LiNE & PiXEL

Aaron Draplin hits the nail on the head here. Fucking great stuff! Do yourself a favour, take 50 minutes while you drink your coffee in the morning and to listen to the man behind field notes tell it like it is.

When I set out to build TrailCheckIn I wanted to build a web app that provided a near native app experience on mobile devices. Thankfully, with the tips I’m going to show you, this is entirely possible using only HTML.

Apple has built several features into iOS that allow developers to create web apps that look and behave like native apps. All that is required on the user’s end is to bookmark the site to their home screen. Lucky for us, Google has also adopted many of the same features, so some of the techniques I’m about to show you will work on Android as well! Rock on!

Much of what I’m showing here comes straight out of Apple’s own iOS Human Interface Guidelines(HIG) and the Safari Web Content Guide. If you haven’t read them already you owe it to yourself to read these Guides! They both contain useful information that goes far beyond building iOS apps.

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The following is taken from a talk Whitney Hess gave at Interlink Conference in 2011. I found it recently in my notes and wanted to share it.

Principles of Experience Design

1. Stay out of peoples way.
2. Create a hierarchy the meets users needs.
3. Limit distractions.
4. Provide strong information scent.
5. Provide signposts and cues.
6. Provide context.
7. Use constraints appropriately.
8. Make actions reversable.
9. Provide Feedback.
10. Make a good first impression.

Some Thoughts…

I enjoy the common sense approach to these principles. The remarkable thing about common sense is that it’s really not that common. I find it fascinating that when building sites or interactive experiences those responsible for creating and often put the needs and desires of decision makers (companies, bosses, execs, etc.) ahead of the people using the product.

I’m stoked to announce to whomever will listen that I have just launched TrailCheckIn into public beta! Visit it at http://trailcheck.in!

This web app has been a long time in the making. TrailCheckIn started about 4 years ago when I realized Whistler didn’t have comprehensive bike trail map available anywhere on the web. With the largest mountain biking community in North America and over one hundred thousand biker visits annually I was sure that either the Municipal Government or our Tourism Board had something in the works to bring accessible biking information to guests and locals alike. Apparently, I was wrong. Update: Whistler.com has released their own mobile trail map. I’m stoked on this! Some of the features, such as elevation profile (desktop only), are ones that I have in development . I hope they continue to build and expand upon it!

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I was recently developing a new User interface (UI) for my client’s Google earth driven site. The idea behind the site is easy enough to understand; a 3D interactive map of Whistler mountain. The map shows ski runs, lodges, parks and lifts. The user is able to navigate the 3D space to see the locations, select a point of intrest and get information about it, you can view it here. This is fantastic for users who know where the point of intrest is, my charge was to create a UI that helps those that are looking for a specific point and have no clue where that is.

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Last week was the official launch of the latest site I built, The Charter Project. This has been an on-going project for a group of University of Windsor Law students. Their aim is to promote the 30th anniversary of the charter of rights and freedoms here in Canada. While there has been several stages to this site this represents the full public launch of the Charter Project. To coincide with the site launch there has been a wealth of media produced including; Public Service Announcements for broadcast on TV and in Theatres, Interviews with High ranking Layers and Celebrity endorsements.

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Some big letters I found while wandering the streets of Vancouver this weekend. I’d love to do a whole alphabet series of these.

The Letter W

The Letter g

Winter Solstice

No mater what creator you may believe in one thing we can all agree on is the passing of the solstice. May the darkest nights bring to you the brightest of days!

Happy Winter Solstice

-Pez

A few weeks back A Book Apart released their fifth and sixth books in their series of brief books for people wo make websites. Designing for Emotion by Aarron Walter and Mobile First by Luke Wroblewski are must haves for any designer who needs to keep on top of the state of the web. In keeping with the spirit of these books I will make my statements on each book… Brief.

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On October 5th 2011, humanity lost one of our greatest creative minds, Steve Jobs.

I am writing this several days after his passing, and much of what I can say, has been said by so many others far more eloquently than I can put into words. So why do I bother? Although I never met him, or even saw him in the flesh, Steve’s actions had a huge impact on my life.

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