Hasta La Ideas

Richard Clarkson Studio est un studio d’art et de design installé dans le quartier de Brooklyn à New-York. Parmi les créations aériennes et épurées des designers, on trouve ces terrariums sphériques plein de raffinement. Les petits globes de verre peuvent contenir de véritables éco-systèmes miniatures ainsi que diffuser une lumière délicate grâce aux LED intégrées. Une façon originale et esthétique de combiner design et jardinage.

If you work in any creative role in the media, tech or digital world, you need to know about UX (User Experience).

UX designers create the full experience that users have on a website, app or device. Their work is the backbone of any digital project, the foundation upon which everything else is built.

You’re influenced by UX, even if you don’t realize it. Every digital experience you’ve ever had, from answering your email to setting up your new computer, was planned by a UX team.

Ranked as one of the fastest growing career fields, Adobe reported that “87% of managers said hiring more UX designers is the top priority of their organization.”

Whether you have no clue what UX design is, or you work with a UX team every day, there’s plenty to learn about this complex, multi-faceted world.

Here are six things UX designers wish you knew.

1. UX and UI are not interchangeable.

You’ve probably heard people use the terms “UX” and “UI” interchangeably, but they’re two very different things.

To put it simply: “UX refers to the user experience, which focuses on how something works and how people interact with it. UI, or user interface, focuses on the look and layout.”

Think of it this way—a UX designer is like an architect building a house. Before creating the blueprint for construction, she has to understand what makes a house flow nicely, as well as how someone living in the house would expect to get around and use the various areas and rooms.

The UI designer is similar to an interior designer who comes in later to oversee the look and feel of the house, select building materials, choose colors and make other visual choices.

2. A UX designer’s day-to-day is so much more than making wireframes.

They’re part psychologist, part architect, part storyteller—and that’s just the beginning. Over the course of a single digital project, a UX designer might:

• Do competitive research
• Hold focus groups
• Create user personas
• Map out content and information architecture
• Design wireframes
• Mockup design sketches
• Evaluate usability
• Collaborate with UI designers, web designers and developers
• Conduct user testing
• Review metrics

The specifics of the role vary from employer to employer. Some (very busy) UX designers also do the work of UI designers, web designers and coders.

Ideally, a UX designer will focus solely on UX, but in smaller companies, it’s not always possible. Take a look at these job descriptions to see just how varied the position can be.

3. They’re secretly judging the UX of everything they do.

When you’re part of a UX team for a long time, it’s hard not to bring your work home with you.

UX designers are the first to notice when a process is clunky or an experience isn’t intuitive. Show them a website that isn’t responsive, or an app that’s difficult to navigate, and they’ll recoil in horror.

4. They love playing the “what if?” game.

When working with a UX team, don’t be surprised if they throw extra questions into the mix early on.

Questions like:

• What if we could streamline the experience from seven steps to three steps?
• What if there are two completely different user accounts that will be using this same product?
• What if the user lives in Canada and our U.S. state drop-down menu means they can’t place an order?

When these questions pop up, don’t panic. UX designers aren’t trying to make the design process harder for you. In fact, they’re trying to make things easier for the end user, by carefully considering all possible scenarios.

Instead of panicking, say: “Thank you for pointing that out!”

5. You’ll save headaches later by folding UX designers into the process way earlier.

Everyone benefits when UX is involved early in the process. Don’t get too far down the road on any project without consulting your friendly neighborhood UX team.

Going back to our “architect” example: You wouldn’t start building a house until the blueprint was complete. Likewise, you shouldn’t jump ahead to website design and button colors until the UX is firmly nailed down.

Starting with UX saves you from going back to the drawing board. (And your UX team will be very happy.)

6. If you want to get ahead in any media/agency/digital job, take the time to educate yourself about UX.

UX design is the foundation of literally every digital experience, including mobile websites, desktop websites, responsive websites, apps, gaming and virtual reality.

Whether you’re a writer, designer, developer, project manager, or marketer, you’ll benefit from learning more about this vital field.

Remember, 87% of employers believe this is a valuable skill!

Give your career a boost! Learn to evaluate UX like a pro with our online course.

The post What UX Designers Want You to Know About UX appeared first on Mediabistro.

Architecture studio Mer Arkkitehdit has integrated the surrounding rocky terrain into its design for this spruce-clad villa in the historic Finnish seaside town of Hanko.

The Helsinki-based architecture studio submerged the basement level of the house by cutting into the rock, while the main floor sits atop the cliff, facing out towards the Baltic Sea and surrounding pine forests.

The entrance of the residence named Stormvillan is at beach level, with a long narrow passageway leading to glazed walls which reveal the surrounding bedrock.

At the back of the ground floor, a wine cellar is built into the cliff, with bare rock making up the room’s walls.

The villa – which was built for an elderly couple – is painted with traditional linseed-oil paint to reflect the area’s 19th-century buildings.

