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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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Okay, not really… but we’re really excited to see the news that Obama has, “highlighted his ambition for the development of high-speed passenger rail lines in at least 10 regions.”
image from nytimes.comAs you know, we’re big fans of traveling by Rail. You can read the article on nytimes.com.
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Take the Ruby on Rails Hosting in 2009 Survey
- 13 Jan 2009
- Allison Beckwith says... Check out this article
The team at Planet Argon introduces the survey for people who deploy Ruby on Rails applications! That’s right, we’ve decided to collect, organize, and share valuable information about how people are managing their deployment process.
We invite anyone who is involved in the deployment management of Ruby on Rails applications to participate in the Rails Hosting in 2009
survey, which will be close on February 1st. Sometime thereafter we will publish the results, along with the anonymous raw data, for use by everyone in the community—including our competitors. Here at Planet Argon, it is our mission to strengthen and improve our hosting-related products and deployment
services based on real feedback from the trenches. So please, if you have a few minutes to spare, take our survey and help us take a giant step into future of Ruby on Rails hosting.
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NEWSLETTER: 012009 – New Years
PLANET ARGON New Years Newsletter
December 31st, 2008
- Client Projects in 2008
- Boxcar Redesigned
- Going into 2009
We wanted to send you a quick note to wish you all a Happy New Year.
Our team had a very successful year and are looking forward to
another great year in 2009. This last year has seen the launch
of client projects that we’ve worked hard on all year, and 2009
brings with it some exciting new products that we will be
announcing in the next few months!Recently launched Client Projects
AlphaClone
Planet Argon recently helped launch AlphaClone.com, a premier stock
research and portfolio simulation service for individuals and professional
investors alike. Planet Argon worked with the AlphaClone team to design
and develop the product from ideation all the way through deployment.
AlphaClone is hosted using the same technology that powers Rails Boxcar
and is being managed by our team of deployment specialists.- Check out AlphaClone at http://alphaclone.com/
Contiki
Planet Argon has been collaborating with Contiki, a worldwide leader in
vacations for 18-35 year olds, as the primary Interaction Design and
Development team behind their online presence for nearly two years. In 2008,
we helped grow their community base beyond the 100k member threshold and it
continues to grow as we expand on ways for their customers to connect with
each other before and after their travels through tips, photo sharing, and
planning reunion trips!- Check Contiki out at http://contiki.com/
Boxcar Redesigned
In 2008, we began redesigning our deployment and hosting services by turning
Rails Boxcar from a simple VPS into a scalable deployment platform. In addition
to 3 different Boxcar plans, we are now also offering custom managed hosting
packages on dedicated hardware for high-volume sites. These packages leverage
the same technology as our Boxcar plans allowing for simple deployments and
simple scalability. Combined with our new consulting options, we’re giving
our customers access to more ways to grow their sites without the headaches
of managing them.To top it all off, we recently launched a new site for Rails Boxcar, sporting
a new look, testimonials, and more detailed plan information.- Check it out at http://railsboxcar.com/
Remember to sign up for our new Rails Boxcar Newsletter! ;-)
Going into 2009
Our team is currently working on a collection of internal projects and
consumer-facing products that we will be launching in the first quarter
of 2009. We are still evaluating new client projects for 2009, so if you
know anybody looking for a Design and Development team, don’t hesitate to
have them give us a call at +1 503 445 2456 or contact us online at:You can also follow us online at:
- Twitter: http://twitter.com/planetargon
- Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/planetargon
- Our Blog: http://blog.planetargon.com
Again, we hope that you had a great 2008 and are looking forward to a successful 2009!
The Planet Argon team!
Alex, Allison, Carlos, Chris, Dan, Dawn, Gary, and Robby
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We were contacted by one of the founders of AlphaClone nearly a year ago. They pitched us on a very complicated project that would need to be simplified so that their customers could easily interact with it. After a vigorous ITER-ZERO process, we kicked off the project last February and earlier today, our clients sent out private-beta invitations to people and we’ve opened up a few features to the public.
They describe themselves as, “AlphaClone is a research service that let’s investors follow the stock ideas of top money managers. AlphaClone simulates, or clones, the performance of investing in these ideas at the time they become public. AlphaClone is the first professional-grade cloning service for self-directed and professional investors alike.” (link)
We’ll go into more details about some of our design decisions in the project in future posts, but did want to invite you all to take a peek at what we’ve been up to for most of the year.
