links for 2009-02-01

• The Ultimate Free Fonts Pack | yensdesign – Tutorials, Web Design and Coding
  A whole big shebang of free fonts. Nice selection here!
  (tags: free fonts)

links for 2009-02-02

• All the Logo Design Inspirational Resources You Will Ever Need! | The Design Cubicle
  The title says it all.
  (tags: inspiration logos)
• 40+ Minimalist Web Designs
  Less is more, right? Right! Some nice designs here.
  (tags: inspiration blogs minimalism)
• Preloaders.net | Free AJAX animated loading gif’s | 3 dimensional (3D)
  As if there weren’t enough little animated Ajax preloaders… here is a tool to help you make your own custom ones.
  (tags: preloader ajax)

links for 2009-02-09

• 10 Web Typography Rules Every Designer Should Know | Webdesigner Depot
  A nice sampling of rules of thumb to help you enhance your web typography.
  (tags: tips webdesign typography fonts)

Congrats to all the Annie Awards Winners!

Some interesting wins from this years Annie Awards Show:

Kung Fu Panda beats out WALL-E for best picture!

Robot Chicken Star Wars II takes the win for best television production.

WALL-E not nominated for Character Design? Interesting…

Ben Burt nominated for voice acting in WALL-E! (I always thought the animators who worked on King Kong should have been nominated for best actor.)

Kung Fu Panda takes home a total of 15 Annies! Congrats goes to my favorite animated film of 2008!

New Project Launched – Measuring Water Reclamation, One Flush At a Time

Green Projects are everywhere. Infrastructure, industry, and of course interactive exhibits. The company I work for recently launched a very cool installation at The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago that has a green focus, but with a bit of a twist. You see, they installed a water reclamation processing system in one of the high traffic restrooms at the museum. This facility takes the water flushed washed down the sink, cleans it, making it “grey water“. This grey water can then be used in the toilets. This conserves a massive amount of water. here’s where we come in.

The bathroom is touchless. The Sloan brand sinks, toliets and urinals (yes, now my blog has the word “urinal” in it, twice, even) are all automatic. In addition, the urinals are of the “waterless” variety. The hand dryers are those cool Dyson airblade ones. All of these devices report to a central server tracking usage. That’s right… the toilets let the server know how many flushes happen, the sinks report the water usage, etc.

We built an interactive presentation that taps into this data via a webservice. The data is then overlaid on some fantastic HD footage of water doing watery things. Washing up on beaches, splashing, gurgling, being water. We used Flash’s H.264 support to its fullest, displayed on 120hz 1080p displays. Looks great. On specified intervals, the metrics are updated, letting viewer know about the environmental impact they are making by using this facility.

Take a look at a couple images (I apologize for the photo quality, they were shot by my iPhone in some low light conditions)… Click on em to see the full size version.

The second image has some data on the display… This image was shot at about 10AM, and the facility had already saved 114 gallons that day! Cool. It states there that the current average savings is 2031 gallons per day. Woot! Now that’s some cool data you can use. All built in flash by The Iona Group. Erik Peterson was the primary developer. He’s on Twitter. You should follow him if you like pithy comments and electric pineapples (I don’t know what they are either). Heather Ford was the primary designer. Follow her on Twitter, too. She does good work.

What a fun project. A great client too.

links for 2009-02-05

• Pattern Tap : Collections
  A wide array of usable UI design patterns for you to use and abuse… hopefully light on the abuse after you do some more research here
  (tags: design UI patterns)

Gentlemen (and Ladies), start your registrations.

I’ve been informed that I got accepted to speak at 360|Flex in Indianapolis (hence the title for the post)! The show will be going down May 18-20, 2009. This is my first true conference speaking gig, so I’m pretty psyched about it. I often speak to 1 day seminars, user groups, classes and other associations, but this is the first time I’ve been invited to a multi-day, multi-track event. Very cool, indeed.

