capcloud | Martin Polley: Archive

Setting up a Static Blog on OS X to Publish to S3...

WARNING: This is rather a technical post. If you’re not comfortable doing neckbeardy things like typing stuff at the Unix command line and adding stuff to your bash profile, you probably want to give it a miss. All I wanted to be able to do was write posts in Markdown in a Dropbox folder and have them be automatically published as a static blog hosted on Amazon S3. On a Mac. Not too much...

Apr 19th

Breaking up the Band

OK, well, not really. I’m actually splitting this blog up into two blogs. Stuff related to UX (and especially HTML prototyping) will be posted on the Livetyping blog, while everything else will be posted here. Right now, the only thing on the Livetyping blog is my recent post about front-end frameworks, which I copied across from here. In the coming days, I’ll be copying other...

Apr 1st

The Best Framework for UX Prototyping in HTML

While I was putting together Livetyping (my online course that teaches UX designers how to create prototypes in HTML, CSS, and Javascript), I used Foundation for the prototype that I showed how to build. But Foundation isn’t the only front-end framework out there. So I decided to take a look at a couple of others to see how they compare. Enjoy. If you’re prototyping in HTML, CSS, and...

Mar 21st

1 note

Feb 6th

16 notes

Jan 10th

172,822 notes

When NOT to Prototype

As I’ve been putting together Livetyping (my HTML prototyping course), I’ve been thinking about situations when you shouldn’t prototype stuff (interface elements, interactions, whatever). This two-by-two chart sums up my thinking: When something is hard to explain, but easy to code, you should code it. When the opposite it true, you should explain it instead (maybe using...

Nov 14th

Time to Dump Wireframes 2: The Turning Tide

If you’re still not convinced that prototyping is better than wireframing (even after reading this?!?), here are a couple of great articles that were published recently that you really must read. In the first, Sergio Nouvel gives a good overview of the pros and cons of each of the different fidelity deliverables that we are used to producing. He then goes on to make a compelling argument...

Nov 11th

How To: Prototype an Animated Notification (à la...

Tip: Switch to full-screen, otherwise you won’t be able to see a damn thing :) This is a short excerpt from Livetyping, my self-paced video course that teaches you (the UX designer) how to prototype in HTML, CSS, and Javascript. You can buy Livetyping here. Or sign up below for news about Livetyping, HTML prototyping tips, and...

Nov 8th

Recording Mobile Screens—Another Option

Recording the screen of a mobile device is not an easy thing. You can build a fancy test rig, with cameras and so on. But it’s expensive and cumbersome. There are iOS apps that let you record the screen. But the ones I’ve seen are either buggy as hell or require you to jailbreak your device. But today I came across another option. AirPlay lets you mirror your iPhone or...

Oct 16th

Cool things happen when you point the iOS 6...

new-aesthetic: Cool things happen when you point the iOS 6 panorama camera out the window of a speeding car Twitter / drcongo (via Ben B)

Oct 16th

27 notes

Learning HTML Prototyping—Where the Hell Do I...

OK, so you’ve read what various UX thought leaders have said or written about prototyping in HTML (or more generally about UXers being able to code) and you’re convinced that HTML prototyping is an important skill. Maybe you want to improve the collaboration between you (the designer) and your developer colleagues. Perhaps you want to improve communication with stakeholders. Or maybe...

Sep 2nd

Livetyping Is Live!

Livetyping, my video course that teaches you (the UX designer) how to prototype in HTML, CSS, and Javascript, is now available! So if you’re ready to start improving collaboration with your developer colleagues, communicating better with stakeholders, and getting your designs in front of users earlier, you should sign up. Oh, and did I mention that designers who can code are in demand...

Aug 27th

The UX Designer's HTML Cheat Sheet

While I was creating my Livetyping course, I realized that HTML5 might look a bit intimidating to some. It has over 120 different tags, which is a lot to get your head round. But in practice, when making interactive HTML prototypes, I only ever use a small subset of these. So I made a cheatsheet containing just these commonly-used elements. Enjoy! If you’ve got any suggestions for...

Jul 14th

Jun 28th

On Academic Achievement

matthasafaceforradio: “It really troubles me when people use academic achievement as a means of measuring intelligence. You’re basically saying that somebody who is able to successfully jump through hoops and be submissive to authority is the height of intelligence, rather than looking at somebody’s capacity to think independently and creatively. I think that you can tell a lot more about...