We’re excited to see how people respond to the site and we’re really excited to be part of this innovative project!
Take a look at:
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Excluding the morning machine that is Robby; the rest of Planet Argon had rarely, if ever, seen the likes of the beloved office at a grisly 7:15am… until Wednesday, August 27th, that is. The day at the office began and ended before much of the team typically batted their sleep-encrusted eyes awake each morning. Backpacks in tow and jokes amok, the team trekked swiftly to the train station to board the northbound train, destination: Seattle.
For weeks, there had been mounting anticipation of this day of fun peppered with work outside the office. Most of the group had minimal time logged on a train, all were looking forward to seeing the Seattle Mariners vs. the Minnesota Twins, but an ever-so-slight sense of unease wafted about:
>"Did anyone bring their iPhone charger?"
>"Will we be near outlets?"
>"How will we ration battery power?"
>"What time is it?"
>"Who’s playing ‘I Spy’ with me?"
>"Who’s having a beer with me?"
All legitimate concerns for an eclectic team with one goal in sight: Accomplishment. The bar is never too high if fun is the mission, especially when work’s necessities are there to keep the gang’s psyche balanced.
With a projected high of a mere 64 degrees, the team wasn’t phased as they settled into the high-back Amtrak seats; various breakfast foods and their mini army of MacBooks strewn across the conveniently placed tables.
A winding 4 hours to reach the stadium which happened to be mere steps from the station left the team with ample time to accomplish tasks across the board. The lack of a true wi-fi connection didn’t hinder Allison, Robby, Chris, Gary and Alex from setting up a bluetooth network with each other.
Beers in hand and game faces on, a grueling battle of wits ensued between Alex and Dawn; Travel Scrabble style.
Upon arrival, with some lovely beers and tasty meals to follow; the posse ventured through the waves of mediocre merchandise vendors into the bowels of the manmade-strocity that is Safeco Field.
The game itself proved to be pretty fruitful, with the Mariners pulling ahead only for the Twins to ultimately reign victorious, 5 to 6. Details can be viewed here.
The game may have been over, but the day trip was in full swing. The ride back proved to be a time when everybody at Planet Argon loosened their collars, so to speak. Work was hammered through, unfortunately nobody was hammered. Games modern and classic were played, jokes too lewd for the internetz were uttered and carried on well through their peak. Observational humor stayed strong, a child with the voice of an alien and the curious name of ‘Elliot’ (E.T. anyone?) dashed through the aisles much to our amusement… Hilarity ensued when he donned a hoody just like his 1980s fictional counterpart.
Also not captured on film were shenanigans involving a suspicious program “PhotoBooth”, which many cite as the reason society is crumbling. Dubbed the “Photobooth Palz” by onlookers, the culprits allegedly were creating questionably inhuman images with nothing more than their own faces and hands. Any information or details should not be reported to authorities.
To the dismay of many, including the Argonistas, the train became delayed by approximately 1 hour; just mere tiptoes from the Vancouver, WA station after the conductor announced a freight train “left a huge mess”… Which of course prompted the team to speculate on what really happened:
>"Foul play"
>"A train surprise"
>"A drug bust"
>"Large-beaded necklaces"
>"Elllllllllllliot!"
Alex was permitted to exclude himself from the no-table discussion as he was studying Planet Argon’s bible, Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins.
Planet Argon arrived back in Portland on the heavy side of 10:00pm, reprogrammed indefinitely by the day’s happenings.
It was a bleary-eyed journey, never low on laughter or yawns. Cliches aside, the literal traveling definitely made the entire excursion worthwhile… Anybody can simply go to a baseball game, but it takes a true posse to mix business with pleasure and find solace in the transit itself.
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We were fortunate to be able to sponsor Ignite Portland 3, which was held at the Baghdad theatre in Portland, Oregon.
What is Ignite? Let’s let them answer that (from Ignite Portland site)
“If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers.”1
Several of us from Planet Argon came down to enjoy the evening. Here are a few videos that I (Robby) took on my Flip.