My session is titled “Developers Are From Mars, Designers Are From Venus”. It’s a session focused on the integration points in a mixed team and the challenges facing them. This is a situation that many design and development house find themselves in today for a number of reasons. As Flash development gives way to Flex development for larger applications, the makeup of the development staff is bringing in more traditional development techniques and technology that seems foreign to designers. Likewise, Developers now just coming to the Flash platform, lured by RIA sexiness and agile techniques find themselves awash in a sea of designer hoo-ha. Leading? Kerning? Whitespace? The attention given to aesthetic in a modern app is not something one used to battleship grey apps is used to. This combination of situations, when put under pressure to deliver on time and on budget can breed animosity and destroys the teamwork mentality needed to create a superior user experience. My session is light on code, heavy on collaboration. Hopefully you’ll find out about some

You can check out the other great 49 speakers on the schedule at: http://360conferences.com/360flex/downloads/schedule.pdf It’s looking like it’s gonna be another great 360|Flex conference, especially with the list of people lined up. Juan Sanchez, Michael Labriola, Doug McCune, Josh Buhler, Renaun Erickson, Jeff Tapper and so many other talented and well known developers in the Flex ecosystem. I’m really happy to share a bill with so many others that I read, follow online and respect.

Tickets are cheaper on a first come, first serve basis! There are limited seats available, so register early. These 360|Flex events sell out. So buy your tickets asap at http://360flex.eventbrite.com to get the best possible price. I hope I see you there… you better go to my session!

A brief History of Stopmotion

In celebration of the release of Coraline, slashfilm brings us an amazing article chronicling the history of stopmotion animation. Along with well researched information, the article contains some fantastic videos including the following:

Check it out today, and be sure to support this wonderful medium by seeing Coraline while it is still in theaters!

I was helping one of my daughters with her homework and the inevitable question came up, “When am I ever going to use this?” While maybe a little frustrating as a parent, it’s really a fair question if you think about it. And it is one that is just as germane to adult learners as it is to my ten year-old daughter.

In corporate learning it is easy to get caught up focusing on the content of the course. Countless hours are spent making sure all the key points are thoroughly covered, that the material is presented in an engaging manner and that there is an adequate way to assess whether the learner has mastered the material. This is all well and good, and very important. But does the learner really know why they are taking the course? If the answer is, “Because my boss told me to,” or “Corporate requires it,” then don’t expect your learners to be too motivated.

If you really want to motivate people so they learn and retain the material you are trying to teach, you must first answer one important question, “What’s in it for me?” The answer to this question will be very different depending on your course content. However, it should always be personal and specific.

First, it must be personal. If you are trying to roll out sales training to your sales force and you tell everyone that the purpose of this training is to, “Improve sales so that the company can achieve a 10% growth in revenue,” people may lose interest almost immediately. But tell them that this training will make them better salespeople and that it will help them reach or exceed their monthly sales quota, and you will get their attention.

Second, be specific. Explain how the training will benefit them. For example, “This training will introduce you to various types of customer resistance and will show you some ways of handling that resistance so that you will be more comfortable and confident when you encounter objections.” There are many ways to make the learning specific. If you have information or statistics on how the training has benefited others who have taken the course, share it. If there are specific situations when your material is particularly useful, be sure to let people know that also.

Answering the question “What’s in it for me,” also provides another benefit besides increasing interest and motivation. It also provides a context for learning. If people understand the answers to When, Where, How and Why they will be using the course material, then they will be able to relate the learning to their own real-life situations. This helps greatly with comprehension and retention of the material.

So, as you are writing the outline for your next course or training piece, be sure to think about providing your learners some personal and specific reasons for how this course will benefit the learner. You’ll end up with people who are more motivated to learn and are able to better comprehend and retain the material.

links for 2009-02-12

• Timelapse CSS (II) from Matthew Buchanan on Vimeo.New Icebrrg design CSS time lapse video | Element Fusion Internet Development
  A pretty good little video showing the styling of a page over time
  (tags: timelapse)
• Timelapse CSS (II) on Vimeo
  A timelapse video of a CSS edit in process. Shows the general order in which you should probably work… typography, color, images/backgrounds, columns, fine-tuneing.
  (tags: timelpase)
• Matthew Buchanan • Timelapse CSS
  A cool little JS bookmarklet to create a timelpase movie out of your CSS Edit. Useful for tutorials.
  (tags: css bookmarklet timelpase)