art Jude Graveson, Artist By traceygrady.com Published On :: Thu, 19 Feb 2015 08:35:53 +0000 Select each thumbnail to view the full image × × Full Article Uncategorised
art How to restart a blog after five years By traceygrady.com Published On :: Thu, 16 Apr 2015 11:28:28 +0000 This is not the post I had planned for resuming my blog. I had in mind a lengthy article about design and its role in communication at this point in digital evolution. Deep. Thought-provoking. But I know that it’s better to start with ideas that are a little less ambitious in scope. Plus, to tell you […] Full Article Blogging blogging content strategy social media trends
art Building a PC, Part IX: Downsizing By blog.codinghorror.com Published On :: Sun, 19 Apr 2020 23:56:03 GMT Hard to believe that I've had the same PC case since 2011, and my last serious upgrade was in 2015. I guess that's yet another sign that the PC is over, because PC upgrades have gotten really boring. It took 5 years for me to muster up the initiative to Full Article
art Pandemic Creativity: Edible Versions of Famous Artworks By kottke.org Published On :: Sat, 09 May 2020 07:56:00 PDT https://kottke.org/20/05/pandemic-creativity-edible-versions-of-famous-artworks Full Article
art Troops to receive Purple Hearts for injuries during Iranian missile barrage on al-Asad airbase in Iraq By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 29 Apr 2020 13:50:08 EDT There will be Purple Hearts awarded to troops injured during the Jan. 8 Iranian missile barrage on the al-Asad airbase in Iraq, a defense official told Military Times. Full Article
art Troops to receive Purple Hearts for injuries during Iranian missile barrage on al-Asad airbase in Iraq By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wednesday, April 29, 2020 - 1:50pm There will be Purple Hearts awarded to troops injured during the Jan. 8 Iranian missile barrage on the al-Asad airbase in Iraq, a defense official told Military Times. Full Article
art Dain Yoon’s Make-up Art Will Confuse You By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 26 Feb 2020 06:33:37 +0000 If you follow Dain Yoon’s Instagram, you get the pleasant surprise to regularly get totally surreal photos of her. The 22 years old artist, based in Seoul, Korea, likes to disrupt reality by using herself as a model for stunning make-up art. You can discover more of her work on her website. Full Article Blog Inspiration Art
art How I Evaluate Crowdfunding Projects: Kickstarter, Indiegogo & Beyond By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 01 Aug 2017 07:01:19 +0000 13 Questions You Should Ask Before Backing A Crowdfunding Project on Kickstarter, Indiegogo and Beyond Full Article Featured Photography Technology Tips & Tricks Crowdfunded Crowdfunding Indiegogo Kickstarter
art 9 Ways To Start Promoting Your Content Now By justcreative.com Published On :: Tue, 28 Apr 2020 04:10:18 +0000 Your ability to create and promote content is critical to your business' success. Here are 9 ways to set up a framework for content promotion immediately. Full Article Blogging & Content Marketing Guest Articles Content Content Marketing Content Strategy
art Famous Hope Quotes as Charts By flowingdata.com Published On :: Fri, 08 May 2020 07:18:08 +0000 I thought we (i.e. me) could use a break, so I made these abstract charts to represent the most popular quotes about hope.Tags: hope, quote Full Article Chart Everything hope quote
art Markdown Comes Alive! Part 1, Basic Editor By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 26 Feb 2020 08:00:00 -0500 In my last post, I covered what LiveView is at a high level. In this series, we’re going to dive deeper and implement a LiveView powered Markdown editor called Frampton. This series assumes you have some familiarity with Phoenix and Elixir, including having them set up locally. Check out Elizabeth’s three-part series on getting started with Phoenix for a refresher. This series has a companion repository published on GitHub. Get started by cloning it down and switching to the starter branch. You can see the completed application on master. Our goal today is to make a Markdown editor, which allows a user to enter Markdown text on a page and see it rendered as HTML next to it in real-time. We’ll make use of LiveView for the interaction and the Earmark package for rendering Markdown. The starter branch provides some styles and installs LiveView. Rendering Markdown Let’s set aside the LiveView portion and start with our data structures and the functions that operate on them. To begin, a Post will have a body, which holds the rendered HTML string, and title. A string of markdown can be turned into HTML by calling Post.render(post, markdown). I think that just about covers it! First, let’s define our struct in lib/frampton/post.ex: defmodule Frampton.Post do defstruct body: "", title: "" def render(%__MODULE{} = post, markdown) do # Fill me in! end end Now the failing test (in test/frampton/post_test.exs): describe "render/2" do test "returns our post with the body set" do markdown = "# Hello world!" assert Post.render(%Post{}, markdown) == {:ok, %Post{body: "<h1>Hello World</h1> "}} end end Our render method will just be a wrapper around Earmark.as_html!/2 that puts the result into the body of the post. Add {:earmark, "~> 1.4.3"} to your deps in mix.exs, run mix deps.get and fill out render function: def render(%__MODULE{} = post, markdown) do html = Earmark.as_html!(markdown) {:ok, Map.put(post, :body, html)} end Our test should now pass, and we can render posts! [Note: we’re using the as_html! method, which prints error messages instead of passing them back to the user. A smarter version of this would handle any errors and show them to the user. I leave that as an exercise for the reader…] Time to play around with this in an IEx prompt (run iex -S mix in your terminal): iex(1)> alias Frampton.Post Frampton.Post iex(2)> post = %Post{} %Frampton.Post{body: "", title: ""} iex(3)> {:ok, updated_post} = Post.render(post, "# Hello world!") {:ok, %Frampton.Post{body: "<h1>Hello world!</h1> ", title: ""}} iex(4)> updated_post %Frampton.Post{body: "<h1>Hello world!</h1> ", title: ""} Great! That’s exactly what we’d expect. You can find the final code for this in the render_post branch. LiveView Editor Now for the fun part: Editing this live! First, we’ll need a route for the editor to live at: /editor sounds good to me. LiveViews can be rendered from a controller, or directly in the router. We don’t have any initial state, so let's go straight from a router. First, let's put up a minimal test. In test/frampton_web/live/editor_live_test.exs: defmodule FramptonWeb.EditorLiveTest do use FramptonWeb.ConnCase import Phoenix.LiveViewTest test "the editor renders" do conn = get(build_conn(), "/editor") assert html_response(conn, 200) =~ "data-test="editor"" end end This test doesn’t do much yet, but notice that it isn’t live view specific. Our first render is just the same as any other controller test we’d write. The page’s content is there right from the beginning, without the need to parse JavaScript or make API calls back to the server. Nice. To make that test pass, add a route to lib/frampton_web/router.ex. First, we import the LiveView code, then we render our Editor: import Phoenix.LiveView.Router # … Code skipped ... # Inside of `scope "/"`: live "/editor", EditorLive Now place a minimal EditorLive module, in lib/frampton_web/live/editor_live.ex: defmodule FramptonWeb.EditorLive do use Phoenix.LiveView def render(assigns) do ~L""" <div data-test=”editor”> <h1>Hello world!</h1> </div> """ end def mount(_params, _session, socket) do {:ok, socket} end end And we have a passing test suite! The ~L sigil designates that LiveView should track changes to the content inside. We could keep all of our markup in this render/1 method, but let’s break it out into its own template for demonstration purposes. Move the contents of render into lib/frampton_web/templates/editor/show.html.leex, and replace EditorLive.render/1 with this one liner: def render(assigns), do: FramptonWeb.EditorView.render("show.html", assigns). And finally, make an EditorView module in lib/frampton_web/views/editor_view.ex: defmodule FramptonWeb.EditorView do use FramptonWeb, :view import Phoenix.LiveView end Our test should now be passing, and we’ve got a nicely separated out template, view and “live” server. We can keep markup in the template, helper functions in the view, and reactive code on the server. Now let’s move forward to actually render some posts! Handling User Input We’ve got four tasks to accomplish before we are done: Take markdown input from the textarea Send that input to the LiveServer Turn that raw markdown into HTML Return the rendered HTML to the page. Event binding To start with, we need to annotate our textarea with an event binding. This tells the liveview.js framework to forward DOM events to the server, using our liveview channel. Open up lib/frampton_web/templates/editor/show.html.leex and annotate our textarea: <textarea phx-keyup="render_post"></textarea> This names the event (render_post) and sends it on each keyup. Let’s crack