ryan p. sims

Bubba Jr. Sims. Goodbye little guy. 2005 - 2008.

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:56:00 -0700

Bubba Jr. Sims. Goodbye little guy. 2005 - 2008.

Oh Chrome. I looked at it and thought the same thing. WTF. (via...

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:37:05 -0700

Oh Chrome. I looked at it and thought the same thing. WTF. (via marc via catbird)

My new favorite wireframing tool - the reporter gridded...

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:16:44 -0700

My new favorite wireframing tool - the reporter gridded moleskin.

“Beige, minimal, with rounded corners and just small...

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:43:00 -0700

“Beige, minimal, with rounded corners and just small enough to fit in your pocket, the Chronotebook has trademark Muji aesthetic appeal. The clock, located in the center of an open page, is divided in halves by the midline of the book—the left hand white graphic represents AM, while the dark graphic on the right is PM. Not only does the layout illustrate our circadian nature but it forces you to organize tasks according to the time of day they need to be done. Overall, it’s easy to look at, simply comprehended and accomplishes a design feat by adding a small feature (a more logical way to break up your day) that has big rewards in functionality.” (Muji Chronotebook via Coolhunting via Muji Design Awards)

“Google looked a lot like a non-profit in the very...

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:30:26 -0700

“Google looked a lot like a non-profit in the very beginning beginning. Google, at year one, was the limit in the calculus sense of what a non-profit index of the web would have produced.”

Paul Graham at Startup School 08

"A city speaks to you mostly by accident—in things you see through windows, in conversations you..."

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:23:47 -0700

“A city speaks to you mostly by accident—in things you see through windows, in conversations you overhear. It’s not something you have to seek out, but something you can’t turn off. One of the occupational hazards of living in Cambridge is overhearing the conversations of people who use interrogative intonation in declarative sentences. But on average I’ll take Cambridge conversations over New York or Silicon Valley ones. A friend who moved to Silicon Valley in the late 90s said the worst thing about living there was the low quality of the eavesdropping. At the time I thought she was being deliberately eccentric. Sure, it can be interesting to eavesdrop on people, but is good quality eavesdropping so important that it would affect where you chose to live? Now I understand what she meant. The conversations you overhear tell you what sort of people you’re among.”

- Cities and Ambition (via Laserlike)

"Knowing what to include, and what to leave out, requires much more discipline. But in coding, as in..."

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:07:12 -0700

“Knowing what to include, and what to leave out, requires much more discipline. But in coding, as in writing, addition by subtraction is the Golden Rule. Product design is about choices, careful ones. It is extremely important to know your customer and listen, but there’s a difference between that and design by committee. Recent history is loaded with examples of successful products that do one thing and do it well, from the iPod to Twitter. In fact, I have seen several product betas that have fewer features than the prototypes. At Mint.com, where I work, we’ve made such choices many times. Below I’ve put together a few tests to help you avoid feature creep, too…”

- F|R: How to Avoid Feature Creep with Your Software Apps - GigaOM

Information Architects » Web Design is 95% Typography

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:11:13 -0700

Information Architects » Web Design is 95% Typography: A good reminder of the importance of paying attention to typography in the user interface.

Arial versus Helvetica.

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:07:00 -0700

Arial versus Helvetica.

Laserlike

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:37:12 -0700

Laserlike: Mike Speiser, who I worked with at Epinions, has a great blog covering economics, game theory, social networking and web trends. Really, really good.

The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 14:35:00 -0700

The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web

Mint.com: Why Design Matters, Too - GigaOM

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 14:27:04 -0700

Mint.com: Why Design Matters, Too - GigaOM

"Sociable technology must support the four themes of communication, presentation, support for groups,..."

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:29:38 -0700

“Sociable technology must support the four themes of communication, presentation, support for groups, and troubleshooting. How these are handled determines whether or not we will find interaction to be sociable. People learn social skills. Machines have to have them designed into them. Sometimes even worse than machines, however, are services, where even though we are often interacting with people, the service activities are dictated by formal rule books of procedures and processes, and the people we interact with can be as frustrated and confused as we are. This too is a design issue. Design of both machines and services should be thought of as a social activity, one where there is much concern paid to the social nature of the interaction. All products have a social component. This is especially true of communication products, whether websites, personal digests (blog), audio and video postings mean to be shared, or mail digests, mailing lists, and text messaging on cellphones. Social networks are by definition social. But where the social impact is obvious, designers are forewarned. The interesting cases happen where the social side is not so obvious.”

- Don Norman’s jnd.org / Sociable Design - Introduction

Eating: bar jules beef tongue.

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 20:55:04 -0700

Eating: bar jules beef tongue.

“Earthquake weather” by Beck from Guero. “I...

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:56:24 -0700

“Earthquake weather” by Beck from Guero.

“I push I pull the days go slow
Into a void we filled with death
And noise that laughs falls off their
Maps all cured of pain and doubts
In your little brain

Something’s coming sky is purple
Dogs are howling to themselves
Days are changing with the weather
Like a rip tide could rip us away “

"Without technology, this trip could’ve been very tricky and, yes, even stressful. Planning routes,..."

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:48:44 -0700

“Without technology, this trip could’ve been very tricky and, yes, even stressful. Planning routes, doing guesswork, feeling scattered and disorganized can all lead to unhappy times. I’d like to think that technology made my trip more fulfilling, less stressful, and more enjoyable. I can’t even begin to contemplate how much TIME we saved by working these services in to our vacation. I encourage everyone to stay open-minded with the technologies that are around them. You don’t need to turn in to a complete tech junkie, but if you think about it, I’m sure there are some things that you can think where technology may help you. If you’re pondering about, “Wow, it’d be really neat if there was a services that did THIS.” There probably is one.”

- Traveling to California, Web 2.0-Style « Daniel Peck

Alexander's Quality Without a Name

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:19:00 -0700

Alexander says, “The quality without a name, is a situation, where, somehow the essence of life is present. It’s intangible. What one would hope, is that pieces of software, make each person that encounters that software more of a person. They’re capable of doing harm to other people by treating them or our interactions machinelike. Yet, this phenomena has the capability of going to a much-much-much richer place that makes a person or child more humane and caring.”

Christopher Alexander interviewed on Studio 360

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:05:00 -0700

Radiohead’s “Airbag” covered by Radiodread.

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:38:26 -0700

Radiohead’s “Airbag” covered by Radiodread.

Radiolab: Brian Greene talks about the multiverse with Robert...

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:57:00 -0700

Radiolab: Brian Greene talks about the multiverse with Robert Krulwich. He does an admirable job at explaining the multiverse. It took three listens for me to get it.