining your Work</strong></p> <p>A well-defined Statement of Work (SoW) or Requirement for Proposal (RFP) can reduce and eliminate many issues that crop up in an outsourcing engagement.</p> <p>After deciding the project scope, the next step is to create a requirements document involving all the relevant project stakeholders.</p> <p>Discuss this requirements document in the light of the outsourcing partner’s proposal document. Does it match one-to-one? Does the proposal explain clearly the project scope, key deliverables, schedule, resource skills, training requirements, roles and responsibilities, and cost terms adequately without any ambiguity?</p> <p>At this juncture, both the companies should be aligned with respect to the project and commercial terms</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Due-diligence</strong></p> <p>This step is critical to eliminate the risk of possible project failure. Take the time to check the following:</p> <ul> <li>Did you define what the outsourcing company should do?</li> <li>Do they have the capabilities outlined in the proposal?</li> <li>Do they have the resources and experience as claimed?</li> </ul> <p>This due diligence enables you to check if the scope of engagement needs to be further refined or the decision to continue with the partner needs to be re-visited.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Contracting Phase</strong></p> <p>This phase is for both companies to contractually agree upon other essential obligations such as:</p> <ul> <li>Who will own the patent for the product designed by the outsourced partner?</li> <li>How will the outsourced partner protect my (outsourcing company’s) intellectual property rights (IPR)?</li> <li>How do I handle product design concepts that are shared or leaked to my competitors?</li> <li>What is the accountability at the partner end if there is a deadline slippage leading to product launch delay?</li> </ul> <p>The outcome is a contractual agreement with a list of Service Level Agreements (SLA) with legal bindings including penalty clause, force majeure, non-disclosure agreements, patent violation acts. This will enable you to safeguard your company rights.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Transition Phase</strong></p> <p>Now that the ball is rolling, build project team counterparts at both the ends. Involve top management (project sponsors), project leads and a project governance document comprising project execution process, project / knowledge transition escalation matrix, documentation, configuration management, audit schedule, and contact information.</p> <p>This step ensures the engagement is intact and limits possible communication gaps.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Managing and Reporting</strong></p> <p>The final step is the value realization step for the outsourcing company.</p> <ul> <li>How rewarding has this engagement for their company?</li> <li>How much value addition has this partner relationship done for me?</li> <li>Can I measure value against reduced product lead time, optimum project costs, repeatability in quality, reduced project management time?</li> <li>Does the partner have creative product design ideas as against the competition?  Typically, the partner will be working in house to come up with this data</li> </ul> <div align="center"> <hr align="center" size="2" width="100%" /> </div> <p><em>The writer is handling the business operations for the European Market and provides engineering and design consultancy for the countries strategizing to enter emerging markets like India. You can reach him at <a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a> or the below contact number for any queries.</em></p> <p><em> </em></p> <p><strong><em>About Barry-Wehmiller International Resources</em></strong></p> <p><em>Barry-Wehmiller International Resources (BWIR) is a global provider of business and technology solutions to the mid-market manufacturing domain. With headquarters in St. Louis, MO., and global delivery operations strategically located to meet customer needs throughout the U.S., Europe, Southeast Asia and South America, BWIR offers world-class engineering services and enterprise consulting solutions that enable its clients to achieve a competitive edge in their marketplace.</em></p> <p><em> </em></p> <div align="center"> <hr align="center" size="2" width="100%" /> </div> <p><strong>Vivek Maladkar</strong></p> <p><strong>Head Business Development –Europe     </strong></p> <p><strong>Barry-Wehmiller International Resources Pvt Ltd</strong><strong>. </strong></p> <p><strong>101 Lilac Grove | Nottingham, UK NG9 1PF</strong></p> <p><strong>+44 (0) 115 967 8787 | DDI +44 (0) 115 907 9483 | fax +44 (0) 115 967 8707</strong></p> <p><strong>Cell +44(0)7867 505 709</strong></p> <p><strong><a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a></strong><strong></strong></p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.bwir.com">www.bwir.com</a></strong></p>

<p></p><p><a href="http://productdesignhub.com/2012/10/newly-designed-donor-chair-aids-blood-collection/blood-donor-chair/" rel="attachment wp-att-1613"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1613" height="527" src="http://productdesignhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Blood-Donor-Chair.jpg" title="Blood Donor Chair" width="500" /></a></p> <p>If you’ve given blood or were recently approached to donate blood ahead of the Olympic games in the summer then you may well have found yourself laying on one of the newly piloted prototype blood donor chairs designed and built by <a href="http://www.renfrewgroup.com">Renfrew Group International</a> that are currently undergoing national trials in National Health Service practises across the UK. This chair was specifically developed in order to solve and answer some of the problems and challenges faced by today’s health service.</p> <p><a href="http://www.nhsbt.nhs.uk/news/2012/newsrelease140612.html">NHS Blood and Transplant</a><strong> </strong>services have revealed that up to<strong> </strong>“2.38m people with ‘super blood’ were asked to donate ahead of the Olympics.<strong>  </strong>Demand for universal blood type O- were expected to be at least 70% higher than donations being made during the games”</p> <p>One particular problem faced by individuals donating blood was the tendency for them to faint during the procedure. The current generation for blood donation chairs were not in any way suitable for individuals who then subsequently needed placing in the recovery position as the two arrangements are distinctly different.  This newly developed chair was designed with this in mind and is said to aid blood donation staff easily handle any situations where individuals need to be physically attended to.</p> <p>In addition to this the newly designed blood donor chairs aid both patient and staff comfort with the ability for the chair to pivot into 3 separate positions aiding the different stages of the blood procurement process.  Members of staff are now less likely to lean into awkward positions when dealing with donors, which will improve their working conditions and physical wellbeing.</p> <p><a href="http://productdesignhub.com/2012/10/newly-designed-donor-chair-aids-blood-collection/donor-chair/" rel="attachment wp-att-1614"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1614" height="534" src="http://productdesignhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/donor-chair.jpg" title="donor-chair" width="500" /></a></p> <p>The chairs have been in trials since December 2011 and they will hopefully be well on their way to widespread adoption in the near future.</p> <p><em><strong>About the author: </strong>Renfrew Group international are a leading and established product design consultancy based in Leicester, UK that provide a range of specialist <a href="http://www.renfrewgroup.com/medical.html">medical product design</a> and innovation services in addition to consumer products, capital goods and automotive design.</em></p>

<p></p><p><a href="http://productdesignhub.com/2012/10/breaking-the-ordinary-designer-cycle/ordinary_designer/" rel="attachment wp-att-1593"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1593" height="238" src="http://productdesignhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/ordinary_designer.jpg" title="ordinary_designer" width="258" /></a></p> <p>Ordinary designers are all around us. Many have a certain flair in their work. But it is hard and challenging for them to break the mould of being ordinary. To achieve top notch quality, it is black magic. Some are capable, others find it beyond them.</p> <p>High craftsmanship is not easy to achieve. Ordinary designers face enormous challenges when attempting to create distinct and strong quality work. So much time is required to learn, practice and develop the required skills. But there is much to learn in the world of design and technology. It is a painful process that so many people will give up very easily.</p> <p>Some people sacrifice months in their room to produce a clean free hand drawing. Some people sacrifice many years at University to scratch the surface of professional standards. I have known many designers who have spent their career moving in and out of the design industry producing only a mediocre standard of work.</p> <p>Everyone was once young, with no skills, experience or knowledge. Even the superstar designer started out without the ability to draw. Yet, with persistence, they have been able to master a repertoire of fine skills in creating truly inspiring work.</p> <p>There are many people who are ordinary and average. This article is about supporting them. Everyone was once a beginner, without basic skills and experience. I am interested in supporting them to break the cycle of an ordinary designer.</p> <p>Do you feel like an ordinary designer, trying to break the mould? I would like to hear your experience. How hard is it for you in your journey? What did you sacrifice?</p> <p> </p> <p><em><strong>About the author:</strong> Huu Huynh is a design & technology teacher with a background in industrial design. If you like this article, follow him on twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/bowlofnoodle" target="_blank">@bowlofnoodle </a>and visit his <a href="http://huuhuy.com" target="_blank">portfolio website</a>.</em></p>

<p></p><p><a href="http://productdesignhub.com/2012/10/top-5-criteria-to-select-your-outsourcing-product-design-opd-partner/odp/" rel="attachment wp-att-1597"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1597" height="310" src="http://productdesignhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/odp.jpg" title="odp" width="393" /></a></p> <p>To enter an emerging market like India, a company’s success depends directly on the development of unique and customized products for the end-customer. This holds true whether an existing product is redesigned or a new product is evolved specifically for this market. Both situations demand thorough knowledge on various parameters pertaining to the target market. As described in the previous article <a href="http://www.bwir.com/files/Barry-WehmillerI/FileCabinet/UploadFiles_ESArticle1Final_6229.pdf">“Engineering Design Considerations for Entering India Market”</a>, these comprise five parameters:</p> <ul> <li>Cultural blend</li> <li>Government regulations</li> <li>Industrial standards</li> <li>Competitors’ foothold</li> <li>Prevailing manufacturing ecosystem</li> </ul> <p>Understanding these parameters with less or no presence in the target market is not only a challenge but is an expensive assignment complete with various risk factors.</p> <p>To mitigate these risks, outsourcing of product design has become a strategic initiative. This leads to the importance of identifying and engaging with the right partner as it has the potential to develop into a long term symbiotic relationship built on the foundation of trust, competency, and understanding.</p> <p><strong> </strong></p> <p><strong>We present five essential criteria for evaluating the right product design partner:</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Product Design Needs’ “Fit”</strong></p> <p>When evaluating an OPD partner, check that they have the necessary competence in your industry.  This is of paramount importance as it will induce the vendor to deliver a holistic solution.</p> <p>This was evident with one of our customers who needed an alternate design for a rotary filler machine that had limitation in accessing machine parts for cleaning and servicing.</p> <p>We looked at the requirement holistically and designed a concept with a new drive to operate from the top of the machine in contrast to the prevailing industry standard of the drive system being at the bottom. This not only resulted in spacious layout, facilitating better cleaning and servicing but also enabled the customer to integrate this system better with the rest of the production line, in addition to improving reliability and higher production capacity.</p> <p>This innovation design not only met the customer’s requirements but succeeded in ‘customer delight’ as well!</p> <p><strong> </strong></p> <p><strong>Experience in the client’s target industry</strong></p> <p>Check if your potential OPD partner has the necessary background in your target market and knowledge about your product(s). This will enable them to develop product concepts which will match with the actual target customer needs.</p> <p>One of our customer manufacturing capping machines wanted us to position their product for India market & requested us to suggest design changes as per the native market need.</p> <p> </p> <p>Having dealt with many companies in the food and beverage industry, we had proactively suggested a drive specification and indexing mechanism for the machine that reaped a three-fold benefit: 35% reduction in production costs, decreased time-to-market and better market penetration relative to the competition. The quick solution would have been next to impossible if BWIR didn’t have the knowledge on the product speed and through put of these machines as used by the Indian customer as per their market demand.  If you’re looking for additional information on how we can assist you with an OPD challenge, please <a href="http://www.formstack.com/landing/bwir-download_casestudy">register here</a></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Presence in the geography</strong></p> <p>Check if your potential OPD partner has presence in your target geography – India.  Their presence in the Indian geography will enable you to design a product based on the manufacturing and vendor ecosystem available in India.</p> <p>Your OPD partner will be able to design your product in India for India – based on the availability of the standard material, purchase parts, manufacturing capability, testing procedures and facilities. With thorough knowledge of these considerations, the product designed will be the best-fit for the market, reducing the overall time, effort, and costs.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Multi-disciplinary offerings </strong></p> <p>Engaging a partner for entering the Indian market is a long term strategy and is really more of a relationship than a one-time transaction. Hence, it is imperative for you to evaluate the credentials, expertise, knowledge and the multi-disciplinary offerings of your potential OPD partner across the product design area. Your potential partner must be capable of conducting tests to validate the performance of the product in the local market environments.</p> <p>Ultimately an end-to-end product design offering with manufacturing and testing support would be an ideal outsourcing product design partner.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Being a reliable partner</strong></p> <p>A partner’s reliability in a geography ensures the confidentially and intellectual property of any OPD project. This is especially true for product design projects as they are research intensive involving specialists and R&D engineers.  A ‘reliability check’ can be carried out by checking the partner’s long-term customer references. At BWIR, we have customers for whom we have successfully completed product designs, product introductions and followed-up with after-sales and support assignments. We have a trusted relationship with our customers. In addition to the five factors stated above, there are other factors to consider in an outsourcing partnership, such as:</p> <ul> <li>Certifications</li> <li>Availability of best-in class infrastructure</li> <li>Financial health</li> <li>Diverse skill sets and competency of the workforce</li> <li>Compatible systems and processes</li> </ul> <p>While the last few factors are suggestions, the 5 key criteria are must-haves for any outsourcing vendor for your product design and launch to be successful in the emerging market.</p> <p> </p> <p align="center"><strong>Click the below links to download our pervious articles</strong></p> <p><strong><em> </em></strong></p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.bwir.com/files/Barry-WehmillerI/FileCabinet/UploadFiles_ESArticle1Final_6229.pdf">Engineering Design for entering Indian Market</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.bwir.com/files/Barry-WehmillerI/FileCabinet/UploadFiles_ESArticle2Final_6230.pdf">Product design challenges for India Entry</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.bwir.com/files/Barry-WehmillerI/FileCabinet/UploadFiles_ESArticle3Final_6231.pdf">Outsourcing Product Design for India Entry</a></li> </ul> <p> </p> <div align="center"> <hr align="center" size="2" width="100%" /> </div> <p><em>The writer is handling the business operations for the European Market and provides engineering and design consultancy for the countries strategizing to enter emerging markets like India. You can reach him at <a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a> or the below contact number for any queries.</em></p> <p><em> </em></p> <p><strong><em>About Barry-Wehmiller International Resources</em></strong></p> <p><em>Barry-Wehmiller International Resources (BWIR) is a global provider of business and technology solutions to the mid-market manufacturing domain. With headquarters in St. Louis, MO., and global delivery operations strategically located to meet customer needs throughout the U.S., Europe, Southeast Asia and South America, BWIR offers world-class engineering services and enterprise consulting solutions that enable its clients to achieve a competitive edge in their marketplace.</em></p> <p><em> </em></p> <div align="center"> <hr align="center" size="2" width="100%" /> </div> <p><strong>Vivek Maladkar</strong></p> <p><strong>Head Business Development –Europe     </strong></p> <p><strong>Barry-Wehmiller International Resources Pvt Ltd</strong><strong>. </strong></p> <p><strong>101 Lilac Grove | Nottingham, UK NG9 1PF</strong></p> <p><strong>+44 (0) 115 967 8787 | DDI +44 (0) 115 907 9483 | fax +44 (0) 115 967 8707</strong></p> <p><strong>Cell +44(0)7867 505 709</strong></p> <p><strong><a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a></strong><strong></strong></p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.bwir.com">www.bwir.com</a></strong><strong></strong></p>

