Tyler Sticka

Logos and fashion collide!

One of the biggest thrills of identity work is unexpectedly seeing your design in use. Case-in-point, this snazzy logo-baring garb from David Martschinske Photography and Focus Designs (makers of the self-balancing unicycle).

Despite the recent trend toward highly dimensional identities, I still believe in high-contrast, graphic marks that retain versatility regardless of media. When I see my designs sewn into cloth or laser-cut from aluminum, I’m extremely happy with that choice. As much as I enjoy watching traditional media’s implosion, there’s something to be said for symbols rendered in a tactile fashion.

Thanks to David Martschinske for sharing.

Google Wave Preview First Impressions

It’s common geek knowledge at this point that Google Wave is named after the predominant method of audio-visual transmission in the tragically short-lived science fiction series Firefly (and it’s feature film sequel, Serenity). What’s ironic about this association is how much Wave, at this stage of development, reminds me of Firefly character River Tam.

River (Google Wave) is a prodigy, exceedingly gifted in nearly every respect, consistently one-upping her older yet still talented sibling Simon (Gmail). As striking as her abilities are, they are only experienced through a fog of schizophrenia and instability. While Simon lacks any of River’s psychic  insight, he is nonetheless remarkable and ultimately more reliable.

Okay, maybe I’m stretching the metaphor a bit. My point is that Wave has really cool moments, but they’re fleeting in this early state. While I haven’t experienced the rampant bugs reported by other users, I have noticed that the interface leaves a lot to be desired (it’s shockingly similar to Microsoft Outlook,  neglecting the emphasis on conversation Gmail achieved), and things become cacophonous when a conversation has many participants.

What I dig about Wave are the live conversations, the ability to structure those conversations in any order you please, and the freedom that plugins give the service. What’s wonderful about these high points is that they aren’t unique to Google’s implementation of the Wave platform. Remember, Wave is an open source creation aimed at replacing email as a standard, with Google’s offering the inaugural product. Regardless of the current user experience, one can’t deny the capabilities of the service, which any group of enterprising designers and developers could leverage into something truly wonderful.

That’s not to say we should necessarily write off Google’s interface at this early stage of development. Sure, it’s a little loopy, but who knows? It might kick email’s butt after all.

Why 10/GUI is brilliant and will probably never work

10/GUI is a multitouch interface designed to push the typical desktop experience forward with the  “interaction bandwidth” afforded through the use of all ten fingers. It’s smart, inventive and really inspiring.

While Microsoft’s Courier concept is fascinating for its application of touch to a decidedly alternative computing experience, 10/GUI seeks to redefine our desktop interactions. I was pleased to see its creator, R. Clayton Miller, thoughtfully address the issue of arm and neck fatigue (a problem cartoonists like myself know all too well). His solution also counters the challenges of the user’s fingers obscuring the point of interaction, something today’s mobile devices sidestep with clumsy fly-up keypress confirmations.

I think 10/GUI is wonderful, and I sincerely hope Miller (or those industrious enough to seek him out) will explore it further and give us some real products to play with. That being said, I remain unconvinced that this type of interface would work in mainstream application.

While listening to 10/GUI’s daunting list of touch gestures required to accomplish basic operating system tasks, I was reminded of industrial designer Dennis Boyle’s account of Palm’s experience selling users on Graffiti text entry over a traditional keyboard. From Bill Moggridge’s Designing Interactions:

I remember that Handspring decided to put the Treo out with both a keyboard and Graffiti, because they didn’t know which one people would choose; they decided to let them vote. The result was quite clear; a large majority went for the small keyboard. [...] [The] little QWERTY keyboard, bad as it is, is such a standard that it requires no guesswork, and that attracts more users.

Despite the fact that Graffiti was a faster and more efficient method of “typing” on a mobile device, these rewards came only if the user invested enough time to overcome the obstacle of learning the standard. While I find it to be really neat, I can’t imagine gaining enough speed from 10/GUI to overcome the time and pain it would take to learn those gestures.

I’ve experienced this with my MacBook Pro’s multitouch trackpad. While simple gestures like scrolling are easy to learn, more complex maneuvers are bothersome and often unwittingly triggered as my hand brushes past while typing. While some of these features ease the frustration of not having a mouse, they are a poor substitute when used in conjunction with the keyboard, occasionally even to the detriment of my workflow.

I’m not saying we necessarily need to coddle our users, gimping innovation for the sake of complacency. What I am suggesting is that immediacy may be the greatest asset of touch computing. It is natural to select an object by touching it. I love the Courier prototype because it evolves tasks which inherently benefit from touch interaction. 10/GUI appears to require memorization prior to use, more like a musical instrument than a user interface. Put simply, I’m afraid 10/GUI will create more problems for me than it will solve.

But I really hope I’m proven wrong.

Ice Cream Social Icon Pack Updated (Google Wave, WordPress & more)

Update: Ice Cream Social Icon Pack 1.2 is now available with even more icons.

Originally created for use on this site and since incorporated into several of my projects, the Ice Cream Social Icon Pack is a set of 25 social media icons you can use in your designs.

New to this release are icons for BlinkList, Blogger, LiveJournal, WordPress and Google Wave. The complete list:

• BlinkList
• Blogger
• Buzz
• Delicious
• Digg
• Facebook
• Feed
• Flickr
• Google
• Lala
• Last.fm
• LinkedIn
• LiveJournal
• Mail
• MySpace
• Newsvine
• Reddit
• StumbleUpon
• Technorati
• Twitter
• Vimeo
• Virb
• Wave
• WordPress
• YouTube

Whoosh! This site now uses jQuery

The original version of the Tyler Sticka experience you’re (hopefully) enjoying this very minute was crafted without a scrap of JavaScript when viewed in a modern browser. Sickened by the amount of designer portfolios reeking of gratuitous and uninspired Flash animation, I wanted my design to stand in stark defiance, crafted only with good ol’ XHTML and CSS (delivered via WordPress, of course).