- The Evolution of our Social Brains, by Jenny Andrews
- Boiling Water in Five Easy Steps, by Vanessa Holfeltz
- “Fracking robots, dude!”:, by Sharon Greenfield
- How To Run a Startup and Not Lose Your Mind, Eva Schweber
- Talking Trash, by Meredith Sorensen
A Short Course On How to Ride Freight Trains – Gerry Van Zand
Don’t get mad, make a video! – Phillip Kerman
(coming soon)
As sponsors, we had an opportunity to go up in front of the audience for 15 seconds. Allison got up to introduce everybody to Planet Argon.
Additionally, it was fun to watch just how active Twitter was during this event.
Thanks to everyone who came up to introduce themselves and to all the speakers for making it an fun and educational evening!
1 http://www.igniteportland.com/about/
2 As sponsors, we had an opportunity to go up in front of the audience for 15 seconds to pitch our company.
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By popular demand.. we’re happy to announce that we’ve just rolled out monthly subscription plans for Boxcar, our professional VPS hosting solution for Ruby on Rails applications. That’s right! You can now order a new Boxcar on a month-to-month basis for just $99/month.
Our team has been building a completely new account management and billing system for the past few months and just launched the initial version. Our aim was to get the essentials out to our customers and work with them to learn more about their goals for managing their Boxcars. Over the next few months, we’ll be building automation tools to simplify the process for deploying Ruby on Rails applications to your Boxcar. Be sure to stay tuned and follow Boxcar on twitter as we’ll be posting information there as we launch these changes.
Ready to hop on our train? Go ahead and place an order now!
For more information, visit railsboxcar.com or contact us.
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If you’ve been a hosting customer of ours over the past few years, you’re likely familiar with our IRC channel for live hosting support. We’ve recently decided to move more of our efforts online and moving to Campfire, which is where we spend a good portion of our day collaborating together anyway.
Ways to Get Hosting Support
There are a number of ways that you can get your hosting questions answered.
PLANET ARGON Documentation Project
If you have any questions or problems, first take a moment to check out the PLANET ARGON Documentation Project. We teamed with several of our friendly hosting customers to create numerous tutorials related to managing hosting accounts on our servers:
You can find a lot of tutorials that have been written by other great customers like you. Don’t hesitate to correct any typos, mistakes or stale information in the Documentation Project.
PLANET ARGON Community Forums
Perhaps you have a question that wasn’t answered by the tutorials; post a message or read previous posts on our community forums.
Before you ask a question or respond to another question, please read our our posting guidelines.
PLANET ARGON Live Chat Help
If you didn’t find what you need in any of the tutorials or forums, the next place that you should go is our live chat room.
Stop by our Campfire web-based chat room. We’re typically there during our standard hours of support.
Drop by and introduce yourself; ask a question, answer a question.
PLANET ARGON Technical Support
If none of the resources above have helped you solve your problem, you should submit a support ticket to our technical staff or call us at +1 503 445 2457, +1 877 55 ARGON.
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We’ve been so busy the past few months that we almost forgot to post photos from our team dinner party in January.
The dinner party was hosted at Noble Rot, a wine-bar and restaurant in Portland, Oregon. We had the whole upstairs to ourselves with personal chefs and excellent food.
It was a great opportunity to have everyone bring their loved-ones for a intimate evening out together. :-)
Here are a few photos from the event.
Melissa, Allison, and Daniel
Pinot Noir
Robby and Paige
Personal chefs prepare our dessert!
View from above
The Planet Argon teamThank you to the Noble Rot and Melissa for organizing this excellent evening out.
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Meteorites: Thanks for the extra hour Daylight Savings Time
- 20 Mar 2008
- Robby Russell says... Check out this article
The Autumn of the Multitaskers
“Neuroscience is confirming what we all suspect: Multitasking is dumbing us down and driving us crazy. One man’s odyssey through the nightmare of infinite connectivity”
Jeff Raskin on ‘Intuitive Interfaces’
“Many claims of intuitiveness, when examined, fail. It has been claimed that the use of a computer’s mouse is intuitive. Yet it is far from that. In one of the Star Trek series of science fiction movies, the space ship’s engineer has been brought back into our time, where (when) he walks up to a Macintosh. He picks up the mouse, bringing it to his mouth as if it were a microphone, and says: “Computer, …” The audience laughs at his mistake."