<p></p><p><a href="http://productdesignhub.com/2012/09/top-3-free-online-educational-resources-for-product-design-students/product_design_student/" rel="attachment wp-att-1586"><img alt="" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1586" height="333" src="http://productdesignhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/product_design_student.jpg" title="product_design_student" width="500" /></a></p> <p>There are a plethora of high-quality online courses and other educational resources popping up on the internet these days. Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley, MIT, and many other big name schools now provide some of their best undergraduate and graduate courses to online students, for free. Some of the top-notch educational content on the web includes courses, tutorials, and videos for product design students and practicing industrial/product designers. If you’re a product design student who wants to learn more about your field or you’re a product designer who would like to brush up on essential concepts, check out these top educational resources:</p> <p><strong>1. <a href="http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm">MIT OpenCourseWare</a></strong></p> <p>MIT offers a number of free product design courses on its OpenCourseWare site. Many of MIT’s offerings are graduate-level courses that are mostly project-based, and they’re primarily meant for those who already have some knowledge of how products are designed. If you want to take your knowledge of product design to a new level or learn how to design specific products like toys and yachts, don’t miss what MIT has to offer on its OpenCourseWare site.</p> <p><strong>2. <a href="http://ecorner.stanford.edu/">Stanford University’s eCorner</a></strong></p> <p>There are a number of educational videos and portions of courses on Stanford University’s eCorner that are meant for product designers and those interested in learning more about product design. Much of what’s available on Stanford University’s eCorner focuses on the entrepreneurial side of industrial and product design. If you’re interested in learning about which kinds of product designs consumers like and what kind of creative techniques you’ll need to use to make best-selling products, the educational videos on eCorner will be right up your alley.</p> <p><strong>3. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/expertvillage/videos?query=industrial+design">Expert Village’s YouTube Page</a></strong></p> <p>Expert Village’s YouTube page offers a number of how-to videos for those interested in designing and creating simple products. To find these videos, you simply need to search for “industrial design” on this organization’s YouTube page. Expert Village’s industrial design videos are ideal for beginning designers who want to learn how to make basic products and draw out the plans for those products before they make them. Expert Village is run by the same people who run eHow. As you might expect, its videos are hit or miss, just like much of the content on eHow’s main website. So, you may have to dig around to find Expert Villages most helpful videos, but they are definitely there.</p> <p>Free online education is just in the beginning stages of development. It will be exciting to see what new educational resources pop up to help product designers optimize what they do. The three resources listed above can serve as valuable tools in the lives of industrial designers. So, give them a try, and expand your mind and skill set!</p> <p> </p> <p><em><strong>About the author:</strong> Angelita Williams is a freelance writer and education enthusiast who frequently contributes to <a href="http://www.onlinecollegecourses.com/">onlinecollegecourses.com</a>. She strives to instruct her readers and enrich their lives and welcomes you to contact her at [email protected] if you have any questions or comments.</em></p>

<p><a href="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/thumb13.jpg"> <img alt="" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-33598" height="160" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/thumb13.jpg" title="thumb" width="200" /></a>I recently had the opportunity to attend Adobe’s Reviewer’s Workshop in New York, where they covered the new CS6 product suite, including major overhauls to Illustrator, aspects of Photoshop, and the official launch of Adobe Muse.</p><p>More interestingly, to me at least, was the new <a href="https://creative.adobe.com/">Creative Cloud</a> subscription service. Creatives, especially small agencies and freelancers, have long struggled to pay for Adobe’s products. After all, shelling out hundreds or thousands of dollars for their software can be a struggle for small businesses, really cutting into profits.</p><p>Even hiring new employees can be an issue, when you figure that the Design & Web Premium version of CS6 runs nearly US$1900 for a new installation.</p><p>What happens if you just need some temp help for a month or two? Do you really want to spend two grand or more for an employee who will only be working for you for six weeks, only to have it sit idle for months afterward?<span id="more-33597"></span></p><p>Probably not.</p><p>That’s why Creative Cloud is such a huge deal for smaller creatives. Rather than shelling out two grand (or $2600 for the full Master Suite), freelancers or agencies can simply subscribe for $49.99 per month, per user. If you’re a current Creative Suite customer, you can get it even cheaper for the first year, just $29.99 per month.</p><p>Here’s how it breaks down, when comparing the Creative Cloud subscription to purchasing CS6. Now, since Creative Cloud gets you access to the full Master Collection, we’ll base the numbers on that. Let’s assume that Adobe releases updates every 18 months, too. With Creative Cloud, you’ll spend $899.92 over the course of 18 months for full access. That’s less than you’ll spend buying a new version of Photoshop Extended. And you get <em>everything in the Master Collection</em>.</p><p><a href="https://creative.adobe.com/"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-33599" height="387" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/appsservices.jpg" title="appsservices" width="615" /></a></p><p>At the Reviewer’s Workshop, we had a chance to really discuss the new service with some of the people from Adobe. One of the biggest concerns voiced was that people like to own things. They don’t necessarily want to rent software, which is essentially what you’re doing with Creative Cloud. Honestly, it’s a valid concern.</p><p>But Adobe has done a lot to address the most common concerns you might have about Creative Cloud. They’re not just diving into a subscription service without thinking about what it will mean to their users (some of whom may have been using their products for decades). Let’s take a look at those:</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>What if I’m not online?</h1><p>This is probably one of the most misunderstood things about Creative Cloud. People hear “cloud” and they instantly think of a product that lives online. But all of the CS6 products are still downloaded and locally hosted on your computer. You can access them whether you’re online or off.</p><p>The “cloud” portion of Creative Cloud comes in with other services, including 20GB of storage. This means you can store your files online and get access from anywhere. Other new Creative Cloud services include Business Catalyst hosting and Typekit web fonts.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>I won’t actually own the software</h1><p>This one is kind of true, but how many other software products do you use that work under a similar business model? As designers, we should be pretty comfortable with cloud-based and subscription-based apps at this point. We use things like Dropbox for sharing and storing files, online accounting apps for our bookkeeping and invoicing, and a lot more.</p><p>So why would we hesitate to use something like Creative Cloud when it’s so much more economical than purchasing the software outright? You still get to download the software, plus you get online storage, free web fonts, and tools for website management and hosting.</p><p>Sure, we’re used to purchasing Adobe products outright, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best way to do things. It was just the only way at the time. Now there’s a different way. In my opinion, it’s a better way for a large majority of creatives.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>An annual subscription still means I have to lay out hundreds of dollars at once</h1><p>Here’s another inaccuracy related to Creative Cloud. When we think of annual subscription, we often assume that we have to pay for the full year up front. But with Creative Cloud, you still pay month to month, just with a year-long commitment.</p><p>And if you decide to cancel your subscription, you’ll only have to pay 25% of the remaining subscription cost, which still allows you some flexibility.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>The best parts of Creative Cloud</h1><p>There are quite a few benefits to Creative Cloud. And so far, there are few, if any, downsides to using it. Of course, as more users sign up and use the services, we may see issues with performance or other problems. But the good news is that Adobe is a large enough company with enough resources that any issues are likely to only be temporary.</p><p>The biggest thing Creative Cloud has going for it is the cost, which I already covered above. The great thing is that if you’re a small agency and you need to hire some temporary help, you can just subscribe for a month or two to give the employee the tools they need, without spending thousands of dollars on a license that barely gets used. Monthly subscriptions are a bit more expensive than annual ones ($74.99 per month rather than $49.99), but it’s still a lot better than shelling out hundreds.</p><p>You also get constant updates to the software, whenever it’s released. No more sudden upgrade costs, it’s all covered under the monthly charge. That’s a huge deal for a lot of creatives, who can be hard-hit by upgrade fees every eighteen months or so. Granted, anyone who’s been in the business long generally sets aside funds to cover these upgrades, but it’s still a big expense all at once. The monthly subscription gives you a constant cost, which makes bookkeeping and budgeting a lot easier.</p><p>The 20GB of online storage included in your subscription is a great added bonus, too. You can just drag and drop your files to upload them, organize them into folders, and share them with other creatives. Sure, services like Dropbox already exist, but having only one service to subscribe to is great.</p><p><a href="https://creative.adobe.com/"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-33600" height="450" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/files.jpg" title="files" width="615" /></a></p><p>You also get hosting for up to five sites through Business Catalyst included in your subscription (and you can always purchase hosting for more). You can view and manage these sites directly from Creative Cloud, and also publish directly from Dreamweaver or Muse, further centralizing your workflow.</p><p>Typekit fonts are also included in your Creative Cloud subscription, for an unlimited number of sites. Currently, the fonts included in this service are all open source and free, though licensing options for paid fonts will likely be added in the future.</p><p>Finally, the newly redesigned Adobe Application Manager is a huge upgrade from previous versions. Now, installing new programs are just a single click away. It handles downloading and installing the software for you, without a bunch of steps. All I had to do was click “Install” on the apps I wanted, ran some errands, and when I came back, they were all installed and ready to use. Compared to installing each one individually (and having to sit around to enter things like product keys and agree to terms of use before installation could complete), it’s a big improvement.</p><p><a href="https://creative.adobe.com/"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-33601" height="451" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/appmanager.jpg" title="appmanager" width="615" /></a></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>So is Creative Cloud right for you?</h1><p>With very few exceptions, I have to recommend Creative Cloud to just about every creative out there who’s looking to upgrade to CS6. It’s more economical and has added benefits that you don’t get with the outright purchase of CS6. Of course, every freelancer and agency out there needs to weigh the pros and cons for themselves, but it really is a huge improvement over previous models.</p><p>For those with misgivings about Creative Cloud, the good news is that you can still buy the regular versions of virtually all of the CS6 products without signing up. The other good news is that the team at Adobe is incredibly receptive to feedback about their products. They want their offerings to work for the design community, and are very interested in what that community has to say!</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p><em>Written exclusively for WDD by <a href="http://cameronchapman.com/">Cameron Chapman</a>.</em></p><p><em> </em><em><strong>Have you signed up for Creative Cloud yet? Do you like the new subscription model?</strong></em></p><p><em><br /> </em></p><p><br /><br /><table height="20" style="border-top: 1px solid #d7d7d7; border-bottom: 1px solid #d7d7d7;" width="100%"><tr><td valign="center"> <a href="http://www.mightydeals.com/deal/flashmint-responsive-web-templates.html?ref=inwidget"><font color="#e64f32" face="Arial" size="3"><b>10 Premium and Fully Responsive Web Templates - only $17!</b></font></a></td><td width="90"> <a href="http://www.mightydeals.com/?ref=inwidget"><br /> <img border="0" height="40" src="http://mightydeals.com/web/images/widget-logo.png" width="90" /><br /> </a></td></tr></table><p><br /></p> <a href="http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/06/adobes-new-creative-cloud-subscription-service/">Source</a>

