Mark-Up

Last week, Geniant was officially acquired by EMC, the global storage, software, and services company. Traditionally EMC was known for their large-scale storage solutions. Over the last several years they’ve shifted their focus to a holistic approach to storing, retrieving, and securing information.

EMC acquired Geniant specifically for inclusion in the Microsoft Services group of EMC Global Services. Not too much should change in the short term. As we get fully integrated with our new team, I’m looking forward to the best of both worlds: having the increased opportunities afforded by a global organization while still working inside a super-talented user experience / design group. Given the wide range of opportunities related to EMC products and services, there should be many rewarding projects to work on.

Interestingly, we learned during orientation that the “2″ at the end of the EMC logo is simply an ornament. It’s never pronounced nor included in text versions of the company name. It’s only used in the type-based graphic logo. Regardless, when seen it does the intended trick of invoking thoughts of relativity, intelligence, or Albert Einstein himself.

Garrett, Jared, and Nathan did a great job crafting the Geniant blog and priming it with some good posts. Now it’s up to the rest of us to fill it with content.

I took my first step towards that end this evening by posting my first article “Web Standards Basics”. I’m guessing most folks reading here are already aware of the benefits of using standards for front-end development, but we’re hoping that the Geniant blog will reach a wider technology audience. Take a look when you get a chance.

My friend and co-worker Garrett Dimon recently relaunched his eponymous blog. The results are fantastic. Garrett cites the work of Edward Tufte as his inspiration to provide visually compelling examples when writing about web design, technology, and other usability topics. The new layout is completely clutter-free, focusing completely on the topic at hand. His simple grid layout provides a variety of interesting ways to incorporate illustrations and examples that are both meaningful and pleasing to look at.

I’m looking forward to reading Garrett’s future posts. If you’re into user experience and visual design, you will likely look forward to them as well. Add his feed to your reader if you haven’t already.

Stephen Anderson provided a wonderful talk a few weeks ago at Refresh Dallas (and subsequently at Refresh06 in Orlando) on “Creating Pleasurable Interfaces: Getting from Tasks to Experiences“. He does a great job of making the squishy elements of UI design feel tangible. The truly wonderful interfaces that we use everyday are our favorites because of the intangibles that Stephen so eloquently describes in this talk. There’s a lot to learn in there and apply to any project we’re working on.

In this talk Stephen mentions the work of Ralph McQuarrie. When George Lucas was shopping the idea for Star Wars to different studios, he was concerned that the traditional method of providing a script to read would not do justice to the scope of setting and drama that the story would provide. He wanted something more than just words on a page to literally illustrate the characters and settings he wanted to film. So George hired artist/illustrator Ralph McQuarrie to do just that. The use of such supplemental material for movie pitches was not at all common during that time. McQuarrie later said “I understand my pictures did something to convince [20th Century] Fox to make Star Wars”.

I know Walt Disney used rough sketches for storyboards in the production process, but I think George Lucas’ approach to develop such high visual fidelity illustrations was novel for selling the project. Lucas realized that there was too much room for interpretation when he only used a script; he wanted to provide more concrete examples of the vision he had for the project. That’s exactly what we do when we insist on some form of prototype to advance our project instead of relying only on a written requirements and design document.

When you’re just trying to get a project off the ground, high visual fidelity concept screens can really help make your inspiration infectious with investors and other project sponsors. Illustrating the key ideas with great visual clarity so they can get a flavor of what their investment will return.