Sorry for the downtime. Konigi went down for most of the day yesterday because a spike in traffic and number of database requests caused the databases to be taken offline. With our web host's help, we've moved Konigi to a virtual private server, and now we're able to run our own database rather than share database resources and limit the number of requests we can make. These are all good problems, and the growing pains are to be expected I suppose. Again, sorry for the interrupted service. I think i day of downtime to move the server is pretty good, so I'm just happy we're back in business.
Blog
The Right Way to Wireframe
Will Evans shows us how he sketches and wireframes interfaces in this cool video, which is a nice preview of what you may see in his upcoming talk on "The Right Way to Wireframe" at IXD10. Incidentally, he's using OmniGraffle with our free wireframe stencils. Will says this about wireframing:
Increasingly, as designers of interactive systems (spaces, processes and products for people), we find ourselves stretching the limits of communication tools to explore and document what it will be like to interact with the things we design.
We describe wireframing as a form of design communication that enables stakeholders, team members, users and clients to gain first-hand appreciation of existing or future problem spaces and solutions.
We create wireframes to inform both design process and design decisions. Wireframes range from sketches and different kind of models at various levels of fidelity looks like, behaves like, works like to explore and communicate propositions about the design and its context.
We think that the wireframing strategies user experience designers use are often constrained by the tools they feel most comfortable with: problem space, domain, expertise, theme, context of problem, bias towards types of design tools and documents, timeliness of artifacts created. For this reason, a session that attacks one business problem from the perspective of four different designers will provide attendees with a unique understanding and set of strategies and tactics to improve their own practice.
New Multi-touch Interactions on the Apple iPad
Craig Villamor and Luke Wroblewski summarize the new interactions we'll be seeing in the iPad.
During Apple's 90 minute unveiling of the iPad this week, a lot of new multi-touch interactions were shown off. But they went by fast. So as a service to digital product designers everywhere, we took the time to extract 8 minutes of new user interface demos from the iPad keynote. Now you can quickly just catch the UI in action on Apple's new native iPad and iWork applications.