As I design sites and web apps day in and day out. I sometimes loose sight of the very principles of design I hold dear. One which I was reminded of recently, thanks to this article … the aesthetic usability effect.
In a nutshell, the aesthetic usability effect states that a user will perceive a product [...]
I learned something this week. I learned that semiconductor manufacturers send out free sample products for evaluation. Most will have nothing to do with us ‘little hobbiest’, requiring a corporate mailing address. But some, like Maxim I.P. will gladly send out a myriad of free products. I just got a batch of MAX72xx chips, $30 [...]
After building and playing around with The Voice of Staurn DIY kit, i fell in love with the 555 chip as an oscillator and lfo. I got to think that while the kit was cool (as all Atari Punk Console projects are), it didn’t afford me the control i really wanted. Sure they have a sequencer, modulator and filter for it now, but I want something that is compact and offers a bit more control that just knob twiddling.
Hence, enter the “LED 555 Synth”. I’m going to use the 4×4 RGB button matrix from SparkFun as the main control surface. Perhaps a few knobs and sliders too. It’s all going to be under the watchful control of an Arduino. I’m not quite sure how it is all going to come together, but I have an idea. I’ll be documenting not just the build, but also the interface design as I work through it … should be fun!
Design is often said to preform the task of communication. Communicating ideas, emotions, or a companies mission or brand. But, I think we need to go a step beyond just looking at design as communication … often times, it is translation too. We are translating the message of our clients to the users. We are [...]
Hello. I’ve decided to give up on my pipe dream of multiple blogs for multiple creative endeavors and instead consolidate everything into one blog, create at futurebot. I’ll be blogging about music, web design, information architecture, science, electronics kit bashing, even an electronic realization of Mozart’s Requiem … pretty much anything that strikes my fancy. [...]