But decisions born of principal, while challenging and rewarding, are not necessarily synonymous with actual experience design decisions. There was an opportunity to use the remarkable jQuery library to make the portfolio items more immediate and visually interesting, and I’d be a fool not to take advantage of that.

You can see the effect in action by visiting any portfolio piece with multiple images, such as this one. If you take a look around, you may notice one or two other changes as well.

I’ve also added support for Google Chrome Frame, which will allow users of Internet Explorer 6 who are unable (or unwilling) to upgrade to experience the new additions without entirely disrupting their browser. That being said, I highly recommend upgrading to a modern browser (such as Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Internet Explorer 8 or Safari) whenever possible.

See? I really can’t stop tinkering.

Make Email Suck Less (Why wait for Google Wave?)

Like so many geeks on Twitter, I’ve been shamelessly begging for a Google Wave invitation. I’ve heard numerous tales of the product’s rampant bugginess, but email feels so broken in the wake of the initial demo that I can’t help but pine for its modern, collaborative goodness.

In spite of this, I realize my wait will not end with Wave’s arrival. The service will likely taking many years to establish itself as the ubiquitous standard it aspires to be. I can’t just ditch email and twiddle my thumbs until that happens.

Here’s how I attempt to thwart email’s crappiness and continue to maintain that Merlin Mann nirvana that is Inbox Zero.

Step 1: Gmail

The setup begins with Gmail which, despite the handicap of our dilapidated email standard, still manages to rock 90% of the time.

I choose Gmail for its massive (and ever-expanding) storage capacity, the ability to send email from my personal domains, the versatility gained from “tagging” messages with labels, and the freedom to access all that cool stuff via POP3, IMAP and Google Sync for free. No competitor even begins to compare at this point and, even if they did, Gmail’s the easiest to escape from should you ever wish to switch.

In accordance with Merlin’s inbox makeover article, I immediately move every email I receive out of the inbox and into an action label after a brief skim. This protects me from workflow disruptions and insures that Gmail’s inbox and archive are used faithfully (for unsorted and archives items).

I prefix my action labels with an underscore so that they’ll be at the top of Gmail’s labels and any folder view in another application. They are:

_Action

For items that require some sort of action or task on my part before I can respond.

_Hold

For items I’ll want close at hand in the next week or so (login information, URLs, attachments, etc.).

_Respond

For items requiring a short message from me without any major tasks or required research.

_Waiting

For items which will likely require action once the sender has responded.

For added goodness, use Gmail’s Multiple Inboxes (enable it in Labs) to put these front and center:

I then follow Adam Pash’s lead and organize all other labels into Contexts and Projects, abbreviated to ‘C’ and ‘P’ respectively. Contexts might be something like “Events” and “Appointments,” whereas Projects refer to things like “New Web Site,” “The Big Account,” etc.

Once all your conversations are nicely organized and you’ve got a great bird’s eye view of your actionable items, Firefox users may want to install FaviconizeTab and Gmail Favicon Alerts for at-a-glance incoming mail alerts without additional applications.

Step 2: iPhone

If you set up Gmail on your iPhone using Apple’s baked-in, shiny logo button for the service, you’re missing out on the best experience.

I highly recommend using Google Sync, which gives you push mail, calendar and contacts from Google’s services. There’s nothing quite like the warm, fuzzy feeling you get having incoming messages pushed directly to that red badge on your home screen.

If you must have full multiple label goodness on your iPhone, or if you already have an Exchange ActiveSync account associated with the device, you should definitely use Gmail through mobile Safari. It does nearly everything the desktop version does (including offline support) and trumps the default mail app in numerous ways.

Step 3: Postbox

I’m somewhat of a zealot when it comes to having a local backup of my email on a hard drive. Call me skeptical, but cloud solutions are too new for me to have complete and total confidence in their archival potential. I was a happy Thunderbird user for years, but Mozilla Messaging has moved forward at a snail’s pace.

Postbox is Thunderbird with super powers. The interface is much more polished and boasts great features like tabs, attachment aggregation and social network integration. In many ways it’s the email client I wish Thunderbird was (and hopefully will be).

Setting up Gmail in Postbox is a snap. The big “archive” buttons acts as you’d expect, conversations are threaded, and the search accepts Gmail-like arguments (such as “from:Mom”).

Unlike Thunderbird, Postbox is a commercial application that’ll set you back $39.95 for a single license after a 30-day trial. Luckily, they’re nice enough to give purchasers a discount to hand out to friends, so the first ten people who purchase using this link will get ten bucks off that price. You’re welcome.

Why are we doing this again?

Because email is a beast, a sickly mutant beast that eats at your productivity and requires specialized care no matter how you access it. This is what it takes to make me happy with it. Using this setup allows me to access the same email everywhere, maintain a local backup on my home PC, and receive new email notifications no matter where I am on my iPhone. My conversations are threaded, helpfully organized and quickly searchable from anywhere.

But I still wouldn’t mind playing with Google Wave. I’ll even trade you a Typekit invite. Anyone? Update: Thanks to Ryan Williams and Chris at Studio 625 for the invites! I’ll publish a reaction to Wave soon.