<p><a href="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/3945314529_6ee3b60d08_m.jpg"><img alt="" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-33106" height="160" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/3945314529_6ee3b60d08_m.jpg" title="3945314529_6ee3b60d08_m" width="200" /></a>UI is the saddle, the stirrups, and the reigns.</p><p>UX is the feeling you get being able to ride the horse, and rope your cattle.</p><p>At least that’s what they used to say in the olden days. Rather, that is what I wished they’d say. Despite how simple that may have sounded, there are many complications and misconceptions when it comes to the differences between UI and UX design, and they cause the design community to go into quite a stir whenever they are brought up.</p><p>An interesting note to that is that I’ve found the people who work at jobs with titles such as Interaction Designer to get paid more simply because they know and act on the differences between those two fields (typically harnessing a little of both). And in fact, I think there are more differences in the people behind these roles than the ideas behind UI and UX design.</p><p>Let’s jump right into a standardized definition that we will try to metaphorically elaborate on. Defined very simply a User Interface design is the part of the product that faces the user when he looks at the site, and the User Experience is how they feel when they look at the site, aka the broad scope. <span id="more-33076"></span></p><p>More pointedly, good user experience is the art of a drill going through wood, or a surfboard gliding through water effortlessly. The feelings those give you is unparalleled because they just work, simple as that. Though, in contrast, the shape of that board that helps it make those turns on the wave is good UI, and the surfwax on the top so you don’t slip off is also good UI. In short, the ENTIRE package is what makes it good UX, whereas good UI is <strong>always</strong> a very important inner-element of that.</p><p>Before continuing, I’d like to just say that this article is based on my opinion alone and in no way is trying to make large grandiose statements on the way anything <strong>should</strong> be. I will be trying to educate readers about various elements of each field, based on my own past experiences but I am, again, in no way trying to impede on your personal views should they differ from those stated in this article. All the metaphors are things that I think relate, and if you think they don’t feel free to let me know in the comments but be sure to give your own as well. It always helps the reader if they have multiple sources giving input about a topic.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>Let’s break it down</h1><p><a href="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/UX1.png"><img alt="" class="image-border" height="450" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/UX1.png" title="UX" width="615" /></a></p><p><em><a href="http://www.odannyboy.com/">Dan Saffer</a> was kind enough to let us use his image. Thanks, Dan!</em></p><p><em><br /> </em></p><h1>Generalities</h1><p>Just look at that image; that is such a glorious illustration of exactly how much is incorporated in User Experience design. Now you can tell why the people in these roles have to be able to think critically and creatively on an almost constant basis. Though, don’t be thrown off if you are a bit confused thus-far, because we have indeed mainly related UX and UI design to physical products like the surfboard, or animals like the horse.</p><p>The reason for that is, this is obviously a bit of a confusing topic, and it is mainly that way because it is heavily fractured. That is, little pieces of one make up the larger view of the other, and that can be sort of confusing or challenging to a lot of people. But even designers have a hard time with it, so don’t feel let down.</p><p>Let’s imagine that we convert those ideas we already spoke about into the web or mobile spaces. The UI would be a series of buttons and how they look, and the UX would say that button should physically press down when you click it. The responsiveness of being clicked, and then having the button pressed down on a 2D website is so satisfying after all, how could a designer not do it? Well, it happens all the time, and I think we get spoiled by the ones that do.</p><p>For instance, I have been to tons of sites that have nice big beautiful buttons with shadows under them like they are just itching to be clicked on, and then when you do, they don’t inset into the page. No responsive animation, and all I know is that it makes me feel disappointed in the design or designer of that product.</p><p>Now, I don’t believe that is because I am some sort of weird button elitist, but instead I think it is because <strong>that is how powerful good user experience is.</strong> I believe that when we come into contact with user experience that is so over the top, and so amazing (as the buttons that inset are, for some reason) then we literally feel like all things should be that awesome. Of course, I wouldn’t judge an entire product because some buttons don’t press down, but that is a big part of how I feel in that given moment going to press that button.</p><p>There are tons of outside factors that influence how we feel on a website at any given time, and we need to do all we can to make sure that website presents itself in such a way that we curb all those outside influences into not being as apparent as the inner-influences of our UX is. In general, always think of UX as an umbrella that houses all the points that make up your product’s experience, in the now, in the future (though that’s some strategy), and in the past.</p><p>It has been argued time and time again, based on all this talk regarding UX and Interaction, is how someone feels on a 2D website actually important at all? Well, if you are trying to get conversions it is; if you are trying to get people to be fascinated by your product or blog it is; if you are trying to get people to understand you it is; if you are trying to get people to listen to you it is; if you are trying to get people to spread your message it is; if you are trying to get people to do pretty much anything then yes, it is very important.</p><p>I’m sure you can tell that yourselves, but the reason we often have this seemingly unnecessary debate is that designers who are in one field really don’t know how to define themselves. And for good reason. Designers often end up doing a number of different jobs within the design realm, and that is why it is actually even more important to find someone who knows exactly what they do best and how they fit into the team - unless of course you are looking for a jack of all trades.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>UX: designing for emotion</h1><p><a href="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/Screen-shot-2012-05-09-at-5.34.47-PM.png"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-33131" height="450" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/Screen-shot-2012-05-09-at-5.34.47-PM.png" title="Screen shot 2012-05-09 at 5.34.47 PM" width="615" /></a></p><p>Outside of the design industry people get really emotionally about design. Which makes it a no-brainer when you think about how important a designer’s job really is. They do more than just put a nice pretty ambiance on things. They can literally create an entire emotion around your product, and <strong>should</strong>.</p><p>The designer is one of the most important people on your team, and should be treated as such. As a related example, Mark Zuckerburg keeps the desks of the Facebook lead designers multiple feet from his desk when he is at work. Engineers are important, but they are what the users don’t see. Their effects are implicit, like site speed and database architecture, but a designer is very much expressing himself all over your product — and there is something to be said for that.</p><p>One of the people a lot of designers look up to is Aaron Walters who does various talks and books, but equally important is his job as lead UX Designer at <a href="http://www.mailchimp.com/">MailChimp</a>. Now, talk about an amazing product. Without even knowing anything about him or what he speaks or writes about, just head on over to the site or look at the image above, and tell me if that doesn’t evoke an emotionally response from you. Well, I know it does so we can just cut to the chase.</p><p>He is all about what is called <em>Designing for Emotion</em>, and he talks about it quite often. You want your design to center around the user’s feelings and emotions when he arrives on your site. Not just what he is feeling externally (more on that later), but what emotions you want your site to convey to him and/or to make him feel.</p><p>This is very apparent when you use MailChimp’s service, or when just navigating around their product pages. You will immediately see that it is one of the most well-designed websites out there, and the simplicity of creating a rather complex form is astounding. They walk you through everything with guides, in a colorful and step by step manner, and you’re never left alone out in the dark. They completely round off the product by sending you examples and tips on how to improve your forms or form behavior, or how to capture other areas of the product for best use after you are using it. And they don’t just do it by giving you huge modal windows that block your exit from the site when you log in, but instead they give you beautiful reminders throughout.</p><p>Because remember, it’s all important. The entire product is UX, an individual section is UI. The joy of throwing a baseball is user experience, the stitching and spherical shape is UI.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>UX and UI: within a team</h1><p>In my opinion, when working on a web or mobile project a UX designer is effectively a creative director. Though, often times in a more formal team structure the creative director is someone who works closely with the founding team to identify the creative vision they have and then he squeezes it through his creative direction and passes it on down to the UX designer who then makes that happen on the site with help from and while leading the UI team.</p><p>I think that in a scrum development environment though, the creative director can just be replaced with the UX lead, if he is okay with that sort of responsibility. Simply because they do much of the same thing, and have much of the same expertise from my POV. Though, again, that is just my opinion.</p><p>In reality, you should fit them in wherever you feel they should fit on a project, but ideally they would not be a joint UI/UX person, unless they were exceptionally talented. I would love to know what the commenters think about this particularly. A lot of you reading are probably designers or aspiring designers, do you bill yourself as both a UX and UI designer? Or do you think there should be separation between the two?</p><p>As far as the actual project goes, the UX designer should be there from inception to completion. He is critical in the project’s life cycle. Projects without them often turn out like Google Video, with no emotion.</p><p>Alternatively, projects that have a UX person/team on call for the entirety turn out like <a href="http://zendesk.com">ZenDesk</a>, just absolutely beautiful and end up being a delight to use. Side-note: go to ZenDesk’s site and click the “Try it free” button on the top right. That is how a button should interact. Also as another side-note, apparently I’m obsessed with buttons.</p><p>Another thing to remember is that UI is effectively a tool that you will be using, and the people working on it are as powerful as a drill or hammer are to a construction job. Always remember to choose the appropriate designers for the job, even if you believe UX to be more important. You should keep in mind that this is a fractal enterprise and that the susceptibility of one branch effects all the others. <a href="http://basecamp.com/"></a></p><p><a href="http://basecamp.com/">Basecamp</a> is another example of great UX, and in fact they have a great engineering team that has a large focus on UX as well. Typically, engineers don’t quite know how to do great UX, *cough* Google *cough*, but in this case 37signals’ engineering team along with their splendid designers do an absolutely amazing job of coordinating ideas to create just the most simplistic and awesome project collaboration applications. The new Basecamp has got to be one of the least resistant applications I’ve ever used (you get up and going <strong>so</strong> fast).</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>UX: what it means for your users, and you</h1><p><a href="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/Screen-shot-2012-05-09-at-5.34.59-PM.png"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-33101" height="450" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/Screen-shot-2012-05-09-at-5.34.59-PM.png" title="Screen shot 2012-05-09 at 5.34.59 PM" width="615" /></a></p><p>We’ve touched on this a bit throughout the article thus-far, but it is important enough to dedicate it’s own subsection to. Simply and straight-forwardly put, if you don’t have emotion on your site your readers will become emotionless and indifferent towards it. The more your readers get from the feeling of your site or product, the more they are engaged on a cerebral level and the more they’ll want to use it, to comeback, to tell friends, or just overly delight you with compliments about your services/product/or site.</p><p>The thing is though, it is often a catch-22 scenario. We are building in pixels, gradients, shine, and artificial depth, and that can often cause us to become complacent when it comes to having a “feeling” toward our products. The software-as-a-service market really helped improve this, and before then especially it was really hit or miss.</p><p>Now though, it is starting to become more jarring when a service doesn’t help you feel something for it. That’s the catch-22: even though this is a flat pixel filled world we work in where we never get to physically touch what we build (ever), we still should feel that it is a part of us and an extension of ourselves. Designers put that much emotion into what they do every day, well the good ones do, and it really is apparent. This is going to become especially important as the web continues to grow and mature over the next few years.</p><p>In fact, I can see a web where all sites and products are designed in such a delightful and emotional way that they literally can become the magazines of years past. Web 2.0 seemed to be all about shine on logos, and social interaction online as an experiment — but the future of the web is much more important and critical. In a few years the maturity of the web will demand nothing but maturity from all products and sites that live on it, and rightfully so. This will cut out the sub-par sites or products <strong><em>very</em></strong> fast. You will pick your company’s intranet, your to-do list, your form creator, and whatever other tools you need based on the <em>feelings</em> they give you and thereby also the functionality therein.</p><p>So, wait a minute, if it’s all about feeling doesn’t that lead away from functionality? Should I have related those two things? In my opinion, yes I should have, because they are incredibly co-dependent. As the maturity of the web increases, and thereby the robust maturity of product design increases, so to does the maturity of product functionality increase. It is an organic and interdependent umbrella effect.</p><p>None of us want to hit our heads on the roof, so what if that roof was non-existent? What if it was up at 10,000 feet? Well, you could do anything - in the world of pixels where gravity doesn’t exist. Relating that all back to UX vs UI designers is really important, because they will be the pushers of this mature web.</p><p>Yes, of course the protocols, database architecture, and engineers will as well, but ultimately the people that create things that are so unbelievably mature looking, well, they are the people that attract worldwide customers.</p><p>And this isn’t just about images or design and CSS, it is also about copywriting. Take a look at the copy in the MailChimp image above. It is simple, clean, sleek, and has no BS involved. That is how copy should be, and will be, when we require it to be so. You could be one of those people that helps us along our way, by requiring it to be so.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>UI: the line and its curves</h1><p>UI Is a fascinating concept, and one that has really revolutionized the web as we’ve known it in the web 2.0 days. As you could no doubt tell, I have done a lot of praising of UX over the course of this article, but I have to say that without the core tools of UI it wouldn’t really mean anything. Remember how fractals work from science class? How could a crystal be formed without the first center section having been formed first?</p><p>When everyone decided that true beauty online meant a lot, it really took a lot of us by the reigns (horses again, I know), but it actually did. We all took notice, we all started to become obsessed with these products that were designed with these amazing little UI facets that sort of have become overly worn by now. jQuery has had an effect, responsive media queries in CSS have had an effect, so too has the actual design.</p><p>I think one of the things about us as people is that we really don’t take things seriously until they are fully polished. And yeah, this could relate to the previous paragraph about the maturity of the web but it also relates even more to how UI has evolved.</p><p>For instance, we never started to take the internet as a communication method until we got professional email and IM clients. We never started to take cars seriously until Henry Ford came up with the production line. We never started to take ice cream seriously until Cold Stone. Okay, maybe the last one was a stretch — but you get the point.</p><p>We relish maturity, and when it comes to UI nothing really has grown the user facing (front-end) web more to what it is today, <em>presently</em>,<em> </em> than UI design has. We are now taking the web more seriously than we ever have, and that will no doubt just continue to increase. Consider how much we do now online. We manage our tasks, meetings, watch video, interact via networking, gaming, and literally do anything we can online. Not only is it better on natural resources, it is one of the more fun ways to do things. Ask yourself why it’s so fun, and the answer you will invariably get back is that it is often so beautiful.</p><p>We are limited in our day to day offline lives with the resources we have like wood, gas, oil, paper, etc. — but online we are completely free. We are only limited by the creativity of designers and programmers. We are moving into a new wave of online access, and the things we do therein and I think we should give a collective “Thank you” to UI designers for that (and engineers too! I am not leaving you out, but this article is about designers after all).</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>UI and UX: the proof is in the pudding</h1><p><a href="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/Screen-shot-2012-05-09-at-6.54.13-PM1.png"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-33111" height="450" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/Screen-shot-2012-05-09-at-6.54.13-PM1.png" title="Screen shot 2012-05-09 at 6.54.13 PM" width="615" /></a></p><p>I am not one of those who enjoys continuing the bantering that goes on about these two fields, but in reality the terms are completely different. Do not let a job posting, or anyone tell you that UI is equal to UX.</p><p>The image above is what I would consider UI work, but I don’t get any sort of feeling from being there or looking at it. Though, it has nice polished UI, the reason I don’t get a feeling is because it is a facet of UX, but it isn’t UX in totality. UX is the totality of the feeling I get from seeing my accounts all in one place on <a href="http://www.mint.com/">Mint</a>. The UI is one of the graphs on the page.</p><p>The UI elements of a page seem to have been down trotted throughout most of this article, but please let me restate that is not the impression I am trying to give off. I love UI elements, and once again it is super important that we realize that UI is one very important part of UX. UI can make your site look beautiful, think ZenDesk, and yet without UX it can be like Digg is without the community. It is emotionless. If there is no community behind UI without UX to re-state the emotion, then there is literally not going to be any. Yes, sometimes good UI guys are so good that they inadvertently create UX without knowing it, but they are few and far between.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>Bringing it all together</h1><p>Really though, talking about these two fields in isolation is great for a bit of mental acumen, but they are completely related <strong>when it comes to working on them</strong>. They are fields that should never be separated in the work-place, and they are fields where the two creatives who perform these jobs shouldn’t work with different directives.</p><p>There is an interdependent aspect to a lot of what we do in the design world, but this really isn’t one of those times. Similarly to how a Creative Director or Scrum Master doesn’t want to leave his team to run on their own, the UI and UX parties should never run on their own without coordination from the other. I firmly believe in that from past experience.</p><p>In summation I think that UI and UX is a topic of much debate, and one that honestly is true to form when it comes to a debate. It enhances the knowledge of both parties in the debate on both topics that are subject to it. It is really an amazing situational topic, and one that you should discuss with your designer friends if you can or when you get a chance. I know I’ve had many a dinner conversation over this exactly, and it can turn out to be quite heated all simply because one believes another’s metaphors aren’t accurately displaying what the difference is (hence why I put the disclaimer at the top of the article).</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p><em><strong>So what do you think of all this? Do you fall on the side that they are completely different and should be kept that way, or do you feel they are the same topic with different terms unnecessarily used to cover it? Some people even go so far as to say they don’t need a UX designer because any good UI designer would also do good UX, do you fall into that camp?</strong></em></p><p><em>Dain Miller is a Sr. Engineer at a Chicago based start-up, though he is still accepting freelance projects. He has a passion for responsive design and Ruby on Rails. You can follow him on twitter at <a href="http://twitter.com/_dain/">@_dain</a>, or find him on <a href="http://about.me/cdainmiler/">about.me</a>.</em></p><p><br /><br /><table height="20" style="border-top: 1px solid #d7d7d7; border-bottom: 1px solid #d7d7d7;" width="100%"><tr><td valign="center"> <a href="http://www.mightydeals.com/deal/flashmint-responsive-web-templates.html?ref=inwidget"><font color="#e64f32" face="Arial" size="3"><b>10 Premium and Fully Responsive Web Templates - only $17!</b></font></a></td><td width="90"> <a href="http://www.mightydeals.com/?ref=inwidget"><br /> <img border="0" height="40" src="http://mightydeals.com/web/images/widget-logo.png" width="90" /><br /> </a></td></tr></table><p><br /></p> <a href="http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/06/ui-vs-ux-whats-the-difference/">Source</a>

