Running The Ladder is the company blog of Bainbridge Studios, a tiny runt of a design practice based in lovely Tacoma, WA.
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Missed Opportunities: Safeway and the Latest Egg Recall
Thursday, August 19th, 2010 | Tom Carmony
Having relatively adjusted to the concept of being a parent here over the past three years, and coming to an acceptance of my responsibility as the primary caregiver for another living, breathing mini-human, things like food recalls actually pique my interest. This morning, I came across a number of items on Twitter regarding the latest nationwide food recall, this time in regards to supermarket eggs, affecting somewhere in the neighborhood of 380 million eggs potentially sold across the country.
The Egg Safety Center has the most comprehensive rundown of all the brands and lot numbers affected by this recall – find it here.
Having purchased eggs recently at our local Safeway, I figured it was important to check out which of their product lines were impacted by the recall. In comparing the eggs in our fridge with those on the Egg Safety Center’s list, I wasn’t entirely clear whether we were impacted. So I figured I’d check out Safeway’s own website for more information. Given that their products in a number of states were included in the recall, they’d surely have some helpful guide for customers to figure out whether or not their recently purchased products were impacted.
Makes sense, right? Seems like a good use of a corporation’s online presence — disseminating important safety related information? Well, apparently not.
Read the rest of this entry »
Comprehensive Round-Up of Free Wireframe Tool Kits
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010 | Tom Carmony
We usually reserve links to this type of “round-up” blog post for the end-of-the-week “Links of the Week”, but this one was just a bit too meaty to pass up. An integral part of any user interface (UI) design work is early wireframing – essentially, sketching out the basic layout and details of a site or application’s UI before getting into the finer design details (colors, typography, etc).
Ask ten designers about their favorite tool(s) for wireframing, and you’ll likely get nine different answers; the tenth won’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Don’t hire him. Many folks use OmniGraffle, others swear by Photoshop or Illustrator. Everyone has a preference, and whatever your preference, it can be a huge timesaver to have a collection of graphics or “stencils” for various common UI elements (scrollbars, form fields, buttons, navigation, etc.).
Speckyboy (yes, that’s REALLY the name of the blog) has posted a great round-up of 20 different free wireframe stencil kits, for all of the major wireframing tools. The post includes a quick overview and download links for each.
If you’re a web designer and haven’t yet incorporated wireframing into the initial stages of your design process, here’s a great opportunity to start.
20 Free Web UI Element Kits and Stencils (via Speckboy) »
Panic Releases Coda Notes Extension for Safari
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010 | Tom Carmony
We were lucky enough to grab an early beta of this via Twitter a couple weeks back, but Portland’s finest Mac software publishers Panic have officially released their Coda Notes extension for Safari.
So what exactly does Coda Notes do?
Coda Notes lets you annotate web pages. Right in your browser. Add sticky notes, draw right on the screen, even edit text live on the page. Then, once you’ve finished marking up a page, you can quickly and easily email a screenshot of your work to one or recipients.
This has the makings of a great feedback tool for web designers. Best of all, it’s free.
Grab it here »
(Safari Extension link – requires Safari 5.0.1)
Magic? Meh… But It Is A Nice Desktop Trackpad, and It Is The Future
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 | Tom Carmony
Apple’s latest round of product announcements included a range of updates to existing lines such as the iMac, the MacPro and LED Cinema Displays. But mixed in amongst those heavy hitters was the introduction of a new desktop-based input peripheral, the Magic Trackpad.
Yes. We’ve got yet another “magical” Apple gadget.
Following the Magic Mouse and the magical experience of the iPhone 4 (am I missing anything else?), the Magic Trackpad brings the multi-touch capabilities of Apple’s current notebook computers to the desktop. This new trackpad is reportedly 80% larger (seems about right) than the trackpad on the MacBook Pro, and offers all of the same multi-touch functionality as Apple’s portable devices. From the comfort of your desk.
So is the experience truly magical? That’s probably a bit much. Will Mac users be abandoning their mice in droves? Some most certainly will. Is this a sign of things to come? Absolutely.
Look, from performance and functionality standpoint, anyone who has used a recent MacBook or MacBook Pro (all of which incorporate at least some degree of multi-touch via their trackpads) knows what you’re getting here. The Magic Trackpad works as advertised. Paired with the recent Safari 5.0.1 update and the multi-touch software update that Apple pushed out yesterday, it brings some fun new touches (pun intended) to the desktop computing experience. The inclusion of inertia scrolling (vertical scrolling that slows down at the tail-end of a scroll, mimicking natural momentum), is a particularly nice feature.
I picked one up at our local Apple Store Wednesday evening (the last one on the shelves) and have been playing with it throughout the evening. I can definitely see using the device for the majority of my non-keyboard input, but not exclusively. Despite it’s strengths, a multi-touch trackpad simply can’t replicate the degree of precision capable with a high-end laser mouse. As a designer, there are tasks that require this level of precision, and for those, out comes the Magic Mouse. But for day-to-day use (email, web browsing, most app functionality), the Magic Trackpad will work like a charm.
The key takeaway here is all about forward thinking. The Magic Trackpad is another step in Apple’s slow and steady transition of our computing experience to touch. The touch experience began with the introduction of the first iPhone in 2007, followed since by the iPod Touch, multi-touch trackpads on the MacBooks and MacBook Pros, the (multi-touch) Magic Mouse, the introduction of the iPad, and now the Magic Trackpad. Steve Job, Apple and its design team are slowly but surely evolving the everyday computing experience of the typical consumer away from the 25-year-old keyboard/mouse combination and toward a multi-touch based input environment.
Does that mean the mouse’s days are numbered? No. There will always be markets for the precision control provided by a mouse. Designers, visual artists and gamers need that level of precision. For them, there will probably always be some iteration of a mouse input device marketed by someone (however niche that product may become).
But for the general consumer? Five years from now, the typical consumer’s computing experience will be almost entirely touch-based. And Apple is leading the way.
Adam Lisagor on The Pipeline
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 | Tom Carmony
Photo courtesy of Lucius Kwok
Our pal Dan Benjamin, who continues to cement himself as a “Dick Cavett for the Internet Age” with his engaging Pipeline interviews, has a gem in his latest episode, talking shop with Adam Lisagor. Many people may know Adam from the hilarious You Look Nice Today podcast, but he’s now making a name for himself crafting memorable, one-of-a-time promotional videos for products such as Square and Flipboard.
Adam discusses his dissatisfaction with his previous work (doing graphics and visual effects for television and film) and what it was like for him to take the leap of quitting his job and venturing out on his own commercially. It’s absolutely worth a listen for anyone having done (or planning to do) the same.
Hear Adam Lisagor on The Pipeline »
Cheap plug masked as full disclosure: We designed the 5by5 Studios website.
UPDATE: Merlin Mann hits the nail on the head in his post about Adam’s interview:
“I don’t know how you could listen to Dan’s swell interview with Adam without feeling at least a teeny bit inspired. Inspired to pick your new projects more carefully, to dump the less gratifying old ones more buoyantly, to give your latest draft just one more line edit, to start noticing the well-disguised opportunities that are lurking in the shadows of inconvenience and loss—to at least briefly double-check that the trendline for whatever stuff you’re making that theoretically matters to you is moving in a sustainable direction you can be proud of.”
Seriously. Check it out. Now.