Edge Cases are the Root of all Evil
“Most Edge Cases are presented in the conference room. You get a cross-functional team together to come up with some solutions to The Problem (insert meeting title here). You have people from all the departments that The Problem touches (plus a few more hangers-on who weren’t invited to the party, but personally felt that The Problem could not be solved without them). You brainstorm ideas, go on tangents and then finally inspiration strikes you.”
Easy, Intuitive and Metaphor, and other meaningless words
“Many tasks, that were once hard, can become easy. Learning to ride a bicycle as a child is precarious, often involving falling off, scuffing knees, and occasional tears. But as experienced cyclists riding a bike is easy. The process of transition from hard to easy is one of learning. All the time we spend in education is aimed at turning the hard into the easy. Not by changing the tasks at all – but instead by changing us.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the point-and-click navigation model of the mouse, although it can degenerate into mystery meat navigation if you’re not careful. I don’t expect web designers to create keyboard-centric websites; the mouse is a natural and intuitive enough way to navigate web sites. But so is the keyboard, in certain circumstances. What frustrates me is when web developers fail to pay attention to the most rudimentary of keyboard support in their designs.”
Blissfully Ignorant Shoppers Happier with Choices
“The researchers used three experiments to arrive at their conclusion. Two of them were consumer test-style experiments in which subjects were asked for their opinion of chocolate in one and hand lotion in the other. In each experiment, one group of subjects was given lots of information about the product, the other group much less. In each instance, the subjects who had little information were more optimistic about the chocolate or hand lotion than those who had more information.”
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Daniel was recently mentioned on OregonLive for helping the city improve the road conditions in Portland. This was aimed at helping bicyclists from spotting pot holes on their commutes to work.
Photo from wildsheepchase on flickr- Read the article, Chalk th is one up against potholes on OregonLive.
- View more photos on this flickr stream
Kudos to Daniel for helping improve the quality of Portland’s streets for bicyclists and cars.
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It’s been over a week since we got back from London and I am starting to get to sleep at a decent hour again. Three of us; Robby, Andy, and myself were invited to London for a week to visit one of our larger clients in London and Bromley, which is a suburb of London. We stayed at the Thistle Marble Arch just off of Oxford Street well know for its shopping. Oxford Street is a broad bustling street packed with shoppers night and day, one morning I even woke up to hordes of people queuing up to get into Primark from my window. Which then meant I had to go shop at to see what all the fuss was about.
We spent a lot of time on the London UndergroundWe had three full days of client meetings and three full days to ourselves to run around and sight-see. The weather was spectacular, sunny almost every day.
The business part of the trip was very informative. We met with our client in Bromley, visited their operations office and their print distribution office, commandeered a small room and rearranged the furniture, talked for three days straight about improvements on the administrative and public interfaces of the application, and met over ten new people from the company. It was great to finally meet some of the people that we’ve been working with for the past nine months and elicit Interaction feedback from our client so that we can continue to design and develop a solution that compliments their workflow and future marketing campaigns.
Andy Delcambe commuting on the train from London to BromleyWe also did a fair amount “getting to know you” type socializing. Something we were all happy to do since we had been working together for half a year with few if not all of us having ever met in person.
We also visited one of their vendors, who are responsible for the development of a 8+ year .NET project that we’ve been interfacing with via Ruby on Rails. Andy has been having weekly conference calls with developers there and he got to have a few pints and work side-by-side on some lingering tickets. Their offices were directly across the street from Buckingham Palace, which meant that we got to walk around and see where the Queen lives.
Walking past Buckingham PalaceOnce we finished working for the week we had a few days to be tourists. The touristy part of the trip was mellow and, well touristy. We did a lot of walking, visiting various neighborhoods. Since our client is in the travel industry, they were kind enough to supply us with some free tickets for a guided bus and river tour. We went all around London on the river Thames and saw many sights. We saw Big Ben, Parliament, the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, and the London Eye. I could never have seen so much by foot. We went to the British Museum, The British History Museum, The National Portrait Gallery, The Tate, Buckingham Palace and many more places. We drank flat, “bitter” beer at pubs with names like “Three Tuns” that had carpets, dark wood paneling and “jacket potatoes.” We took the tube with our “oyster cards” everywhere and our fearless transportation leader Andy kept us headed in the right direction at all times.
