
Restraint - tortilla
http://www.usabilitypost.com/2009/10/02/restraint/
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sunir
I'm interested in the contrast between Flickr and the portfolio sites. I
believe (I may be mistaken) Flickr restrained itself in order to allow the
photos to be the dominant visual element.

I understand why the portfolio sites are overly designed. It's a quick way to
scream, "Hey, we're for designers!" It's more for designers learning from
other designers than as a showcase to non-designers.

Flickr is more about the mass market consuming beautiful photos, so that is
different. It's interesting that Virb (<http://www.virb.com>) aims kind of in
the middle, and its design is kind of in the middle.

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spitfire
virb has horrible design though. The exact opposite of artful well thought out
design. Pastels and rounded buttons do not make "design".

Restraint would be writing fewer blog posts, thinking more. When you have a
careful, tested, well thought out idea, presenting that to the world.

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DanielStraight
But which is easier to type on, the iPhone or the BlackBerry? I realize I'm
just taking one of his example, but simple design is not always the most
functional. Devices should definitely have no _unnecessary_ interface or
design elements, but there are differing opinions on what is necessary. I
really can't imagine typing lots of text messages on a touch screen.

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stcredzero
I've gotten quite good at typing on the iPhone. I used to write my girlfriend
all of my "Love emails" from my desktop at work. Now I write them all from the
iPhone on the plane. 2 or 3 large paragraphs are not a problem, once you get
the hang of it. That said, I don't think typing on the iPhone is for everyone.
I think UI programmers and programmers and engineers in general will tend to
be better at it. We know how to be "nice" to machines.

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allenbrunson
i'm going to agree with this. i don't do a whole lot of typing on my iphone,
because i use it mostly for content consumption, rather than creation. but
when i do need to type on it, i don't find that to be a problem.

i especially like how it can have a whole bunch of different keyboards: one
optimized for url entry, one for general text, one for phone numbers, one for
japanese, and so on. a hardware keyboard feels obsolete the second it's
produced, which is the same way i feel about paper printouts these days.

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DanielStraight
That is an excellent point about optimized keyboards.

