The more meaning, the better.

“We need a deliberate and constant investment in routines involving learning, improving, and maturing as part of integrated practices and a clear identification of the project roles necessary so that teammates can build trust with one another, help others on the team, and keep the team together over time. This effort may include defining a well-understood, comfortable, open, inviting project language. When a team defines a project’s purpose and artifacts together then iterates them over time and even across successive projects, the learning environment matures iteratively as part of the project experience.”

Daniel Szuc, Jo Wong, Michael Davis Burchat, and Jennifer Fabrizi ~ UXPA Magazine ★

InfoDesign is alive and kicking.

“The book you have before you is sediment, an old-fashioned document that registers an event that, in Slovenia, could well represent a utopian or at least an optimistic step into cutting-edge thought, while, in its English version, it contributes important knowledge to the existing, internationally recognized discipline we call information design. In late 2009, Slovenia’s Museum of Architecture and Design began its fourth series of lectures in the theory of architecture and design; like the ones before it, this lecture series was founded on the idea that when talking about professional disciplines on the local scale we need to speak from the experience of what is happening globally and must open new doors and seek ideas more at depth than at breadth.”

Edited by Petra Černe Oven and Cvetka Požar ~ courtesy of @pco_paralaksa

Information intensive environments have not been this popular in Interactions Magazine.

“We live in a world where information is part of our everyday lives, where we don’t dedicate time to “doing computing,” where information is ever present and leaves a digital footprint, and where notions of online versus offline have become almost meaningless. As mentioned, we are heading toward a state where we will stop using computers and instead inhabit interactive and information-rich architecture. Many exciting challenges lie ahead. For example: How will we design the architectural interfaces to information and interaction to create relevant inhabitant experiences? How will we give inhabitants access to how their data is being captured, manipulated, used, and stored? What role can architecture play in protecting people’s privacy and security? What does an interactively augmented environment mean for how we perceive our environment when we already know that mind, body, and environment co-shape this? Given the large number of signposts in both HCI and architecture, we suggest that the only natural expectation is stronger ties between the worlds of information and the design of physical spaces to address the challenges we now face.”

Sheep Dalton, Holger Schnädelbach, Tasos Varoudis, and Mikael Wiberg ~ ACM Interactions ★

When you start with three, more will follow.

“Designing information effectively is a wonderful and complex challenge. I feel grateful that in the past ten years I have had the opportunity of working with extraordinary teams of scientists to the end of communicating complex data. These three lessons are among the most precious lessons I have learnt along my journey.”

Angela Morelli a.k.a. /aamorelli | @angelamorelli ★

A lot of problems to be fixed.

“Leave the design-centric language (…) behind. Speak the language of business. The more we as designers do this, the more we drive home the message that a strategy conversation without design present is incomplete.”

Jeff Gothelf, Andy Budd, and Chris Thelwell ~ InVision blog ★

Icing on the cake or lipstick on a pig.

“There are reasons you’re still saying the same thing after all these years — still talking about how it always seems like design gets tacked on to the end of the process. You should be at the concept meeting, you say, where you can make a real difference.”

(Robert Hoekman Jra> a.k.a. @rhjr ~ Smashing Magazine) ★

Design with the digital material at hand. The browser interface being the canvas for it.

“Some insist designing in the browser is the only way to design a website. Some say designing in the browser limits creativity and these people don’t want to give up their graphic editors. What’s going on? Why the split? Why so many for and so many against designing in the browser? (…) I think the main reason for any pushback or misunderstanding is that detractors look at the phrase design in the browser literally and those in favor of it don’t.”

(Steven Bradley a.k.a. @vangogh ~ vanseo design) ★

Design is making decisions in the design space, determined by constraints.

“The word constraint can sound like a bad word. Constraints are something you can’t do. They restrict what you’re allowed to do They take away freedom. They remove options. They’re rules you didn’t set. They’re an early bedtime or being forced to eat your vegetables when you want ice cream.”

(Steven Bradley ~ vanseodesign) ★