Hanko, which sits at the southern tip of Finland, was historically a popular spa resort for Russian nobility towards the end of the 19th century, while Finland was still a part of the Russian Empire under the rule of Alexander III.

The winding, pine tree-lined beaches are lined with elaborate wooden seaside houses built for Russian aristocrats to reside in during summer months.

Stormvillan is situated in the centre of the historic area with unobstructed views of villas designed by the acclaimed Finnish architect Theodor Höijer.

Upon entering the house, leaf-green floor tiles reference the surrounding pine forests, contrasting starkly with the otherwise white and wooden interior. Following the white carpeted staircase upstairs, the room opens out into the main living space.

The first-floor living area has vistas in three different directions: the view out towards the sea can be seen from the length of the room, while the west-facing dining room catches the evening sun, with the master bedroom taking in views of the cliffs and pine forests.

With views overlooking the Baltic sea, the flat roof of the basement level has been clad with decking and balustrades, which serves as a wooden terrace that can be entered from the main living area.

The gabled zinc-covered roof of the first floor provides a hardy and weather-resistant shelter to the wind and spray from the sea, while simultaneously blending into the coastal palette.

Stormvillan joins Gamla Villan, another of Mer Arkkitehdit’s projects built in Hanko, in which the studio provided a contemporary update of the town’s historic villas.

Another studio to incorporate the rocky terrain into their design includes Seattle-based Olson Kundig Architects, who used dynamite, chippers and saws to bore through the huge boulders of a rocky outcrop on a North American island to make room for its raw concrete house.

The post Mer Arkkitehdit sets spruce-panelled villa into cliff face in Finnish seaside town appeared first on Dezeen.

British jewellery designer Lara Bohinc has branched into lighting with a collection of lamps made from broken spheres.

The range features ceiling lights and table lamps, all of which appear to be made from colliding quarters from one orb. The ceiling lights come suspended by metal rods, while the table versions lack a base or other kind of support, and are placed on their side.

The lights are held in a metal framework, and feature white acrylic domes – which are available in two sizes. Collision is a recurring theme for Bohinc, who has designed similar broken orbs for bracelets, rings and pendants.

“As I have always loved the deconstruction and reconfiguration of pure geometric form, I saw lighting as an opportunity to explore these ideas in a new way,” the designer told Dezeen.

“Collision is about the splitting of perfection; in this case a perfect sphere has broken but in a very symmetrical manner. It is almost like the pieces are sliding apart and could easily slide back.”

“That is what gives it the feeling of movement and stillness at the same time, a dynamic interaction and a contradiction – something that always interests me.”

Designing the metal framework was a particular challenge for Bohinc, as well as understanding how to evenly distribute the light. “The key was in approaching each quarter as its own entity,” she explained.

Bohinc studied industrial design at the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts before moving to London to complete a masters in metalwork and jewellery at the Royal College of Art.

She has collaborated with brands including Gucci and Lanvin, and set up her own business in 1997 – opening her first store in London 10 years later.

Other orb-like lighting covered by Dezeen includes Victor Castanera’s balancing lamps, which feature glowing spheres that balance between steel shelves, and a set of precarious lights by Child Studio made from precariously balanced globes.

The post Lara Bohinc designs colliding orbs for first lighting collection appeared first on Dezeen.

This test-tube-like packaging was designed by New York-based Leadoff Studio to modernise the experience of cleaning your teeth with a stick.

The designers were tasked with creating the functional packaging design for THIS Toothbrush – a brand that produces traditional miswak sticks, which are used by biting and peeling the bark and fibres of the wood.

Their response was a test-tube-like case that also incorporates a stainless steel cutter. This helps users to reduce the amount of mess made when using the stick, and also makes it easier to cut through the fibres.

The bottom blade is shaped like a cone, so the twig can be pushed into it to create bristles. After use, the end of the stick can be cut away and stored in the tube, which has perforations to prevent mould.

“We were very influenced by Arabesque styling and Islamic architecture,” said Leadoff Studio‘s Jordan Diatlo.

“The pointed arch shape used in archways and vaults in Islamic architecture became an aesthetic detail on the sides of the case, and is subtly repeated into the top of the test tube, the blade profiles, and negative space around the blades.”

The studio also incorporated a locking mechanism, so blades are kept closed once the cap is on, preventing users from accidentally injuring themselves.

Leadoff Studio purposefully developed stripped-back packaging that would offer a contrast to the “flashy graphics” of other toothbrushes.

To reflect the use of miswak sticks across the Arab-speaking world, the studio embossed the THIS logo in both Arabic and English, and designed a triangular paper pack that has room for both languages.

THIS toothbrush was first developed by New York’s School of Visual Arts graduate Leen Sadder. The packaging was chosen as a finalist in the 2017 Dieline Awards.

Other more futuristic takes on the toothbrush include an electric device that collects data about its user’s brushing habits, and a brush that cleans teeth with nanotech ions instead of toothpaste.

The post Leadoff Studio creates functional packaging for traditional teeth-cleaning twig appeared first on Dezeen.