Tag: design

KC Design Week

Posted on by Kyle

Kansas City Design Week
I’m happy to announce that I’m a presenter at the first annual Kansas City Design Week on Thursday, February, 4.

I’ll be presenting with couple of other guys from work; we’ll be talking about the impact of design on business and how a the perception of a brand is shaped by the design of products, user experience and messaging. We’ve had a few calls with the organizers of design week and quite a bit of brainstorming amongst ourselves. After a breakthrough today, it feels like the presentation is finally starting to come together… excitement is building.

KC Design week is all about celebrating the value of design, including graphic design, industrial design and architecture. There are a bunch of cool design-related events throughout the week (all of which are free), so head over to KCDesignWeek.org to check out the schedule and reserve a space for yourself. From what I’ve heard, about 90 people have registered for our session, which means we’re *this close* to a sold-out show.

And if your at the AIA building on the 4th, stop by and say ‘hi!’.

Fennec – the little things

Posted on by Kyle

I downloaded a copy of Fennec today — Mozilla’s experimental mobile browser optimized for touch screen mobile devices.

If you’re either TK or one of the .00001% of the rest of the population who owns a Nokia N810, you can test the browser in a real mobile environment.

For the rest of us, Mozilla’s been kind enough to offer downloads of Fennec that work in Windows, OS X and Linux.

It’s actually pretty aggravating to use a touch screen-optimized browser with a mouse and keyboard, but I was happy to see the thought they’ve put into the user experience.

Case in point, the settings screen:

If you can’t read these, the items include gems like:
Load images – Makes websites pretty
Enable Javascript – Makes websites flashy
Enable Plugins – Makes websites annoying

At SXSWi ’08, there was a great panel called, “From Frustration to Elation” that made the case that injecting emotions (like humor, happiness, empathy, etc.) into products, software and services helps people make positive connections with the experience, which can contribute to the difference between a successful product and a failure.

In an arena with a growing number of players (like this, this and this), little things can have a big impact.