The homepage of Some Random Dude as of today is 39.6Kb spread across 5 requests (13.1Kb and 2 of those requests are Google Analytics). Over 30% of pages sampled load in 1 second or less. 74.5% of pages sampled load in 3 seconds or less. These numbers increase dramatically when you restrict the sample page loads to countries with high broadband adoption. This site performs this way not because of a plugin I installed or the server’s Apache settings (although they help). It performs this way because of tough decisions made in the design process. This site was designed to be fast. Read On…

This post was originally posted on the Seabright blog.

Writing on the iPad has inherent challenges. In portrait mode, the keyboard is far too cramped to perform any significant typing. It is clear that landscape was the intended mode of typing due to the more realistic dimensions of the keyboard in addition to the iPad cover’s feature to place the device at a suitable typing angle. However, landscape mode has the problem of vertical space limitations with the keyboard active. With these challenges, I am always interested to see how app designers try to provide more functionality with such significant restrictions. A recent app that has gotten some attention is Writing Kit, which provides advanced writing features as well as in-app researching tools. Unfortunately, it has also followed a design cue I first observed on iA Writer for iPad. Writing Kit adds a formatting bar on top of the iOS keyboard, offering useful features at the cost of exaggerating the problem of writing space. One has to ask themselves how worthy an interface element is if it erodes the experience around the subject it is supporting. Read On…

When I released Iconic in font format it got a lot of positive feedback. However, it had one significant technical issues that kept it from being practical. The glyphs in the font had no logical assignment to Unicode characters, making the output semantically unsound. A few months back, Philip Shaw shared a much improved method for glyph assignment which I have implemented in the current version of Iconic. I thought it would be worthwhile to share that approach so that others may adopt it and that a standard can hopefully form. Read On…

The couple months ago a person contacted me to help them design a small icon system for an academic paper. The icons were needed to communicate different online privacy settings when sharing content or information. Communicating levels of privacy is far more complex than the simple nouns or verbs normally symbolized in icons. The set was small enough in number for me to take design them outside of my work hours. What I’m showing today are wireframes of the icons to communicate the general direction and explain the structure/rules behind this system. Read On…

A couple months ago, a person emailed me asking for tips for transitioning to design from a development background. As someone who had loosely gone through the same path (from programming to design to programming then back to design), I wanted to share any advice I could possibly give. After writing the letter, I thought it may be useful to a few other people out there. So if you are a developer looking to get into design, this is written specifically for you. To preface, this article is not why developers can be good designers. This article does a great job of articulating those ideas. So instead of duplicating good work, I spent time on some ways a developer can get into design. Read On…