Design

Submitted by

on Jan 02, 2012

Chaos Computer Club and the Rise of Hacker Culture

3 comments

[Left: logo of the Chaos Computer Club]

The German hacker club, Chaos Computer Club has recently been in the news for their annual end of the year Chaos Communication Congress at which well-known writer and BoingBoing editor, Cory Doctorow spoke on “the coming war on general computation.” In this post, I will introduce you to the club, their events, and other hacker organizations, events and affiliates worldwide. I will do this via a sort of travellog of the club's Chaos Communication Camp, which I had the good luck to attend this past August.

Submitted by

Zoey Kroll

on Jan 14, 2011

Compostmodern: Sustainable Design and the Pickle Barrel Composter

I'm looking forward to attending the unconference at Compostmodern, where sustainability and design meet. As an urban farmer/user experience designer, I love this fertile ground where disciplines aren't so disciplined, and people aren't afraid to get their hands dirty.

I mean this literally – I'd rather meet people over compost than coffee.

Submitted by

Gregory Heller

on May 07, 2010

We've Met The Enemy And He Is Powerpoint

1 comment

So read the headline of a New York Time's article a few weeks back, you probably saw some coverage of the dizzying slide showing linkages between various constituencies in Afganistan. Without going any further into that slide, or the article about it and the relationship of PowerPoint and military strategy, I'd like to highlight some ideas about slides and presentations.

Submitted by

Ron Akanowicz

on Aug 29, 2009

Three Causes and Associated Symptoms of a Poorly Conceived Redesign Project

"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure." Anonymous, often attributed to Dan Quayle

Determining if your website project will be a success or failure is tricky. It's like trying to decide if the pizza you're about to eat will be good or bad (which can be a trick question- when is pizza ever that bad?).

Submitted by

Zoey Kroll

on Jul 27, 2009

Top Non-Profit Brands

2 comments

As part of any major web redesign effort, CivicActions recommends a brand re-assessment. Cone Inc., a communications company specializing in "cause branding," recently stated that because of undeveloped branding efforts, "some organizations may be leaving millions of dollars in potential unearned revenue on the table." The company recently released a report of the 100 top Non-profit brands.

Submitted by

Gregory Heller

on May 14, 2009

Smashing Magazine on Web Design Best Practices for Non Profits: Amnesty.org Cited!

6 comments

Smashing Magazine posted a really great "best practices" piece about web design for non profits. They then provided 20 examples of great non profit websites, among them, two CivicActions clients, Amnesty International, of which they said:

The Amnesty International site makes great use of color, including a bright yellow header and accents mixed with shades of gray and black. A slideshow on the home page shows current news and research. Links to join, donate, or take other action are featured prominently in the sidebar and a link to media information is included in the header. The home page also includes plenty of current news and resources below the main content up top.

And Witness.org, for whom we built the Video Hub. We are very proud of our work for these two worldchanging clients, and happy that they are being recognized not only for their great work, but for their websites as exemplars for the non profit sector.

Submitted by

Ron Akanowicz

on Mar 30, 2009

Information Architecture Summit "Expanding Our Horizons", Memphis TN 2009

Like any relatively new field of study Information Architecture is still trying to define itself. Is it a practice in and of itself? Or is it/should it be part of a broader field that uses other tools and produces additional artifacts? The IA Summit endeavored to create a dialog around what this practice can actually encompass when considering users' interactions with information. The summit itself intimated at our need to begin bridging the gap between traditional IA (links and pages) and the burgeoning social and semantic web (contexts and connections). First, the theme of the summit was "Expanding Our Horizons," suggesting the practice look beyond those tools and techniques we've come to know and love (hi sitemaps).

Submitted by

Bevan Rudge

on Dec 08, 2008

Usability Of Car Stereos

For a long time I have wondered how the teams that design car stereos can fail so miserably at making car stereos easy to use. The function of a car stereo is not complicated, and there are few tasks that need to be considered in the design of a car stereo interface. Approximately in order of importance these tasks are;