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The kids are alright...
- 3 Mar 2010
- Robby Russell says... Check out this article
2 comments Last comment by Terra
My nephew just turned 5 years old, which means that I was recently seeking a birthday gift. Last year, I had taken him to OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) where he appeared to have a great time playing and learning. Money well spent.
In the back of my mind, I had been planning to purchase him an annual membership so that he could go more often. As his birthday neared, I began to look into this and was quickly discouraged by their membership packages.
At first glance, this may seem straight forward and reasonably priced. Yet, none of these plans were targetting my situation. You see, my goal was to purchase a membership for my nephew. One that might allow myself, his parents, grandparents, or babysitters to take him. Currently, this isn’t possible because their plans require named adult(s) and a number of kids they can take. I’m sure this works for many people, but I believe that a better option would be one geared towards the individual kids.
When I went to review their plans, I was expectig to purchase something like this:
..but all I could do is purchase a membership for some adult(s). Feeling disatisfied with my options, I decided to get in touch with OMSI. I sent in an email over a month ago to explain my scenario and see if they had a way to setup a special membership. Unfortunately, they never bothered to respond. Perhaps I’ll need to call someone in their offices to inquire, but regardless… I really find their strategy flawed.
Story time…
When I was younger, I had several membership cards to various attractions. One was GoKart license, another for an aquarium, and one for an amusement park. I was proud of my GoKart license and kept it in my wallet as kid. I remember getting newsletters in the mail from the aquarium letting me know about upcoming events. This would motivate me to ask my parents to take me (or find someone else to do it for them). I could imagine that this sort of membership model would be a great way to engage kids and invite them back on a more frequent basis. Kids are great at getting adults to take them to do stuff…
In the end, Micah (my nephew) didn’t get a membership pass and OMSI didn’t convert a ready-to-buy birthday shopper.
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It’s always humbling to see someone admit (and show) how obsessed they are about things.
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New Studio Warming Party
We’re planning to have a small party next month on April 1st, 2010. If you’re in the Portland, Oregon area, be sure to RSVP on our site.
We swear… this isn’t an April Fool’s joke! ;-)
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Was going through some of our photo archives and found this gem.
designer: Allison Beckwith
developer: Graeme Nelson -
I was curious how it would perform against a traditional form. Would people be more inclined to complete it because of the narrative format? Or would the unfamiliar presentation format confuse people?
from "Mad Libs" Style Form Increases Conversion 25-40%An interesting approach to form design that we might want to explore ourselves.
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Our new studio is located directly across the street from a few basketball half-courts. The sun has come out over the past few days and we’ve been taking advantage of this. If you’re in the Pearl District, you might discover a few of us playing 2v2 matches and HORSE in the afternoons.
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Ryan Gensel has recently joined our design team. He’s already begun posting on our blog and you’ll find him featured on episode 4 of the Planet Argon Podcast.
You’ll be hearing a lot more about Ryan in the near future.
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We may well define it for our purpose as “methodical thinking directed toward finding regulative connections between our sensual experiences.” Science, in the immediate, produces knowledge and, indirectly, means of action. It leads to methodical action if definite goals are set up in advance. For the function of setting up goals and passing statements of value transcends its domain. While it is true that science, to the extent of it’s grasp of causative connections, may reach important conclusions as to the compatibility and incompatibility of goals and evaluations, the independent and fundamental definitions regarding goals and values remain beyond science’s reach.
from Ideas and Opinions p. 58 (1948) -
Episode 4: The hiring process
We just published a new entry to our podcast. In this episode we discuss our recent UX Designer hiring process. Enjoy!
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It’s about the joining of the different disciplines, and not particularly a discipline in and of itself. While the best designers have an awareness of the disciplines that surround and overlap theirs, to be considered an experience designer would necessarily require management and coordination between the disciplines to ensure holistic products. This is an essential skill for making the best products, of course, but I would guess this is often a temporary role that designers move into during key points in the design process from a starting point of one of the other disciplines. Without the “raw materials” of the disciplines that make up UX, UX would be empty indeed. Source
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ReadWriteWeb has a weblog post that ranks highly in Google’s search results for “Facebook login”. The comments on the post are filled with complaints from confused people who think that this is the new Facebook login page.
It’s funny, yes, but it’s a fascinating glimpse at just how confused many people are about how web sites and browsers work. They don’t use bookmarks, they don’t type “facebook.com” in the location field. They just Google for whatever they’re looking for and assume the first result is correct. All this argument over whether the iPad is too simple — if anything it’s probably still too complex.
from Daring Fireball: Facebook login -
We love to play ping pong. We don’t compete with each other. We just get up and head to the table. We’ll volley for a bit, talk about the project we’re working, and go back to our desk feeling refreshed.
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So what concerns me is if this quest for creating simple software is hurting us. Are we creating a culture of users that require a dumbed down experience, at the expense of the increased efficiencies and productivity gains we can realize with more complex tools? Are we also stifling the creativity of the designers and developers who are afraid to provide useful features because of the fear that they may be complex or not immediately obvious?
from Less is Less -
Over the past several years, Gary has been introducing our team to football (soccer to us Yanks). We’ve been making it a regular thing to sneak over to the local Irish pub for lunchtime matches. On a personal level, I’ve become obsessed with watching Liverpool matches at 4:30am PST on Saturday mornings so that I can catch 12:30pm GMT matches.
Earlier today, our new friend and client Matthew Speakman from Spacewalk Creative joined us for a match. He admitted to having recently grown his own obsession with the sport.
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Taken a few years ago after we went hiking as a team.
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From an exhibit at the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry
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Portland's iPhone application
- 6 Feb 2010
- Robby Russell says... Check out this link
2 comments Last comment by Jude
City of Portland Citizen Reports
The City of Portland has released a free iPhone application that allows people to report problems with any of the city infrastructures. This means that if you’re walking down the street and notice a pot hole, graffiti, knocked over trees, street signs, etc… you can stop, take a photo, and report it right there.
Look forward to hearing how well this works out for the city. Would be interested in knowing if they’ll be opening up the data collected as well.
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Suggest your podcast topic ideas
- 6 Feb 2010
- Robby Russell says... Check out this photo
1 comment Last comment by Aliniabub
After taking a short break over the holiday season, we’re planning to start recording new episodes of the Planet Argon Podcast.
If you have any topics ideas, please let us know.
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Cultured Code, the team behind one of my favorite desktop/iphone applications, Things, has an excellent status page with a flight theme design for their customers.
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Clever rebranding of this South African airline. More photos →
