Posts Tagged ‘inspiration’

Inspiration is something that I think any creative person occasionally struggles with. I recently traveled to California and at my first stop, Yosemite National Park, I immediately felt inspired and humbled by all the amazing things surrounding me. I thought about all that we can learn from nature and how it relates to what I’ve […]

I am a lifelong fan of LEGO© toys and games and of J.R.R. Tolkien. So when LEGO began to release The Lord of the Rings sets, I was delighted. I then came across this video about designing Shelob™ Attacks while reviewing the new sets: As a user experience researcher and designer, I enjoy learning about […]

Over the last couple of years I’ve really enjoyed learning the ins and outs of photography. It has been the creative outlet that I needed that is similar enough to user experience design, but different enough that it doesn’t feel like work. Now that I’ve been shooting for awhile now, I’m finding that many of […]

Inspiration sometimes sneaks up on you. That’s what happened to me when I took my son to see Wreck-It Ralph, and prior to the movie the Disney Short “Paperman” was shown. I cannot properly expresses how amazing the creative genius of this short is, and it’s great to see that it was recently nominated for […]

If you’re like me, you spend what feels like a decent portion of your professional life creating and compiling presentations. Or perhaps you’re like the other half of the professional world where a lot of your time is spent listening to those presentations. I reflect back on conferences I’ve been to which are often a […]

When discussing great data presentation, Edward Tufte is often cited, with good reason. Good data presentation has always been important. It is especially necessary to achieve the potential with Big Data, uniting Information Management and Experience Design. I’m indebted to Perficient colleague Brian Dudley for introducing me to Hans Rosling and his inspiring way of presenting data. Rosling […]

In my last post, I wrote about the importance of changing the thinking about accessible design and how design itself is a powerful tool for change. Designing for change was a second strong theme at Big Design 2012, continuing from Big Design and UPA last year. Several sessions explored using design to bring about change, […]

When was the last time you saw a floppy disk (outside of a museum, or your friendly IT guy’s stash)? In all likelihood it’s been a while. There may very well be some of you reading this who have never actually held a floppy disk, let alone used one. Oh man, that makes me feel […]

Google is sponsoring its second annual global science fair for students aged 13-18. This competition calls for the “brightest young scientists from around the world to submit interesting, creative projects that are relevant to the world today.” I have always found science fair and similar intellectual challenges to be incredibly inspiring. Falling into a rut […]

In “The top mistakes UX designers make: the writeup,” Scott Berkun shares common errors about culture and attitude that designers and user researchers make. Sadly, most of the mistakes seemed to result when we fail to have empathy for our colleagues. The following summarizes just a few of Berkun’s points that I found particularly interesting […]

November is National Novel Writing Month, affectionately known as NaNoWriMo. This annual event is “a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing.” Started in 1999 by Chris Baty, the goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words, the equivalent of the average-sized novel, in 30 days. Sounds crazy? Baty acknowledges this in the first line of his […]

Last weekend, I virtually attended BlizzCon 2011, a conference hosted by Blizzard Entertainment, the game developer behind Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo. A major focus of this annual conference is to provide insights and generate excitement about upcoming content planned for each franchise, but it is also a celebration of gamers, by gamers, and for gamers. […]