Sep
17
The Right Temporo-Parietal Junction, a portion of your brain just above your right ear is the part of your brain that helps us to understand other peoples’ frame of mind.
As UX practicioners, designers, and every developers we are always sensing the motivations and feels of people who will be using the websites we create.
Listen to Rebecca Saxe share fascinating lab work that uncovers how the brain thinks about other peoples’ thoughts — and judges their actions.
Sep
16
This is from InformationisBeutiful.net a gem blog that I happened to come across not too long ago.
Its by the very talented David McCandless visual & data journalist from London.
Great place for data junkies and data geeks like me.
If you like the the Twitter one, you’ll love everything else on the blog.
Sep
15
Love the Shift Happens series. Always combine 3 things I like to see on my computer: good design, cool transitions, and impactful statistics.
Aug
03
Burson-Marsteller and Proof Digital Media just released some statistics on social media ventures for Fortune 100 companies.
During 2009, Twitter surpassed blogging as the social media platform of choice – at least among the Fortune 100
Fortune 100 companies reach out directly to stakeholders via social marketing:
Read more or slide through the presentation below.
Aug
03
Found this story about how coin flipping can be controled if you have the ability to toss with the same force every time… I’m going to practice my craps dice throwing again 
Coin tosses are a classic metaphor in economics for randomness. For instance, in his book about market efficiency, A Random Walk Down Wall Street, economist Burton Malkiel compares the price movements of the stock market to the random outcome of a flipped coin: “[S]ometimes one gets positive price changes for several days in a row; but sometimes when you are flipping a coin you also get a long string of ‘heads’ in a row.” According to Malkiel, mathematicians’ terms for the sequences of numbers produced by any random process—in this case a coin flip—is known as a random walk. To him, this is exactly what stock price movements look like; hence the title of his book.
Aug
02
The American Time Use Survey asks thousands of American residents to recall every minute of a day. Here is a neat interactive visual on how people over age 15 spent their time in 2008 (courtesy of NYTimes.com). You can filter by demographics from the top right navigation and maximize each activity by clicking on the graph all through smooth seamless transitions on the page.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Jul
14
Designing information can help us see data in ways that help us achieve specific goals. Well designed data ends up having little text yet the information is delivered through a variety of visual means. That’s how we learned in kindergarten, using pictures and picture books. We process images way faster than we process words.
The Vignet Labs blog posted a great article that show some great examples of information design.
For more information on the subject here are some of my fav books:
Anything by Edward Tufte (The top four results)
The Best Information Diagrams 2 (steep price, still trying to get my hands on #3)
The above image comes from: http://www.sistemadesignitalia.it/drm/
Jul
14
Designing information can help us see data in ways that help us achieve specific goals. Well designed data ends up having little text yet the information is delivered through a variety of visual means. That’s how we learned in kindergarten, using pictures and picture books. We process images way faster than we process words.
The Vignet Labs blog posted a great article that show some great examples of information design.
For more information on the subject here are some of my fav books:
Anything by Edward Tufte (The top four results)
The Best Information Diagrams 2 (steep price, still trying to get my hands on #3)
The above image comes from: http://www.sistemadesignitalia.it/drm/
Jun
23
UX Booth has a great article on Counting Clicks. The every famous “3 Click Rule”, which is something like everyone should get to where they want to go in 3 clicks, is one of those “rules” that we aren’t fans of.
Not because we don’t like the challenge of making everything on your website available within 3 clicks. There might be times where it is applicable. As a general rule it places unnessary contrains on the architecture that might not really be a benefit to the user.
For example large navigation systems are not helpful for people to make decisions with. In that scenario people might want 4 clicks with smaller navigation items.
The truth is that hard, fast, and specific rules like this don’t apply to everything. Just like saying that a glass of wine a day is good for you doesn’t apply to everyone.
Jun
22
Some iPhone apps usage stats from adlabs.
– Minutes per use: 9.6 (Greystripe)
– Uses per user: 19.9 (Greystripe)
– Only 20% of users return to use the app after the first day (Pinch Media)
– After a month, this number drops to 5% (Pinch Media)
– “39% of iPhone users cited weather-related apps as one of the three kinds of applications they use most frequently (Compete via MediaPost, April 2009)
