CategoryDevices

January 14, 2013 — Designing websites for smartphones is easy compared to retrofitting those already in place. More than that, it’s embarrassing how, almost eight years after CSS gained practical acceptance, a lack of foresight haunts those of us who write HTML. Read more…

November 26, 2012 — Twenty minutes after unboxing my first iPad, I realized this device’s potential to revolutionize the world of kiosks. Read more…

September 24, 2012 — Managing a personal device lab can be quite hard with an ever expanding number of devices. It’s not only expensive, but also bad for our environment. Think of a situation where every web developer would purchase a large pile of gadgets and keep adding new ones as they are launched — this wouldn’t make much sense. Thankfully, there are better ways to handle the problem. During the spring of 2012, Jeremy Keith wrote on his website that anybody is welcome to visit their device lab at Clearleft’s office in Brighton, UK and use their devices. What they didn’t expect, though, was that in response many local developers offered to add their own devices to the collection as well. Two weeks later Jeremy Keith and Remy Sharp also presented this idea at the Mobilism conference in Amsterdam and the people attending loved it. A few months after Mobilism, similar labs started popping up in places like Amsterdam, Berlin, London and Malmö. Read more…

July 18, 2011 — In this article, we’ll discuss performance in relation to design and present seven guidelines that can help shape design decisions related to performance while accounting for the needs of end users and businesses. These guidelines are based on the experiences of our teams in designing native mobile apps for a broad product portfolio and on multiple mobile platforms. Read more…

May 12, 2011 — According to Brandweek, “brands are the express checkout for people living their lives at ever increasing speed. This article shows you how, and why, to add “app”-like icons to your sites for several mobile and desktop browser displays, to clearly and elegantly identify your site with an icon that stands out from the crowd. When I was a lad growing up in rural America, we only got four channels on television, all local affiliates of the four national networks (yes, four; you’re forgetting PBS, which I only watched when they did dinosaur specials). The ABC and CBS stations came in fairly clear if you adjusted the “rabbit ears” antennae just right, and wrapped tinfoil on ’em. Read more…

May 26, 2008 — Successful product design manages to reveal useful functionality beyond its appealing form. No matter how excellent a design looks like, most customers aren’t likely to spend money on something they won’t be able to use. On the other hand, most people are likely to buy something useful despite the design it has. Read more…

February 18, 2008 — Few weeks ago we’ve presented a number of innovative gadgets, devices, designs and concepts. Unless explicitly specified, none of them has been officially released or produced yet, and none of them is currently available for end-users. But what about existing products? What about innovative designs which are already available in stores and can be bought straight away? Read more…

February 4, 2008 — We live in a spectacular time. The pace of technology steadily increases, new fields of science are heavily explored and innovative concepts emerge almost every day, resulting in stunning and overwhelming products. The impact of these products can be tremendous: in fact, new technology can completely revolutionize the way we play, communicate, work and live our lives. Some of these products are just eye-candy, some are useful, some are visionary and some may become revolutionary in the next years. Read more…

January 7, 2008 — Steve Jobs stated once that the “design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” While this statement has proven to be crucial over thousands of years, one shouldn’t misinterpret it by emphasizing the functionality despite the design. When it comes to product design, the significance of aesthetics of a given device, the way its design looks and feels, determines the choice of the customer once the functionalities of multiple devices are more or less similar. If supported by sound user interface and a well-tested, clean implementation, innovative design solutions can drastically enhance the user experience. Read more…