<p><img alt="our favorite tweets of the week may 28 to june 3, 2012" class="alignleft" height="160" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/thumbnail.jpg" width="200" />Every week <strong>we tweet a lot of interesting stuff</strong> highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers.</p><p>The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to <strong>follow us on Twitter</strong>, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the best tweets that we sent out this past week.</p><p>Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that we tweeted about, so don’t miss out.</p><p>To keep up to date with all the cool links, simply <strong>follow us</strong> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/designerdepot" rel="" target="_blank">@DesignerDepot</a><span id="more-34021"></span></p><p>Create a Cool Blog Post Date Icon with <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/search/%23CSS" title="#CSS">#<strong>CSS</strong></a> <a href="http://t.co/G0Ao7e0p" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/bbPFi">http://ow.ly/bbPFi</a></p><p><img alt="" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/dateicon.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Gotta click this! The Museum of Endangered Sounds (made by obsolete gadgets) <a href="http://t.co/yo2bTxso" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://savethesounds.info/">http://savethesounds.info/</a> /via <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/ilovetypography" rel="">@<strong>ilovetypography</strong></a></p><p><img alt="" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/endangeredsounds.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>A good web form design is relevant. Need reasons? <a href="http://t.co/0UTBwRvY" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/bbUNi">http://ow.ly/bbUNi</a></p><p><img alt="" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/formdesign.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Everything you need to know about web fonts, by <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/TheTypeStudio" rel="">@<strong>TheTypeStudio</strong></a>: <a href="http://t.co/8GQcWupW" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/bbTcp">http://ow.ly/bbTcp</a> /via <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/netmag" rel="">@<strong>netmag</strong></a></p><p><img alt="" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/webtype.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>The Art of Negative Space By Tang Yau Hoong is a universe you must enter <a href="http://t.co/RjzS9vRI" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/bbVbB">http://ow.ly/bbVbB</a></p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/negativespace.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Dear ICO: This Is Why Web Developers Hate You <a href="http://t.co/LzXrBuKC" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/bbVgg">http://ow.ly/bbVgg</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/search/%23cookielaw" title="#cookielaw">#<strong>cookielaw</strong></a></p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/dearico.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Impress.js is a jQuery plugin used to create stunning visualizations <a href="http://t.co/Jxmkq2Yh" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/bd840">http://ow.ly/bd840</a></p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/impressjs.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Cool tutorial <a href="http://t.co/5Ehgqkl5" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/bdauv">http://ow.ly/bdauv</a> Learn How to Create Apple’s Famous Linen Texture</p><p><img alt="" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/linentexture.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Develop A One-Of-A-Kind CSS/JS-Based Game Portfolio <a href="http://t.co/2TyaxQto" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/bd6Z8">http://ow.ly/bd6Z8</a> /via <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/smashingmag" rel="">@<strong>smashingmag</strong></a></p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/gameportfolio.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Creating Inline SVGs with HTML5 <a href="http://t.co/hSWgq4D7" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://su.pr/1KHwRg">http://su.pr/1KHwRg</a></p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/inlinesvg.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>MUD: Minimum Usable Design <a href="http://t.co/vTRue9ji" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/beU0s">http://ow.ly/beU0s</a></p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/mud.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Cool! Adobe launches week-long live broadcast <a href="http://t.co/kqd1ILDi" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/beW6s">http://ow.ly/beW6s</a></p><p><img alt="" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/adobe.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Coworking Spaces for Freelancers Sounds Like a Great Idea <a href="http://t.co/rRmQaUNF" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/beXQc">http://ow.ly/beXQc</a> What do you think?</p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/coworking.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Mohammed Kanoo’s Portraits Of Celebrities Wearing Arab Clothing Are Bold and Interesting <a href="http://t.co/w7xBoXoy" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/bf0Fp">http://ow.ly/bf0Fp</a></p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/arab.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>The DNA Of Idea Execution: How Creatives Are Working Today <a href="http://t.co/aWtJV3Pb" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/bgqFG">http://ow.ly/bgqFG</a> *Great read</p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/dna.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>A Brief History of John Baldessari <a href="http://t.co/pqzOLMz3" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/bgs7Z">http://ow.ly/bgs7Z</a> Cool, funny, cerebral, sardonic, provocative - narrated by Tom Waits</p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/baldessari.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Take a look at the amazing illustrations by Yuri Gvozdenko <a href="http://t.co/bZIiIzFL" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/bgwx9">http://ow.ly/bgwx9</a></p><p><img alt="" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/gvozdenko.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>So the olden days were weird. Want proof? Check out Black and WTF <a href="http://t.co/VoKP0jZm" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/bi4Qo">http://ow.ly/bi4Qo</a></p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/oldendays.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Pure Awesomeness <a href="http://t.co/sNBAImHL" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/bi4W8">http://ow.ly/bi4W8</a> Astronaut Tweeting Images From Space</p><p><img alt="" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/astronaut.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>The ampersand has captured the hearts of many. The result? A great collection of artistic interpretations: <a href="http://t.co/ad24TsmY" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/bi840">http://ow.ly/bi840</a></p><p><img alt="" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/ampersand.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Fashion, manga & animals: the art of Melissa Haslam is gorgeous and romantic <a href="http://t.co/fA9vwoPA" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/bi5aR">http://ow.ly/bi5aR</a></p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-6312/melissahaslam.jpg" /></p><p><em><strong>Want more? No problem! Keep track of all our tweets by following us <a href="http://www.twitter.com/designerdepot" rel="" target="_blank">@DesignerDepot</a></strong></em></p><p><br /><br /><table height="20" style="border-top: 1px solid #d7d7d7; border-bottom: 1px solid #d7d7d7;" width="100%"><tr><td valign="center"> <a href="http://www.mightydeals.com/deal/flashmint-responsive-web-templates.html?ref=inwidget"><font color="#e64f32" face="Arial" size="3"><b>10 Premium and Fully Responsive Web Templates - only $17!</b></font></a></td><td width="90"> <a href="http://www.mightydeals.com/?ref=inwidget"><br /> <img border="0" height="40" src="http://mightydeals.com/web/images/widget-logo.png" width="90" /><br /> </a></td></tr></table><p><br /></p> <a href="http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/06/our-favorite-tweets-of-the-week-may-28-june-3-2012/">Source</a>

<p><a href="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/thumb11.jpg"><img alt="" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-33517" height="160" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/thumb11.jpg" title="thumb" width="200" /></a>Every week we feature <strong>a set of comics</strong> created exclusively for WDD.</p><p>The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers.</p><p>These great cartoons are created by<strong> Jerry King</strong>, an<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; color: #081852; font-size: x-small;"> </span> award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world today.</p><p>So for a few moments, take a break from your daily routine, have a laugh and <strong>enjoy these funny cartoons</strong>.</p><p>Feel free to leave your comments and suggestions below as well as any related stories of your own…<span id="more-33512"></span></p><h1>Another *&%^$! contest</h1><p><a href="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/13.jpg"><img alt="" class="image-border" height="450" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/13.jpg" title="1" width="615" /></a></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>Cancel that follow up</h1><p><a href="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/2.jpg"><img alt="" class="image-border" height="450" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/2.jpg" title="2" width="615" /></a></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>Upgraded to small</h1><p><a href="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/33.jpg"><img alt="" class="image-border" height="450" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/33.jpg" title="3" width="615" /></a></p><p><em><strong>Can you relate to these situations</strong><strong>? Please share your funny stories and comments below…</strong></em></p><p><em><strong><br /> </strong></em></p><p><br /><br /><table height="20" style="border-top: 1px solid #d7d7d7; border-bottom: 1px solid #d7d7d7;" width="100%"><tr><td valign="center"> <a href="http://www.mightydeals.com/deal/flashmint-responsive-web-templates.html?ref=inwidget"><font color="#e64f32" face="Arial" size="3"><b>10 Premium and Fully Responsive Web Templates - only $17!</b></font></a></td><td width="90"> <a href="http://www.mightydeals.com/?ref=inwidget"><br /> <img border="0" height="40" src="http://mightydeals.com/web/images/widget-logo.png" width="90" /><br /> </a></td></tr></table><p><br /></p> <a href="http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/06/comics-of-the-week-132/">Source</a>

<p><a href="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/thumb16.jpg"><img alt="" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-33887" height="160" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/thumb16.jpg" title="thumb" width="200" /></a>It’s Friday and we’re back with yet another freebie!</p><p>This week’s freebie is a set of 50 minimalist icons designed exclusively for Webdesigner Depot by <strong>Patrik Larsoon</strong> from <a href="http://simplypixels.net/" rel="" target="_blank">SimplyPixels</a>, a self taught web designer from Sweden with a passion for creativity and design.</p><p>Icons are provided as transparent PNG files and are free for use in personal and commercial projects, with no attribution required.</p><p>Redistribution is not allowed, so if you’d like to share this one with your friends, kindly direct them to this page so that they can download their own copy from here.</p><p>The full preview and download info is after the jump…. Enjoy!<span id="more-33885"></span></p><p><a href="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/preview-simplycons.jpg"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-33888" height="289" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/preview-simplycons.jpg" title="preview-simplycons" width="615" /></a></p><p></p><p><br /><br /><table height="20" style="border-top: 1px solid #d7d7d7; border-bottom: 1px solid #d7d7d7;" width="100%"><tr><td valign="center"> <a href="http://www.mightydeals.com/deal/flashmint-responsive-web-templates.html?ref=inwidget"><font color="#e64f32" face="Arial" size="3"><b>10 Premium and Fully Responsive Web Templates - only $17!</b></font></a></td><td width="90"> <a href="http://www.mightydeals.com/?ref=inwidget"><br /> <img border="0" height="40" src="http://mightydeals.com/web/images/widget-logo.png" width="90" /><br /> </a></td></tr></table><p><br /></p> <a href="http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/06/free-download-simplycons-icon-set/">Source</a>

<p><img alt="create a custom theme demo site" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-32964" height="160" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/WDD1-ThemeDemo-thumbnail.jpg" title="WDD1-ThemeDemo-thumbnail" width="200" />WordPress is the world’s most popular content management software solution, with more than 60 million users around the world. With a community that large, it’s only logical that the development community is appropriately robust itself.</p><p>As adoption of WordPress continues to increase worldwide, more and more theme developers are bringing their private skills to the public marketplace.</p><p>They do this by offering custom WordPress themes either for free or for a small price, and they demonstrate each theme’s appearance using a demo site.</p><p>This is far different from simply displaying an image of the theme in action. Instead, a theme demo site actually lets users peruse an entire, complete WordPress installation with the theme in action. This actually helps to sell users on a theme, as enabling them to use the theme itself proves its usefulness and high quality.</p><p>This can be done by any user of WordPress 3.0 (or higher) more than a single extra plugin. All it requires is enabling one of the new WordPress “sleeper” features that goes unnoticed, and unused, by all but the most advance WordPress customers. Here’s how it’s done.<span id="more-32963"></span></p><h1>WordPress networks: the key to a theme demo site with WordPress 3.x</h1><p>Previous versions of WordPress before the 3.x line of releases were big on using plugins to make a theme demo site. And this process wasn’t simplified by simply installing one plugin; instead, the vast array of features a user required often meant that they’d have to enable two, three, or even four plugins and widgets to get the job done. With WordPress Networks, this is essentially a deprecated way of creating a theme demo site.</p><p>Enabling WordPress Networks will require a bit of PHP knowledge, as well as some basic coding of server files like .htaccess. It will use the Dashboard to perform most of the setup, and then the user will simply modify a few files to complete the process. After that, new sites can be created to display the content of WordPress themes within one website.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h2>Step 1: modifying WP-Config.php to enable multi-site installations</h2><p>By default, the WordPress Networks feature is not enabled. Furthermore, it cannot be enabled simply by using the WordPress Dashboard alone. Instead, it must first be enabled by adding a line of code to “wp-config.php.” From there, further customization is allowed in the Dashboard.</p><p>Using an FTP client, navigate to the root directory of a WordPress installation and download wp-config.php. Open this file in a text editor, and then add the following line of code before the end of the file:</p><pre>define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);</pre><p><img alt="" class="image-border" height="420" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/WDD1-ThemeDemo-1.jpg" title="WDD1-ThemeDemo-1" width="615" /></p><p>This simply instructs WordPress to enable the Networks administration panel and setup process. Save the file and upload it to the server; next, log in to the WordPress Dashboard.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h2>Step 2: enabling and configuring WordPress networks</h2><p>Once the Dashboard is open, click the “Tools” heading in the Dashboard sidebar and click on the new “Networks Setup” administration option that is listed here. This will open a page full of settings as they pertain to the new network. These must be carefully configured, as they directly relate to URL structure and site navigation.</p><p>The most important of all these choices is the one between subdomains and subfolders. Each theme will eventually have its own WordPress installation, so each theme’s demo site will be accessed in one of these two ways. A subdomain will appear as <code>"http://theme-name.domain.com"</code> while a subfolder will appear as <code>"http://domain.com/theme-name"</code>. Choose carefully and deliberately, as this cannot be changed after the form is submitted.</p><p>Next, fill out the remaining details on the page. These details include the following:</p><ol><li>Server Address</li><li>Network Title</li><li>Administrator’s E-mail Address</li></ol><p>With all of the above details accurate, it’s time to click “Install” and allow the process to complete. WordPress will turn a single-site installation into a network and it will then print out a set of instructions that must be manually performed by the administrator.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h2>Step 3: completing the process manually</h2><p>Unfortunately, the WordPress Dashboard has its limitations when drastically changing a site from a single-site operation to one that contains tens or hundreds of theme-based new sites. While it performs much of the work on its own, it will require the administrator to configure the site’s .htaccess file, a well as the wp-config.php file. Further, administrators will have to setup a media directory that will contain uploads from all of the networked sites. In a theme installation, this is likely to go unused, but it must still be set.</p><p>The .htaccess changes will determine the permalink structure of the site as it relates to the subdomain or subfolders option chosen in the first part of the process. Because this code is based on WordPress’ settings, present location, and user input, it is very hard to change and should be copied and pasted exactly.</p><p>Changes to the wp-config.php file must be added to that file right below where the “enable multi-site” code was placed in the first step of this process. It’s important to keep all of the code relating to WordPress Networks grouped together in the same part of the configuration file.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h2>Step 4: administration of the WordPress network</h2><p>With these changes having been made, it’s time to log back into the Dashboard interface and observe how the interface has changed along with the site’s function. First and foremost, there is now a “Network Admin” link where there was previously a link to the WordPress site’s index page. This will allow for adding new sites to the network and administration of those that have already been created.</p><p>There is a Dashboard-like interface solely for this purpose, and users should familiarize themselves with it before proceeding with creating the actual content of their WordPress theme demonstration site.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>Using the WordPress networks feature to create a theme demo site</h1><p>Now that WordPress Networks has been successfully installed and users are familiar with the Dashboard administration interface that configures sites within the network, it’s time to get moving on creating the actual demonstration sites that users will see when they preview a theme on the site.</p><p>First and foremost, make sure that all of the themes demonstrated are uploaded with the main WordPress themes folder that was previously used to theme the sole site within the Dashboard. This folder, as a reminder, can be found here:</p><pre>/public_html/wp-content/themes/</pre><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/WDD1-ThemeDemo-2.jpg" title="WDD1-ThemeDemo-2" /></p><p>Every theme folder should be named in all-lowercase letters, with just one word or a hyphen between words. With this step completed, the work begins.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h2>Step 1: create a new network site for every WordPress theme to be demonstrated</h2><p>The process of creating a WordPress theme demonstration site is a little tedious from here on out, and this first step is perhaps the most tedious of them all. Using the WordPress Networks Dashboard, create a new site for every single theme that will be demonstrated to users. Make sure that the site’s title is the same as the demonstrated theme’s name, as this will make the demo site more functional and user-friendly.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h2>Step 2: apply a theme to each new WordPress network site</h2><p>Perhaps just as tedious as the first step is applying a unique theme to each of the new sites that was just created. This can also be done within the Networks Dashboard; navigate to the site that needs to be themed, click “Appearance” and then “Themes.” Activate the theme and then move on to the next site within the network.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h2>Step 3: make sure every theme links to every other theme</h2><p>The usability of a theme demonstration site can be improved by making sure that each demo theme links to all of the other themes within a website. Thanks to the new WordPress Networks feature, this is actually ridiculously easy to do. It uses a WordPress widget that is designed for the Networks feature itself in order to link to all sites within a network.</p><p>In the main WordPress site’s Dashboard, click the “Plugins” sidebar heading and go to “Add New.” In this administration panel, search the WordPress plugins site for the Diamond MultiSite Widget. Download, install, and activate this widget. Then navigate to the Networks Dashboard and apply it to each site within that network. This can be done by clicking the “Appearance” sidebar heading and then navigating to “Widgets.” Drag the new “Page Listing” widget into the sidebar (preferably near the top) of the theme. Repeat this process for every theme demo within the network.</p><p>Every theme should also contain a “Back” link which returns the user to the theme index page so that they might choose another option to preview. This can be placed in the theme’s sidebar or wherever else the user prefers to have this link displayed to end users.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>Almost done: bringing multi-site theme demo pages to the WordPress index</h1><p>At this point, the truly hard work of creating a theme demonstration site is actually completed. The WordPress Networks feature has been installed and successfully setup, the sites have been created and themed, and they all link to each other using a drag-and-drop WordPress widget. In place of tedium is now a simple process of linking to each site on an index page which lists all of the themes to be downloaded or purchased.</p><p>This can be due however a user wishes to complete it; most prefer to pair a small screenshot with links to preview, download, or buy the theme itself.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>Automating the site creation process with a plugin</h1><p>Of course, even built-in WordPress features might need a little help from time to time. For users who prefer not to manually create a new WordPress Networks site instance for every theme they intend to show off, there is a plugin that will make the process virtually automatic and unattended.</p><p>That plugin is called “Replicator” and is, once again, installed via the main WordPress Dashboard instead of the Networks Dashboard. This plugin essentially allows a user to “clone” a created WordPress Site within the WordPress Networks feature. That means things like the MultiSite widget in the sidebar, a “back” link, and other site settings, will be automatically filled in and placed; customizations will need to be made, of course, but it’s nice to be able to create 35 new sites with the click of one button, rather than clicking that one button 35 separate times.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>Troubleshooting: common problems with WordPress networks installations</h1><p>Despite being included as a standard WordPress feature instead of as a plugin, the WordPress Networks feature has been known to give some users a headache by not displaying their sites or placing them at unpredictable URLs. The largest problem that seems to arise is that a user will enable the “subdomain” setting during the WordPress Networks setup process, but they’ll forget to create those subdomains (or enable them) in a site’s actual administration area like cPanel or the Plesk Panel. Failure to enable subdomains, or create the subdomains for use by WordPress, can cause links within the newly-created network to return 404 errors, timeout errors, and other glitches that will send users away.</p><p>Before heading for the hills, tearing your hair out, or finding a developer community to offer assistance, make sure that a site’s .htaccess file has been properly configured and that subdomains have been enabled within a site’s root control panel. Furthermore, ensure that your web hosting package supports the large number of subdomains that you wish to use; otherwise, you may need to upgrade to a better hosting package (or web host altogether) or reconfigure the site to use subfolders instead.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>Easy and straightforward way of selling themes</h1><p>Thanks to the new, built-in WordPress Networks feature, displaying multiple themes in a fully-usable website interface has never been easier. With attention to detail and careful configuration of both a WordPress installation and the server settings for the website itself, users will find it exceedingly easy to promote and even sell their creative works.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p><em><strong>If you sell themes, do you have a theme demo site?</strong></em></p><p><em>Vladislav Davidzon is the principal of a US-based <a href="http://www.davidzon.com"> online marketing consultancy</a>, developing integrative solutions through high impact search engine optimized WordPress websites for socially responsible customers of all sizes around the world. For more details visit <a href="http://www.davidzon.com">Vladislav Davidzon & Associates</a>.<br /> </em></p><p><br /><br /><table height="20" style="border-top: 1px solid #d7d7d7; border-bottom: 1px solid #d7d7d7;" width="100%"><tr><td valign="center"> <a href="http://www.mightydeals.com/deal/flashmint-responsive-web-templates.html?ref=inwidget"><font color="#e64f32" face="Arial" size="3"><b>10 Premium and Fully Responsive Web Templates - only $17!</b></font></a></td><td width="90"> <a href="http://www.mightydeals.com/?ref=inwidget"><br /> <img border="0" height="40" src="http://mightydeals.com/web/images/widget-logo.png" width="90" /><br /> </a></td></tr></table><p><br /></p> <a href="http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/05/how-to-make-a-wordpress-demo-site/">Source</a>