Jun 27th

2,833 notes

Should Designers Be Able to Code?—Cennydd Bowles

In my recent post about why UXers should learn to prototype in HTML, CSS, and Javascript, I missed out the one person whose opinion prompted me to write the post in the first place. In April, Andrew Travers and Matthew Solle interviewed Cennydd Bowles for the London IA podcast. They asked him whether he is “a unicorn that codes” and whether he thinks that it is something that’s...

Jun 21st

1 note

Time to Dump Wireframes

Most of the work we do as UX designers is either for the web, or related to it in some way. The things that we design are often web sites or web applications. And even if they aren’t, web technologies are finding their way into more and more things: native iOS apps, Android apps, even desktop software. And the web is a-changin’. Gone are the days when all you needed was a desktop web...

Jun 18th

10 notes

Apr 22nd

486 notes

Progress?

So anyway, I haven’t done much on my webapp lately, but now I’ve decided to pull my finger out. I originally started playing around with Google AppEngine for the back-end, but I realized a couple of things. First, I’m not going to get very far, nor learn very much, just by copying and tweaking Google’s example code. Second, using AppEngine ties you in to Google. You...

Dec 27th

1 note

Bookmarklet, Part II

That bookmarklet is shaping up quite nicely. Shame it doesn’t actually do anything yet :)

Oct 15th

Bookmarklets

Woot! I made my first bookmarklet that actually works! It’s small and doesn’t do much, but it does something.

Oct 12th

Making

I want to make something. I have an idea and I want to bring it to fruition. To design it, then build it. All on my own. Right now, I can’t do it. Not all of it. There are too many things I don’t know yet. But I know enough to get started. I can design it. I can code the front end. I trust that I’ll be able to figure out the Javascript. I don’t have a clue about the back...

Sep 26th

martinpolley.com

I finally got round to registering martinpolley.com. For now, it just redirects here. Maybe I’ll do something interesting with it at some point. Let’s just say that I’m not holding my breath…

Aug 24th

The Power of Personalization (or not…)

My wife recently got a new phone. She said she didn’t really need an iPhone, so she went for an LG Cookie Plus. It’s a nice looking phone, with a decent-sized touch screen and quite a slim casing. I played around with a bit and found it incredibly frustrating. The touch screen isn’t as responsive as the iPhone’s. Swiping is as likely to move something as it is to do what...

May 9th

Do Tools Matter?

Michael Angeles has an interesting post over at konigi.com about how our tools are not important. “Don’t let anyone tell you that the tools you choose are wrong or inappropriate. Find the right design and keep winning.” This got retweeted a lot. I read it and found myself agreeing. I even retweeted it myself. But since then I have been thinking about this a fair bit. And now...

Mar 14th

Jan 31st

1 note

Dec 12th

7 notes

Forex Trading

A friend of mine asked me to post a link for him. If you’re even remotely interested in Forex Trading, you should check it out.

Nov 1st

Sir Ken Robinson Gets Animated (RSA)

I’m a big fan of Sir Ken.

Oct 17th

Dodgems

I’m pretty chuffed with the way this photo turned out.

Oct 17th

1 note

Oct 14th

53,407 notes

The Importance of Vision

I just listened to an old episode of The Conversation, where Dan is talking to Garrett Dimon, Cameron Moll, and Faruk Ates about how you know when an application or design is done. Garrett Dimon said something that particularly stuck with me. He talked about the importance of having a vision for what the thing is going to be like two years from now. You use this to help decide what new features...

Oct 13th

Sep 15th

1 note

1 tag

Don't Touch the Controls!

One of the dubious benefits of having a leased car is getting to drive a different car whenever it has to go to the garage for something. (This time, a cracked windshield.) The one car I actually enjoyed was a Prius. All the others were meh, including the Toyota Corolla that I have at the moment. One of the more annoying things about this car is the gearbox. Automatic transmission has been...