Our trip was heavily documented by Andy and Robby who have graciously posted torrential amounts of photos Andy Delcambre’s photos and Robby Russell’s photos.Oh yeah! And it was great meeting those of you who came out to join us for drinks on our nights off!
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Last night, while working late in the office, Andy noticed that Google now had Street View for Portland, Oregon.
Here is our current office location (for the next three weeks).
In a few weeks, we’ll no longer be facing this side of the block as we’re moving around the corner.
…and a closer view of the exterior of our new studio.
Thank you, Google, for putting Portland (streets) on the map!
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We moved to downtown Portland, Oregon in February of 2006 and while the space has had it’s perks, it also lacked a lot of natural light. So, we had decided that our next location would have much more natural light.
The new office space lacks private offices, but over time we have all migrated to a shared workspace anyway.
It’s just our luck that within the same building, a new studio space opened up. We have people working this month on improvements to the space, such as a finished (wood) floor, installing a sink/kitchen area, amongst other fun stuff. We’re hoping to be in our new space, which is just down the hall around November 1st.
The team is excited that we’ll be in a space that has way more natural light than our current space. :-)
Small perk… Ground Kontrol is across the street!Stay tuned for more photos as the construction team makes progress…
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It’s October and we’re excited to announce that we’re an official sponsor for the Working with Rails monthly hackfest this month. We’ve allocated one Boxcar for the first prize winner of this months hackfest. As of today, you have 29 days to climb your way to the top of the pack.
Good luck to all those who participate this month!
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Even Simple Multi-tasking Can Make a Project 30% Late
“Instead of doing many things at once (thinly-veiled in the name of Productivity), focus your attention on one task at a time, which in the long run will allow you to do more.”
Collaboration with development is a handshake, not a handoff
“As designers, we have the opportunity to provide an immense amount of value as the design moves through the development process. This process is best when it’s less of a handoff and more of a handshake; it’s a commitment between the designers and developers. Trust is a key component of this relationship, and once developers learned to trust our design decisions—and realized that we were really listening to their feedback about technical feasibility—it allowed them to focus on writing code and not second-guessing our design choices.”
If you aren’t embarrassed by v1.0 you didn’t release it early enough
“It is well known that the sooner you catch a mistake in development, the cheaper it is to fix. I believe this is just as true in marketing. A sure way to find these marketing mistakes is to release. You wouldn’t write a thousand lines of code before you tried to compile it. Why would you spend a year or more on development before testing it in the market? Creating software should be an incremental process.”
How well do you know prototype
“Here, I’ve collected most common use cases that do NOT use all of prototype’s capabilities and their simple solutions. I hope this will be a basic checklist to go through when developing for your next project.”
Simple Ways to Help Your Design Suck Less
“I often deal with people that have programming and website creation experience but lack any design experience or even common sense in design. Creating things visually pleasing comes naturally to me (I think), I also study the area at a tertiary level. Following some published theories as well as my own aesthetic sense there’s some simple things you can do to create better design.”
Getting Creative With Specs: Usable Software Specifications
“Usability applies to our deliverables as much as to our designs. Creating a usable spec is an excellent way for us as designers to make things easier for the rest of the team.”
Foundations of Interaction Design
“…Interaction Design is distinct from the other design disciplines. It’s not Information Architecture, Industrial Design, or even User Experience Design. It also isn’t user interface design. Interaction design is not about form or even structure, but is more ephemeral–about why and when rather than about what and how.”
“Every project and every office has multiple personality types. How you work with them and how you manage the rationale of decisions and feedback is crucial to your success.”
Typenuts, The Funny Side of Typography
see for yourself… ;-)
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A week ago, we quietly opened up the process for accepting new orders for our brand new hosting solution for Ruby on Rails. Here is what we sent out to all those who signed up on the Rails Boxcar mailing list.
Rails Boxcar is here!
We’ve been busy getting everything setup and tested for our newest hosting solution for Ruby on Rails. Boxcar, a pre-configured virtual server for hosting your business-level Rails applications, was developed out of our observations of how our Rails hosting customers are deploying their applications. Boxcar was designed to support the best-practices for Rails deployment.