<p><img alt="justintime prototyper review" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-33278" height="160" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/thumb8.jpg" title="thumb" width="200" />If you build mobile apps, you almost certainly spend a lot of time building prototypes and wireframes.</p><p>And the more interactive you can make them, the easier it is to create the final versions of your apps without confusion on the part of your developers.</p><p><a href="http://www.justinmind.com/prototyper/">Justinmind Prototyper</a> is an incredibly powerful prototyping app that includes all the functionality you could possibly want in an app prototyping solution, whether you create apps for mobile devices, the web, or even desktop environments.</p><p>It works for website prototyping, too!<span id="more-33277"></span></p><p>Prototyper is incredibly easy to use and intuitive. You can start out by specifying your viewport parameters (there are presets for a variety of common devices), which then displays as a guide on-screen. From there, just add the design elements you need to build your app’s UI.</p><p>Design elements include everything from shapes to things like form fields and menus, making it easy to mock up your UI design without having to start from scratch. All you have to do is drag and drop them into place within your design.</p><p><a href="http://www.justinmind.com/prototyper/"><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/widgets.jpg" title="widgets" /></a></p><p>But the drag and drop functionality doesn’t end with just placing elements. To create links and interactions, you do the same. To define a link, just drag the component to the screen you want to link it to. Add comments the same way (just drag and drop them onto components).</p><p>Guidelines make designing your wireframe a lot easier and more precise (meaning it’s easier to convert it to a finalized design later on). The ability to round corners, crop images, or apply color gradients means your final wireframes are a lot more visually appealing than a simple sketch. Create entire pixel-perfect designs right within Prototyper, saving time down the road.</p><p>You can add images to your designs quickly and easily, too. Just drag and drop the images you want from design programs like Photoshop, or directly from your browser. There’s even a color capture tool so you can grab precise color values for your design.</p><p>You can even create your own widgets with Prototyper and save them to your own widget libraries. Just group items together and then drag them to the widget library, it’s that easy! And there are already widget libraries for iPhone, SAP, iPad, Blackberry, and Android.</p><p>One of the best features of Prototyper is the immediate simulation of your prototypes. Just click the “Simulate” button and you’ll see a simulation of your prototype’s behavior instantly. You even get the ability to <a href="http://blog.justinmind.com/justinmind-prototypes-inside-a-real-iphone/">test your prototypes on mobile devices</a>.</p><p><a href="http://www.justinmind.com/prototyper/"><img alt="" class="image-border" height="450" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/simulate.jpg" title="simulate" width="615" /></a></p><p>Once your prototype’s design is finished, you can simulate interactions to get a feel for how the app will actually <em>work</em>. You can show and hide content, change styles, or conditional navigation without having to write code, and triggered by a number of different events, including Onclick, OnMouseOver, and more. You can also simulate form and data grid behavior. Even add validation or messages without having to write code or create a database! Create if-then conditions without coding, too! And of course Prototyper includes <strong>support for mobile gestures in your prototypes</strong>.</p><p>Prototyper also gives you the ability to simulate complex data like shopping carts or data bases, something a lot of other wireframing apps lack entirely. Being able to show your clients or other team members exactly how something like a shopping cart will work on the finished site can make it much easier to get key sign-offs on the early design.</p><p>Make a change in one area, and you can apply it globally by using style guides for your wireframes. This is a huge deal for complicated prototypes that might feature a large number of different screens. You won’t have to waste time changing the same thing on fifteen different mockups. You can also share data globally using variables.</p><p>You can even use animation utilities to add animations to your wireframes. Use these for things like dynamic messages, progress bars, or any other type of movement required. Plus, you can add video or other media content from the web, including interactive Google Maps, YouTube videos, and more.</p><p>A prototype is only as valuable as it is useful. That’s why Prototyper has a number of features that help you get from prototype to finished app or site. You can export all of the information in your web prototype to an MS Word or Open Office document, which is perfect for creating a design and development spec. It’ll include screens, interactions, business rules, working scenarios, Data Masters, and comments, plus information on the prototype itself. This alone can save hours of time.</p><p>If you’re building a website or HTML-based app, you can <strong>export your wireframes directly to HTML</strong> with all of the interactions, conditions, and validations defined and functional. This can then be sent to your clients or users to be tested right within their browser.</p><p>You can also integrate your prototype with other testing tools, and publish your prototype online to get feedback using online comments. These are valuable tools for taking your project from the prototyping stage to the finished design, seamlessly within your workflow. You can even create your own plugins to extend the functionality of Prototyper.</p><p>Justinmind provides a ton of great <a href="http://www.justinmind.com/prototyper/learn-build">learning resources</a> to help you get started with Prototyper, including great video tutorials and downloadable PDF tutorials and a user guide. You can download widget libraries for mobile and web apps, sketches and desktop apps, speeding up your prototyping process.</p><p>Prototyper comes in two editions: the free version, which includes basic web widgets, interactive widgets for iPhone, Android, and iPad, and link interactions; or the Pro version, which includes all of the above, plus rich interactions, conditional rules, validations, form and data grid simulations, variables, masters and templates, and HTML and document generation. There’s a 30-day free trial available with the Pro version, which is normally $495 for a perpetual license with unlimited wireframes. Both the Pro and free versions work with Windows XP and Windows 7, as well as Mac OS X 10.5 and newer.</p><p>You can check out <a href="http://www.justinmind.com/prototyper/examples">examples</a> of existing prototypes on their website, and even download them to check out right in Prototyper. It’s a fantastic app for anyone who creates dynamic applications, regardless of the platform.</p><p><em><br /> </em></p><p><em><strong>Reviewed exclusively for WDD by Cameron Chapman</strong></em><br /> <em>[Disclaimer: This post is a sponsored review, the opinions expressed in the article are the author's only.]</em></p><p><br /><br /><table height="20" style="border-top: 1px solid #d7d7d7; border-bottom: 1px solid #d7d7d7;" width="100%"><tr><td valign="center"> <a href="http://www.mightydeals.com/deal/flashmint-responsive-web-templates.html?ref=inwidget"><font color="#e64f32" face="Arial" size="3"><b>10 Premium and Fully Responsive Web Templates - only $17!</b></font></a></td><td width="90"> <a href="http://www.mightydeals.com/?ref=inwidget"><br /> <img border="0" height="40" src="http://mightydeals.com/web/images/widget-logo.png" width="90" /><br /> </a></td></tr></table><p><br /></p> <a href="http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/05/review-justinmind-prototyper-faster-simpler-prototyping/">Source</a>

