There’s an untapped opportunity to design software environments that are beautiful, thoughtful, and humane.
But building business software people love is no small feat. At Asana, they’ve learned the hard way that getting it right requires overcoming four core design tensions.
1. Power AND Simplicity.
2. Efficiency AND Emotion.
3. Power Users AND Casual Logins
4. Unobtrusiveness AND Beauty.
Adobe: 5 Reasons We Killed The Creative Suit
Yesterday, news broke that Adobe wouldn’t be producing a Creative Suite 7 (CS7).
Their decision to migrate their users to their Creative Cloud platform, which requires a monthly subscription to use, has been under fire. We gave Adobe a chance to respond to the worst criticisms here.
Back To The Future: Why Retro-Innovation Is The Next Big Thing
Against an accelerating backdrop of datafication, a “retro-innovation” trend is emerging. New products and services are designed to connect us with the past in ways that are both nostalgic and interactive.
A Micro Loft Designed For Maximum Impact
See how NY architects have transformed a dreary 425-square-foot New York apartment into a deceptively large and airy pied-à-terre.
An idea for New York: a net-zero park within a three-block-long stretch of central median running down Allen Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Each block of that (prototype) linear park would be designed to test—via its amenities—a particular resilience strategy: waste disposal and biomass generation; solar/renewable energy; or storm water retention.
Imagine: In Washington, D.C., more people-focused spaces and opportunities to gather and breathe as they cross the Potomac River and move among the city’s key sights.
Many design firms buy the new Adobe Creative Suite whenever it comes out. After all, the software is a mainstay for anyone who creates on computers. But today, Adobe has announced that there will be no Creative Suite 7. That’s because the Creative Suite is giving way to the Creative Cloud—a subscription-based model in which you pay for access to Adobe’s software monthly. And as it appears, their famous individual products that traditionally make up Creative Suite, like Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign won’t be available for individual purchase, either.
“The ugly truth about sustainable design is that much of it is ugly.”
In The Shape of Green, architect Lance Hosey argues that the way toward green design is through aesthetics rooted in nature. Read more…
Read about Todd Sanders’ masterful work in Meet A Modern-Day Master Of The Classic Neon Sign.
Infographic: The Amazing Evolution Of Video Game Controllers
Like the games we play with them, video game controllers have grown more complex throughout the years.
As in nature, though, that evolution isn’t a simple generational march.
The Evolution of Video Game Controllers, by Pop Chart Lab shows us what all of that progress looks like.
An Effortless Fitness App That Will Get You Moving
Moves is free, it lives in your phone, and requires zero interaction. If this doesn’t get you motivated to move your ass, nothing will.
Personal fitness trackers like Nike Fuelband are the thin end of the wedge for mainstream wearable computing. But if, like me, you’ve ever thought, Why would I buy a whole separate device just to do this one little thing? then you might be, like me, just lazy enough to try a free iOS app called Moves instead.
It lives in your iPhone and tracks your activity in the background, so there’s no separate device to learn how to use or remember to carry (you already have your phone on you at all times).
You don’t even have to launch it—Moves will simply ding a little summary of your physical activity into your Notifications Center every day, where you’ll end up seeing it regardless of what you’re doing with your phone.
Essentially, Moves gives you no more excuses.
The day of reckoning has come for the old mainstay of email. All user accounts have been migrated to Outlook.com where some fancy new features await.
The French design firm Sitbon has designed an underwater aquatic pod called Bloom. It’s “a semi-submersible center, moored to the seabed with a system of cables” that would both house researchers and grow carbon-dioxide absorbing phytoplankton.
