September 19th 2010
Every now and then a pseudo-discussion will flair up, in response to a blogpost or a tweet, about online criticism and feedback. There was one such ‘discussion’ on Brendan Dawes’ blog back in January, when I initially drafted this post. For some reason I never published this then. I think I was too mad about the whole thing because his blog post taken on its own was rather weak – it was such a flippant remark – and it provoked some equally flippant responses. But it did raise an important point about a certain lack of criticism in web design which I’m particularly aware of having come from a fine art background where criticism is taught and practiced quite vigorously. To learn how to give and take criticism is one of the main reasons I would recommend getting some undergraduate education.
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Posted by Emily in
Design
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February 22nd 2010
Celebrating software as a service, wondering why other products can’t be more like it and enjoying seeing the web’s influence on print design.
I try not to subscribe to newsletters which I’m not going to read but there are a few in which I usually find something interesting or exciting to look at. Two of these appeared in my inbox this week. One from my online accounting application Freeagent and the other from an online shop I buy from occasionally called Nigel’s Eco Store.
Freeagent were writing to announce that they’ve released a new version of the application. I perhaps got a little over-excited about the features they’ve added. But the new functionality includes some things I’d specifically been waiting for, like linking an expense to a project without ‘rebilling’ it (useful if you charge a flat rate). In one way you could say that these features are things that always should have been there, but you know what it is like when you design things for the first time. You don’t always get it right.
Like my kettle. I bought one of these Eco Kettles last year. I was seduced by the promise that you can measure exactly now much water you need to boil. I always found with a regular kettle that I’d boil at least twice as much water as I need and that seems like a big waste of energy. Not to mention the impact on our electricity bill, considering how many cups of tea we make in a week, with 2 of us working from home every day.
Anyway it turns out that although the kettle does indeed let you only boil as little as 200ml water (and is probably saving a tonne of energy), it has some annoying little ‘bugs’: you can never get the last bit of water into the boiling chamber; the lid leaks and its a bit of an effort to push the button down (not such a biggy for me, but for elderly or arthritic users I’d say this is a major usability flaw). And it isn’t particularly attractive now, is it?
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Posted by Emily in
Design
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August 23rd 2009
Working from home, 5 miles from central London, I can get really lazy. I can’t be bothered to go into ‘town’ so I end up missing what is arguably the whole point of living in London. The exhibitions, the galleries, the shows. It’s usually when a friend comes to visit that I am forced out of my little Hackney bubble to check out whatever it is they fancy seeing. And then I find myself wondering why the hell I don’t do this more often.
So I was pleased when my old art school chum Digger came down from Glasgow recently, cos we went and did some culture.
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