UI/UX Case Study: The Evernote Sharing User Experience.

During a typical day of working on Monday Night Combat, I’ll have brief but frequent periods of time where, in order to test a change to the UI I’ve just made, I’m waiting for the game to be built and pushed — or “cooked” — to my Xbox, and since I can’t actually make any changes during this time it leaves me with about two minutes of time where I’ll fire up a web browser, check email, or otherwise twiddle my thumbs. It can be pretty distracting to keep moving from random web articles back to the game, so I thought it would help my focus if I tried to at least productively read things that have to do with UI, keeping my attention at least mostly related to the task at hand.

So during those moments for the past few weeks I’ve been collecting articles about user experience design and user interface design and storing them in a notebook in my very favorite app of all time, Evernote. By tagging them in their own notebook I’m slowly accumulating an indexed encyclopedia of UX and UI design knowledge that I can use for my own reference, edification, and skill growth. I also post these articles to Twitter and Facebook as I find them (I’m trying to consciously add value to my social networking these days rather than just posting about what I had for lunch — it was a pulled-pork sandwich, though, if you must know), and after a couple of people told me they’ve really been digging these articles, I decided I should share my Evernote notebook publicly for the benefit of other people who might like to see this information collected.

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Making Stuff, Week 33: And Still More Batts.

It’s another Fiber Friday, and here I’m with two weeks in a row for posts. Awesomesauce.

I kind of went batt crazy (har har) this week and did some more batts, even though I have some still waiting to spin. But when the urge strikes you gotta go with it. This time, though, I thought I’d detail the process a bit more. Maybe it’s just for my own benefit when I look back and want to see how I did these, or maybe someone reading this is interested in seeing this process detailed.

The plan. I had a plan for these batts, which I’m calling “Gun Metal Benz.” You’ll see the finished product in a bit. The plan was that I wanted to blend Benz’s black fleece with merino/silk that I’d dyed Gun Metal Blue, thinking that the black of Benz’s natural color would make the dye really pop as it has in past blends I’ve done with his fleece. So I started with some washed locks and carded them up into batts.

Benz's soft fleece, carded into two batts.

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Making Stuff, Weeks 31 & 32: More Batts.

The crafting is going slowly this week as we spend most of our free time prepping for our wedding, which is — GASP — in less than a month. I’m slowly working on the shawl, but I also managed to get at least one spinning-related project done this week: a couple of new batts.

Cinnamon Chocolate Mint batts.

I hadn’t intended to make these, but while doing some cleaning this weekend while I had some spare time I put away a bag of Cinnamon’s fleece in the fiber studio. When I opened the plastic box I use to store his fiber, I saw that I had a big paper bag filled with some of the combing waste I had saved from blending his fleece with some Merino wool. I looked up at my peg board and saw the green and chocolate Merino roving I had dyed that had been sitting there a while. I didn’t have a specific project in mind for these rovings; they were the leftovers of a previous project. I looked at the bag, and then I looked at the rovings. And then I took a few minutes to sit down with my drum carder. What came out were these batts, and I’m loving the color. I’m calling it Cinnamon Chocolate Mint and I can’t wait to spin them up.

I only got a total of 3.2 ounces so I need to decide exactly how I want to spin this to maximize the yarn I get. Any thoughts on that, spinners? For now they’re just sitting there looking pretty while I decide. Usually I know exactly how I want to spin the fibers I prepare but I guess because this was so spur of the moment I’m kind of blanking on the next step.

That’s it for this week, so it’s another short Fiber Friday post. But don’t let that stop you from getting even more Friday Fiber fill over at Wonder Why Gal’s Fiber Friday.

My User Experience: Blackberry.

I upgraded my phone several months ago and since I’m on Verizon I don’t get my first choice in phones, which would be the iPhone. Since I didn’t really like the Droid when I used it in the store I went with the Blackberry Curve.

For the most part the phone has been easy enough to use — “easy enough” meaning that the UI had issues, and it may take a mistake or two to get a setting right but eventually I figured it out. While looking for answers to questions I had online I saw more than one post that mentioned that Blackberries are well known for their steep learning curve but that the reward for having surmounted it was mastery of a lot of advanced options and a highly configurable device.

Well, that learning curve really decided to come back and bite me the other day: I had what was possible the worst user experience with a device I’ve ever had. I’ll tell you the story, and then I’ll tell you what questions it raised in my mind about the psychology of user interfaces and experiences.

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DIY: Saving Money on Cosmetics, Part 2.

A couple of weeks ago I detailed the process of making my own eyeshadows, and I promised a part two that would talk about other things I’ve been doing for a couple of years now that are both better for my skin and save me a lot of money on cosmetics.

I’ve always had terrible skin. As a kid I had acne and as an adult I have the common problem of rosacea — a mild condition that entails some patchy redness and broken blood vessels that can be hard to cover up with makeup and are usually made worse by most skin products. It was always hard to find products that didn’t further irritate my skin and hard to find makeup that helped cover it up without looking like I was trying to imitate Tammy Faye Bakker. I tried any product on the shelf that made promises of clearing the skin, reducing redness, and evening skin tone. And then when those didn’t work I stepped up the game and tried products from some of the bigger dedicated companies like Mary Kay.

A lot of these products didn’t do much of anything or make any noticeable difference. Some worked for the most part. None of them produced any miracles, but then I wasn’t expecting any. The main problem was not that they didn’t work but that they were so expensive. A single bottle or jar of most skin products that promise to improve skin condition like mine can cost upwards of fifteen dollars or more, and they’re small enough to go through quickly, and I was too queasy to do the math on how much that was costing me.

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Making Stuff, Weeks 29 & 30: Something Blue

A short update for this week’s Fiber Friday entry which, by the way, you can get more of over at Wonder Why Gal’s blog.