Sep 13th

This is just a test to see if I screwed up my blog -> Twitter thing…

Sep 6th

Better vs Familiar

While reading #1 here (which recommends using familiar user interface paradigms for learnability), I couldn’t help thinking about Loewy’s MAYA principle (most advanced yet acceptable) and this from Dieter Rams: Things which are different simply in order to be different are seldom better, but that which is made to be better is almost always different. We need to strike a...

Aug 14th

Sensible Defaults to Save Energy

Our new office building has dimmable lights that each person can control for their own cubicle. Originally, you could set the dim level anywhere from 30% to 100%. Every morning, the lights would be reset to 100% brightness. But recently they changed the defaults. Now you can set the dim level from 0% (off) to 100%. And the default (which the lights reset to every morning) is 0%. So now when...

Aug 5th

My iPod Is Ignoring Me (and I Like It)

I just noticed that sometimes, my iPod Nano ignores my commands. The play/pause button plays or pauses when you press it. A long press of the same button turns the iPod off. But what if my press is not quite long enough? Well it turns out that the iPod is designed to ignore my ambiguous command, rather than risk doing the wrong thing. Did I mean “pause”? Or did I mean...

Aug 4th

Best Place for Tabs

Yesterday I downloaded a beta build of Firefox so that I could play with Tab Candy. I am very impressed, and can’t wait until some of the other features that Aza Raskin showed in his demo video are implemented. One side effect of using this version of FF is that the tabs are back at the top. (I use the Tree Style Tabs extension, which lets me stack the tabs at the side instead.) And...

Jul 27th

Dusty Digital Albums

I was thinking about how we relate to our music. And specifically how this has changed with the move from physical media (vinyl, tapes, CDs) to digital music that has no physical manifestation. In the old days (eight, ten years ago) you would have CDs on shelves. Maybe some old tapes and vinyl albums in a box somewhere too. Your CDs might have been organized alphabetically. Or maybe by genre....

Jul 20th

Jun 12th

Divvy

Finally someone has created an application for Mac OS X that lets you manage windows properly. Well worth the $14. (It’s just a shame that this sort of functionality isn’t baked into the OS.)

May 26th

Watch

This is clever stuff. /via @bruces

May 20th

iPad: Maybe Usability Isn't Everything?

When I read about Jakob Nielsen’s usability test findings on the iPad, I can’t help but think of Fred Beecher’s article from last year for Johnny Holland, The iPhone is not easy to use: a new direction for UX Design. In the article, Fred talks at length about the low usability and learnability of the iPhone and its apps. But he goes on to say that that doesn’t really...

May 11th

UCD... in the bathroom

So we just moved into a new office building. A behavior I had noticed in the old building was guys wandering into the bathroom carrying laptops (on their way from one meeting to another, presumably) and looking around (in vain) for a dry horizontal surface on which to place their laptops. In this new building, I notice that every bathroom has a shelf, which I assume is for putting your laptop on...

May 9th

And Now I Shall Tweet about this Post

.bbpBox{background:url(http://a3.twimg.com/profile_background_images/79767773/twilk_background_4b8ccaf04fbd8.jpg) #8a0404;padding:20px;}p.bbpTweet{background:#fff;padding:10px 12px 10px 12px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#000;font-size:18px !important;line-height:22px;-moz-border-radius:5px;-webkit-border-radius:5px}p.bbpTweet...

May 5th

Modern Slavery, and What We Can Do about It

I just watched this TED talk and I am stunned and shocked. Appalled. Sickened. There are 27 million slaves in the world. Twice as many slaves as there are Jews. Think about that for a minute. And it doesn’t take much to liberate someone from slavery—on average a hundred or so dollars. Go to Free the Slaves now to find out how you can help.

Apr 11th

1 tag

Rockstars?

I think this whole design rockstars argument is a bit daft. I think we need both—people who will blaze trails (rockstars) and others who will follow them (most everybody else).

Mar 30th

2 tags

Transitions and States

Wow! Buxton was right. The transitions are just as important as the states (if not more so). As I play around with jQuery (+HTML + CSS, obviously) as a prototyping tool, I’m finding that I really need to play around with the details of the transitions to make it obvious what is happening (something that it is hard to do in my head, for me at least). For example, in my prototype I have a...

Mar 24th

Software companies should hire more user experience designers and less technical writers. That way, they would need less tech writers, because the products would explain themselves. And the products would be better to boot.

Mar 23rd