So..as you can all see, it’s been over a month since my last post, and what a busy month it has been as I’ve moved myself across 3 time zones to Palo Alto. I have so many “OMG this would be a great thing to write about” topics in my head but no much time to do it. Don’t worry all the topics will make it here…eventually. If you follow me on twitter you would know this already, but I’ve meaning to post it here…….

I got published! I think their is a time at some point in every designers career that they realize people care about what they put together.  I’m not talking about people who “have to” care about you designed like the employer who is paying you, the consultant who hired you, the professor who is marking you. I’m talking about people who opt in to caring about your design because they see the value in it after it’s been designed. Maybe it’s the customers that buy the product because it’s easy to use or in my case the publisher that’s responsible for the “Publications” section that will be added to my resume. A conference paper that I co-authored with my design team for the memory prompting device for Alzheimer’s patients was published! We were pretty excited about it. You can check out the abstract here.

That’s all for now, sorry it’s not too interesting…I will post some stuff soon. I also want to get all the details up about the Disney project, and how much I’m enjoying living and working in Silicon Valley.

Dear Facebook,

Thank you very much for releasing what may be the most obvious addition to your nicotine-like product. I’m not sure why the early April release of your chat client took over four years to make, but I’m sure glad that it’s out. I can now talk to all my 400+ friends in ONE web based client (everyone loves efficiency), and have yet another tool to convince my “I’m not signing up for Facebook just to be different and socially separated” friends to join.

I’m also a fan of the UI, it’s very similar to Google’s chat client in Gmail. Clearly, collecting staff from down the road was a smart move! Way to go! The UI is clean, and doesn’t interfere with my stalking social networking experience. The mini feed updates in the chat window also gives me a better connection to the person I’m chatting with, I instantly feel like we are co-browsing Facebook, something we could never *really* do before <3.

Thanks again,

Melina McLarty

I read the ixda mailing list a lot, I can’t nearly read everything, but if you’re interested in interaction design, you should definitely sign up here. One topic that comes up over and over, is the fine blurry undefined line between visual designers, interaction designers, interface designers, user experience designers, and many more related and deliciously intertwined roles in the product design arena. Well, regardless of the boundaries, here is a picture that proves why we must all play nicely in the sand box.

At first glance, this seems like the visual design for a logo, when placed at the top of website it seems like it would definitely do the trick, right? But wait, what if you change the orientation, and have people interact with the logo on the side of a pen, where it’s viewed at a 90 degree clockwise rotation…hum..well..turn your head and see for yourself!

Oh ya, the full article is here.