nonrecursive

This looks helpful, too. Thank you!

That looks helpful- thanks!

Does anyone have recommendations for resources on messaging/queueing basics? I'm look for something on the basic patterns (pubsub, broadcast... ?) and basic considerations to be aware of.

You really don't care if someone has a conceptual understanding of UI/UX? I guess that's fine if you're not doing anything unique. But if you are, how is your designer going to be able to think through the unique design problems posed by your product?

I mean - take Mint, which has been widely praised for its design. Would a designer have been able to produce it by cobbling together half-understood components from other sites?

I'd really like to hear more about why you don't think a designer needs to be able to understand what design is. I'm curious about how you think he'd even be able to successfully emulate other sites if he doesn't understand what to emulate and why.

Thanks for clarifying!

You make a good argument that Ebert's argument isn't sufficiently scientific. Ebert also doesn't provide any data for his hypothesis that the degraded qualities of movies is going to effect box office returns.

However, I think these are the wrong criteria for judging the article. I don't think Ebert's it's meant to be scientfic, nor is his article primarily about economics. I saw it as more of a love letter, which is very personal, very subjective. His last paragraph:

"I despair. This is a case of Hollywood selling its birthright for a message of pottage. If as much attention were paid to exhibition as to marketing, that would be an investment in the future. People would fall back in love with the movies. Short-sighted, technically illiterate penny-pinchers are wounding a great art form."

The primary purpose of the article isn't to explain the potential economic impact of the degradation in projection quality, or to provide scientific proof that the majority of people are affected. It's to say that movies look shittier, and to explain why - and to express how sad it makes him that movies are looking so shitty. I saw the remark about how people would be less likely to return to theaters as more of an expression of his unhappiness than as the central point of his article.

Personally, I found the article very helpful. I saw Thor opening weekend, and I was confused about why it looked so dim. It was disappointing to me to view something so graphically rich in a way that made it look it was 50 years old and faded. I didn't know what was wrong, but now I do, and now I know how I can attempt to see movies in a way that I'll like more.

I obliged you with a downvote.

Almost the entire article is devoted to explaining that there is an empirical (the word I think you intended when you used "pragmatic"? not sure) degradation in film projection and why that is.

He then relates that to the comments he's had on his blog and in email about how movies look better on blu-ray than at the theater, as well as other comments from professional movie critics. This doesn't seem unreasonable at all.

I'd like to hear more about your contentions with the article, because I don't really see how what you wrote corresponds to what Ebert wrote.

I'm not sure if you're trying to imply that this is bad gamification. With bad gamification, I feel like I'm slaving away in order to achieve something stupid. Like - Hooray, my orc is level 50! Well, so what?

With coderwall, there's no way I'm going to alter my behavior in order to get badges on it. But it's fun - very fun - to see what badges appear, and to compare myself to other people. Coding is something that's already super personal, it's something people do for fun already, and thus I find it very unlikely that someone's going to come away from coderwall feeling something like, "I just slaved away on this code that was exciting to create and all I got was this stupid badge. Damn you coderwall! Damn you for manipulating me into doing something I'm proud of!"

My experience with coderwall was that it was very amusing to see the badges I'd gotten, and the fact that I had more than some people I know provided me with data for gloating. But will it send me on a downward spiral, making me grind away at programming so that I can get the "Forked 500" badge while I increasingly lose contact with reality? Will it make me feel like I've been gamed when I do someday create a project that's been forked 500 times? I doubt it.

Then again that is a pretty awesome looking badge.

Ha! I never knew that about his laundry. I imagine the attitude was different then. The idea of a grown man asking his mother and sisters to do his laundry nowadays seems downright pathetic.

But yes, I love Walden too. Often, I'll use parts of it as placeholder text. I feel like it's good to remind myself that my work has no point if I am not able to be cultivate tranquility and contentedness now, with what I have, and that it does no good to turn into the kind of person he describes: "The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor. They have no friend Iolaus to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydra's head, but as soon as one head is crushed, two spring up."

Thanks - you're the second person to point that out, and it's something I intend to fix.

You make it sound very fun :) I've done some usability testing, and I've really enjoyed it in the past. But really, I'm not sure how I would realistically test a flyer.

Actually... it could be quite fun to create a couple flyers with links listed, post them around town, and see how many hits I get. I don't think it would be a true a/b test, though, as it wouldn't be possible to alternate different flyers at the exact same location.

Another great book on the psychology and neurology of visual design is Visual Thinking for Design: http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Thinking-Kaufmann-Interactive-T...

I didn't include it because I don't think it's for beginners, but it's super informative.

Hmm... I didn't say that I'm "not interested in testing at all", and it's unfortunate that I came across that way. In fact, years ago I created a Rails tool for performing a/b split tests: https://github.com/flyingmachine/rails_ab_split_tester . Also, in the resources section of the site I link to Don't Make Me Think, which strongly advocates quick, cheap user testing. However, I felt like a discussion of testing was outside the scope of site. And unfortunately, I don't have the time to conduct proper tests myself. I wish I did, but I've spent a great deal of time on the site already, and it's time for me to work on other things.

However, this is why I made the site available on github - if you'd like to improve the site, please do create a pull request. If I come across a little surly here, it's because it's bizarre to me have put so much effort into the guide, motivated solely by my love of design and desire to engender it in others, only to read that somehow I'm exhibiting disrespect for great design.

