http://www.rickmunoz.com/blog dissecting design Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:38:57 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Jacek Utko is an extraordinary Polish newspaper designer whose redesigns for papers in Eastern Europe not only win awards, but increase circulation by up to 100%. Can good design save the newspaper? It just might. http://www.rickmunoz.com/blog/2009/jacek-utko-can-design-save-the-newspaper/ New York 2008 from Vicente Sahuc on Vimeo This video is a beautiful, mesmerizing piece of work.  Objectively, it is little more than some candid, street footage (admittedly taken in Manhattan) spliced together and laced with a nice soundtrack. Tthose words technically do describe the video -- which could easily instead ... http://www.rickmunoz.com/blog/2009/its-not-the-tool-its-the-mechani/ [caption id="attachment_100" align="alignright" width="150" caption="It all starts here."][/caption] The eggheads over at User Centric published an academic analysis of the UI of the instrument panel and center stack on the new Mini Clubman. Despite in all their scientific vigor and application of UI expertise, though, they didn't get it quite right. ... http://www.rickmunoz.com/blog/2009/the-dashboard-is-not-the-user-experience/ I love this story. This "graffiti artist", Poster Boy, took his very limitation - no money to buy supplies - and from that limitation established his art form. I think there is a lesson there for everyone who works in a creative field. Often, when presented with a blank sheet, ... http://www.rickmunoz.com/blog/2009/making-something-from-nothing/ Kicker Studio designer and author Dan Saffer speaks about the designing and documenting for gestural interfaces. Kind of long, but worth a watch. http://www.rickmunoz.com/blog/2009/tap-is-the-new-click/ I guarantee that you will love this video. For a high-def, albeit briefer, version, visit Capacity's site. Although it is tons of fun and entertaining to watch, what is most compelling is the huge leap forward displayed here in the notion of what a logo and a brand can mean. Conventional ... http://www.rickmunoz.com/blog/2009/branding-on-a-higher-level-cartoon-networks-noods/ Here we have a conceptual version of Ford's second generation Sync system, to debut next week at the Detroit auto show. Beyond the flawless voice recognition capaciy, there are two striking things about this video. First, the natural language the model uses to control the SYNC system. The ability to use ... http://www.rickmunoz.com/blog/2009/fords-second-genration-sync-technology/ Apple was, of course, the big news in the technology world today. Most inspiring of the product updates was iLife 09. Specifically, iPhoto has added some powerful new features to enable users to organize and find photos in their library. The new tools, Faces and Places (in addition to Events, ... http://www.rickmunoz.com/blog/2009/ia-vs-domain-language/ Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo. Mozilla labs blows minds with this mold-breaking, innovative, and nearly genius addition to the browser kingdom: Ubiquity. As they describe it, Enable on-demand, user-generated mashups with existing open Web APIs. (In other words, allowing everyone (not just Web developers) to remix the Web so ... http://www.rickmunoz.com/blog/2008/ubiquity-for-firefox-text-commands-that-make-pull-the-web-together/ Seth Godin had a great post today about designing for users who just don't get it: Great design is intuitive. Great design eliminates confusion. But not for everyone, not all the time. The words and interactions you use often have a sophistication that will confuse some portion of your audience. One  of ... http://www.rickmunoz.com/blog/2008/great-design-is-intuitive-it-eliminates-confusion-but-not-all-the-time/