We’ve been busily planning the wedding, and it’s surprising just how much time that can take up. In the meantime, though, I began the Luna Moth shawl and I’m really enjoying how it’s working up so far. This is my Something Blue and my Something New for the wedding. The yarn is gorgeous and so delicately soft that I’m almost afraid of it — it’s a singles and I rarely knit with singles to begin with, and it’s 100% silk to boot. But hey, it’s gorgeous so far, don’t you think? I can’t wait to finish it. The only negative with this yarn is that the dye isn’t fully set and leaves some blue on my hands, which means I’ve got some soaking to do when this is done lest it leave that blue on my dress.

Luna Moth shawl, in progress.

And that’s it for this week. I ain’t got time to write, I’ve got a shawl to knit!

Rent-a-Paca!

Back when we were shopping around for our alpacas and visiting nearby farms to get to know them and their routines, we visited Tiger Mountain Alpacas, a little home farm literally just up the road from us. While we were there she pointed to her neighbor nearby and explained that he had a small pasture and that she kept some of her alpacas on it.

We got a visit from that neighbor last weekend. We were dismayed to learn from him that Tiger Mountain Alpacas had to sell their animals, which for him meant that his pasture was empty and had been for nearly a year now and the grasses and weeds were getting out of control. He stopped by to ask if we were interested in putting our boys on it — free grass for us, free pasture mowing for him.

After some questions and a quick walk up the road to check out the pasture we decided it was a great idea. Our summer here in the northwest has been terrible for growing anything so our pasture is growing pretty slowly. We figured this was a great way to extend our pasture’s viability a little bit and maybe allow us to give our boys just a little less hay this year. We’ll only be doing it through July and August — after that the bears start hanging around our neighbor’s area for berries and get a little unpredictable, he says.

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Making Stuff, Weeks 24 – 28: It Can’t Have Been THIS Long…

Oh. Oh, my. I went and counted the weeks since my last Making Stuff update and was shocked — nay, appalled — at myself for having let a whopping five weeks pass without an update. I had intended to use this series as impetus to create something every week and be held accountable for it with actual photo documentation. And I sort of failed there. But that sometimes happens and you just have to pick it up again and keep going.

Wedding planning is my go-to excuse these days — I’ve spent most of my free time researching and researching and researching some more, and for some reason I felt like I just really needed a short spinning and knitting break, you know? And it doesn’t help that I’ve stalled on that lovely shawl I’m making with my Bamboo Benz handspun; I was sure I had enough yardage but ended up coming up very short, and with it being a lacy triangular shawl pattern (Marmalade on Ravelry) I now have to figure out the right place to rip back to if I want to finish it correctly. I don’t care about it being small — I actually kind of want it small so that it’s more of a neck shawl — but I do care about finishing it right. But now that I’m actually looking at the pattern after pulling it up to link here, I think I’m feeling a little more stress than I need to about it. It looks like I really can just rip back to the end of the last repeat and do the finishing chart. I’ve been knitting for twenty years now so this really shouldn’t be that scary. And it’s not, it’s just that it’s disheartening to know that after twenty years of knitting you can still make egregious errors like severely underestimating your yardage or not planning your chart repeats correctly. Or not putting a lifeline in to easily rip back to. You know, like you said you were going to do when you started this project knowing that you would likely run out of yarn. That sound you hear is that of my palm meeting my forehead.

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DiY: Saving Money on Cosmetics, Part 1.

I’ve always been a DiY kind of girl. I’ve also always been a makeup-and-clothes kind of girl. (Okay, that’s not entirely true — for most of my early childhood I was a pretty die-hard tomboy, but apparently something changed.) And any girl who’s into makeup and clothes knows that that stuff can get pretty expensive, and not only is it expensive but it’s frequently not exactly what you wanted when you brought it home. Or, in the case of makeup and skin care, doesn’t live up to the claims its label and price tag make.

The clothes part I’ve always handled by knitting and sewing a lot of my own clothes. I actually don’t like sewing that much and hardly do it anymore, but as a teenager I got really good at taking patterns and making them fit me. And of course knitting my own sweaters and accessories is something I’ve obviously kept up with.

So how about the whole skin care and makeup thing? Well, several years ago I got the urge to give that one a try and started making some of my own basic cosmetics — things like lip balm or bath oils, nothing too outrageously difficult. I was still spending a ton of money on expensive moisturizers, makeup, and hair products, though, and a few years ago I picked up a book called Natural Beauty at Home and my whole outlook on what I was capable of making myself completely changed. I started making my own cold cream to remove makeup. I not only succeeded in making a great product that was just as good, if not better, than what I was paying for at home, it turned out to be way cheaper and only took a few minutes to make. So I ventured even further — I looked up recipes and tried moisturizers, face cleansers, and mineral foundation. When those seemed to get really close to what I wanted I started researching and adapting my recipes, doing multiple trials, and eventually refining them to produce exactly what I wanted — all on the cheap, both in money and time.

This weekend I decided to branch out and try to make my own eyeshadows for the first time. I thought I’d document the process a little bit and show you what I did. In Part 2 I’ll talk about the other products I’ve been making for a few years now — moisturizer, cold cream, and mineral foundation.

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Alpacaversary: Our First Year of Alpaca Ownership.

Tomorrow marks a year to the day when we brought our first (and so far only) alpacas home and jumped headlong into the beginnings of alpaca ownership. We would have had an interesting year even if we hadn’t gotten them – Matt and I were each laid off and have since started new jobs, and then of course there’s our recent engagement – but the alpacas have added immeasurable joy and interest to our already fun lives, and I thought it would be a good time to reflect on some of the things we’ve learned in the last alpaca-filled year.

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