Pleasure and Pain

Improving the human experience one day at a time

Pleasure and Pain: photos by Whitney G. Hess

Entries Tagged as 'Design'

Sketching made easier by UI Stencils

February 22nd, 2010 · Comments · Design, Pleasure, Productivity

Yes, I’m obsessed with Konigi’s Omnigraffle wireframe stencils, but what if you could have real-life stencils to help you sketch? You can. They’re called UI Stencils, and they’re made by Design Commission, an experience design agency in Seattle.

Drawing can be intimidating for a lot of folks, and the fear of not being a “good drawer” [...]


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Steal inspiration from everywhere

February 13th, 2010 · Comments · Design, Pleasure

My friend Paul Isakson recently posted this great quotation by Jim Jarmusch, the indie filmmaker (Broken Flowers, Coffee and Cigarettes, Ghost Dog).
His words so beautifully capture something I’ve felt for a long time, and I wanted to share it with all of you.

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that
resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.
Devour [...]


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The Excellence better known as Interaction10 #ixd10

February 8th, 2010 · Comments · Conferences, Design, Pleasure

I just got home from Savannah last night, and I’m already missing everyone terribly. The four days I spent there at IxDA’s Interaction10, their third annual conference, was one of the best conference experiences I’ve ever had (and as you may know, I go to a lot of conferences!).

Not only is Savannah a wonderfully beautiful, [...]


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The UX Design Process for the Boxee Beta

January 27th, 2010 · Comments · Consulting, Design, User Experience

More than a year ago I very proudly announced that Boxee, the much-loved social media center software company, had hired me as the user experience designer for their beta. In the five months that I worked with them, I conducted user interviews and usability testing to identify people’s needs, behaviors and frustrations, and redesigned the [...]


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Faceted Filtering…in the Real World

November 16th, 2009 · Comments · Design

I’m completely in love with this new commercial by Freschetta that demonstrates what “faceted filtering” would look like in the physical world.

Pattern Definition
Faceted filtering is a mechanism that allows the user to progressively reduce a large group of items by selecting the desired attributes from various dimensions (or facets) of those items
Note: faceting filtering is [...]


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