Ideas and Discoveries

On the 10th birthday of An Event Apart, I looked back at what I was doing a decade ago—and what’s changed.

Inc. Magazine profiled and interviewed Big Medium’s Josh Clark about the elements of great mobile products (and the stuff we’re still getting wrong).

An excerpt from Josh Clark’s book Designing for Touch explores how we grip different devices, revealing the ergonomic demands of touchscreen interfaces.

Josh’s latest book hands you the best design patterns and interactions for modern interfaces.

Memories of a night in Siena remind me what we’ve gained—and what we’ve lost—in the era of the algorithm.

In an interview, Josh Clark previews his keynote for the Delight conference, explaining why magic yields more imaginative interfaces than technological inspiration.

The best technologies disappear into the environment to minimize distraction from the content or experience at hand. Yet we design for distraction, and we call it engagement. When you say "engagement," I now hear "theft of attention."

Wareable.com profiled and interviewed Big Medium’s Josh Clark about the risks and opportunities of moving interactions off screen and into the world around us.

The future is sitting right in front of us in plain view, waiting to be assembled. Do we have the nerve and imagination to piece it together?

As devices multiply, the new opportunity is less about designing individual screens, and more about designing interactions between the devices.

The real luxury of wearing information is not in exposing ourselves to every passing data point but in filtering that data in ways that deliver insight and amplify our humanity.

Smashing Magazine published The Mobile Book this week. I was honored to contribute the book’s final chapter about designing for touch.

New hybrid keyboard-touch laptops and tablets have changed the game. When any desktop machine could have a touch interface, we have to proceed as if they all do.

Back! Done! Cancel! Save! Mobile apps sport a bevy of buttons to dismiss a view, but their proper placement isn’t always obvious. Here are the general rules to follow.

The history of New York City’s aggressive grid of city streets offers plenty of lessons for digital designers.

Jakob Nielsen’s dubious mobile website guidelines make the mistake of assuming that there’s such a thing as “this is mobile content, and this is not.”

Designers often conflate device context with user context—or worse, with user intent. “This is mobile, so they’ll never want to do that.” ”This is mobile, so it’s aimed only at users on the go.” Friends, this is hooey.