Khoi Vinh's Blog, page 81

Taxonomies of Lost NYC Playgrounds

Writer James Trainor has a collection of photographs from lost New York City playgrounds. As they became a fixture of urban planning in the last century, playgrounds also became a significant intersection of architecture and social science. These photographs capture the high ambitions at the heart of many of the more adventurous ones dreamed up…

Answering Questions at Designer News

I’m a big fan of what the Layer Vault team have built in Designer News. It’s not as big a community as its obvious inspiration Hacker News, but it’s quite vibrant on its own, and I’ve found myself spending lots of time there over the past couple of years with rewarding results. This afternoon I…

Tommy Johnagin’s Mom Uses iTunes

I love my mom. She lives in California, so I love how technology brings us closer together, too. But sometimes helping her cope with her hardware and software can be challenging. Comedian Tommy Johnagin, on his album “Standup Comedy 3,” has a hilarious bit about providing tech support for his own mom. Warning: recently I…

How iOS Has Changed

I don’t link to a lot of infographics here but I like this one, and I’ve always been fascinated by the incremental, barely noticed way some interfaces can change, even when we look at them all day long. This extensive graphic from 7dayshop.com presents a pretty comprehensive overview of how iOS has evolved. The original…

We Used to Be Friends

This is a twenty-three minute video that overlays every episode of season one of the TV series “Friends” directly on top of one another, resulting in a frighteningly shrill nightmare of sitcom inanities. It also happens to be sublimely lovely in parts, not to mention transfixing. You’re welcome! + Share Facebook Twitter Google+

Movies I Saw in 2014

When people ask if I’ve seen any good movies lately, I tend to answer that, with three kids and a surfeit of side projects, I hardly ever get to watch anything. But looking back at the past twelve months, I realize that somehow I did manage to see a decent number of the year’s more…

Designing Watch Faces for Android Wear

“Global digital product studio” Ustwo (creator of the critically lauded “Monument Valley” game) got a plum assignment from Google: design a series of digital watch faces for Android Wear. They documented their experience in this video, which I watched a few times, as I’m eager to learn more about wearable technology and the challenges of…

Khalik Allah

Photographer and filmmaker Khalik Allah has taken beautiful, vibrant photographs of the people of Harlem, NY, focusing recently on the corner of 125th St and Lexington Avenue. His portraits are deeply engrossing and capture street life with rare verve. He also directed a 60-minute film called “Field Niggas” that’s available in its entirety on Vimeo.…

Now Hiring a Designer at Wildcard

Almost everything you see at Wildcard was designed by my colleague Stephen Meszaros and myself, but we want to change that. As of today, we’re officially looking to add a third member to our small design team. You can see the listing and job description at Authentic Jobs, where you can also apply. People often…

A Roundup of Today’s Interface Prototyping Tools

Over the past year-plus of designing, building, launching and iterating Wildcard, we’ve used a slew of tools to prototype the kinds of interactions that have gone into our iPhone app. My colleague Steve Meszaros just published a terrific post at his blog with his perspective on each of the major ones that we’ve used. Those…