open our web inspector and look at the web socket traffic. Using Chrome, open the developer tools, navigate to the network tab and click WS. In development you’ll see two socket connections: one is Phoenix LiveReload, which polls your filesystem and reloads pages appropriately. The second one is our LiveView connection. If you let it sit for a while, you’ll see that it's emitting a “heartbeat” call. If your server is running, you’ll see that it responds with an “ok” message. This lets LiveView clients know when they've lost connection to the server and respond appropriately. Now, type some text and watch as it sends down each keystroke. However, you’ll also notice that the server responds with a “phx_error” message and wipes out our entered text. That's because our server doesn’t know how to handle the event yet and is throwing an error. Let's fix that next. Event handling We’ll catch the event in our EditorLive module. The LiveView behavior defines a handle_event/3 callback that we need to implement. Open up lib/frampton_web/live/editor_live.ex and key in a basic implementation that lets us catch events: def handle_event("render_post", params, socket) do IO.inspect(params) {:noreply, socket} end The first argument is the name we gave to our event in the template, the second is the data from that event, and finally the socket we’re currently talking through. Give it a try, typing in a few characters. Look at your running server and you should see a stream of events that look something like this: There’s our keystrokes! Next, let’s pull out that value and use it to render HTML. Rendering Markdown Lets adjust our handle_event to pattern match out the value of the textarea: def handle_event("render_post", %{"value" => raw}, socket) do Now that we’ve got the raw markdown string, turning it into HTML is easy thanks to the work we did earlier in our Post module. Fill out the body of the function like this: {:ok, post} = Post.render(%Post{}, raw) IO.inspect(post) If you type into the textarea you should see output that looks something like this: Perfect! Lastly, it’s time to send that rendered html back to the page. Returning HTML to the page In a LiveView template, we can identify bits of dynamic data that will change over time. When they change, LiveView will compare what has changed and send over a diff. In our case, the dynamic content is the post body. Open up show.html.leex again and modify it like so: <div class="rendered-output"> <%= @post.body %> </div> Refresh the page and see: Whoops! The @post variable will only be available after we put it into the socket’s assigns. Let’s initialize it with a blank post. Open editor_live.ex and modify our mount/3 function: def mount(_params, _session, socket) do post = %Post{} {:ok, assign(socket, post: post)} end In the future, we could retrieve this from some kind of storage, but for now, let's just create a new one each time the page refreshes. Finally, we need to update the Post struct with user input. Update our event handler like this: def handle_event("render_post", %{"value" => raw}, %{assigns: %{post: post}} = socket) do {:ok, post} = Post.render(post, raw) {:noreply, assign(socket, post: post) end Let's load up http://localhost:4000/editor and see it in action. Nope, that's not quite right! Phoenix won’t render this as HTML because it’s unsafe user input. We can get around this (very good and useful) security feature by wrapping our content in a raw/1 call. We don’t have a database and user processes are isolated from each other by Elixir. The worst thing a malicious user could do would be crash their own session, which doesn’t bother me one bit. Check the edit_posts branch for the final version. Conclusion That’s a good place to stop for today. We’ve accomplished a lot! We’ve got a dynamically rendering editor that takes user input, processes it and updates the page. And we haven’t written any JavaScript, which means we don’t have to maintain or update any JavaScript. Our server code is built on the rock-solid foundation of the BEAM virtual machine, giving us a great deal of confidence in its reliability and resilience. In the next post, we’ll tackle making a shared editor, allowing multiple users to edit the same post. This project will highlight Elixir’s concurrency capabilities and demonstrate how LiveView builds on them to enable some incredible user experiences. Full Article Code Back-end Engineering
art A Viget Glossary: What We Mean and Why it Matters - Part 1 By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 21 Apr 2020 08:00:00 -0400 Viget has helped organizations design and develop award-winning websites and digital products for 20 years. In that time, we’ve been lucky to create long-term relationships with clients like Puma, the World Wildlife Fund, and Privia Health, and, throughout our time working together, we’ve come to understand each others’ unique terminology. But that isn’t always the case when we begin work with new clients, and in a constantly-evolving industry, we know that new terminology appears almost daily and organizations have unique definitions for deliverables and processes. Kicking off a project always initiates a flurry of activity. There are contracts to sign, team members to introduce, and new platforms to learn. It’s an exciting time, and we know clients are anxious to get underway. Amidst all the activity, though, there is a need to define and create a shared lexicon to ensure both teams understand the project deliverables and process that will take us from kickoff to launch. Below, we’ve rounded up a few terms for each of our disciplines that often require additional explanation. Note: our definitions of these terms may differ slightly from the industry standard, but highlight our interpretation and use of them on a daily basis. User ExperienceResearchIn UX, there is a proliferation of terms that are often used interchangeably and mean almost-but-subtly-not the same thing. Viget uses the term research to specifically mean user research — learning more about the users of our products, particularly how they think and behave — in order to make stronger recommendations and better designs. This can be accomplished through different methodologies, depending on the needs of the project, and can include moderated usability testing, stakeholder interviews, audience research, surveys, and more. Learn more about the subtleties of UX research vocabulary in our post on “Speaking the Same Language About Research”.WireframesWe use wireframes to show the priority and organization of content on the screen, to give a sense of what elements will get a stronger visual treatment, and to detail how users will get to other parts of the site. Wireframes are a key component of website design — think of them as the skeleton or blueprint of a page — but we know that clients often feel uninspired after reviewing pages built with gray boxes. In fact, we’ve even written about how to improve wireframe presentations. We remind clients that visual designers will step in later to add polish through color, graphics, and typography, but agreeing on the foundation of the page is an important and necessary first step. PrototypesDuring the design process, it’s helpful for us to show clients how certain pieces of functionality or animations will work once the site is developed. We can mimic interactivity or test a technical proof of concept by using a clickable prototype, relying on tools like Figma, Invision, or Principle. Our prototypes can be used to illustrate a concept to internal stakeholders, but shouldn’t be seen as a final approach. Often, these concepts will require additional work to prepare them for developer handoff, which means that prototypes quickly become outdated. Read more about how and when we use prototypes. Navigation Testing (Treejack Testing)Following an information architecture presentation, we will sometimes recommend that clients conduct navigation testing. When testing, we present a participant with the proposed navigation and ask them to perform specific tasks in order to see if they will be able to locate the information specified within the site’s new organization. These tests generally focus on two aspects of the navigation: the structure of the navigation system itself, and the language used within the system. Treejack is an online navigation testing tool that we like to employ when conducting navigation tests, so we’ll often interchange the terms “navigation testing” with “treejack testing”.Learn more about Viget’s approach to user experience and research. Full Article Strategy Process
