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From Aaron Koblin's TED presentation:

"Artist Aaron Koblin takes vast amounts of data -- and at times vast numbers of people -- and weaves them into stunning visualizations. From elegant lines tracing airline flights to landscapes of cell phone data, from a Johnny Cash video assembled from crowd-sourced drawings to the "Wilderness Downtown" video that customizes for the user, his works brilliantly explore how modern technology can make us more human."

Beautiful, incredibly creative use of user contributed hands for data-driven art.

http://www.ted.com/talks/aaron_koblin.html

Click the full screen icon, it's much better that way. Headphones warning: rowdy party music ahead.

I rarely do click-through prototypes, but if I have to, then I use Symbols and links in Mockups to make it painless. This is a speed-wireframing video I whipped up to demonstrate to customers in a few minutes what the experience of wireframing with Symbols is like.

http://youtu.be/_8IyyvECYrg?hd=1

Jason Toth of Viget discusses the danger of blind devotion to simplification in design, and writes about the role of UX designers as curators of content. He offers useful suggestions for how to play that role so we don't come off as content hackers.

I think the argument for facilitating curation is as apt for feature selection and design as it is for content. I view the role of someone doing content strategy as being able to take in the glut of information for analysis and providing direction for how to deliver the message with greater efficiency and maybe at times, poetry.

Curation and editing go hand in hand in my mind. It's as much the role of the curator to question the body of content to find the core of the message to deliver, as it is of the editor to guide a writer to find the lede. That could mean eliminating parts that detract from the message or it's delivery, rather than simply combining and compressing a lot into a small space.

Application interfaces provide problems similar to content. When taking in the number of possible use cases and stories that the application can support, a designer provides direction in terms of the delivery of an interface users interact with. On the interface side, it could mean questioning the necessity of the thing you're hiding for progressive disclosure, rather than finding clever ways to hide it in the first place.

Read more on VigetAdvance.

http://www.viget.com/advance/dont-simplify-the-ux-curate/

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying ‘no’ to 1,000 things.”

—Steve Jobs on product development, from "Steve Jobs: Get Rid of the Crappy Stuff" in Forbes.

Gallo exaggerates a little, but I like the point he tries to argue later in the article about focus and reduction. It takes courage to reduce and say no, and that is a big differentiator when it comes to Apple hardware and software.

Apple is the easy example, but for good reason. Many argue that hindsight analysis of Jobs' strategy might be easy, but the company's success in product development continues to provide lessons to learn.

The idea of knowing when to say no seems obvious and is something you might say is always top of mind. But, if you're working on a product, you're likely to be challenged every day with decisions to say yes or no to the possible products you might design, and the features you might build into your products. Every one of these challenges requires courage to say no if the outcome compromises your vision, because in the moment it will seem like the world is begging for you to do it.

I know as a user of different products, I've been vocal about the pet features I've wanted as a "power user" of said products, and bitched when that voice didn't get heard. But I believe that the tech products that I continue to use and that are of value are those that hold onto a clearly defined vision and purpose, and whose features reflect that with selectivity and refusal to deviate from it. More often than not, to me, these products have provided a more focussed experience.

Via Core77

http://blogs.forbes.com/carminegallo/2011/05/16/steve-jobs-get-rid-of-the-crappy-stuff/

Jumping in and immediately starting to build the product, even if it does get completed and ship, is almost guaranteed to produce a mediocre product in which there is little innovation or market differentiation. When you have only one kick at the can, the behaviour of the entire team and process is as predictable as it will be pedestrian.

—Bill Buxton in Sketching the User Experience
Buxton writes in this passage on the impact of iterative sketching on risk, exploration and innovation.

“The more you know, the less you need. The experienced fly fisherman with only one rod, one type of fly, and one type of line will always outfish the duffer with an entire quiver of gear and flies. I never forget Thoreau's advice: 'I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes...'"

—Yvon Chouinard in Let My People Go Surfing.
Chouinard is a mountain climber, environmentalist, and founder of Patagonia. He was writing about product design in the quote above.

I love these two posts by Mark McGuiness on the 99% on why eccentricity and how daily routine helps trigger creativity.

He points out three characteristics of a hypnotic trigger:

1. Uniqueness - it should be something (or a combination of things) you don't associate with other activities, otherwise the effect will be diluted.


2. Emotional intensity - the kind you experience when you're really immersed in creative work.


3. Repetition - the more times you experience the unique trigger in association with the emotions, the stronger the association becomes.

I live by daily routines, but I also associate that with my need to feel balanced and in control of my time and the living and working space around me. I also have a tendency to be impulsive or to dive very deeply into activities, so routine acts both as clock and trigger.

There are some excellent anecdotes about the routines of famous creatives. I find myself really intrigued by the more eccentric ones, like those of Victor Hugo and especially that of Orhan Pamuk. Pamuk's act of re-creating his "walk to work" trigger is pretty ingenious. Read more...

http://the99percent.com/tips/7021/Why-Creative-People-Need-to-Be-Eccentric

Sketching interfaces is a path focussed on generating many ideas and finding the right design. Lately I've been thinking about how to adapt the activity of physically sketching on paper to get the same results in Mockups. On the Balsamiq UX blog, I wrote about a technique I've been experimenting with to do sketchboards in Mockups using a Symbols library.

http://blogs.balsamiq.com/ux/2011/04/28/sketching-in-mockups/

"Music is the space between the notes."

—Claude Debussy, as quoted in Turning Numbers into Knowledge (2001) by Johnathan G. Koomey

"It is always better to improve and strengthen your own line or knowledge than to try and cut your opponent's line."

—Ed Parker, Martial Arts Instructor and Author