design of stuff

Thursday, November 21, 2002

yet another IE patch

'Critical' Windows, IE Hole Plugged, according to PC World. Yet another security hole found. Yet another patch to add. I think there are more bytes in patches on my Win98 OS than there are from the actual, original 2nd edition software. So it goes. The patch can be found here: yet another MS patch.

I wonder if my current software will run on Lindows? I guess we'll know soon enough, since Stanley ordered a copy of it to test it out.
posted by lee on 11/21/02 at 04:45 AM

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Friday, November 15, 2002

ooh, texture heaven!

Check out Auto FX Software - textures for the taking, royalty free, for just registering. Lots and lots of very nice textures.
posted by lee on 11/15/02 at 04:43 AM

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Thursday, November 14, 2002

ColorMatch 5K

This may have been around for a while, but I just discovered it: ColorMatch 5K. It's a pretty handy dandy little color mixer that gives you a good palette of matching colors. I would love it if you could enter a hex value for a color and get the matching colors - but I'm not complaining, just glad to be able to use it.

I found the link to this on MezzoBlue, which I found while reading through comments on an article about Contributor (see yesterday's post) on Evolt.
posted by lee on 11/14/02 at 04:46 AM

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Thursday, November 07, 2002

ruins, again

My fascination with ruins continues unabated. This site is gorgeous, and spooky: the derelict sensation.



Detroit Train Station, Audrey Mantey

DetroitTrainStation_Audrey_Mantey.jpg



Audrey Mantey has a series of photographs of the ruin of the Detroit Train Station in Southwest Detroit (abandoned in 1988). I remember this station vividly - I was fascinated with it from the first time I saw it. I remember going with my Dad to pick up the out-of-town newspapers there when I was a little girl and then doing the same thing by myself when I was in college. I used to sit there and read the newspapers and watch the people.



This train station is not too far from where Tiger Stadium used to stand, and where the second-oldest Roman Catholic church in America, St. Anne (founded in 1701), still stands.



This site is worth spending time on, a lot of interesting projects and presentations. And it makes me realize I should go get pictures of a derelict building right here in Norwalk that fascinates me before it gets torn down. It's a building I would love to buy and renovate if I had the money to do it right.

posted by lee on 11/07/02 at 05:30 AM

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Saturday, September 28, 2002

A useful design tool

Sessions.edu is an online design school. They launched a new tool called The Color Calculator: "... provides the user with the ability to identify color schemes or harmonies for any design project, by controlling a series of menus and tools."

Thanks to Stanley for this link.
posted by lee on 09/28/02 at 04:35 PM

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Tuesday, September 17, 2002

Guess the Axis

From David Strom's Web Informant comes this interesting bit o' code: Axis Applet. Click on any three countries to find out what they have in common (an Axis, evil or otherwise, is defined as three countries having something in common).

After you play with that awhile, back up the URL to CODeDOC to check out what it's all about - software art with a focus on the code.
posted by lee on 09/17/02 at 04:52 AM

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Wednesday, February 13, 2002

More useful usability stuff

developerWorks: Usability : Seven tricks that Web users don't know. This was pretty interesting - as a developer, I really do forget that I had to learn this stuff at one time.
posted by lee on 02/13/02 at 02:54 PM

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Tuesday, February 12, 2002

Jared’s wombat??

Just received Jared Spool's latest UIEtips enewsletter: "Determining How Design Affects Branding." Lately Jared has been annoying me with his spam all about attending some conference on the west coast (once is okay. Three times is NOT okay). But aside from that, methinks he should start selecting more substantial stuff for his newsletter if he has any hopes whatsoever of selling my company reports on his research. These examples just won't do it:

"The more shoppers could purchase their desired products, the more their positive attitudes about the site's brand increased."
Duh.

"The usage of certain design elements correlated very strongly with people's brand attitude changes. For example, shoppers who used size charts while buying apparel were more likely to show brand strength increases on those sites. While shoppers who used Search correlated strongly with decreases in brand strength."
Correlations do not a conclusion make. How strongly correlated? Was it a statistically significant correlation or just a line moving on a chart? What were they searching for? Why were they searching? What's a brand-strength increase, anyway? And the only reason to use a size chart is if you're already committed to buying - otherwise, it's a pain in the ass to figure them out. So if someone IS ALREADY committed to buying, of course his or her brand awareness is going to be higher.

"These two findings tell us that when we create designs that focus on ensuring users accomplish their goals, we are likely having a long-term positive effect on the strength of the brand."
As opposed to what, deliberately designing sites to be user unfriendly and to thwart user goals? How much money was spent on this study? Time?

If you want USEFUL web-building information, go here: Criteria for optimal web design (designing for usability) from the Software Usability Research Laboratory at Wichita State University.
posted by lee on 02/12/02 at 03:01 PM

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Friday, January 18, 2002

What my parents saw

GREAT collection of WPA posters via the Libe of Congress site. Wonderful for getting ideas for good retro designs.

matches.jpg
posted by lee on 01/18/02 at 12:37 AM

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