art A Viget Glossary: What We Mean and Why It Matters - Part 2 By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 28 Apr 2020 10:09:00 -0400 In my last post, I defined terms used by our UX team that are often confused or have multiple meanings across the industry. Today, I’ll share our definitions for processes and deliverables used by our design and strategy teams. Creative Brand Strategy In our experience, we’ve found that the term brand strategy is used to cover a myriad of processes, documents, and deliverables. To us, a brand strategy defines how an organization communicates who they are, what they do and why in a clear and compelling way. Over the years, we’ve developed an approach to brand strategy work that emphasizes rigorous research, hands-on collaboration, and the definition of problems and goals. We work with clients to align on a brand strategy concept and, depending on the client and their goals, our final deliverables can range to include strategy definition, audience-specific messaging, identity details, brand elements, applications, and more. Take a look at the brand strategy work we’ve done for Fiscalnote, Swiftdine, and Armstrong Tire. Content Strategy A content strategy goes far beyond the words on a website or in an app. A strong content strategy dictates the substance, structure, and governance of the information an organization uses to communicate to its audience. It guides creating, organizing, and maintaining content so that companies can communicate who they are, what they do, and why efficiently and effectively. We’ve worked with organizations like the Washington Speakers Bureau, The Nature Conservancy, the NFL Players Association, and the Wildlife Conservation Society to refine and enhance their content strategies. Still confused about the difference between brand and content strategy? Check out our flowchart. Style Guide vs. Brand Guidelines We often find the depth or fidelity of brand guidelines and style guides can vary greatly, and the terms can often be confused. When we create brand guidelines, they tend to be large documents that include in-depth recommendations about how a company should communicate their brand. Sections like “promise”, “vision”, “mission”, “values”, “tone”, etc. accompany details about how the brand’s logo, colors and fonts should be used in a variety of scenarios. Style guides, on the other hand, are typically pared down documents that contain specific guidance for organizations’ logos, colors and fonts, and don’t always include usage examples. Design System One question we get from clients often during a redesign or rebrand is, “How can I make sure people across my organization are adhering to our new designs?” This is where a design system comes into play. Design systems can range from the basic — e.g., a systematic approach to creating shared components for a single website — all the way to the complex —e.g., architecting a cross-product design system that can scale to accommodate hundreds of different products within a company. By assembling elements like color, typography, imagery, messaging, voice and tone, and interaction patterns in a central repository, organizations are able to scale products and marketing confidently and efficiently. When a design system is translated into code, we refer to that as a parts kit, which helps enforce consistency and improve workflow. Comps or Mocks When reviewing RFPs or going through the nitty-gritty of contracts with clients, we often see the terms mocks or comps used interchangeably to refer to the static design of pages or screens. Internally, we think of a mock-up as a static image file that illustrates proof-of-concept, just a step beyond a wireframe. A comp represents a design that is “high fidelity” and closer to what the final website will look like, though importantly, is not an exact replica. This is likely what clients will share with internal stakeholders to get approval on the website direction and what our front-end developers will use to begin building-out the site (in other words, converting the static design files into dynamic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code). If you're interested in joining our team of creative thinkers and visual storytellers who bring these concepts to life for our clients, we’re hiring in Washington, D.C. Durham, Boulder and Chattanooga. Tune in next week as we decipher the terms we use most often when talking about development. Full Article Strategy Process
art "In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses..." By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 12:13:00 -0700 “In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. This kind of art is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive, it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is purposeless. It is usually free from the dependence on the skill of the artist as a craftsman.” - Artist Sol Lewitt on conceptual art. Full Article
art Squared Circle Pit #55 - Comic Artist Box Brown Talks AEW vs. NXT By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Fri, 04 Oct 2019 21:59:08 +0000 Comic artist Box Brown is the guest on the show this week. We kick things off talking about his comic... The post Squared Circle Pit #55 - Comic Artist Box Brown Talks AEW vs. NXT appeared first on Metal Injection. Full Article SquaredCirclePit aew all elite wrestling box brown wrestlemetal wwe wwe nxt
art Smartwatch Showdown: Apple Watch vs. Fitbit Versa By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Thu, 07 Nov 2019 20:12:25 +0000 In the world of smartwatches, the two big contenders are the Apple Watch and the Fitbit Versa. The Smartwatch Showdown infographic from The Watchstrap is very timely with recent news that Google has just acquired Fitbit.In the world of wearable gadgets, smartwatches are all the rage at the moment. The smartwatch market is growing by the day, and new and improved devices are constantly being released. This means that picking the right smartwatch can be a real head-scratcher. To help you choose the right device for your needs, we’ve compared two of the hottest smartwatches on the market: the Apple Watch Series 4 and Fitbit Versa!If you want to find out which of these devices came on top in the end, don’t miss the comprehensive infographic below!First, this is a great use of infographics in content marketing! The Watchstrap is an online retailer of watch bands, and the infographic is a comparison design without being a sales pitch. It draws in traffic by providing valuable information, which build credibility for their brand.There are a handful of things I didn’t like about the design itself that could be easily improved to make this a better infographic design:Too much text. I realize there isn’t much data to work with, but they need to cut down the text in the infographic. Paragraphs of explanation don’t belong in the infographic, they belong on the landing page. The infographic should be short and draw in readers to the website if they want to learn more.The scale is wrong in the Size & Design section of the infographic. The dimensions of the Apple Watch are larger, but the graphic illustration on the page is smaller. The illustrations should be visually correct to scale.Eliminate any word wrap when possible. There are a number of list points that have one hanging word wrapping to a second line. This could be avoided by shortening the text or just widening the text box. There’s room in the design without wrapping some of these words.The URL in the footer should link to the infographic landing page, not the home page of the company site.Copyright or Creative Commons license is completely missing.Don’t obscure the source by only listing the home page URL. What’s the link to the research data? Full Article
art The Chart Guide v4.0 - Interview & Giveaway By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Fri, 08 Nov 2019 19:33:45 +0000 Michiel Dullaert, data visualization expert and trainer from the Netherlands, has updated his Chart Guide poster to version 4! A free PDF is available for download from his website, and introduces a new category, 19 new charts and 4 extra design tips. You can also purchase a full-size printed poster version.As the November 2019 Giveaway, I have a pair of Chart Guide posters, that will be shipped to one lucky winner. That way you get one for yourself, and one you can give to a friend or coworker.Register HERE by November 30, 2019 at 11:59pm CT, and the winner will be randomly chosen on December 1st!This poster shows 84 charts to choose from and includes 16 chart design tips to help you make the Perfect Chart. The poster is available as a big poster or you can download the PDF file for free. Let this ChartGuide poster help you choose and design your Perfect Chart.You can see his complete write-up about the new version HERE. I was able to ask Michiel a few interview questions about developing the posters:Cool Infographics: What’s your background and how did you get into visualizing data?Michiel Dullaert: Years ago I have been working in the boardgame and puzzle industry. Part of my work was discovering new boardgames and puzzles and introduce them to the market. I was working for two different companies, both at the time that a new product of theirs really changed the market. For the boardgame industry I worked for the company that introduced a new type of boardgame (the game of Catan) that made playing boardgames a popular hobby. After that, I worked for a company that created puzzle magazines at the time the Sudoku puzzles was introduced. And here the same happened again, a new type of puzzle that changed the way people would puzzle and talk about puzzles. Both were very