How, you ask?
Unlike a typical VPS, we’ve pre-configured Boxcar to allow you to follow just a few steps to get your Rails application up and running as quickly as possible. We’ve also given you more control over your environment to install additional packages, gems, and programs.
We don’t want your Boxcar to box you in… except when you want it to.
Boxcar will provide you with more privacy. Your application will be completely separate from other customers’ applications. You will also get excellent performance as you will not be competing for memory usage or disk space with other customers, which leads to more stability for your application.
Don’t feel lonely!
All Boxcar customers will have access to a community-driven documentation project, aimed at helping everyone share tips
and tricks for configuring and maintaining your Boxcar.Ready to hop on our train?
For the initial launch, we’re offering 6 and 12 month plans, both of which have a 30 day money back guarantee. Prices start at $85/month for the twelve month plan and $90/month for the six month plan.
Go ahead and place an order
Questions?
If you have any questions about our new Boxcar service, don’t hesitate to send an email to contact@planetargon.com or give us a call at +1 877 55 ARGON.
We’re excited about the launch of Boxcar and would like to thank all of our existing customers who have helped us design it.
Cheers,
The PLANET ARGON Team
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26 Reasons What You Think is Right is Wrong
“A cognitive bias is something that our minds commonly do to distort our own view of reality. Here are the 26 most studied and widely accepted cognitive biases.”
The Five Biggest Web Site Mistakes
“Mistake No. 2 Don’t organize your site based on what’s familiar or convenient for your organization or its departments. You want a site that’s convenient for its end users—they come first. Put yourself in their shoes. Use language that makes sense to your intended audience; translate terminology (and any other jargon) into plain English.”
Multi-Tasking: Why projects take so long and still go late
“In most project environments multi-tasking is a way of life. This seemingly harmless activity, often celebrated as a desirable skill, is one of the biggest culprits in late projects, long project durations, and low project output. At the same time it is one of the least understood factors in managing projects.”
IT Conversations – Several podcasts of conversations with Interaction Design experts, from Irene Au to Jesse James Garrett.
Survey: Internet Explorer ‘most influential’ tech product in past 25 years
“Interesting word “influential.”" .. ""Best" certainly would have been a different story."
“Today we’re happy to announce that we are adding support for the hCard microformat to Google Maps results. Why should you care about some invisible changes to our HTML? By marking up our results with the hCard microformat, your browser can easily recognize the address and contact information in the page, and help you transfer it to an addressbook or phone more easily.”
“We know that design is an expense—just look at any company’s balance sheet. And we know intuitively that for many companies, design is a profit center. But few organizations can actually prove that great design drives profits.”
Open – Code – New York Times Blog – The New York Times launches a new “blog about open source technology at The New York Times, written by and primarily for developers. This includes our own projects, our work with open-source technologies at nytimes.com, and other interesting topics in the open source and Web 2.0 worlds.”
Why usability is a path to failure
…"why oh why do people in this day age still hold up “usability” as something laudable in product and service design? Praising usability is like giving me a gold star for remembering that I have to put each leg in a different place in my pants to put them on. "
Never Use a Warning When you Mean Undo
“Have you ever had that sinking feeling when you realize—just a split second too late—that you shouldn’t have clicked “Okay” in the “Are you sure you want to quit?” dialog?”
What Puts the Design in Interaction Design
“Designed behavior is not invisible. Sometimes it is obfuscated; at other times, it is apparent or even obvious. Most importantly, designed behavior dictates the flow between action and reaction, which is the basis of an interaction.”
Using Omnigraffle to visualise Rails model associations
“a quick script to scan the associations between models and output it in the Graphviz DOT format.”
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If you’re in the Portland area (or would consider relocating) and are interested in a contract or potential full-time job working with Ruby on Rails, continue reading!
PLANET ARGON is currently seeking Interaction Designers and Ruby on Rails Developers.
We’re looking for passionate people that are enthusiastic about working in a diverse and collaborative environment. Developers on-site in Portland are preferred, but we will consider top-notch people that can demonstrate their ability to collaborate as quickly as our team does in our company offices.
If you’d like to apply, please introduce yourself with a thoughtful cover letter and resume. We’re looking forward to meeting you!
