I cleaned up the back deck a bit and finally got around to cutting back a couple of junipers I purchased last month but hadn’t got around to attending to. I only wanted to clean them up and get rid of some foliage before winter but on one of them I went a little further to actually taking steps to decide the front and initial design of it.

Here’s how it looked post-op and next spring I’ll re-pot and wire it up, along with a sketch I did imagining a furture direction for it.

I just wanted to download a great font. Here’s an example where the web designer seems to want to waste peoples valuable time. The position of the ‘Download’ button may have been hidden for some very good reason but it’s beyond me.

I expect a download button to be either quite big and to the top-left under a header, or a button or link of any fashion at the bottom. It took some scanning before I found the tiny link at the top at the end of a row of similar looking links.

An ongoing, project that I’m looking forward to is helping maintain our church’s website. This initial mockup went where I wanted it to go but I’d like to refine it further and ensure everything’s in its place; both aesthetically and otherwise.

Taken last week:

I anticipate being slightly busier next year…

This morning while brushing my teeth the faucet sparked a couple of trains of thought. If I was tasked with designing a new faucet how long would I have to work and how difficult would it be for me to break out of the paradigm of hot on the left, cold on the right? Even when attempting to come up with something unique or original how much convention am I locked into?
The second train of thought was If I was tasked with designing a new faucet why in the great googely-moogely would I want to break out of the paradigm of hot on the left, cold on the right? As a user would I want to have to re-learn where the hot and cold were?

I didn’t come up with any conclusions other than I think it’s good to be aware in our design process, to the best of our ability, where we are locked into convention so that we can, where appropriate, attempt to chart a new course.
And where the user is concerned, I’m sure its best, particularly with an interface as familiar as a faucet, to keep things conventional and not try to be clever with that particular aspect of the design…