<p><a href="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/02/telecommuting.thumb_.jpg"><img alt="" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-29526" height="160" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/02/telecommuting.thumb_.jpg" title="telecommuting.thumb" width="200" /></a>When I was a kid, I remember driving with my father during the gas crisis of the early 1970s. We drove past lines of cars that went on for about half a mile or more.</p><p>We would stop at a local gas station where he knew the owner. The owner of the station closed his business and sold gas by the tank full only to good customers, by appointment only. God forbid you drove far away from home and needed gas elsewhere and had to wait on line for a couple of hours for the maximum half tank stations would sell while customers shot each other over the precious juice. It was just like The Road Warrior only people were more civil in that movie and the gas they killed each other for cost nothing.</p><p>It was a bad time but it forced people and society to change. When gas was outrageously priced at a dollar a gallon, consumers opted to buy smaller cars and dump their gas-guzzlers that were the size of Rhode Island.</p><p>There were articles and news stories spotlighting the practice of mixing errands so one could save gas and the government preached trying the four-day work-week.</p><p><span id="more-29523"></span></p><p>The proposal was simple and brilliant. Businesses would extend the 9-5 workday by two hours, four days a week and be closed on Fridays. The 40-hour week would still remain but by cutting the need for commuting and the energy used by an office full of people, there would be substantial savings and lessen the dependence on foreign oil. With every office closed on the same day, there would be no loss of business inertia.</p><p><a href="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/02/telecommuting.007.gif"><img alt="" class="image-border" height="243" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/02/telecommuting.007.gif" title="telecommuting.007" width="615" /></a></p><p><a href="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/02/telecommuting.008.gif"><img alt="" class="image-border" height="360" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/02/telecommuting.008.gif" title="telecommuting.008" width="615" /></a></p><p>Naturally, business turned down the idea, most probably because they couldn’t fathom such a change or going against established Dickensian workhouse ideals.</p><p>Basically, they couldn’t give up the power over workers and, as we have seen over the past decade or so, the Dolly Parton song, that goes, “working nine to five…” is so outdated that twenty-something workers wonder if it’s a joke. Well, here’s the punchline to that joke: The “lunch hour” use to be an HOUR! I guess no business has the audacity to rename it, “lunch fifteen minutes” or “why-are-you-chewing-get-back-to-work!”</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1><strong>It’s all about power</strong></h1><p>Why didn’t businesses want to adapt to a great idea that would cut energy usage by one fifth? Power. It represented a loss of control over employees.</p><p>At one large corporation in a part of the country where snow was more ice and road clearing was not a consideration of the local government, employees dreaded the winter months and there was always the question of what would happen when six or more inches of frozen water fell upon the city. The corporate newsletter always answered the question with the flippant line, “people ask what we consider a snow day. We call it a vacation day!”</p><p><a href="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/02/telecommuting.006.gif"><img alt="" class="image-border" height="409" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/02/telecommuting.006.gif" title="telecommuting.006" width="615" /></a></p><p>If you didn’t show up, you were docked one of your vacation days, so we all trudged into the office, usually to find the department manager was “working from home.” I could never figure out how someone manages a staff from home but after years of employees suffering dented cars, concussions on slippery sidewalks on corporate property and the fear of death on the commute to work, the company adapted to the stance of people “working something out with their managers.” The usual arrangement was to work three extra days to receive one day in compensation.</p><p>The evolution in policy was, I suspect, driven more from the fear of an employee revolt and Romanoff-style executions of the executives and lawsuits than concern for dead employees. Lock-downs in employee cubicles would happen long before the freedom and flexibility of telecommuting.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1><strong>What exactly IS telecommuting?</strong></h1><p>It’s not a hard concept. A worker who has the job description and skills which allow that employee to work independently in an office situation, sets him or her up to work remotely from home. It’s just like lock-down in your cubicle or freelancing from home. You are driven by deadlines. Complete them on time or lose a client…in this case, your job.</p><p>For years, people have emailed jpegs to clients for approval, spoken on group calls, and Skyped for instant feedback and visual affirmation. I’ve done quite a bit of teleconferencing and no one ever suspects that I’m naked from the waist down. Aside from that bit of too much information, the ability to work independently as a freelancer translates well to full-time telecommuting.</p><p>The hard concept of telecommuting is getting your boss to understand why it will work and how it will benefit the company and employees.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1><strong>Why telecommuting is good for everyone</strong></h1><p>Organizations around the world are implementing telecommuting with enthusiasm. According to a 2008 study, 45 million Americans already telecommute at least one day a week. BT, a leading provider of communications solutions, hired its first home worker in 1986; today more than 70% of BT’s employees benefit from a flexible schedule of telecommuting. The company estimates that it has saved at least $500 million, and has improved its productivity by between 15% and 31% – a fact that cannot be ignored.</p><p><a href="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/02/telecommuting.002.gif"><img alt="" class="image-border" height="374" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/02/telecommuting.002.gif" title="telecommuting.002" width="615" /></a></p><p>The best candidates for telecommuting are those that are self-disciplined and can follow through on projects and meet deadlines. Certainly those who have freelanced can handle that. There’s a point to discuss with your boss.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h2><strong>Other considerations help everyone AND the company! By telecommuting:</strong></h2><ul><li>You help the environment. Less gas consumed, less harmful emissions, less wear and tear on public roadways and your vehicle.</li></ul><ul><li>The company doesn’t have to spend resources for you. Each employee who is not using electricity, heat, office materials, etc., represents savings to the firm (while you are picking up some of these costs by working remotely from home, they are offset by the costs of commuting, dry cleaning, wardrobe, etc.).</li></ul><ul><li>Working alone promotes greater productivity. Let’s face it…coworkers like to chat, take cigarette breaks, take a bit longer for lunch, etc. Working in an office usually does not include hard and fast deadlines and if YOU are one of the people who deals with deadlines—such as those designers have, but perhaps administrators, marketing and sales people, and other support personnel do not—then working alone may be lonely. But there are no distractions and work is usually finished in three-quarters of the time it would be in an office situation.</li></ul><ul><li>Not having to face the rush and hassle of commuting each and every morning relieves stress, and that can lower absenteeism and health costs for a company. While working in New York City, we would all come into work and, after pouring a hot cup of coffee, share our morning subway horror stories. Who sat in a puddle of urine, had snot sprayed on them, or put up with a less-than-sane person yelling at them about government plots to control their minds and bowels. So, even public transportation represents stress…perhaps more than driving one’s own car in heavy traffic.</li></ul><ul><li>Safety is another benefit as there are less cars on the road and there is no risk to life and property during inclement weather.</li></ul><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h2><strong>Why Telecommuting can be bad:</strong></h2><ul><li>If you’ve freelanced for a long period, you know that being alone can make you feel isolated. This is why many freelancers belong to design organizations—to get out and mingle with others. Having an “office family” is sometimes one of the joys of going into work. Isolation, like one of those movies where someone is stranded on a deserted island in the middle of nowhere, has a weird effect on people. Before long, you will see no reason to shave or brush your hair, wrap yourself in toilet paper as opposed to wearing clothing, and you’ll start talking to inanimate objects…and they will answer back!</li></ul><ul><li>Friends and family will look at you as “being available” during the day for favors, errands and company. While freelancing, people would ask me to help them move, other freelancers with less work would want to “hang out” for several hours and my spouse had a list of chores I could do “because I was home.”</li></ul><ul><li>If you aren’t disciplined, it will become harder to get dressed in the morning or get up early for the workday. When freelancing, I tend to keep vampire hours. The world, unfortunately, keeps daylight hours. There are also some wonderful shows and movies on cable during the day and who would really mind if you have the TV on while working? Caddyshack is on right now and although I’ve watched it 273 times, the draw to watch it again is hard to fight. Be the ball, Danny.</li></ul><ul><li>If you’re a smoker, like me, you’ll go through a pack of cigarettes in an hour while sitting at your computer. You’ll also put on weight from too frequent trips to the refrigerator for a snack. Soon you’ll just keep boxes of Twinkies by your desk…well, on your desk…on your keyboard with M&Ms all over your Wacom tablet.</li></ul><ul><li>It’s easy to get lost in the workday/personal needs for errands time. If you are able to decide on your own working hours, you should opt to keep your morning for personal activities, and shift the work hours later (afternoon and evening).</li></ul><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h2><strong>Fighting the bad habits:</strong></h2><ul><li>Set your hours as if you were commuting into an office. Get dressed, shower, and groom yourself as if you were going to be around people. With telecommuting, you may be called to come into the office right away. Showing up in a robe or with an ill-fitting glitter unicorn T-shirt will undermine the small amount of respect creatives already have.</li></ul><ul><li>Make sure your friends and family understand that you have set work hours as if you were in an office. While you can allow some flexibility, which is one of the perks of telecommuting, don’t let others decide how flexible you can be. If you have caller ID on your phone, screen calls and keep personal calls at a minimum.</li></ul><ul><li>Only smoke outside or away from your desk and set a timer so you have no more then one cigarette every hour. That’s usually more than a company will allow for breaks. Hooray for workplace flexibility!</li></ul><ul><li>Don’t allow food in your workspace.</li></ul><ul><li>A deadline is a deadline is a deadline. Don’t miss one or you’ll be back in the office everyday of the week.</li></ul><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1><strong>How to approach your boss about creating a telecommuting arrangement</strong></h1><p>With all of the aforementioned points in mind, ask you boss about a telemarketing situation. Point out the positive factors for the company but leave the smoking out of it. Outline these important negotiating points:</p><ul><li>You are not disappearing from the office. You will be in regularly for important meetings and to discuss upcoming projects.</li></ul><ul><li>Perhaps, set one day a week for you to come in for the day to go through approval processes, deliver final files, discuss changes or meet with a committee or two. Assure the boss that you will come in off-schedule when needed.</li></ul><ul><li>Outline a process for sending jpegs on a daily or twice daily basis so the boss can keep abreast of your progress.</li></ul><ul><li>Talk about energy consumption savings (no computer to power, no lights at your work station), no distractions to you or other employees by staying at home, and the environmental considerations of telecommuting.</li></ul><ul><li>Tout the technology that will allow you to teleconference when needed and assure your boss that you will be available during all working hours.</li></ul><ul><li>Ask for a trial period of a month to try out the situation so you and your boss can evaluate any strong or weak points in the arrangement and make adjustments from there. You may decide that telecommuting isn’t working for you and if your boss isn’t happy with the results, you won’t be fired when the trial period is over. You’ll just be back in the office.</li></ul><p>Unfortunately, as many articles on this subject point out, employers have a fear that not having every employee present will lead to some sort of falling domino effect in the office. If you are not present, how can you handle a last minute change or new assignment? While some managers and bosses give employees wide latitude in working on projects, preferring the, “here-it-is-get-it-done-without-involving-me,” which is the perfect boss for telecommuting, there are more people in charge that want to know where you stand every step of the way and be able to see you physically available at every minute of the day.</p><p>There are those managers who just won’t give up the power of having you present. They believe that if you can achieve without them looking over your shoulder, you are negating their position in the pecking order of the company and putting their job in jeopardy.</p><p>Naturally, there are bosses that just want the power to have you present because they want you to share the commute and workday in the office because they must do so. Have you ever called in sick, only to hear your boss ask how bad the infirmity is and question if you really can’t make it? These are not the bosses to approach about telecommuting.</p><p>You have to see and judge your work situation, considering not only your skills and ability to work remotely but also how it will affect coworker’s daily schedule and progress and how your boss will react to the idea.</p><p>Statistics on telecommuting are surprising. The vast majority of workers in the United States commute to work, with 70% reporting they commute all the time to work. 9% telecommute part time and travel to their jobs the rest of the time; half of these individuals telecommute just one or two days a week; 2% telecommute full time; the rest work in home-based businesses or are unemployed.</p><p><a href="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/02/telecommuting.001.gif"><img alt="" class="image-border" height="628" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/02/telecommuting.001.gif" title="telecommuting.001" width="615" /></a></p><p>40% of U.S. employees hold jobs that that could be done at home. 61% of federal employees are considered eligible for telecommuting but only 5.2% do so on a regular basis; 42% of U.S. employers say they have allowed staff to work remotely this year—up from just 30% in 2007 (this is not to say that these workers do this on a regular basis).</p><p>If you have proved yourself at work and showed you can get things done without supervision, chances are you can bring up the subject and be taken seriously. If you are considered invaluable as a worker who interacts with others on a daily basis and has all the answers at your fingertips, then you will never, ever be allowed to leave and will probably be chained to your desk and given a bucket for bathroom breaks.</p><p>In either case, you will never know unless you ask. Maybe start with one day of telecommuting and if the world doesn’t stop spinning, go for two. Two may lead to three or four. In our business, you can probably count on spending at least one day on the office. Still, three or four days not spent commuting would be very nice, wouldn’t it?</p><p>A couple of articles you’ll want to read on telecommuting and other considerations:</p><p><a href="http://www.hr.com/en/communities/benefits/10-considerations-in-developing-telecommuting-poli_eacu32zo.html">10 Considerations in Developing Telecommuting Policies and Agreements</a></p><p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-the-new-groupthink.html?_r=4">The Rise of the New Groupthink</a></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p><em>Speider Schneider is a former member of The Usual Gang of Idiots at MAD Magazine and has designed products for Disney/Pixar, Warner Bros., Harley-Davidson, ESPN, Mattel, DC and Marvel Comics, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon among other notable companies. Speider is a former member of the board for the Graphic Artists Guild, co-chair of the GAG Professional Practices Committee and a former board member of the Society of Illustrators. Follow him on Twitter <a href="http://www.twitter.com/speider" rel=""><strong>@speider</strong></a></em></p><p><em><strong><strong><em>Do you telecommute? Have you approached your boss about telecommuting? Tell us your story!</em></strong></strong></em></p><p><br /><br /><table height="20" style="border-top: 1px solid #d7d7d7; border-bottom: 1px solid #d7d7d7;" width="100%"><tr><td valign="center"> <a href="http://www.mightydeals.com/deal/flashmint-responsive-web-templates.html?ref=inwidget"><font color="#e64f32" face="Arial" size="3"><b>10 Premium and Fully Responsive Web Templates - only $17!</b></font></a></td><td width="90"> <a href="http://www.mightydeals.com/?ref=inwidget"><br /> <img border="0" height="40" src="http://mightydeals.com/web/images/widget-logo.png" width="90" /><br /> </a></td></tr></table><p><br /></p> <a href="http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/05/convince-your-boss-about-telecommuting/">Source</a>

