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Why a commercial website CMS is a smarter investment than a homegrown agency solution
The reports of Windows Phone lacking in apps are greatly exaggerated
It’s time for an open source, global social network
Managing the chaos with Task Ave.
Our Windows Phone app, Rhythmatic, wins at the Fast Track to the Mobile App Design Challenge
Design for "me"
The term "user-centred design" (UCD) get tossed around a lot these days in the world of modern software development. And for good reason. It's very important that the needs, wants and limitations of users are front of mind when designing applications.
March 30, 2012 by Geof Harries in Design
Using brand experience attributes to design digital products
Organizations with well-manicured brands know that their customer touch-points need to not only make a good impression, but also be visually identifiable as theirs and support the brand's description of itself. Unfortunately, while most brand-oriented companies are careful to emphasize these qualities in their printed materials and corporate websites, few pay enough attention to how their other digital products perform for people.
March 12, 2012 by Geof Harries in Design
Windows 8 Consumer Preview from a desktop user's perspective
Although the majority of yesterday's news about Windows 8 Consumer Preview centered on the Metro/tablet interface, I'd instead like to briefly discuss the new operating system from a desktop user's perspective.
March 1, 2012 by Geof Harries in Design 2 comments
How to label a Clear form button
In most circumstances, I try to altogether avoid using a dedicated "Clear" button in a software application interface. The action of clearing form fields is a destructive action and while sometimes that destruction is what you want (you actually do want to start over again) there are times that it’s absolutely the last thing you want to do.
February 20, 2012 by Geof Harries in Design
Designing Windows software: Seeking Windows 8 desktop application guidelines
Looking at Windows 8 from a builder's perspective, almost all of the marketing and communications towards developers and designers from Microsoft about Windows 8 has been focused on Metro style apps: what they are, how to make them and in which ways they'll be delivered; that is, through the Windows Store. And of that information, most of it has been directed towards developers. So, what about designing Windows 8 desktop applications?
February 4, 2012 by Geof Harries in Design
Designing Windows software: Moving our Windows Phone app, Cash Hound, from design to prototype
After we learned that we won the Fast Track to the Mobile App contest, we looked at our schedule for this month and next, both of which were already packed, and were perplexed as to how we'd shoe-horn the actual development and design of our app into that time period.
January 19, 2012 by Geof Harries in Design 2 comments
Designing Windows software: Measuring vertical spacing for Windows Phone apps
Spend any amount of time designing a Windows Phone app and you'll discover that 12 is the magical number of pixels in the horizontal grid. But what about vertical spacing?
January 17, 2012 by Geof Harries in Design 2 comments
Designing Windows software: Cut the chrome
The more Windows desktop software I design, the more I find myself being influenced by the principles of Windows Phone in my work. That doesn't mean that what I produce always looks like it belongs on a Windows Phone device, but rather it's that I translate those concepts, at a high level, to the interfaces I design.
November 23, 2011 by Geof Harries in Design
Designing Windows software: Measuring the application frame for maximized windows
When designing Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) software, you can choose to either utilize the default Windows theme, with all of its built-in sizing and controls, or create your own from scratch. With a custom theme, you need to figure out those control measurements yourself.
October 23, 2011 by Geof Harries in Design
Abolishing forms
For what seems like forever, forms have been a core part of the digital experience. From e-commerce websites to business applications and mobile software, forms are what most systems utilize to collect input from users. Yet, over the past while, we’ve been trying to abolish the traditional form in the interfaces we design and build.
October 6, 2011 by Geof Harries in Design
Designing spatially
Earlier this year, we were contracted to build a web mapping application for Yukon Government’s Water Resources Branch. The end result was to be an interactive water data catalogue; a spatial representation of water sample data as collected by various agencies across the territory. This was a project that really pushed my limits as a designer.
July 25, 2011 by Geof Harries in Design
What I love about designing for Windows Phone
What I love about designing for Windows Phone is the constraints.
July 13, 2011 by Geof Harries in Design 2 comments
How to choose the right Segoe typeface for your Windows or Windows Phone application
Segoe is a typeface currently being used by Microsoft for Windows Phone, printed marketing materials and some of their newer desktop software interfaces. While Segoe is available in a number of variations, for the purposes of digital applications, there's only two distinct choices: Segoe UI or Segoe WP. Here's how to pick the right one.
June 7, 2011 by Geof Harries in Design
Adobe Fireworks version control
I've been using Fireworks as my everyday interface design software since it was owned by Macromedia. My introduction to the application came in 1999, when Macromedia released Fireworks 2. An essential tool that's never been included in Fireworks is version control.
May 17, 2011 by Geof Harries in Design
Are User Experience Design agencies a dying breed?
Four years ago, when I started Subvert, a significant portion of our business was focused on user experience design consulting. I didn’t have the skills to build complex back-end technology or highly interactive front-end interfaces, so I stuck to what I knew.
April 19, 2011 by Geof Harries in Design
Does your software have good manners?
Whether you're designing or building software, it's vitally important to consider how your product will behave in front of users. It can be helpful to think of these behaviours as "manners".
February 1, 2011 by Geof Harries in Design
Navigation for enterprise applications
Designing enterprise applications often means you’re dealing with hundreds of screens, wildly disparate functionality, inter-departmental politics and a huge variety of user skill types. Take into account the complexities of each and you can see how structuring an enterprise application can quickly drive a designer mad.
January 3, 2011 by Geof Harries in Design
Designing complex data tables
Enterprise applications make regular use of tables to display complex data. When designed for the needs of people, rather than simply a replication of the database(s) underneath, complex tables can actually be enjoyable to view and operate.
June 29, 2010 by Geof Harries in Design
Designing for null values
Quite rare is the business software that doesn't include the display of null values. When you're dealing with extensive forms for data input and viewing, you're bound to end up with zeroes; here's how to design for them.
May 14, 2010 by Geof Harries in Design
Why we skip low-fidelity wireframes and get right to high-fidelity concepts
There was a time, not too long ago, that all of our website and application projects started off with research and wireframes.
November 25, 2009 by Geof Harries in Design 3 comments
User experience design: You can't have one skill without the other
In a few weeks, our Yukon IT industry society, YITIS, is hosting an Interaction Design Practicum course here in Whitehorse. When we were first considering such an event, several people asked me if I felt having more local folks skilled in what I do would be a threat to my business.
May 23, 2009 by Geof Harries in Design 3 comments
How Microsoft can win back the hearts (and wallets) of web designers
Most, if not all, of the web designers I know work on Mac OS X, myself included. Some are dyed-in-the-wool Mac people and others are recent converts from Windows, but no matter how long they have been using a Mac, most swear they will never switch back to Windows.
July 31, 2008 by Geof Harries in Design 3 comments
Why Interaction Designers should know how to code
Whenever I see a job posting for an Interaction Designer, I comb through the required skills to see if writing front-end code is part of the position. Unfortunately, all too often, this is not the case.
July 18, 2008 by Geof Harries in Design
Better homepage: City of Whitehorse re-design
The current City of Whitehorse homepage has problems. The design and structure are not representative of the beautiful place in which we live.
February 4, 2008 by Geof Harries in Design 5 comments
The quiet importance of submit button design
Submit buttons, although modest, are the gatekeepers in a web form. As the buttons control if people can ultimately send data to your website or application, time must be spent...
October 29, 2007 by Geof Harries in Design