Running The Ladder is the company blog of Bainbridge Studios, a tiny runt of a design practice based in lovely Tacoma, WA.
So what's the deal with the fish?
Browse by Topic
Recommended Reading
Flickr at the Office
Latest via Twitter
RSS Feed
subscribe to the rss feed
The Reality That Is Facebook
Thursday, May 27th, 2010 | Tom Carmony
The queasy blend of friends and “friends” is central to the Facebook experience. People who might get some sane use out of Facebook are advertising something, a business or a service or something. Facebook might have originated as a means of personal connection, but now it seems like strictly business disguised as personal connection, and the rhetoric of it is just as horrible as that sounds. Everybody writes in ad-sized bits, everybody “likes” a million products and services, everybody affirms things and exclaims over things like TV pitchmen. It’s as if everyone you know is turning into those horrible shills who blog about things they pretend to like for company kickbacks.
Eileen Jones nails it (via jimray)
First Impressions of Wired’s iPad App
Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 | Tom Carmony
Wired’s new iPad version (iTunes Link) of the magazine has finally hit the iTunes Store, beginning with the current June issue. Macworld has a good rundown of the basics here. As a subscriber to the print edition, I was particularly curious to see how the content was translated to the new tablet medium.
To date, most magazine-to-iPad transitions have been pretty underwhelming. Popular Science made a splash at launch with their highly interactive edition, and Time magazine’s effort has been generally well received (save for the annoyance of each issue being packaged as an individual app — particularly egregious for a weekly publication). Most other attempts at iPad magazine publication has honestly been nothing more than PDF viewers. Dwell (iTunes Link), Zinio, and other apps are fine as simple direct ports of the publications, but they bring absolutely nothing new to the table. It’s akin to watching a VHS tape on a HDTV.
Overall, I really like what Wired’s done here with the iPad edition. Their format seems to share a lot in common with Time’s, in that both strike a nice balance of some of the best aspects of what print offers for copy and image presentation, while slickly working in expanded multimedia content for many of the featured pieces, including audio, video, image galleries, and more.
The current issue features a great (albeit too brief) piece on Pixar, focusing on their design/development process for each film, and includes a neat walkthrough of the work involved in developing a single scene. This is well done, even in the print edition, but the iPad version is able to offer the added feature of actually showing you the finished scene. Yes, it’s a bit of a no-brainer, but it’s still a new feature for a new medium very much in its infancy. And it’s really well integrated.
Some of the advertisers are getting in on the interactivity as well. While this first issue features plenty of static display ads (ported over directly from the print version), a few others do stand out. Cameron Moll mentioned one in particular, and posted a quick video of the ad in action.
I’d gladly jettison the print edition (and feel better about the environmental benefits of utilizing less print) if it wasn’t for one factor — price. When I can get the print edition sent to my door for $20 (or often less, depending on special subscription offers), there’s just no way I’m going to pay 3x that ($5 per issue) for each month’s Wired. I understand $5 as a single issue price (comparable to the existing newsstand price for the print version), but publishers need to move quickly toward a subscription model for this content.
Whether that’s achieved via the iTunes Season Pass model, or through in-app purchases, I don’t really know or particularly care. But my hunch is that there will be few people who are going to buy more than an occasional issue at this price. Sure, the first issue will probably do well, as folks check out the new format and buy it for the shear novelty of it (it is a great demo for folks new to the iPad).
But that novelty won’t last for long at $60 per year.
Wired Magazine iPad App (iTunes Link)
Quick and Dirty Remote User Testing
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 | Tom Carmony
It’s often overlooked, particularly on small-scale projects, but even the most basic user testing can provide a wealth of invaluable information for both designers and clients. We all think we know and understand how our users will interact with a product or feature, but until you sit down and spend some time observing real people in real interactions with your site or web app, you’re probably greatly overestimating its ease of use and underestimating potential sticking points for the end user.
Nate Bolt discusses a range of easy-to-implement user testing options in the latest issue of A List Apart. There’s lots of great information crammed into his piece, both on tools we’re already familiar with (e.g., Silverback, CrazyEgg) and a host of alternatives. It’s definitely worth checking out.
Quick and Dirty Remote User Testing (via A List Apart)
Crunching Numbers
Monday, May 24th, 2010 | Tom Carmony
We may have to hire this one to do our taxes next year.
Links of the Week: May 21st
Friday, May 21st, 2010 | Tom Carmony
Google Font Directory
The full listing of Google’s newly embeddable webfont selection.
Pictaculous
Generate custom color palette from a image upload (link courtesy of Dan Benjamin).
Linear Gradients
One of a number of excellent tools on the site for generating CSS-based visual effects.
You can see all of our recommended links on del.icio.us »