I used to live in Fairfax Virginia, about 10 minutes away from Tyson’s Corner Mall. Tyson’s Corner was the mythical location of the first Apple Store which opened in the summer of 2001. When I first visited the Apple Store in 2001, it was like setting foot inside a gallery: very quiet, uncrowded, with patrons…
Month: January 2008
Do You Dream in Korean?
My 6 year-old daughter has now spent a total of 9 months in Korea. She now speaks fluent Korean, but I often wonder whether she thinks and dreams in Korean or English. The other day, she hurt her finger on a toy and screamed, “Ow!” At least I know at a reflex level, she’s still…
Innovative Web Technologies: P2P Philanthropy
Here’s a re-posting of an article originally posted April 11, 2007, on the Forum One UX&D blog for the benefit of my Korean readers. * * * During the Nonprofit Technology Enterprise 2007 conference I went to a session with Charles Best of Donors Choose, which is a site that allows individual donors to fund…
New Addition: Resources (see sidebar)
As a web consultant, I always used to advise clients against using such nebulous terms as “Resources”. This was due to the fact that, to different users, the terms mean different things. There was alway an ongoing debate over which is the best term: Resources, Library, Documents, or Publications. There really is no answer to…
Two Resolutions for 2008
#1 Meet and connect people. I find ideas are always made better when they are shared openly. I’ve tried to invite different people out for lunch each day at work. Folks who know each other, but who under normal circumstances won’t go to lunch with each other. One measure of health is how well the…
Adventures in the Seoul Metropolitan Subway
I take the Seoul Metropolitan Subway system to work everyday, compacted like sardines in a can. I was in no rush to get to work the other day and as I took my time through the system, I started to notice the signage around me. I found some interesting ones. (My personal favorite) In…
Simplicity, Complexity and Contradiction in Design
Belatedly I finished John Maeda‘s book, The Laws of Simplicity, which outlines ten laws for balancing simplicity and complexity in business, technology and design. In effect he is building on the “Less is More” principle, popularized by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (originally spoken by Robert Browning in 1855.) I’ve been a long admirer…
Strategies for Globalizing Korean Websites
I wrote an article for my company’s December email newsletter sent to clients. The intended audience of the article was upper-management types and web managers in Korea corporations, who intend their websites to reach out to a global audience. Due to some internal restructuring at my company which resulted in the company splitting into three…
Lloyd’s of London Photo on Schmap
A photos I took back in 1989 of Richard Rogers‘s Lloyd’s of London made it on to Schmap‘s guide to London, a dynamically travel guide which bills itself as: Exploring a Schmap Guide is a uniquely interactive experience: maps and guide content are dynamically integrated, allowing intuitive, real-time access to reviews and photo slideshows for…
Looking for “Using Wireframes” Article?
I recently noticed traffic on this site looking for my Using Wireframes article (my most popular post to date) posted on my old, now-retired blog, strangesystems.net. The article provides an overview of what wireframes are (from a web design, information architecture point of view), some guidelines on how to create them and some Visio and…