<p><img alt="CSS3 Best Practices for Designers" class="alignleft size-full" height="160" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/css3-bp-thumb.jpg" title="An Introduction to Modernizr" width="200" />If you’re primarily a designer and have recently started learning CSS, you’ve probably started to incorporate some of the new CSS features that have been added to the language in <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS/#css3">CSS3</a>.</p><p>But if you don’t have a lot of experience with CSS, then you’re probably trying to figure out what is the best way to handle some of the challenges that arise from using multiple vendor prefixes, dealing with older versions of Internet Explorer, and other CSS3-specific dilemmas.</p><p>In this article, I’ll try to cover some of the important things to remember when dealing with these issues. Keep in mind that nothing here is set in stone but these should just be guidelines to help you write more effective, easier to maintain, and future-proof code.<span id="more-33358"></span></p><h1>Know your support charts</h1><p>You probably won’t have to memorize which features work in which browsers. In most cases, CSS3 features will not work in all in-use browsers. And in some instances, even the most recent versions of browsers don’t have full support.</p><p>So the first thing you should do is understand where support is lacking. The primary resource you should use is the <a href="http://caniuse.com/">When can I use…</a> site, which includes charts for CSS3, HTML5, and tons more. You can even do side-by-side comparisons with different browsers, as shown in the screenshot below that <a href="http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+9,firefox+3.6">compares CSS3 support in Firefox 3.6 vs. IE9</a>:</p><p><a href="http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+9,firefox+3.6"><img alt="When can I use... support charts" height="400" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/caniuse-compare.jpg" width="650" /></a></p><p>Although <em>When can I use…</em> is probably the only support chart source you’ll need, here are a few other options to consider:</p><ul class="tight_list"><li><a href="http://css3clickchart.com/">CSS3 Click Chart</a></li><li><a href="http://www.quirksmode.org/css/contents.html">CSS contents and browsers compatibility</a></li><li><a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc351024(v=vs.85).aspx">CSS Compatibility and Internet Explorer</a></li><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_(Cascading_Style_Sheets)">Comparison of Layout Engines (CSS)</a></li></ul><p>But know that although a CSS feature may be listed somewhere as “supported”, that doesn’t mean it’s without bugs or inconsistencies. So test thoroughly.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>Don’t overuse polyfills</h1><p>Due to client or agency pressure, or just the fact that you want everything to look and function the same everywhere, you might be tempted to use the many <a href="https://github.com/Modernizr/Modernizr/wiki/HTML5-Cross-browser-Polyfills">CSS Polyfills</a>.</p><p>But many of these scripts can slow your pages down considerably — especially if you use more than one. There are <a href="http://www.impressivewebs.com/importance-of-website-performance-sources/">many studies and sources</a> that show the importance of a website’s speed, so any polyfills should be considered carefully and with your site or app’s overall best interests in mind.</p><p>To help you decide what to polyfill and what to just allow to degrade to a lesser experience, use the <a href="http://html5please.com/#css">HTML5 Please</a> site. As shown in the example screenshot below, <em>HTML5 Please</em> will often recommend avoiding polyfills for certain features:</p><p><a href="http://html5please.com/#css"><img alt="HTML5 Please" height="237" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/html5please.jpg" width="650" /></a></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>Test how features degrade</h1><p>If you’re avoiding a lot of polyfills, then naturally you’re going to have to allow many CSS3 features to degrade to a more primitive experience in older browsers (usually IE6-8). But don’t assume this will happen automatically.</p><p>In many cases (for example, when using multiple backgrounds), you’ll have to declare a property that gets overwritten by the CSS3 feature, but that will still show up in older browsers.</p><p>For example, for multiple backgrounds, you might do this:</p><pre>.element { background: url(images/fallback.jpg) no-repeat; background: url(images/example.png) center center no-repeat, url(images/example-2.png) top left repeat; } </pre><p>Notice the single background image declared before the multiple background images line. Non-supporting browsers will display the single image but will ignore the 2nd line. Supporting browsers will read both lines, but the first line will be overwritten by the second.</p><p>Some other CSS3 features that could benefit from this type of fallback are RGBA colors, HSLA colors, and gradients.</p><p>To help you see how CSS3 feature degrade in older browsers, you can use a bookmarklet called <a href="http://davatron5000.github.com/deCSS3/">deCSS3</a>.</p><p><a href="http://davatron5000.github.com/deCSS3/"><img alt="deCSS3" height="268" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/decss3.jpg" width="615" /></a></p><p>It currently only works in Chrome and Safari, but just drag the link to your bookmarks bar and then click the link on any site that you want to ‘de-CSS3′ and it will show you the site with text shadows, rounded corners and other new stuff removed. Of course, this is no replacement for actual browser testing, but can serve as a useful guide for faster development before you do your final testing towards the project’s end.</p><p>Another tool to aid in dealing with fallbacks is the <a href="http://modernizr.com">Modernizr</a> JavaScript library. But if you’re intimidated by libraries, don’t be. Modernizr is not difficult to deal with from a CSS perspective. Check out <a href="http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/04/an-introduction-to-modernizr-for-designers/">this tutorial</a> for a pain-free introduction.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>Dealing with vendor prefixes</h1><p>One of the messy parts of CSS3 is having to deal with all the different vendor prefixes. Maintaining code that uses all the prefixes is tedious and in some cases you don’t need all of them. Who can possibly remember when to include “-o-” or “-ms-” and when not to?</p><p>Well, as mentioned, using the support charts will help. But here are a few other suggestions to help deal with vendor prefixes.</p><h2>Use a CSS preprocessor</h2><p>Preprocessors are all the rage right now. But CSS beginners and designers who aren’t hardcore developers or programmers may have a hard time dealing with these new tools.</p><p>So although preprocessors are certainly not for everybody, they are definitely worth considering, because they can seriously improve your production and maintenance time.</p><p>An extensive discussion of preprocessors is certainly beyond this article, but here are some links to get you started:</p><ul class="tight_list"><li><a href="http://lesscss.org/">LESS</a></li><li><a href="http://lesscss.org/">Sass</a></li><li><a href="http://compass-style.org/">Compass</a></li><li><a href="http://learnboost.github.com/stylus/">Stylus</a></li></ul><p>And if you find that stuff too heavy, Chris Coyier of CSS-Tricks has some <a href="http://css-tricks.com/musings-on-preprocessing/">thoughts on preprocessors</a> that might help you get an overall view. And here’s <a href="http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/html-css-techniques/sass-vs-less-vs-stylus-a-preprocessor-shootout/">a post on Nettuts+</a> that covers some of the features and benefits of using a few of the most popular CSS preprocessors.</p><h2>Be consistent in your code</h2><p>If you choose not to preprocess your CSS using one of the aforementioned technologies, then you’ll have to deal with maintaining all the vendor prefixes. So make sure you pick a style and order for your vendor prefixes and stick with it. This way, your code will be easier to read and maintain.</p><p>For example, some CSS developers put their vendor prefix lines in alphabetical order, and use indenting so that the values all line up, like this:</p><pre>.element { -moz-transition: background-color linear .8s; -ms-transition: background-color linear .8s; -o-transition: background-color linear .8s; -webkit-transition: background-color linear .8s; transition: background-color linear .8s; } </pre><p>That’s just one way to do it. But whatever method you choose, just be consistent throughout your code. This would be especially important if you work on a team where others have to read and/or maintain your code.</p><p>Of course, not all CSS3 features are this easy to organize (for example, the code for keyframe animations is much more complicated), but for most features you should be able to have a consistent style that makes development and maintenance smoother.</p><h2>What about the standard property?</h2><p>You’ll notice in the example in the previous section, the last property declared after the vendor lines is the standard version of the property. If you’re going to include the standard property, this is definitely how you should do it. So always include it last when you add it.</p><p>This is to ensure that the vendor implementation of the feature is overwritten by the standard implementation. But there’s a caution here.</p><p>For some complex animations and interactions, it is conceivable that the implementation could change so much that when the browser starts supporting the standard property, it could have undesirable effects. So in some cases, you might be better off leaving out the standard property altogether.</p><p>I wrote about this topic more in-depth <a href="http://www.impressivewebs.com/standard-property-omitted-css3-features/"> on my blog</a>, so check that out if you want a more comprehensive discussion of this issue.</p><h2>Use Prefixr</h2><p>One of the easiest ways to deal with all the cross-browser vendor weirdness is to use a handy little tool called <a href="http://prefixr.com/">Prefixr</a>. With Prefixr, you just develop your code as always, and you could just use a single vendor prefix (for example, only “-moz-”) for all your CSS3. Then, when you’re done testing in that one browser and have everything working the way you want, just throw your code into Prefixr and it will generate all the extra vendor code for you.</p><p>Prefixr also can be integrated automatically <a href="http://www.prefixr.com/api/usage/">with your text editor</a>, and includes support for lengthy keyframe animations code. As an alternative, you can also try out a tool I created called <a href="http://animationfillcode.com/">Animation Fill Code</a> that adds the extra vendor code for keyframe animations.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>Test thoroughly</h1><p>The last suggestion I’ll give here is to test thoroughly in all the browsers you’re supporting. You can use dozens of tools and libraries to assist you with your CSS3 development, but nothing can replace thorough tests in real browser environments.</p><p>And this advice would be especially important if you’re dealing with a lot of responsive design-related CSS3 (e.g. media queries), and heavy use of typographic features. You want your content to be usable and readable in all browsers, even if the CSS3 features aren’t available.</p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><h1>Your thoughts?</h1><p><em><strong>Do you have a lot of experience with CSS3? Do you have any ‘best practices’ that you’ve developed? Feel free to offer your comments and suggestions.</strong></em></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p><em>This post was written exclusively for Webdesigner Depot by Louis Lazaris, an author, freelance writer, and web developer. Louis is a co-author of <a class="external" href="http://www.sitepoint.com/books/htmlcss1/" rel="">HTML5 & CSS3 for the Real World</a>, published by SitePoint, and he writes about front-end web design technologies on <a class="external" href="http://www.impressivewebs.com/" rel="">Impressive Webs</a>. You can <a class="external" href="http://twitter.com/ImpressiveWebs" rel="">follow Louis on Twitter</a> or contact him through his website.</em></p><p><br /><br /><table height="20" style="border-top: 1px solid #d7d7d7; border-bottom: 1px solid #d7d7d7;" width="100%"><tr><td valign="center"> <a href="http://www.mightydeals.com/deal/flashmint-responsive-web-templates.html?ref=inwidget"><font color="#e64f32" face="Arial" size="3"><b>10 Premium and Fully Responsive Web Templates - only $17!</b></font></a></td><td width="90"> <a href="http://www.mightydeals.com/?ref=inwidget"><br /> <img border="0" height="40" src="http://mightydeals.com/web/images/widget-logo.png" width="90" /><br /> </a></td></tr></table><p><br /></p> <a href="http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/05/css3-best-practices-for-designers/">Source</a>

<p><a href="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/thumb15.jpg"><img alt="tweets of the week may 21 - 27 2012" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-33772" height="160" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads/2012/05/thumb15.jpg" title="thumb" width="200" /></a>Every week <strong>we tweet a lot of interesting stuff</strong> highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers.</p><p>The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to <strong>follow us on Twitter</strong>, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the best tweets that we sent out this past week.</p><p>Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that we tweeted about, so don’t miss out.</p><p>To keep up to date with all the cool links, simply <strong>follow us</strong> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/designerdepot" rel="" target="_blank">@DesignerDepot</a><span id="more-33769"></span></p><p>Learning LESS: Mixins <a href="http://t.co/UGCSNUQX" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://su.pr/6YvmKG">http://su.pr/6YvmKG</a></p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-52712/mixins.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Interested in game design? Check out these 4 interactive lectures: <a href="http://t.co/fM0je3fY" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/b2xEz">http://ow.ly/b2xEz</a></p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-52712/gamedesign.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>A Great Showcase Of Websites With Seamless Social Media Integration <a href="http://t.co/TBjyVLUD" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/b2ylP">http://ow.ly/b2ylP</a></p><p><img alt="" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-52712/smintegration.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Project management and the design professional <a href="http://t.co/8IRyWny9" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/b2uqt">http://ow.ly/b2uqt</a> Do project managers often do more harm than good? *Great <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/netmag" rel="">@<strong>netmag</strong></a> read</p><p><img alt="" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-52712/projectmanagement.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Selling Art: Creative and Artistic Advertisements <a href="http://t.co/m9ybZi0J" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/b2wqg">http://ow.ly/b2wqg</a> Awesome collection</p><p><img alt="" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-52712/sellingart.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Nobody likes a short visit <a href="http://t.co/w6WgfXll" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/b4aFM">http://ow.ly/b4aFM</a> Improving 404 Page Design</p><p><img alt="" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-52712/404page.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>There’s a new kid in town: CanJS <a href="http://t.co/kh17dX9Q" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/b4dvc">http://ow.ly/b4dvc</a></p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-52712/canjs.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>A short documentary about the craft of storytelling by Ken Burns <a href="http://t.co/b4uKichK" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/b4cfD">http://ow.ly/b4cfD</a> A must-see for your inspiration</p><p> </p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Awesome 5-second animations from Ross Phillips <a href="http://t.co/w9ZXVm7q" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/b5UwL">http://ow.ly/b5UwL</a></p><p><img alt="" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-52712/rossphillips.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>FF Chartwell <a href="http://t.co/Q4YCEBYl" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/b62X6">http://ow.ly/b62X6</a> Travis Kochel’s fantastic typeface for creating simple graphs</p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-52712/chartwell.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>The real conflict behind <picture> and <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/srcset" rel="">@<strong>srcset</strong></a> - <a href="http://t.co/i5fucCbf" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/b66mb">http://ow.ly/b66mb</a> - Interesting read. Enjoy!</p><p><img alt="" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-52712/picture.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p><a href="http://t.co/qTurkxbV" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://infogr.am/">http://infogr.am/</a> let’s you create interactive infographics</p><p><img alt="" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-52712/infogram.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Fast food, rockets, blue skies and McDonalds villains in Rob Flowers’s illustrations <a href="http://t.co/YMdPXwfA" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/b68rG">http://ow.ly/b68rG</a> Two thumbs up</p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-52712/robflowers.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>In Charlotte Caron’s portraits, everyone is wearing a mask <a href="http://t.co/HGpECWfB" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/b68K1">http://ow.ly/b68K1</a></p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-52712/charlottecaron.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Numerografía-Yorokobu by Wete = a really cool typography <a href="http://t.co/TwvcMcHa" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/b68X5">http://ow.ly/b68X5</a></p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-52712/numerografia.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>The History Of Usability: From Simplicity To Complexity <a href="http://t.co/9fNkSn52" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/b7pTS">http://ow.ly/b7pTS</a> *great article by <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/smashingmag" rel="">@<strong>smashingmag</strong></a></p><p><img alt="" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-52712/usability.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Design my <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/search/%23CSS" title="#CSS">#<strong>CSS</strong></a> > <a href="http://t.co/JoXp6UdC" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/b7pDk">http://ow.ly/b7pDk</a> < Free tool to custom design your website components</p><p><img alt="" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-52712/designmycss.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Change aversion: why users hate what you launched (and what to do about it) <a href="http://t.co/ii6tPVOP" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/b7qnc">http://ow.ly/b7qnc</a></p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-52712/changeaversion.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Impressive Illustrations by Rory Kurtz with a touch of dark and beautiful <a href="http://t.co/NNt8yd71" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/b7pbO">http://ow.ly/b7pbO</a></p><p><img alt="" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-52712/rorykurtz.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>How do graphic designers say “happy birthday?” <a href="http://t.co/dij98Sv8" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/b7pgL">http://ow.ly/b7pgL</a> 30 Years, 30 Posters: Milton Glaser, 2×4, and Michael Bierut</p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-52712/30years.jpg" /></p><p><br class="spacer_" /></p><p>Embroidery is hot and Maricor/Maricar knows that <a href="http://t.co/8iZguCht" rel="" target="_blank" title="http://ow.ly/b9mHe">http://ow.ly/b9mHe</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/search/%23typography" title="#typography">#<strong>typography</strong></a></p><p><img alt="" class="image-border" src="http://netdna.webdesignerdepot.com/uploads6/tweets-52712/maricor.jpg" /></p><p><em><strong>Want more? No problem! Keep track of all our tweets by following us <a href="http://www.twitter.com/designerdepot" rel="" target="_blank">@DesignerDepot</a></strong></em></p><p><br /><br /><table height="20" style="border-top: 1px solid #d7d7d7; border-bottom: 1px solid #d7d7d7;" width="100%"><tr><td valign="center"> <a href="http://www.mightydeals.com/deal/flashmint-responsive-web-templates.html?ref=inwidget"><font color="#e64f32" face="Arial" size="3"><b>10 Premium and Fully Responsive Web Templates - only $17!</b></font></a></td><td width="90"> <a href="http://www.mightydeals.com/?ref=inwidget"><br /> <img border="0" height="40" src="http://mightydeals.com/web/images/widget-logo.png" width="90" /><br /> </a></td></tr></table><p><br /></p> <a href="http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/05/our-favorite-tweets-of-the-week-may-21-may-27-2012/">Source</a>

<div style="float: right; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 5px;"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/death-star-petition/&src=sp" name="fb_share" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" type="box_count"><img align="right" src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/themes/v7/img/share-buttons/fb.jpg" style="border: none; margin-right: 5px;" /></a><br /> <a href="http://twitter.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/death-star-petition/&via=mashable" target="_blank"><img align="right" height="51" src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/themes/v7/img/tweet.jpg" style="border: none; margin-right: 5px;" width="51" /></a></div> <p><a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/death-star-petition/"><img src="http://7.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/stromtrooper.jpg" style="height: auto; margin: 0 auto 10px auto; display: block;" /></a>Here's an interesting twist to the fiscal cliff negotiations. A petition <a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/04/white-house-death-star/">calling on the U.S. to build a Death Star</a> has reached 25,000 signatures on the "We the People" <a href="http://mashable.com/category/white-house/">White House</a> website a day ahead of its deadline -- meaning the Obama Administration, according to its own rules, must prepare an official response.</p> <p>The cost of turning the fictional <a href="http://mashable.com/category/star-wars/">Death Star</a> into a fully operational battle station was estimated by economics students at Lehigh University last year to be $852 quadrillion, or roughly 13,000 times the global GDP. So there goes the budget deficit.</p> <p>On the other hand, once built, a Death Star could be used to shake down other nations, not to mention alien civilizations, for t… <br /><a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/death-star-petition/">Continue reading...</a></p> <p>More About: <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/star-wars/">Star Wars</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/the-white-house/">the white house</a></p><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Mashable/~4/5kmf3eNc1Jc" width="1" />