nice jobs, with a lot of enthusiastic conversations with customers about new products.In both companies I was working in the product development. I always had a large personal interest in the data behind the products. So it felt logic to do more with data, and I changed careers. I started working for a large company as an analyst. And it was not long that I found out that my colleagues were not interested in my reports. Although the reports contained interesting information it was shown in large tables and busy charts. People seemed to be not interested and if the looked into the numbers, they did not seem to understand them. My work did not seem to matter. The contrast between my previous jobs and the work as an analyst could not have been bigger. At that time I decided I would try to find a way to make people as enthusiastic about data as they were about boardgames and Sudoku puzzles. The first step was reading books on the topic of data visualization. Because I was working in the business intelligence field, the most logic choice were the books of Stephen Few. I bought them all and a whole new world opened for me. When Few was in the Netherlands to give a course I felt very lucky I could join. The workshops inspired me to learn more on this topic. So I bought more books and the next year I joined a class of Alberto Caïro. This gave me multiple perspectives on the same topic. The things I learned were applied to my work, and I was getting more and more responses on my visualizations. People actually started to read and understand them. My manager asked me to explain my choices in visualizations to my colleagues, so they could learn from me. And then I discovered how great it is to teach about data visualisation. I met a couple of UX designers and they inspired me learn more about that topic and to get an UX certification. The knowledge I gained in learning UX helped me in developing my own perspective on good data visualization. And in my workshop I try to inspire others to create such. For these workshops I wanted an overview of charts. Although there were already some great overviews, none of them had the point of view I was teaching in class. So I decided to design my own. That’s how Chart.Guide started. Cool Infographics: Who is the Chart Guide poster intended for?Michiel Dullaert: The website and the posters are intended for everyone who makes charts. For me it does not matter if you are working as a data-journalist or a data scientist, a infographic designer, project manager or a financial analyst. As long as you need help or inspiration when making charts or tables, Chart.Guide can help you. Online in the form of the website and offline in the form of the poster. Because I want to inspire as many people as possible I made the PDF of the poster free to download. I know that the poster is used in business departments, newsrooms and in school classrooms.Cool Infographics: What was your design process for the poster?Michiel Dullaert: The main source for updates to the poster or website, is the conversations I have with people I teach or work with. If they have a need for certain chart types, or make design mistakes, I try to add that topic. DPG Chart Chooser The first poster edition (picture DPG Chart Chooser) was just a collection of charts I created for my students. For each chart a few words on when to use the chart and, more important, it gave advice on what charts were not recommended. On the second edition (the first under the Chart.Guide brand) I added chart design tips. The reason, I saw people choose a good chart but then mess up the design. Last year, I got questions about maps, so I decided to add them on poster edition 4. Rearranging the layout of the Chart Guide The design process starts with insight I get from conversations I am having. Next step is cutting the old poster and rearranging everything. (see picture ChartGuide rearrange) now, will lead to more insights on the poster in the future. Although it make take some time to transform everything to the screen or paper. I still need to find some time to explain on the website why some charts are “not recommended”. Cool Infographics: You asked your followers to help choose the design of the new poster. How did that go?Michiel Dullaert: The poster is made to help people. So it seems to be logic to give them a role in the design process. As a UX designer I like to test my designs before releasing them. Most of these tests are done in class, because I like to observe the users in how they use the new design. The online voting was suggestion of a student. It did give me a lot of useful feedback. Especially when people wrote a lot of text explaining their choice. For future editions I will do the same.Cool Infographics: How can people follow you for updates?Michiel Dullaert: People who have downloaded the PDF will get an email when a new poster is available, or when something interesting is added to the website. For this and more chart related inspiration, they can follow me on Twitter: @Chart_Guide or on facebook: /ChartGuide1.This helpful reference guide is one of over 25 FREE data visualization guides I maintain links to in the Cool Infographics Tools pages. See them all on the DataViz Reference Guides page, and let me know if I’m missing any. Full Article
art Humanity ‘Sleepwalking Towards the Edge of a Cliff’: 60% of Earth’s Wildlife Wiped Out Since 1970 By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 30 Oct 2018 20:36:31 +0000 By Julia Conley Common Dreams “Nature is not a ‘nice to have’—it is our life-support system.” Scientists from around the world issued a stark warning to humanity Tuesday in a semi-annual report on the Earth’s declining biodiversity, which shows that … Continue reading → Full Article Biodiversity ET News biodiversity extinction mass extinction wildlife
art Humanity ‘Sleepwalking Towards the Edge of a Cliff’: 60% of Earth’s Wildlife Wiped Out Since 1970 By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 30 Oct 2018 20:36:31 +0000 By Julia Conley Common Dreams “Nature is not a ‘nice to have’—it is our life-support system.” Scientists from around the world issued a stark warning to humanity Tuesday in a semi-annual report on the Earth’s declining biodiversity, which shows that … Continue reading → Full Article Biodiversity ET News biodiversity extinction mass extinction wildlife
art Talking to computers (part 1): Why is speech recognition so difficult? By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Thu, 3 Jun 2019 08:31:15 GMT Although the performance of today's speech recognition systems is impressive, the experience for many is still one of errors, corrections, frustration and abandoning speech in favour of alternative interaction methods. We take a closer look at speech and find out why speech recognition is so difficult. Full Article
art Talking to computers (part 2): VUI as an error recovery system By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Mon, 1 Jul 2019 08:21:51 GMT I take a closer look at some unavoidable challenges to effective speech recognition, and I discuss why you may want to think twice before designing dialogue that is 'conversational' and 'natural'. I also offer five important questions that I think should form the basis of any VUI design kick-off meeting. Full Article
art Usability task scenarios: The beating heart of a usability test By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Mon, 2 Dec 2019 07:22:13 GMT Usability tests are unique. We ask people to do real tasks with the system and watch. As the person completes the task, we watch their behaviour and listen to their stream-of-consciousness narrative. But what makes a good usability task scenario? Full Article
art Intercellar - Accidental Anomalies of Particle Wallpapers By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Thu, 07 May 2020 04:00:00 +0000 Intercellar - Accidental Anomalies of Particle Wallpapers AoiroStudioMay 07, 2020 Intercellar is a series of free wallpapers designed 'by accident' by Crtomir Just. I mentioned 'accident' because 'the images are the results of errors in particle simulations'. I think they are super stunning and crispy. We took the liberty to share Crtomir's entire collection and their 'download links'. You can download the 8K wallpapers, this feature is a reminder of what we used to do back in the days. We are definitely living in different times but it's always a nice reminder to remember what we were made of. These images are the results of errors in particle simulations. While accidentally trying to scrub through the timeline, the otherwise predictable simulation explodes and is forced to take strange turns by blindly filling the gap between missing frames. About Crtomir Just Crtomir is an art director and 3D artist based in Murska Sobota, Slovenia, his work slightly shifted and it’s plain awesome. Make sure to follow his work on Behance and store. Society6 Behance Download Wallpapers - The Sand of Times Download Wallpapers - Space Cowboys Download Wallpapers - Coraline Download Wallpapers - Funki Porcini Download Wallpapers - The Stones Roses Download Wallpapers - The Sting Full Article
