Pilot error and the shape of things to come
How Alphonse Chapanis, a young psychologist, saved the lives of WWII pilots through clever design.
David Hall Multidisciplinary designer Personal work and musings on design, culture and working life.
Our hero: Storymapping the user’s journey
This is the story of a novel and powerful way to visualise your user’s journey, and a traumatising childhood gaming experience.
Graphic notation: the art of visualising music
Design and music intersect in many areas, yet one relatively obscure but creative area is in the design of graphic notation by composers.
Design principle: effective listening through reflective questioning
Listening is a vital UX skill we can all get better at, and a chatbot experiment from the 1960s teaches us how.
Design principle: avoid the need to ask the question
Steve Job’s challenge to the engineers of the first iPad keyboard is instructional for us all.
The literate designer: an essential guide to microcopy
Designers should not be mere decorators, but have an understanding of language and microcopy, a crucial design skill, now more than ever.
Cardew’s Treatise: the greatest musical score ever designed
Described as the ‘Mount Everest’ of graphical musical scores, Treatise still manages to surprise with its invention and beauty of graphic notation.
A lean guide to designing for behaviour change – Part 3
We will put what we’ve learnt about behavioural strategies and motivation into practice.
Forget Plato: the importance of shadow in interaction design
Shadow plays an important role in interaction design. It communicate vital visual cues in layered and interactive interfaces
Favourite podcasts for creatives, designers and amateur psychologists
14 hugely interesting and educational podcasts on design, creativity and psychology to fill any learning void.
A lean guide to designing for behaviour change – Part 2
We look at behavioural strategies such as automation and changing habits to see how using intrinsic motivation is a good thing.
A lean guide to designing for behaviour change – Part 1
Designing for behaviour change uses behavioural science, psychology and motivation in the things we build to change people’s behaviour.
Design for non-designers: five visual principles to give you a head start
Follow these simple design principles, and you will start creating more effective and consistent design that you can be proud of.
HAL’s display from 2001, wallpaper download
Download wallpaper inspired by the HAL display form 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Flipping the bird: quitting Twitter and getting my attention back
I joined Twitter 10 years ago and today, I wilfully pressed the deactivate button.
NoUI and the danger of invisible design
Product designers are hiding the workings of the system as they try to create a better user experience, but is there a danger here?