Oura ring is a wonderful sleep tracker. While certainly a tad pricey, its incredibly effective at its given purpose. I didn't realize 1) how much quality sleep impacted my overall health and 2) how consistently quantifying sleep quality impacts daily decisions (working out, drinking, eating, etc). Highly recommended.
I too went deep into paintball back in the late -90's; it was one of the few 'sports' that I really took an affinity to.
Unfortunately, I was shot in my left eye with the barrel being less than 3 feet away, leaving me legally blind in one eye. It was after a game and we all had our masks off.
Being that my main skillset is/was design & web, it was one of the scariest experiences of my life. Fortunately I've continued to build a great career relying on the vision of one eye.
I've been approached a few times to speak out publicly on TV against the dangers of paintball, but have always declined. Just like anything in life, proper precautions are important and freak accidents will happen.
I would love to play again one day, but it's probably not the best idea.
It happens, lax safety on and off the field and poor gun safety/trigger control. Keep your mask on at all times on the field and barrel bags on off the field, and accidents like this can't happen (source: I ref and play paintball every weekend). We kick people off the field for lifting their mask when they are on the field and ensure barrel bags go on before walking back into the staging area.
It's really hard to quantify how valuable Andrew and his interviews have been to me on a personal, professional and spiritual level. Congrats Andrew, you've earned this in spades.
Not sure I agree that Marketo's business is unsustainable - clearly they want to make more headway in the B2C space; the B2B Marketing Automation market would seem to be saturated, but I would argue that there's still plenty of growth for them for the next 3-5 years, at a minimum.
As far as I can tell, ExactTarget's marketing automation capabilities vastly pale in comparison to Marketo or Eloqua, I could be wrong though.
something like 90%+ of Marketo's customers integrate it with Salesforce. Of course Salesforce won't just cut them off if they have a competitor tool, due to anti-trust issues, but it doesn't necessarily bode well for Marketo now that Salesforce owns a competitor. Pardot is a fairly small piece of Exacttarget though so potentially Marketo could still be a target at some point.
Larger scale B2C marketing automation is generally much more complex than b2b. Ecommerce databases are generally less normalized across businesses, aren't hosted by an intermediary like salesforce and contain more data. Cross-channel retailers with physical stores track a ton of transactions and customers. I really don't think that any b2b marketing automation platform will make much headway trying to go b2c. Hubspot has some success only because they focus on local and small businesses.
I was totally confused reading through this the first time - it made me roll my eyes at least 5 times. Then I realized it was satirical and my faith in PG was once again restored.
Flat design certainly has it's place in the world but it's important to keep in mind that ultimately it's just another aesthetic. Distressed, Glossy, Flat, Matte, Woodsy, etc, these are all just styles that lay on top of what is good information architecture and interaction design.
It's not about flat design being right or wrong, it's more about whether it's appropriate for the job/task and audience/market.
There are good movies with special effects and good movies without special effects -- it's just a one element of the entire experience and by no means the most important.
"Flat design" is, yes. It's just a horrible label for a much broader concept, which is "form follows function", "clarity", "honesty".
Skeuomorphism is an easy target because it is dishonest by definition. Things that appear "cutting edge" or "high quality" today will, in a few years, seem dated, clunky, and pointless.
By contrast, pick up a copy of Die Neue Typography and see how well not just Tschichold's designs, but his ideas, hold up today. Skeuomorphism is a symbol of the Old UI. What we need is the New UI.
> By contrast, pick up a copy of Die Neue Typography and see how well not just Tschichold's designs, but his ideas, hold up today.
Dieter Ram's designs also hold up. Honesty is at the center of it all. This is also the reason why people still quote Confucius. Honesty is simply living and experiencing in the purest way possible.
I completely agree. From a usability viewpoint visual style just helps to give your experience some context. Just to make you feel better, familiar, engaged, interested, etc.
You can be in a fully white concrete room or in a baroque temple. Both can be too much if not appropiate and both can give you some marvelous feeling.
I think the difference is that "flat design" is not added to a good information architecture. It's just what you get when you resist trends to add textures and widgets that don't belong.
I think your own example illustrates it: a film without special effects is just a film.
Well... you still kind of need to add colors, fonts, and even pixel perfection of elements, so in essence you are still doing that extra step after the initial IA, just with a certain restriction.
