How did the wealthy and educated of the past – say 18 or 19 century – usually begin their day? Just like we do: by reading their mail. After that they sat down to write the replies, which were lengthy, calligraphic, grammatically impeccable and of the finest style, so this activity often occupied a large part of the day. The most personal thing about these letters was, of course, the handwriting: perfected day after day, a skill that is rapidly being lost in our times as the communication is replaced by computerized text. Now there is a service allowing you to retain some of that original, personal quality: Pilot Handwriting.
But it comes with a problem. When opening a handwritten letter that looks like the one in the video one would naturally expect it to be – well, impeccable and of the finest style. And we are not used to caring much about our style, grammar or punctuation nowadays. By the way, do you know that in 18th century they sometimes used to write “cross-letters” to save money? Smaller letters were cheaper.
Every time I feel like taking advantage of Paris rich cultural life I am confronted with information websites that do not satisfy my needs, are not easy to search or do not show the kind of information I want to see. Now it seems that I have found a website quite answering my needs: 75.agendaCulturel.fr. It has a strong Web 2.0 flavor, a clear layout with large user-friendly typography, enticing visual design and, most of all, simple and effective search. Sometimes the design seems almost too “friendly”, with huge typeface and a lot of white space, giving an impression of being still “under development”. But it is definitely a good start… of my cultural weekend.
Russia is not China and it is not Iran: although the freedom of speech in mass media is restricted and the media itself is rigorously controlled, Russia is officially still a democracy. This means the country cannot block the access to community websites when a problem arises, which means that the citizens will protest or take action when the government fails to.
The past few weeks Russia has experienced a severe heat wave, causing its vast forests to burn. Whole villages were annihilated and Moscow itself disappeared for days behind a heavy smoke curtain. Already in the beginning of the calamities it turned out that the authorities were not capable to protect the forests and the people adequately. So, after the first protests, the people started organizing themselves.
Online communities were created to coordinate volunteer efforts: to extinguish the fires, to help the professional fire fighters and those who have lost their homes. This movement was lead by several bloggers. Thanks to “livejournals“, popular in Russia, many Moscovites, sick of inhaling smoke, went to fight the fires themselves or started collecting money, clothing and equipment. All these efforts were coordinated through blogs, Facebook and Twitter, with detailed reports and maps.
Besides getting the situation under control this citizen initiative also has another, more long term result: proving where and how the government failed. Those responsible will have a hard time avoiding it.
Pour tout ceux qui travaillent dans le domaine du tactile, ou rencontrent quelques difficultés à comprendre et décrypter toutes les gestuelles déjà existentes (entre le pinch, le spread et le splay), Luke Wroblewski publit sur son site un guide particulièrement intéressant compilant un grand nombre d’interactions rencontrées sur les différents supports existants : Magic Mouse, iPhone, Android, Windows 7 Phone, Table surface, etc…
Outre ce pdf disponible ici, il site évoque notamment les recommendations sur la taille des zones actives selon les différentes guidelines (Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, etc…).
Il y a quelques temps, je vous faisais part de mes doutes sur l’efficacité du design communautaire. Or, il semble que le projet communautaire de Nokia avance bien quand on voit les sketches qui sont proposés.
we are colorblind.com : une belle initiative pour recenser les astuces graphiques et les modèles de design d’interfaces pour améliorer l’accessibilité des interfaces au sujet des déficiences visuelles.
Je vous recommande particulièrement le section “Tools“, qui propose entre autre des outils pour valider le contraste couleur de texte / couleur de fond.
Moscow Metro system is the city’s pride and joy, and one of the busiest, largest metro networks in the world. A network that gets larger every year, adding new lines and stations. If in the beginning the metro map was just the easy to recognize brown circle with each metro line crossing it at two points, but nowadays the lines have become so long that the new construction aims to interconnect them without actually crossing the Ring and without having to go through the city center to get to another side.
Art. Lebedev Studio was commissioned to design the next generation of the Moscow Metro Map, and here is a fragment of the final result:
Comparing it to the current map (see fragment below) I cannot help liking the old one more. It had somehow more “body” in its visual representation of the stations, but the typography on the Lebedev’s map definitely has a better readibility:
On their website Art. Lebedev show their design process leading to the final map, with some interesting deviations, inspired by metro maps of other cities. Personally I find the final version bleaker than some of the working ideas.
Depuis bientôt deux semaines que je teste l’iPad de manière quotidienne, deux constats s’imposent :
je n’utilise quasiment plus mon ordinateur personnel à la maison. Il ne représente plus que 10% de mon usage,
l’idée d’avoir “mutualisé” les systèmes d’exploitation et les interfaces de l’iPhone et l’iPad pose certains inconvénients pénibles en terme d’expérience utilisateur.
L’origine du problème vient d’une prise en compte insuffisante de la prise en main et du poids de l’iPad. En effet, celui-ci est trop lourd pour être porté à une main pendant plus de 5 minutes sans ressentir une gêne.
C’est pourquoi, on a tendance à :
le reposer sur quelque chose, en général son abdomen. Or, cela rend l’accès au bouton “Menu” peu pratique. Du coup, on bascule l’iPad en mode paysage, voire on lui met la tête en bas pour accéder au bouton en haut de l’appareil.
le saisir à deux mains. C’est ici qu’interviennent les problèmes de conception d’interfaces.
Par défaut les barres de navigation et d’actions sur l’iPhone et sur l’iPad se trouve en haut et en bas, ce qui nous oblige à constamment lâcher d’une main l’appareil pour y accéder. Pour certaines applications, ça ne pose pas réellement de problèmes, mais pour d’autres, ça devient pénibles. C’est notamment le cas des applications de lecteur de flux RSS.
J’en ai testé 5 ou 6 et je dois dire que j’étais très heureux de découvrir Reeder, qui a décidé de faire abstraction des guidelines d’Apple.
L’application propose une barre d’actions latérale qui permet d’utiliser l’iPad à deux mains de manière confortable sans le lâcher. Ainsi, on utilise naturellement ses pouces.
J’espère que les développeurs s’inspireront de cette initiative à l’avenir quand cela fait sens.
I like this kind of initiative. He’s not happy with the boarding pass design, so he offers something else. And as a good designer, he keeps on iterating (solo + collaborative way).
Event page
