design

The Greener Room

November 25, 2009

I'm pleased to present the new TGR: now with more green! I've spent some time over the past few weeks learning a little CSS, PHP and Java (and I apologize for being so late to that party). I've been experimenting behind the scenes with TGR and tonight I'm excited to make those changes official. So, what's [...]

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Untangling charts

August 6, 2009

House Minority Leader Boehner recently released this "infographic" (I use the term loosely) in order to demonstrate his frustration with the House Democrats's heath proposal: The chart really is an absolute nightmare: the colors, layout, and hidden connections contribute to an absolutely impossible-to-read image, which is exactly what Rep Boehner wants. Recently, Robert Palmer, a [...]

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Things that keep me up at night: academics' websites

June 22, 2009

Why are academics' websites so poorly designed? In fact, they go beyond bad design and border on unuseable. Taleb's disasterous fooledbyrandomness.com epitomizes the phenomenon. One of the images is actually displayed upside down! Andrew has pointed out that my marquee example was not to be, but do not be distracted by the beautiful celebrities: Taleb's [...]

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Overcharting

June 2, 2009

An article in Friday's NYT called "Let the Kid Be" was accompanied by this graphic: I don't like this presentation because I think it is misleading. But first, a little history: You may remember last year a JP Morgan chart was circulated which showed the deterioration of bank's market values. The old and new market [...]

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When are users right about design changes?

May 12, 2009

I just saw this article about Google's data-driven design philosophy. It seems Google will not make design choices unless they are backed by quantitative findings that the change is a measurable improvement; users vote with their clicks. Adhering too rigidly to a design philosophy guided by “Web analytics,” Ms. Dunn [of the Stanford Institute of [...]

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The "less is more" approach

May 4, 2009

When I was in school, we read a paper on "damaged goods" - products which a manufacturer has intentionally disabled in order to price discriminate or drive revenue elsewhere. Now, Jorge Garcia's blog (you may also know him as Hurley), demonstrates the phenomenon in the wild via this accidental economics lesson: Kudos Smarte Carte On the new design. [...]