Re: "clean" - keep in mind that the site is meant to be an introduction to design. People who have no design vocabulary nonetheless have an implicit understanding of "clean" and "messy". For many people, "clean" can in fact be a goal, and I felt no need to ignore the way people actually use the word. Also, it made for a fun title :)

I try to explain what I mean by "clean" design in a way that's not limited to personal aesthetic - it's design that allows the audience to quickly find the information they need. Did that not really come across? If it did - do you think that making information easy to find is not a valid goal of design? Or do you disagree with my definition of "clean"?

It seems like we're not using the word "clean" in the same way, but if we are, I'd love to hear your thoughts on why you think "clean" isn't better or necessary.

Thanks - I hadn't considered that. I'll add it to the list of improvements I'd like to make.

Thanks - you perfectly described my rationale for the header sizing.

Yes, the site itself actually uses a grid. To create it I used susy: http://susy.oddbird.net/

All very true! I am taking a break from this site for the time being, but when I revisit it, I plan on:

* Creating new before & after examples from scratch, hopefully with fewer flaws

* Adding a section on going through the process of redesigning something

* Adding more resources

But no, I'm probably not ever going to do the science, unless somehow I get paid for the time I spend doing so.

The github repo is available to anyone interested: https://github.com/flyingmachine/clean-up-your-mess

Yeah... if I were doing the flyer again now, I probably would eliminate the circle, and make the contact info larger, spanning the two columns.

Initially, when I was making this site, I wanted to have an area for people to have conversations about it, in part so I could explain all these little details. There's a lot I wanted to explain that I just couldn't fit into the site because I thought it would be too tangential.

Thanks! It was very much inspired by The Non-Designer's Design Book.

Hi, I made the site. Your criticism and the other points in this thread are valuable to me - so thanks.

When writing the site, I showed the before & after to a few non-designers, and every single one had the impression that the right-hand flyer looked better. In my opinion, that's key - if something _looks_ more understandable, it's more likely to be read. If something _looks_ hard to digest, people aren't even going to bother.

The readability may look like an issue on the site, but when the flyers were actually printed, the apparent problem no longer actually looked like a problem.

@Jabbles - yes, the font differences were a large difference that I don't mention anywhere. Using a sans-serif font for the headers and a serif font for the text creates more contrast, making the headers stand out more and making the headers and details more easily distinguishable from each other.

A number of the points made are excellent ones, and I wish I had incorporated them. For example, the contact information should have been way, way more prominent. Capitalizing the URL is something I've never considered in the three years since I made the flyer, but I can see how that would help.

Thanks again for all your criticisms. I've never created a site like this before, and man, was it difficult for me. I spent at least 200 hours on it, going over the text and examples over and over again. There's much, much more I'd like to do with it, and there are many flaws I want to address, but for now I feel like it's more important that it's just out there.

Thanks - glad to hear it made a good impression. Right now I have a script to generate all the prices. I just run it manually and rsync to my dreamhost server, but soon I'm going to create a cron job so that the prices will stay up to date.

Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks! I hadn't thought of that at all. I'll play around with it.

This is the first side project I've worked on solely for the purpose of making money. I don't expect to make a lot - rather, I hope to learn about selling. I think the very simple format will allow me to quickly experiment and run a/b tests.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

I'm not trying to imply that it's a socially/morally correct reaction. I just wanted to write candidly in case it's helpful to the folks who made the site.

I was very excited by the link title and disappointed by the site. Here were my reactions, roughly in order:

* Why would they show a hobo on the home page? (I'm not trying to be funny here, that is honestly what popped into my head.)

* I'm at the office, therefore I'm not going to play that video.

* Sign up for an invite? No thanks. I wish you had told me in text and images what silk is.

* I should go back to HN and write about how incredibly disappointed I am to not get any useful info from the home page. Data visualization is near and dear to my heart, and I would have liked very much to see a new app for that domain.

I also disagree with his “inherent ability” argument. I think that interface design is a learnable skill and can be improved through practice. Which of us is right? We’ll never know, as it’s not really a testable assertion.

In my opinion, that makes it a pretty weak argument that detracts from the rest of his article. Besides that, it could have the effect of discouraging people from trying, as they’ll just think “Oh well I can never do that because I don’t have the genes, or whatever.”

My opinion is that programmers in particular have a hard time with design because they’re not presented with a systematic way of thinking about it. That’s what I’ve started to try to do with my site http://www.visualmess.com . It tries to instill the “user-centric” mentality and provide a framework for thinking about design based on the brain’s visual information processing capabilities.

Yep I am. Next I will probably add a walkthrough, going through the process of improving a design. I also want to add more resources. I could also expand it to include info on color, balance, etc. For now I'm listening to feedback to see what it's really missing.

Thank you.

This is my 9-month project. From idea to product in only nine months! My hope is that it's useful for developers, as well as anyone else who thinks he/she doesn't have the design gene.

It's on github, too: https://github.com/flyingmachine/clean-up-your-mess

From the screenshots, the quality looks incredible. How long have you been developing the site?

A couple additions that I think would improve the site:

* A "coming soon" section

* A link to the artist's web site

* Artist bio

The design of the site itself was very nice, too.

Good luck!