art Every Journey Starts with That First Step, Especially with TBI and/or PTSD By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Mon, 09 Dec 2013 00:00:00 EST Adam says that like drill and ceremony and calling cadence, which start with a first step, so does recovery from a brain injury and/or PTSD. Full Article
art Article: 25 Beautifully Dark-Schemed Landing Pages for Inspiration By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 05 May 2020 14:58:36 +0000 There is something instantly remarkable about a website with a strong, dark color scheme. Full Article Articles Round-Ups Blue Color Dark Color Scheme Dark Mode
art Troops to receive Purple Hearts for injuries during Iranian missile barrage on al-Asad airbase in Iraq By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wednesday, April 29, 2020 - 1:50pm There will be Purple Hearts awarded to troops injured during the Jan. 8 Iranian missile barrage on the al-Asad airbase in Iraq, a defense official told Military Times. Full Article
art C/HA Artist Award Competition By www.photocompete.com Published On :: Sun, 03 May 2020 07:39:02 +0000 Theme: Debauchery Submit your best work expressing your view/perspective of what debauchery means to you. Solo exhibition and an accompanying Book during our Winter season. Image requirements: 10 [...] The post C/HA Artist Award Competition appeared first on Photocompete. Full Article Art Contests Current Exhibition International
art Say Yes, Figure It Out Later. Starting from the Start with Tyler Babin By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 03 Jul 2019 13:15:14 +0000 “It’s impossible to move forward while staying the same”. That’s what motivated Tyler Babin, a 25 year old up & coming filmmaker, who hustled his way into his dream job only to leave it to pursue the riskier thing, an even bigger bet – on himself. I’ve had literally hundreds of requests over the years to have someone on the show who isn’t Richard Branson or Brene Brown or {fill in the blank star}…ie. host someone who hasn’t “made it big” and is, instead, on the come-up themselves…someone from within our very own community who has been listening for years, connecting dots, gleaning knowledge and is now taking major action on that. Well THIS is Tyler’s story. If you’ve followed my pal Gary Vaynerchuk, it’s likely you’ve actually seen some of Tyler’s work. For the last 3-4 years, he’s been a whirlwind tour traveling the world with Gary, shooting photo + video, creative directing projects at Vayner… and it all started right here on this show nearly 8 years ago. This episode goes full circle, friends. Also – instead of the usual studio conversation, Tyler and I recorded the show while grabbing a burger & margarita just around the corner […] The post Say Yes, Figure It Out Later. Starting from the Start with Tyler Babin appeared first on Chase Jarvis Photography. Full Article chasejarvisLIVE Podcast adobe content creator creative residency Filmmaking Gary Vaynerchuk photography
art Elizabeth Gilbert: The Art of Being Yourself By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 24 Jul 2019 13:11:57 +0000 Brace yourself for a TRULY powerful episode with the bestselling author and creative genius, Elizabeth Gilbert. Although best known for her memoir Eat, Pray, Love–which went on to sell over 12 million copies and became a film staring Julia Roberts—she’s also one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world… The whole world. Spend some time with her in your ears on today’s podcast and you’ll know why in under a minute… In this episode, we cover How Liz considers mental health her full time job, and writing / being a professional creator is a hobby. How the only way out of pain is through honesty. Liz shares her experiences working through the loss of her partner to cancer. The things we won’t even admit to ourselves will cause us pain, even to the point of mental and physical breakdown Her latest INCREDIBLE novel called City of Girls (…a “delicious novel of glamour, sex, and adventure, about a young woman discovering that you don’t have to be a good girl to be a good person”) Why mercy is the foundation to any creative endeavor. How creativity and writing can be a tool to slow the mind during hard times. And […] The post Elizabeth Gilbert: The Art of Being Yourself appeared first on Chase Jarvis Photography. Full Article chasejarvisLIVE Podcast author cancer creativity death Elizabeth Gilbert fear Liz Gilbert love New York vulnerability
art Jump into Fear with Jeremy Cowart By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 21 Aug 2019 13:00:45 +0000 Jeremy Cowart was named the “Most Influential Photographers on the Internet” by Huffington Post in 2014. He’s the founder of a global photography movement, Help-Portrait, to give back to those in need. As well as many photography projects bridging empathy and creativity into awareness and action. If you’ve been a long time listener / watcher of this show, you’ll recognize Jeremy from one of the first episodes nearly 10 years ago. Jeremy’s vision and ambition have not slowed down. Today on the show, we get into his new book I’m Possible and his biggest project to date, building a hotel where every aspect serves someone in need. We get into facing fears, overcoming doubt, and how to turn the seemingly impossible to possible. In this episode: The fear of having a dream that’s so big. Chasing a dream for a decade or lifetime. How do you take action and get paralyzed because it’s so big? How to chase curiosity despite your fear of starting something new? Whether you’re just starting out or you’re thinking about transitioning from something you love doing and are already good at…. Battling against our inner monologue pulling us away from the thing we know we […] The post Jump into Fear with Jeremy Cowart appeared first on Chase Jarvis Photography. Full Article chasejarvisLIVE Podcast creativity interview jeremy cowart Photographer The Purpose Hotel
art Independence and the Art of Timeless Work with Zoë Keating By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Thu, 29 Aug 2019 05:03:23 +0000 A cellist since the age of eight, Zoë Keating pursued electronic music and contemporary composition as part of her Liberal Arts studies at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. I came across her music almost 10 years ago and love it so much I reached out to see if she would be interested on being on the show. Not only did she respond, she left us reeling from her incredible live performance and chat on art + entrepreneurship. Now she’s back on tour with her latest album Snowmelt. In this episode, we go deep into personal growth, dealing with incredible loss, balancing parenthood and career, and landscape for independent artists. Enjoy! FOLLOW ZOË: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe Watch the Episode This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times. The post Independence and the Art of Timeless Work with Zoë Keating appeared first on Chase Jarvis Photography. Full Article chasejarvisLIVE Podcast death independent artist motherhood musician parent zoe keating
art Adaptation, Self-Awareness and Art of the Side Hustle with Chris Guillebeau By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 04 Sep 2019 13:08:03 +0000 Chris Guillebeau has traveled to 193 countries. And just to be clear, that is all of the countries recognized on the planet. He is the first person to do it before the age of 35. More importantly, he has built online businesses, side hustles, and mastered the art of a non-conforming lifestyle since he was 19 years old. There’s almost nobody better person equipped to talk about starting lots of businesses. He has a daily podcast called Side Hustle School where he’s featured more than 850 different side hustle businesses + featured many in his new book called 100 Side Hustles. Chris also started half a dozen or more himself, started one of my favorite conferences, The World Domination Summit, and is a New York Times bestselling author of books like the $100 Start Up and The Art of Non-Conformity and many others. This guy is a beast and he’s so savvy, so humble. In this episode: We go into details about some of Chris’ favorite side hustle businesses he’s come across in his podcast & writing this book – what are some of the most common traits and failures. Chris shares his experience with depression, how he’s faced it, […] The post Adaptation, Self-Awareness and Art of the Side Hustle with Chris Guillebeau appeared first on Chase Jarvis Photography. Full Article chasejarvisLIVE Podcast anxiety Chris Guillebeau depression gig economy side gig side hustle
