Posts of the Link variety
The idea is that different types of online social relationships drive different levels of engagement. Whereas getting a lot of people to watch your youtube videos will encourage you to post more, you’re likely to get even a greater productivity boost if a lot of your actual friends favorite or comment on your videos.
Luke Wroblewski leaves it with a guess on why this is often the case:
So actual friends (real relationships) are more likely to encourage contribution. Perhaps we can blame this on the 0-1-2 effect which states that the probability of joining an activity when two friends have done it is significantly more than twice the probability of doing it when only one has done so.
Jonathan Nicol does a nice job of visually demonstrating how Helvetica and Arial render at smaller sizes on a PC. My typical font stack has been Helvetica, followed by Arial; however, seeing Helvetica rendered at small sizes on a PC makes me reconsider that habit. The conclusion for me can be generalized as: use “Arial, Helvetica” for body copy and “Helvetica, Arial” for headings.
Lukas Mathis retells a nice story that illustrates a hidden bias that can pollute a usability test.
Clever Hans, his horse, quickly learned to do a number of complex math calculations – the horse could add, subtract, multiply, divide, do date calculations, and even understand German. It would tap out the answers to any math question with its foot. It could even read and give the correct answers to questions written on a piece of paper.
Of course, when psychologist Oskar Pfungst investigated the horse, he quickly figured out what was happening. The horse didn’t understand German, couldn’t calculate, and couldn’t read. Instead, it responded to involuntary cues in the body language of Wilhelm von Osten, who, in turn, solved the math problems for his horse. Von Osten was completely unaware that he was providing these cues to the horse.
Faux-redesigning Craigslist is like a right of passage for some designers. This time it’s officially sanctioned by a print publication, who put some top notch designers to the task. Of course, Khoi Vinh and team (Anh Dang + Paul Lau) just killed it, because they are part one of the best digital design teams in the industry (New York Times Digital). On the other side of the spectrum is Pentagram, who only mustered a gimmick, which is frustratingly appropriate in light of their web design pedigree.
A good design pattern library acts as a dictionary, allowing one to be more expressive by making abstract concepts concrete. When you can ground concepts you can use them to build something greater than the sum of its parts. You can’t solve an algebra problem without the basic language of arithmetic, in the same way you can’t design a social system without a basic language of interactions that compose it. This wiki collection of social design patterns serves as a companion site for an upcoming O’Reilly book from Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone – and judging by the wiki, it should be a good one.
