all the good things RSS

Everywhere in the world, amazing and wonderful things continue to unfold.

I appreciate the sublime
and things that are remarkable, smart, inventive or just beautiful. I also like to keep track of process and things that inspire. I also have a running set of helpful resources for UX design.


This site will give you a constant feed of amazing things in fields as varied as interaction design, web design, product design, business innovation, fine art, the humanities, and science.

My name's Jaireh. By day, I'm a UX designer for a big telecom company. I have also been: a designer of many things like this and this. Welcome to my internet Wunderkammer.

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Updated (almost) Daily

Archive

Oct
2nd
Fri
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Historically the field of architecture has been dominated by 2 opposing extremes. On one side an avant-garde full of crazy ideas. Originating from philosophy, mysticism or a fascination of the formal potential of computer visualizations they are often so detached from reality that they fail to become something other than eccentric curiosities. On the other side there are well organized corporate consultants that build predictable and boring boxes of high standard. Architecture seems to be entrenched in two equally unfertile fronts: Either naively utopian or petrifying pragmatic. We believe that there is a third way wedged in the no mans land between the diametrical opposites. Or in the small but very fertile overlap between the two. A pragmatic utopian architecture that takes on the creation of socially, economically and environmentally perfect places as a practical objective.
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Bjarke Ingels ted talk on his architectural design process.

1) design is an evolution of good ideas that stick

2) remix ideas that are dropped for future use

3) architectural movements do not need to be counter to current avant garde movements

4) story telling is important to all architectural problems

5) sustainable does not have to be = guilt/suffering/protestant ethic. it can be celebratory and fun

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Sep
27th
Sun
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Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on. Paying attention to what is going on in the world. Seeing patterns. Seeing things as they are rather than how you want them to be. Being able to read what people want. Putting yourself in the right place where information is flowing freely and interesting new juxtapositions can be seen. But you can save yourself a lot of time by working on the right thing. Working hard, even, if that’s what you like to do.
— Caterina Fake on why working hard is overrated
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Sep
20th
Sun
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listening to users != building exactly what they want - Paul Buchheit

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But seen from another angle, craigslist is one of the strangest monopolies in history, where customers are locked in by fees set at zero and where the ambiance of neglect is not a way to extract more profit but the expression of a worldview.

The axioms of this worldview are easy to state. “People are good and trustworthy and generally just concerned with getting through the day,” Newmark says. If most people are good and their needs are simple, all you have to do to serve them well is build a minimal infrastructure allowing them to get together and work things out for themselves. Any additional features are almost certainly superfluous and could even be damaging.

Newmark has been working hard to extend the influence of his worldview. His public pronouncements have the delighted yet apologetic tone of a man who has stumbled on a secret hiding in plain sight and who finds it embarrassingly necessary to point out something that should long have been obvious. He seems to have discovered a new way to run a business. He suspects that it may be the right way to run the world.

— Gary Wolf on Craigslist
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Wired invited Khoi Vinn, lead designer of NYTimes.com, and his design team to redesign the stubbornly anachronistic Craigslist.com

Wired invited Khoi Vinn, lead designer of NYTimes.com, and his design team to redesign the stubbornly anachronistic Craigslist.com

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the process behind the NPR redesign

the process behind the NPR redesign

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Aug
12th
Wed
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Six Simple Design Frameworks for effective web aps
1. Make it Direct
2. Keep It Lightweight
3. Stay on the Page
4. Provide an Invitation
5. Use Transitions
6. React Immediately
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Jul
22nd
Wed
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aardvark’s chat bot router has taken a hint from common IM away message practice (of using them as conversation baits). brilliant.

aardvark’s chat bot router has taken a hint from common IM away message practice (of using them as conversation baits). brilliant.

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Jul
5th
Sun
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5 users are sufficient for a usability study - nielsen

5 users are sufficient for a usability study - nielsen

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