art The Soulful Art of Persuasion with Jason Harris By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 11 Sep 2019 13:00:42 +0000 As creators and entrepreneurs, getting our ideas out in the world is critical. And today, I have my long time friend Jason Harris in the hot seat to help us with just that. Jason is the founder and CEO of the award winning creative agency Mekanism. He is one of Creativity Mag’s most creative people in business, Top 100 People Who Make Advertising Great and about 52 other awards in the creative space. You’ve certainly seen his work if you’ve watched Superbowl commercials or heard of Peloton, Ben & Jerrys, HBO, and more. He also is one of the people that I look up to as a model of giving back. He donates a huge amount of his time to causes in which he believes and uses his marketing savvy for doing good in the world. I’m super inspired by our conversation today for so many reasons, but here’s handful to whet your palette: Of course we get into his new book The Soulful Art of Persuasion, in which Jason breaks down the art of sharing our ideas in an honest and authentic ways We talk about the ups and downs living life identifying as a professional creator, including the […] The post The Soulful Art of Persuasion with Jason Harris appeared first on Chase Jarvis Photography. Full Article chasejarvisLIVE Podcast ad agency Jason Harris Mekanism
art Start in a Place That’s True with IN-Q By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Thu, 02 Apr 2020 13:15:09 +0000 Storytelling is one of the oldest art forms. It connects us. Our brains our wired for it. Story is not only a way for us to share and connect with others, but a path to deeper understanding and vulnerability. That’s why I’m very excited to have on the show award winning Poet, Author, and Performer, IN-Q. In addition to his poetry, live performances and storytelling workshops, IN-Q is a multi-platinum songwriter having worked with Selena Gomez, Aloe Black, Miley Cyrus, Mike Posner, and Foster the People. Oprah named him on her SuperSoul 100 list of the world’s most influential thought leaders. He’s been featured all over the place including A&E, ESPN, HBO, and companies such as Nike, Instagram, Spotify, and many more. In our conversation, we get into his new book, Inquire Within. In fact, he reads a bit of it on the show. It’s an awe-inspiring rhythmic exploration of transforming love, loss, and forgiveness into growth. Super excited for you to hear it. We also get into: Developing your own voice by focusing on what’s moving and meaningful for you How to find calm in the chaos Using vulnerability to short-cut and deepen relationships in our lives and much, […] The post Start in a Place That’s True with IN-Q appeared first on Chase Jarvis Photography. Full Article chasejarvisLIVE Podcast grief growth hip hop loss love pain poet self development spoken word writer
art Markdown Comes Alive! Part 1, Basic Editor By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Wed, 26 Feb 2020 08:00:00 -0500 In my last post, I covered what LiveView is at a high level. In this series, we’re going to dive deeper and implement a LiveView powered Markdown editor called Frampton. This series assumes you have some familiarity with Phoenix and Elixir, including having them set up locally. Check out Elizabeth’s three-part series on getting started with Phoenix for a refresher. This series has a companion repository published on GitHub. Get started by cloning it down and switching to the starter branch. You can see the completed application on master. Our goal today is to make a Markdown editor, which allows a user to enter Markdown text on a page and see it rendered as HTML next to it in real-time. We’ll make use of LiveView for the interaction and the Earmark package for rendering Markdown. The starter branch provides some styles and installs LiveView. Rendering Markdown Let’s set aside the LiveView portion and start with our data structures and the functions that operate on them. To begin, a Post will have a body, which holds the rendered HTML string, and title. A string of markdown can be turned into HTML by calling Post.render(post, markdown). I think that just about covers it! First, let’s define our struct in lib/frampton/post.ex: defmodule Frampton.Post do defstruct body: "", title: "" def render(%__MODULE{} = post, markdown) do # Fill me in! end end Now the failing test (in test/frampton/post_test.exs): describe "render/2" do test "returns our post with the body set" do markdown = "# Hello world!" assert Post.render(%Post{}, markdown) == {:ok, %Post{body: "<h1>Hello World</h1> "}} end end Our render method will just be a wrapper around Earmark.as_html!/2 that puts the result into the body of the post. Add {:earmark, "~> 1.4.3"} to your deps in mix.exs, run mix deps.get and fill out render function: def render(%__MODULE{} = post, markdown) do html = Earmark.as_html!(markdown) {:ok, Map.put(post, :body, html)} end Our test should now pass, and we can render posts! [Note: we’re using the as_html! method, which prints error messages instead of passing them back to the user. A smarter version of this would handle any errors and show them to the user. I leave that as an exercise for the reader…] Time to play around with this in an IEx prompt (run iex -S mix in your terminal): iex(1)> alias Frampton.Post Frampton.Post iex(2)> post = %Post{} %Frampton.Post{body: "", title: ""} iex(3)> {:ok, updated_post} = Post.render(post, "# Hello world!") {:ok, %Frampton.Post{body: "<h1>Hello world!</h1> ", title: ""}} iex(4)> updated_post %Frampton.Post{body: "<h1>Hello world!</h1> ", title: ""} Great! That’s exactly what we’d expect. You can find the final code for this in the render_post branch. LiveView Editor Now for the fun part: Editing this live! First, we’ll need a route for the editor to live at: /editor sounds good to me. LiveViews can be rendered from a controller, or directly in the router. We don’t have any initial state, so let's go straight from a router. First, let's put up a minimal test. In test/frampton_web/live/editor_live_test.exs: defmodule FramptonWeb.EditorLiveTest do use FramptonWeb.ConnCase import Phoenix.LiveViewTest test "the editor renders" do conn = get(build_conn(), "/editor") assert html_response(conn, 200) =~ "data-test="editor"" end end This test doesn’t do much yet, but notice that it isn’t live view specific. Our first render is just the same as any other controller test we’d write. The page’s content is there right from the beginning, without the need to parse JavaScript or make API calls back to the server. Nice. To make that test pass, add a route to lib/frampton_web/router.ex. First, we import the LiveView code, then we render our Editor: import Phoenix.LiveView.Router # … Code skipped ... # Inside of `scope "/"`: live "/editor", EditorLive Now place a minimal EditorLive module, in lib/frampton_web/live/editor_live.ex: defmodule FramptonWeb.EditorLive do use Phoenix.LiveView def render(assigns) do ~L""" <div data-test=”editor”> <h1>Hello world!</h1> </div> """ end def mount(_params, _session, socket) do {:ok, socket} end end And we have a passing test suite! The ~L sigil designates that LiveView should track changes to the content inside. We could keep all of our markup in this render/1 method, but let’s break it out into its own template for demonstration purposes. Move the contents of render into lib/frampton_web/templates/editor/show.html.leex, and replace EditorLive.render/1 with this one liner: def render(assigns), do: FramptonWeb.EditorView.render("show.html", assigns). And finally, make an EditorView module in lib/frampton_web/views/editor_view.ex: defmodule FramptonWeb.EditorView do use FramptonWeb, :view import Phoenix.LiveView end Our test should now be passing, and we’ve got a nicely separated out template, view and “live” server. We can keep markup in the template, helper functions in the view, and reactive code on the server. Now let’s move forward to actually render some posts! Handling User Input We’ve got four tasks to accomplish before we are done: Take markdown input from the textarea Send that input to the LiveServer Turn that raw markdown into HTML Return the rendered HTML to the page. Event binding To start with, we need to annotate our textarea with an event binding. This tells the liveview.js framework to forward DOM events to the server, using our liveview channel. Open up lib/frampton_web/templates/editor/show.html.leex and annotate our textarea: <textarea phx-keyup="render_post"></textarea> This names the event (render_post) and sends it on each keyup. Let’s crack open our web inspector and look at the web socket traffic. Using Chrome, open the developer tools, navigate to the network tab and click WS. In development you’ll see two socket connections: one is Phoenix LiveReload, which polls your filesystem and reloads pages appropriately. The second one is our LiveView connection. If you let it sit for a while, you’ll see that it's emitting a “heartbeat” call. If your server is running, you’ll see that it responds with an “ok” message. This lets LiveView clients know when they've lost connection to the server and respond appropriately. Now, type some text and watch as it sends down each keystroke. However, you’ll also notice that the server responds with a “phx_error” message and wipes out our entered text. That's because our server doesn’t know how to handle the event yet and is throwing an error. Let's fix that next. Event handling We’ll catch the event in our EditorLive module. The LiveView behavior defines a handle_event/3 callback that we need to implement. Open up lib/frampton_web/live/editor_live.ex