Craig & Tim Build Things

Video

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:05:49 -0500

"With the rise of social networking, email has taken a back seat to tweets and wall posts as the hip..."

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 20:21:08 -0400

“

With the rise of social networking, email has taken a back seat to tweets and wall posts as the hip message format. But email is still a huge channel for messaging, and serious business messaging has not yet mingled much with pokes, favorites, or other social message types.

There are many places in the UX Lifecycle where email has a place. Of course, each of these things can be done directly in the interface of your application. However, since not every app is an everyday app, you can’t be sure when people will be using it. It makes sense to supplement in-app communications with outside communications as well.

• Confirmation: Emails have always been used to confirm some action taken, such as a purchase or a registration. In this way they act as a receipt of action taken, often prompting you to print them out for your records.

• Reminders: Email serves as a simple reminding tool to let people know where to go and what to do. The money management app Mint, for example, emails you to remind you when to pay your credit card bill.

• Learning: Email newsletters are a real source of learning for application users. As applications get more sophisticated and similar, they will be differentiated not only on function or ease-of-use but also in how well they can teach you about the activity they support. Take, for example, the rise in learning materials in email newsletter applications…now competing on how good they can make you as an emailer, not just on how easy they make the act itself.

• Alerts: Email is excellent at alerting people to something important. Again, Mint is helpful in this way. First, it emails me when my bank account gets low on funds, which protects me from over-drafting. Second, it lets me know when I’ve been charged a bank fee, which often means that I have to go figure out why. While the news it delivers isn’t good, Mint provides a better user experience because it helps me become better at managing my accounts.

• Updates: When you update your software or service, you want your customers to know immediately. Instead of waiting for them to log into the service, it makes sense to send them a message. This allows you to let them know faster but also allows you get feedback faster, thus shortening your iteration cycle time.

These are just the basic ways that email is useful in providing a positive user experience. And despite the rise of social networking email is still the primary way for out-of-app communications.

”

- Email, the Glue of UX - 52 Weeks of UX (via uxuiuxui)

Reviving the Urld

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 18:34:02 -0400

Reviving the Urld

Video

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 18:27:45 -0400

Video

Sat, 04 Jun 2011 09:40:39 -0400

"It’s not about how hard you hit… It’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep..."

Sat, 04 Jun 2011 08:33:00 -0400

““It’s not about how hard you hit… It’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward””

- Rocky Balboa

Video

Wed, 04 May 2011 21:36:59 -0400

Video

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 15:44:13 -0400

Why the iPhone 5 will be late.

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 01:05:00 -0400

By now, you’ve probably heard the rumors that the iPhone 5 likely wont ship until September 2011, or even later. Many thought this would be simply to get the iPhone launches more inline with holiday schedule, theoretically boosting sales. I’d like to give an alternate theory.

With yesterday’s launch of the long awaited white iPhone 4, Apple has actually launched and shipped THREE separate phones since June 2010.

The first of course being the iPhone 4 that was plagued by Antennagate (the issue of loss of signal by bridging the metal antenna on the exterior of the device,) and nearly by Glassgate (the issue of the back glass plate shattering inside some protective cases.)

The second was the launch of the iPhone 4 on Verizon in February of this year. The transition to Verizon’s CDMA network required many internal changes and adaptations, including the most obvious change to the external antenna structure (although still plagued by the issues of AntennaGate.)

The third is of course the release of the white iPhone 4, which was mocked heavily for its delayed launch. As Phil Schiller, Senior Vice President at Apple, told All Things Digital, “The white casing reacted with various internal components, and needed some extra UV protection from the sun,” requiring apple to almost go back to the drawing board in search of a design that allowed for a white coat of paint, and the necessary UV protection to go hand in hand.

The answer was a slight increase in thickness allowing for an internal redesign.

We love the visual web.

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 22:59:00 -0400

We love the visual web.

When we started work on Clove two years ago, our goal was to create a centralized hub to gather all of the great content from the blogs we follow, our twitter and facebook friends, and any of the dozen plus social networks and websites we visit daily. We soon realized that once we had all of that content in one place, it became overwhelming. There was too much to read through and we found ourselves gravitating towards anything with an attached photo or video.

Our thoughts then shifted to, “How can we create a visually minded interface for this content? How can we find only the GREAT content?”

The answer was surprisingly easy. Our friends and followers were already sharing links and photos all around us. All we needed to do was count how often each story or picture was shared. We also realized we could pull stats from sites like reddit and digg, among others. We then were able to get a picture of what our group of friends found most interesting.

Now, because the both of us are photographers, we noticed a lot of great photography content floating to the top thanks to the algorithmic filter. We began to wonder if we could apply this algorithmic sort to other content beyond photography. Passionate cooks, writers, musicians, artists, engineers, developers, gardeners… all were sharing great content on twitter, facebook, youtube, vimeo and countless RSS enabled blogs.

We realized we had a tool to turn a bunch of topical feeds into an algorithmically curated visual dashboard. We then set out to create an interface, focused on absolute simplicity, for any user to create one of these automatically updated & curated feeds.

Cliq.ly is that dashboard.

Craig Condon: WE

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 22:55:54 -0400

12:17:24 AM Craig Condon: WE
12:17:26 AM Craig Condon: HAVE
12:17:27 AM Craig Condon: LIFTOFF

Video

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 20:36:06 -0400