The Barry Lyndon poster is an iconic masterpiece, and an interesting example of the inaccurate attribution found while I was researching it. As with much of Kubrick’s life and work, it is difficult untangling myth from fact. — The very mention of Barry Lyndon will either elicit a groan you get from an over stimulated teenager forced to trudge through economics class or silent reverence in a middle-aged man who bought the Criterion Collection edition, and delicately wipes it down every month. …

The ‘Mount Everest’ of graphical musical scores, Treatise still surprises with its invention and beauty. It is also one of the finest fuck yous to the musical establishment. — Seeing the pages of Treatise for the first time is akin to stumbling across an alien manuscript, something unearthly and beautiful, but incomprehensible. Cornelius Cardew created Treatise, the ‘Mount Everest’ of visual musical scores and graphic notation, to break away from the straitjacket of traditional musical notation. There are many…

Behavioural design uses behavioural science, psychology, and motivation to guide how people use our products. — Design influences behaviour. Using psychological principles and theories of behaviour, we can design for how users behave, building an environment that supports whatever route they take, instead of forcing them to conform to how our products and services work. There are so many terms mentioned when researching this topic, such…

Shadow doesn’t get as much love as other design elements, such as cool colour palettes or super sexy shapes, but it is vital in communicating interaction. — Plato gave shadows a bad name. Alright, look, I may be stretching this a little, but bear with me. In the Allegory of the Cave, Plato contended shadows mislead people about the true nature of reality, setting up a distrust of darkness and shadows. …

How Alphonse Chapanis, a young psychologist, saved the lives of WWII pilots through clever design. — As the massive B-17 ‘Flying Fortress’ touched down after a long day of combat, the pilot flicked the control to drop his speed as he had always done. Within seconds, the massive plane collapsed onto the tarmac, skidding and screaming on its fuselage. These accidents were to happen with increasing…

This is the story of a novel and powerful way to visualise your user’s journey, and a traumatising childhood gaming experience. — We are inveterate storytellers, ‘who create our own identities around a story’ says philosopher Owen Flanagan. It seems appropriate that story (without the definitive article) is a powerful design thinking tool. Task and user flows are ubiquitous industry-standard design tools, yet they lack the human factor, leading to a less…

Listening is a vital UX skill we can all get better at, and a chatbot experiment from the 1960s teaches us how. — Joseph Weizenbaum, a computer scientist at MIT, created the first natural language computer program called ELIZA in 1964, a precursor to the chatbot we put up with today. A person would type their question in to a terminal and ELIZA would magically come back with a response on the screen…

Designers should not be mere decorators, but have an understanding of language and microcopy, a crucial design skill, now more than ever. — Look at these two images

14 hugely interesting and educational podcasts on design, creativity and psychology to fill any learning void. — Are you perennially challenged to get any reading done? Are you the type that wakes up each morning with a book stuck to your face after only one page? Podcasts might be the answer. Although they don’t have the tactile feel of paper, they can have the nail biting tension…