Guaranteed to induce a panic attack, created by poodwaddle, feed your morbid facination with World Clock. 4 people drowned whilst I was watching, wonder who they were?

Ben from British Letterpress has very kindly sent me a bumper pack of printed samples and ephemera, loads of stuff.

Including this ace map of The North from 1970.

Spelco, part of the German pavilion has brought its Gryphon, the next generation of parachute systems. It is an innovative strap-on-wing that allows a parachutist to fly further, and unlike with a traditional jump, it is not dependent on the winds. There are even plans to fit an engine, which would allow a parachutist to ‘fly’ for up to 150km.
Designed specifically for military use the Gryphon is a modular upgrade for existing HAHO (High Altitude High Opening) parachutes. It is presently designed for the TW-9 based parachute system, but it can be modified to accommodate other suitable canopies.
It has a wing span of 1.8m and offers both roll and pitch control. It even has a virtual reality simulator, giving showgoers the chance to strap on some wings. “We have made more than 100 jumps with the latest wing now and so far all of the calculated targets have been met. (more…)

Matthew Pennell of Digital Web Magazine recently sat down with the boys from Sidebar Creative for a group chat about our little design collective.

We talk about what goes on behind the scenes, our approach to creating web apps (including our first venture, MyMileMarker), and our plans for the future.

Working with Sidebar has been a wonderful experience since we started in January, and this interview offers you a glimpse of our personalities and some insight into why it works.

If you fashion a beard and work in the creative industries then Mark Brereton would like to hear from you. Mark is working on “How to get ahead with a beard in the creative industries” – a book that will explore whether a beard adds more success within a creative role and career.
I’ve had a beard for ten years (that’s not my beard above btw) and I can confirm that a warm chin is definitely a more creative one.
Anyway, if you would like more info or you would like to help out by appearing in the book please contact Mark directly.

‘Tis the season for being interviewed — this time I sat down (virtually) for some Q&A with Helen from Design Interviews, and now the fruits of our labor have been published for your enjoyment.

It covers topics not touched on in my last interview (and vice versa) so if you have a few moments, head on over and check it out. Their list of interviewees is extensive and includes folks like Jeff Croft (interview) and Andy Budd (interview), though you may need to dig around a bit to find them all (their index of interviews seems to be incomplete at the moment).

When we began Adaptive Path in 2001, user experience was not a widely appreciated concept. It was confused for “user interface” or “usability,” and companies typically had one or two people dedicated to it.

In the time since then, user experience has emerged as a recognized discipline within many enterprises, valued for its customer empathy as well as the rational approach it brings to design problems.

Here’s the problem with the recognition of user experience as a valuable contributor to the enterprise — such success encourages growth, with the idea that the more valuable something is, the more people should work on it. I know of companies that have literally dozens of user experience practitioners, and you know what? Those teams are typically too big.

How do you know when your user experience team is too big? When team members are working on the bulls*** projects in your organization. You’ve got all this staff, and you need to keep them busy, so it’s hard to say know when other parts of your organization ask for your team’s help, even when you know those projects aren’t truly worthwhile.

But it’s essential for user experience groups to be able to say, “No.” If we want to be considered for a seat at the strategy and planning table, if we want to be taken seriously as instrumental contributors to the companies we work for, we need to make sure that we only work on that which satisfies a true strategic direction of our organization. If we’re willing to work on any old thing, then we’re also easy targets for “headcount reduction” when times get tough.

You don’t need that many people to have a large impact. Excuse me for referencing Apple, but as this article explains, “Apple has always kept its design team small–somewhere between 12 and 20 people, Brunner estimates.” Those folks aren’t working on bulls*** projects.

And I can think immediately of two tangible benefits by keeping your user experience team smaller. The first I already addressed — you deliver only on projects fundamental to the business. The second is focus. One spur for writing this article was seeing UX managers with large teams whose efforts are scattered across numerous bulls*** projects. All of those projects suffer because the leadership can’t bring any focus.

As an advocate for user experience efforts, I feel its essential that we say “No” to bulls*** projects and keep ourselves focused on work that truly matters. To do this, I suspect that some organizations would need to shed quite a few employees. That’s okay — there are plenty of understaffed user experience groups out there who could use them.

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About two months ago, I debuted sketch.basement.org with an introduction to a new style of blogging: sketchcasting. Sketchcasting is essentially podcasting with a whitebaord. Draw, talk and describe some stuff while you draw. It's a neat, and in some cases, more effective way of conveying ideas and concepts. It was also released as an Arc90 Lab Experment.

There was one problem with sketchasting: it's pretty hard to sketchcast. It require a set of tools and and a level of tech-savvy-ness that a lot of people don't have. I took a crack at showing people how to sketchcast, but I think that served as more of a reality hit of how much work it actually takes to start sketchcasting easily.

Enter Sketchcast.com, a really neat Flash-based web app that lets you record your sketches and share them or post them Youtube-style. Very, very cool and well executed. The debut of Sketchcast.com was actually covered by Techcrunch today.

It's pretty exciting to see an idea take hold and watch others build something cool around it. Best of luck to the team behind Sketchcast.com. They've built a really accessible tool for the masses.

Now let's see what the masses come up with!

I’ve always been a fan of DixonBaxi, even though I don’t really know too much about the indiviuals, other than what’s available on their site. I believe threeoh did an interview with them a few years back, but that stuff is no longer online. Well, they have posted some new projects to their portfolio, which has a great and unique interface. dixonbaxi.com There are several studios that I keep an eye one… checking in from time to time, to see if any new work has been put on display for us, and they are one of my faviorites. A good range of projects, and always up to the highest quality. I’d love to drop in on their studio one day, when visiting England.