and key in a basic implementation that lets us catch events: def handle_event("render_post", params, socket) do IO.inspect(params) {:noreply, socket} end The first argument is the name we gave to our event in the template, the second is the data from that event, and finally the socket we’re currently talking through. Give it a try, typing in a few characters. Look at your running server and you should see a stream of events that look something like this: There’s our keystrokes! Next, let’s pull out that value and use it to render HTML. Rendering Markdown Lets adjust our handle_event to pattern match out the value of the textarea: def handle_event("render_post", %{"value" => raw}, socket) do Now that we’ve got the raw markdown string, turning it into HTML is easy thanks to the work we did earlier in our Post module. Fill out the body of the function like this: {:ok, post} = Post.render(%Post{}, raw) IO.inspect(post) If you type into the textarea you should see output that looks something like this: Perfect! Lastly, it’s time to send that rendered html back to the page. Returning HTML to the page In a LiveView template, we can identify bits of dynamic data that will change over time. When they change, LiveView will compare what has changed and send over a diff. In our case, the dynamic content is the post body. Open up show.html.leex again and modify it like so: <div class="rendered-output"> <%= @post.body %> </div> Refresh the page and see: Whoops! The @post variable will only be available after we put it into the socket’s assigns. Let’s initialize it with a blank post. Open editor_live.ex and modify our mount/3 function: def mount(_params, _session, socket) do post = %Post{} {:ok, assign(socket, post: post)} end In the future, we could retrieve this from some kind of storage, but for now, let's just create a new one each time the page refreshes. Finally, we need to update the Post struct with user input. Update our event handler like this: def handle_event("render_post", %{"value" => raw}, %{assigns: %{post: post}} = socket) do {:ok, post} = Post.render(post, raw) {:noreply, assign(socket, post: post) end Let's load up http://localhost:4000/editor and see it in action. Nope, that's not quite right! Phoenix won’t render this as HTML because it’s unsafe user input. We can get around this (very good and useful) security feature by wrapping our content in a raw/1 call. We don’t have a database and user processes are isolated from each other by Elixir. The worst thing a malicious user could do would be crash their own session, which doesn’t bother me one bit. Check the edit_posts branch for the final version. Conclusion That’s a good place to stop for today. We’ve accomplished a lot! We’ve got a dynamically rendering editor that takes user input, processes it and updates the page. And we haven’t written any JavaScript, which means we don’t have to maintain or update any JavaScript. Our server code is built on the rock-solid foundation of the BEAM virtual machine, giving us a great deal of confidence in its reliability and resilience. In the next post, we’ll tackle making a shared editor, allowing multiple users to edit the same post. This project will highlight Elixir’s concurrency capabilities and demonstrate how LiveView builds on them to enable some incredible user experiences. Full Article Code Back-end Engineering
art A Viget Glossary: What We Mean and Why it Matters - Part 1 By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 21 Apr 2020 08:00:00 -0400 Viget has helped organizations design and develop award-winning websites and digital products for 20 years. In that time, we’ve been lucky to create long-term relationships with clients like Puma, the World Wildlife Fund, and Privia Health, and, throughout our time working together, we’ve come to understand each others’ unique terminology. But that isn’t always the case when we begin work with new clients, and in a constantly-evolving industry, we know that new terminology appears almost daily and organizations have unique definitions for deliverables and processes. Kicking off a project always initiates a flurry of activity. There are contracts to sign, team members to introduce, and new platforms to learn. It’s an exciting time, and we know clients are anxious to get underway. Amidst all the activity, though, there is a need to define and create a shared lexicon to ensure both teams understand the project deliverables and process that will take us from kickoff to launch. Below, we’ve rounded up a few terms for each of our disciplines that often require additional explanation. Note: our definitions of these terms may differ slightly from the industry standard, but highlight our interpretation and use of them on a daily basis. User ExperienceResearchIn UX, there is a proliferation of terms that are often used interchangeably and mean almost-but-subtly-not the same thing. Viget uses the term research to specifically mean user research — learning more about the users of our products, particularly how they think and behave — in order to make stronger recommendations and better designs. This can be accomplished through different methodologies, depending on the needs of the project, and can include moderated usability testing, stakeholder interviews, audience research, surveys, and more. Learn more about the subtleties of UX research vocabulary in our post on “Speaking the Same Language About Research”.WireframesWe use wireframes to show the priority and organization of content on the screen, to give a sense of what elements will get a stronger visual treatment, and to detail how users will get to other parts of the site. Wireframes are a key component of website design — think of them as the skeleton or blueprint of a page — but we know that clients often feel uninspired after reviewing pages built with gray boxes. In fact, we’ve even written about how to improve wireframe presentations. We remind clients that visual designers will step in later to add polish through color, graphics, and typography, but agreeing on the foundation of the page is an important and necessary first step. PrototypesDuring the design process, it’s helpful for us to show clients how certain pieces of functionality or animations will work once the site is developed. We can mimic interactivity or test a technical proof of concept by using a clickable prototype, relying on tools like Figma, Invision, or Principle. Our prototypes can be used to illustrate a concept to internal stakeholders, but shouldn’t be seen as a final approach. Often, these concepts will require additional work to prepare them for developer handoff, which means that prototypes quickly become outdated. Read more about how and when we use prototypes. Navigation Testing (Treejack Testing)Following an information architecture presentation, we will sometimes recommend that clients conduct navigation testing. When testing, we present a participant with the proposed navigation and ask them to perform specific tasks in order to see if they will be able to locate the information specified within the site’s new organization. These tests generally focus on two aspects of the navigation: the structure of the navigation system itself, and the language used within the system. Treejack is an online navigation testing tool that we like to employ when conducting navigation tests, so we’ll often interchange the terms “navigation testing” with “treejack testing”.Learn more about Viget’s approach to user experience and research. Full Article Strategy Process
art A Viget Glossary: What We Mean and Why It Matters - Part 2 By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 28 Apr 2020 10:09:00 -0400 In my last post, I defined terms used by our UX team that are often confused or have multiple meanings across the industry. Today, I’ll share our definitions for processes and deliverables used by our design and strategy teams. Creative Brand Strategy In our experience, we’ve found that the term brand strategy is used to cover a myriad of processes, documents, and deliverables. To us, a brand strategy defines how an organization communicates who they are, what they do and why in a clear and compelling way. Over the years, we’ve developed an approach to brand strategy work that emphasizes rigorous research, hands-on collaboration, and the definition of problems and goals. We work with clients to align on a brand strategy concept and, depending on the client and their goals, our final deliverables can range to include strategy definition, audience-specific messaging, identity details, brand elements, applications, and more. Take a look at the brand strategy work we’ve done for Fiscalnote, Swiftdine, and Armstrong Tire. Content Strategy A content strategy goes far beyond the words on a website or in an app. A strong content strategy dictates the substance, structure, and governance of the information an organization uses to communicate to its audience. It guides creating, organizing, and maintaining content so that companies can communicate who they are, what they do, and why efficiently and effectively. We’ve worked with organizations like the