<div style="float: right; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 5px;"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/google-maps-ios-greatness/&src=sp" name="fb_share" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" type="box_count"><img align="right" src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/themes/v7/img/share-buttons/fb.jpg" style="border: none; margin-right: 5px;" /></a><br /> <a href="http://twitter.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/google-maps-ios-greatness/&via=mashable" target="_blank"><img align="right" height="51" src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/themes/v7/img/tweet.jpg" style="border: none; margin-right: 5px;" width="51" /></a></div> <p><a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/google-maps-ios-greatness/"><img src="http://8.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/google-maps-for-iOS.jpg" style="height: auto; margin: 0 auto 10px auto; display: block;" /></a>We're glad to see <a href="http://mashable.com/category/google-maps/">Google Maps</a> back on iOS, and so is <a href="http://sachagreif.com/design-details-of-google-maps-for-ios/">Sacha Greif</a>, a Kyoto-based designer, coder and entrepreneur who points out the subtle excellence in the new app that <a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/google-maps-ios-here/">rolled out for iOS</a> Wednesday night.</p> <p>He likes its style: <a href="http://mashable.com/category/google/">Google</a> has carried over its now iconic and clean design from its other apps into this one, and he likes the white/light-gray look of it all. Although Greif doesn't much care for some of Google's other design choices (he's looking at you, Google Reader), he thinks Google Maps' clean look works particularly well on mobile platforms. He loves the typeface choice, too, which he thinks "looks like it’s been through Weight Watchers." He's right. Just look at those slim s… <br /><a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/google-maps-ios-greatness/">Continue reading...</a></p> <p>More About: <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/google-maps/">Google Maps</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/design/">design</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/ios/">iOS</a></p><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Mashable/~4/FeW_Ox378kY" width="1" />

<div style="float: right; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 5px;"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/assange-australian-senate/&src=sp" name="fb_share" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" type="box_count"><img align="right" src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/themes/v7/img/share-buttons/fb.jpg" style="border: none; margin-right: 5px;" /></a><br /> <a href="http://twitter.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/assange-australian-senate/&via=mashable" target="_blank"><img align="right" height="51" src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/themes/v7/img/tweet.jpg" style="border: none; margin-right: 5px;" width="51" /></a></div> <p><a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/assange-australian-senate/"><img src="http://9.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/assange-ecuador.jpg" style="height: auto; margin: 0 auto 10px auto; display: block;" /></a>Even when <a href="http://mashable.com/2012/10/25/assange-embassy-us/">he's locked up in the Ecuadorian embassy</a> in London, Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange's ambition doesn't wane. Apparently, he now wants to be a senator. Yesterday, Australian newspaper <em>The Age</em> <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/assange-looks-to-contest-senate-election-20121212-2ba43.html">reported that </a><a href="http://mashable.com/follow/topics/julian-assange">Assange</a> wants to run in the 2013 Australian federal election and even create a <a href="http://mashable.com/follow/topics/wikileaks">Wikileaks</a> party in his native country.</p> <p>Leaving aside the chances of winning the seat, it's not entirely clear whether he is actually eligible to run for senator in the first place, Australian legal experts say.</p> <p>Eligibility</p> <p>According to the Commonwealth Electoral Act of 1918, to run for a congressional seat, a person needs to be at least 18 years old, an Australian citizen, and be eligible to… <br /><a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/assange-australian-senate/">Continue reading...</a></p> <p>More About: <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/world/">World</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/julian-assange/">julian assange</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/wikileaks/">wikileaks</a></p><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Mashable/~4/MEjMVlyWkl4" width="1" />

<div style="float: right; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 5px;"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/jelly-bean-coming-verizon-galaxy-s-iii/&src=sp" name="fb_share" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" type="box_count"><img align="right" src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/themes/v7/img/share-buttons/fb.jpg" style="border: none; margin-right: 5px;" /></a><br /> <a href="http://twitter.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/jelly-bean-coming-verizon-galaxy-s-iii/&via=mashable" target="_blank"><img align="right" height="51" src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/themes/v7/img/tweet.jpg" style="border: none; margin-right: 5px;" width="51" /></a></div> <p><a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/jelly-bean-coming-verizon-galaxy-s-iii/"><img src="http://5.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/samsung.jpg" style="height: auto; margin: 0 auto 10px auto; display: block;" /></a>If you’re a Verizon Galaxy S III user, then the carrier has the perfect holiday gift for you: the latest version of <a href="http://mashable.com/category/Android/">Android</a>.</p> <p>Galaxy S III smartphones on Verizon will be upgraded to <a href="http://mashable.com/category/android-4.1-jelly-bean">Android 4.1 Jelly Bean</a> Friday. </p> <p>Jelly Bean brings a number of new features to the Galaxy S III including Google Now, Google’s built-in digital assistant resembling Apple’s Siri. Jelly Bean also updates notifications on the phone, allowing you to return missed calls and email from directly within the notifications window.</p> <p>With Jelly Bean the camera on your Galaxy S III will also see an upgrade, adding a number of built-in Instagram-like filters to the camera app. Videos you record with your phone c… <br /><a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/jelly-bean-coming-verizon-galaxy-s-iii/">Continue reading...</a></p> <p>More About: <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/galaxy-s-iii/">Galaxy S III</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/android/">android</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/samsung/">samsung</a></p><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Mashable/~4/2ATbG9TPbeE" width="1" />

<div style="float: right; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 5px;"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/november-viral-video-spoilers/&src=sp" name="fb_share" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" type="box_count"><img align="right" src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/themes/v7/img/share-buttons/fb.jpg" style="border: none; margin-right: 5px;" /></a><br /> <a href="http://twitter.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/november-viral-video-spoilers/&via=mashable" target="_blank"><img align="right" height="51" src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/themes/v7/img/tweet.jpg" style="border: none; margin-right: 5px;" width="51" /></a></div> <p><a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/november-viral-video-spoilers/"><img src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Girlcoveringeyes_withYouTube.jpg" style="height: auto; margin: 0 auto 10px auto; display: block;" /></a>Prepare for the magic to end -- the Fine Bros. are recounting the top 50 viral video sensations of November and straight-up cutting to the chase. </p> <p>So if you pulled a Rip Van Winkle and fell asleep for the entire month, you don't have to worry about catching up with all the Internet chit-chat. It's right here. </p> <p>Turns out, most of the videos have common themes -- people think the videos are fake, they go "awwww" upon seeing them and/or believe everyone in the video to be a badass. </p> <p><strong>SEE ALSO: <a href="http://mashable.com/category/viral-video-recap/">Past Viral Video Recaps</a></strong> </p> <p>Nonetheless, the list is exhausting, as is watching these guys talk fast enough to cram 50 videos into four minutes. </p> <p>So watch the above video, and then go seek… <br /><a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/november-viral-video-spoilers/">Continue reading...</a></p> <p>More About: <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/viral/">Viral</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/youtube/">YouTube</a></p><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Mashable/~4/UIfoHb04OGo" width="1" />

<div style="float: right; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 5px;"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/parents-facebooks-new-controls/&src=sp" name="fb_share" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" type="box_count"><img align="right" src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/themes/v7/img/share-buttons/fb.jpg" style="border: none; margin-right: 5px;" /></a><br /> <a href="http://twitter.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/parents-facebooks-new-controls/&via=mashable" target="_blank"><img align="right" height="51" src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/themes/v7/img/tweet.jpg" style="border: none; margin-right: 5px;" width="51" /></a></div> <p><a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/parents-facebooks-new-controls/"><img src="http://7.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/facebook-settings.jpg" style="height: auto; margin: 0 auto 10px auto; display: block;" /></a>Facebook changed <a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/12/privacy-controls-facebook/">its privacy settings</a> on Wednesday and it's important to know what the new changes mean for users, especially your digitally-connected children. </p> <p>You might notice that now all your privacy settings are housed under one area called Privacy Shortcuts. But you may not see the changes on your profile yet -- <a href="http://newsroom.fb.com/News/547/Better-Controls-for-Managing-Your-Content">Facebook said</a> it will be rolling this out through the end of this year.</p> <p><strong>SEE ALSO: <a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/12/new-facebook-privacy-settings/">Here's What the New Facebook Privacy Settings Will Look Like</a></strong></p> <p>Nicky Jackson Colaco, manager of privacy and safety at Facebook, tells <em>Mashable</em> these settings haven't been changed so much as moved, and one setting has been enhanced. The goal was to make it easier for users to access, and be… <br /><a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/parents-facebooks-new-controls/">Continue reading...</a></p> <p>More About: <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/children/">Children</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/facebook/">Facebook</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/social-media/">Social Media</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/parents/">parents</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/privacy/">privacy</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/settings/">settings</a></p><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Mashable/~4/ZKMCMZs3mTU" width="1" />

<div style="float: right; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 5px;"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/digital-marketing-2013/&src=sp" name="fb_share" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" type="box_count"><img align="right" src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/themes/v7/img/share-buttons/fb.jpg" style="border: none; margin-right: 5px;" /></a><br /> <a href="http://twitter.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/digital-marketing-2013/&via=mashable" target="_blank"><img align="right" height="51" src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/themes/v7/img/tweet.jpg" style="border: none; margin-right: 5px;" width="51" /></a></div> <p><a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/digital-marketing-2013/"><img src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/computer-guy.jpg" style="height: auto; margin: 0 auto 10px auto; display: block;" /></a><em><a href="https://twitter.com/thejongardner">Jonathan Gardner</a> is director of communications at <a href="http://www.vibrantmedia.com/">Vibrant Media</a>, a leading digital ad company. He has spent his career as an innovator at the nexus of media and technology, having worked in communications and as a journalist.</em></p> <p>Another year, another attempt to predict the future. If 2012 was the year of Korean dance videos, citizen curation and Superstorm Sandy, who can possibly tell what 2013 might bring?</p> <p>It’s exciting to think that a year from now we’ll be buzzing about all new startups, fresh apps to obsess over and maybe even a new device or two we can’t imagine ever having lived without. </p> <p>But in the realm of digital marketing, the writing’s already on the wall. Here are t… <br /><a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/digital-marketing-2013/">Continue reading...</a></p> <p>More About: <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/marketing/">Marketing</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/predictions-2013/">Predictions 2013</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/social-media/">Social Media</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/contributor/">contributor</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/features/">features</a></p><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Mashable/~4/SyPgkhb9epI" width="1" />

<div style="float: right; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 5px;"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/kickstarter-campaign-dashboard/&src=sp" name="fb_share" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" type="box_count"><img align="right" src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/themes/v7/img/share-buttons/fb.jpg" style="border: none; margin-right: 5px;" /></a><br /> <a href="http://twitter.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/kickstarter-campaign-dashboard/&via=mashable" target="_blank"><img align="right" height="51" src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/themes/v7/img/tweet.jpg" style="border: none; margin-right: 5px;" width="51" /></a></div> <p><a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/kickstarter-campaign-dashboard/"><img src="http://5.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Kickstarter-Dashboard.jpg" style="height: auto; margin: 0 auto 10px auto; display: block;" /></a>Soma, a water filter company, built a dashboard to track its recent Kickstarter campaign and it is now offering the tool for free as a Chrome extension.</p> <p>More About: <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/kickstarter/">kickstarter</a></p><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Mashable/~4/Mmq3oOOEjxo" width="1" />

<br /> <h4>1. For Organizing Ollie</h4> <br /> <a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/pinterest-diy-gifts/#1064191-For-Organizing-Ollie"><img src="http://mashable.com/wp-content/gallery/10-diy-gift-ideas-on-pinterest/6.%20For%20Organizing%20Ollie.jpg" style="border: none;" title="1. For Organizing Ollie" width="400" /></a><br /><br /> <p>One for each size of googly eye. Pinned by <a href="http://pinterest.com/pin/184929128418439006/">Truebluemeandyou.Tumblr.com</a>, from <a href="http://www.housetohome.co.uk/room-idea/picture/playful-playroom-storage-ideas/9">House to Home</a></p><p><a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/pinterest-diy-gifts/#1064191-For-Organizing-Ollie">Click here to view this gallery.</a></p><div style="float: right; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 5px;"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/pinterest-diy-gifts/&src=sp" name="fb_share" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" type="box_count"><img align="right" src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/themes/v7/img/share-buttons/fb.jpg" style="border: none; margin-right: 5px;" /></a><br /> <a href="http://twitter.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/pinterest-diy-gifts/&via=mashable" target="_blank"><img align="right" height="51" src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/themes/v7/img/tweet.jpg" style="border: none; margin-right: 5px;" width="51" /></a></div> <p><a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/pinterest-diy-gifts/"><img src="http://4.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/bracelet-diy.jpg" style="height: auto; margin: 0 auto 10px auto; display: block;" /></a>Whether you prefer to give from the heart or you're just plain broke, DIY is the way to go for gifting. And <a href="http://mashable.com/category/pinterest/">Pinterest</a> is chock full of inspiration. </p> <p><strong>SEE ALSO: <a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/secret-santa-gifts/">10 Foolproof Gifts for Your Office Secret Santa</a></strong></p> <p>To help you out, we've collected 10 simple craft projects that would please any member of your kooky family. So, fire up the glue gun and shake up the spray paint. These handmade crafts will be the hit of the holidays. </p> <p>Be sure to share your own DIY tips and ideas in the comments below.</p> <p><em>Thumbnail image courtesy <a href="http://pinterest.com/pin/260786634642111993/">Teghan Delude</a>, from <a href="http://honestlywtf.com/diy/diy-woven-chain-bracelet/">Honestly WTF</a></em></p> <p>More About: <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/gifts/">Gifts</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/diy/">diy</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/features/">features</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/holidays-2012/">holidays 2012</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/pinterest/">pinterest</a></p><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Mashable/~4/WWRKYP0Whng" width="1" />

<div style="float: right; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 5px;"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/spreecast/&src=sp" name="fb_share" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" type="box_count"><img align="right" src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/themes/v7/img/share-buttons/fb.jpg" style="border: none; margin-right: 5px;" /></a><br /> <a href="http://twitter.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/spreecast/&via=mashable" target="_blank"><img align="right" height="51" src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/themes/v7/img/tweet.jpg" style="border: none; margin-right: 5px;" width="51" /></a></div> <p><a href="http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/spreecast/"><img src="http://9.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/iPhone-Video.jpg" style="height: auto; margin: 0 auto 10px auto; display: block;" /></a>Spreecast founder and CEO Jeff Fluhr believes social video is the next logical step after text- and photo-based social networks like Facebook and Twitter. </p> <p>More About: <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/social-video/">social video</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/spreecast/">spreecast</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/startup/">startup</a>, <a href="http://mashable.com/tag/valleygirltv/">valleygirltv</a></p><img height="1" src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Mashable/~4/ilP0suFu5OQ" width="1" />