Washington Speakers Bureau, The Nature Conservancy, the NFL Players Association, and the Wildlife Conservation Society to refine and enhance their content strategies. Still confused about the difference between brand and content strategy? Check out our flowchart. Style Guide vs. Brand Guidelines We often find the depth or fidelity of brand guidelines and style guides can vary greatly, and the terms can often be confused. When we create brand guidelines, they tend to be large documents that include in-depth recommendations about how a company should communicate their brand. Sections like “promise”, “vision”, “mission”, “values”, “tone”, etc. accompany details about how the brand’s logo, colors and fonts should be used in a variety of scenarios. Style guides, on the other hand, are typically pared down documents that contain specific guidance for organizations’ logos, colors and fonts, and don’t always include usage examples. Design System One question we get from clients often during a redesign or rebrand is, “How can I make sure people across my organization are adhering to our new designs?” This is where a design system comes into play. Design systems can range from the basic — e.g., a systematic approach to creating shared components for a single website — all the way to the complex —e.g., architecting a cross-product design system that can scale to accommodate hundreds of different products within a company. By assembling elements like color, typography, imagery, messaging, voice and tone, and interaction patterns in a central repository, organizations are able to scale products and marketing confidently and efficiently. When a design system is translated into code, we refer to that as a parts kit, which helps enforce consistency and improve workflow. Comps or Mocks When reviewing RFPs or going through the nitty-gritty of contracts with clients, we often see the terms mocks or comps used interchangeably to refer to the static design of pages or screens. Internally, we think of a mock-up as a static image file that illustrates proof-of-concept, just a step beyond a wireframe. A comp represents a design that is “high fidelity” and closer to what the final website will look like, though importantly, is not an exact replica. This is likely what clients will share with internal stakeholders to get approval on the website direction and what our front-end developers will use to begin building-out the site (in other words, converting the static design files into dynamic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code). If you're interested in joining our team of creative thinkers and visual storytellers who bring these concepts to life for our clients, we’re hiring in Washington, D.C. Durham, Boulder and Chattanooga. Tune in next week as we decipher the terms we use most often when talking about development. Full Article Strategy Process
art New Gallery: Winterlichter Palmengarten Jan 2016 By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Tue, 19 Jan 2016 20:44:39 +0000 Winterlichter Palmengarten Jan 2016 Full Article Uncategorized Changing Perspectives IFTTT
art Winterlichter Palmengarten Dec. 2019 By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Sat, 28 Dec 2019 12:27:57 +0000 Full Article
art Getting Started With Nuxt By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Mon, 27 Apr 2020 10:30:00 +0000 Web developers build a lot of Single Page Applications using JavaScript frameworks (Angular, React, Vue). SPAs dynamically populate the contents of their pages on load which means by the time google crawls their site, the important content is yet to be injected into the site. Part of this problem can be solved by pre-rendering your application’s content. This is where server-side applications come in, and for Vuejs developers, we can build server-side applications using Nuxt. Full Article
art Mirage JS Deep Dive: Understanding Mirage JS Models And Associations (Part 1) By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Thu, 30 Apr 2020 09:30:00 +0000 Mirage JS is helping simplify modern front-end development by providing the ability for front-end engineers to craft applications without relying on an actual back-end service. In this article, I’ll be taking a framework-agnostic approach to show you Mirage JS models and associations. If you haven’t heard of Mirage JS, you can read my previous article in which I introduce it and also integrate it with the progressive framework Vue.js. Full Article
art Nikon has confirmed that their flagship D6 DSLR will start shipping on May 21st By feedproxy.google.com Published On :: Fri, 08 May 2020 11:06:35 +0000 It feels like forever since Nikon announced their newest flagship DSLR; the Nikon D6. It’s actually only been three months, but that hasn’t stopped some people getting anxious. Recently, customers were being told that the D6 would start shipping right about now, but now Nikon has officially come out to announce that the Nikon D6 […] The post Nikon has confirmed that their flagship D6 DSLR will start shipping on May 21st appeared first on DIY Photography. Full Article news Availability Nikon D6
art eagereyesTV Episode 2: Unit Charts, Dot Plots, ISOTYPE, and What Makes Them Special By eagereyes.org Published On :: Wed, 09 Oct 2019 07:17:21 +0000 Charts usually show values as visual properties, like the length in a bar chart, the location in a scatterplot, the area in a bubble chart, etc. Unit charts show values as multiples instead. One famous example of these charts is called ISOTYPE, and you may have seen them in information graphics as well. They’re an […] Full Article Blog 2019 eagereyesTV
art Paper: Evidence for Area as the Primary Visual Cue in Pie Charts By eagereyes.org Published On :: Thu, 17 Oct 2019 15:52:12 +0000 How we read pie charts is still an open question: is it angle? Is it area? Is it arc length? In a study I'm presenting as a short paper at the IEEE VIS conference in Vancouver next week, I tried to tease the visual cues apart – using modeling and 3D pie charts. The big […] Full Article Blog 2019 paper pie charts
art eagereyesTV Episode 3: 3D Pie Charts For Science! By eagereyes.org Published On :: Mon, 21 Oct 2019 06:00:03 +0000 How do we read pie charts? This seems like a straightforward question to answer, but it turns out that most of what you’ve probably heard is wrong. We don’t actually know whether we use angle, area, or arc length. In a short paper at the VIS conference this week I’m presenting a study I ran […] Full Article Blog 2019 eagereyesTV pie charts
art eagereyesTV: What is Data? Part 1, File Formats and Intent By eagereyes.org Published On :: Wed, 06 Nov 2019 16:07:40 +0000 We all use data all the time, but what exactly is data? How do different programs know what to do with our data? How is visualizing data different from other uses of data? And isn’t everything inside a computer data in the end? The latest episode of eagereyesTV looks at what data is and what […] Full Article Blog 2019 data eagereyesTV
art Review: Alberto Cairo, How Charts Lie By eagereyes.org Published On :: Tue, 12 Nov 2019 05:07:05 +0000 Alberto Cairo’s new book, How Charts Lie, takes readers on a tour of how charts are used and misused, and teaches them how to not be misled. It’s a useful book for both makers and consumers of charts, in the news, business, and pretty much anywhere else. When Alberto started talking about the title on […] Full Article Blog 2019 Book Reviews
art eagereyesTV: What Is Data? Part 2, Are Images Data? By eagereyes.org Published On :: Mon, 16 Dec 2019 13:01:25 +0000 Visualization turns data into images, but are images themselves data? There are often claims that they are, but then you mostly see the images themselves without much additional data. In this video, I look at image browsers, a project classifying selfies along a number of criteria, and the additional information stored in HEIC that makes […] Full Article eagereyesTV
art Regular Tur'an numbers of complete bipartite graphs. (arXiv:2005.02907v2 [math.CO] UPDATED) By arxiv.org Published On :: Let $mathrm{rex}(n, F)$ denote the maximum number of edges in an $n$-vertex graph that is regular and does not contain $F$ as a subgraph. We give lower bounds on $mathrm{rex}(n, F)$, that are best possible up to a constant factor, when $F$ is one of $C_4$, $K_{2,t}$, $K_{3,3}$ or $K_{s,t}$ when $t>s!$. Full Article
art Arthur packets for $G_2$ and perverse sheaves on cubics. (arXiv:2005.02438v2 [math.RT] UPDATED) By arxiv.org Published On :: This paper begins the project of defining Arthur packets of all unipotent representations for the $p$-adic exceptional group $G_2$. Here we treat the most interesting case by defining and computing Arthur packets with component group $S_3$. We also show that the distributions attached to these packets are stable, subject to a hypothesis. This is done using a self-contained microlocal analysis of simple equivariant perverse sheaves on the moduli space of homogeneous cubics in two variables. In forthcoming work we will treat the remaining unipotent representations and their endoscopic classification and strengthen our result on stability. Full Article