http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=744121 Car Battery DL and Thread @ XDA Dev Forum
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=745155 Block Battery DL and Thread @ XDA Dev Forum
August 4, 2010
May 10, 2010
May 6, 2010
May 5, 2010
March 26, 2010
Upcoming new Andchat app UI
The current Andchat UI
The new upcoming layout
Recently I have had the opportunity to focus on more personal projects while I look fora new job designing. Probably the biggest focus right now is going through some of the applications in the Android Market that need UI improvements, and offering concept UI’s for free to their developers. I think it’s a great way to stay on top of the mobile game, as well as improving my design chops by doing something new all the while giving back to a largely open-source community from which I have been offered so many great applications for free.
When i offered free design services for dev’s on XDA, dev Zer0day of Andchat fame asked me to take a look at the UI for his great IRC client. After a while of going back and forth, we have finally come to agreement on a new design for his app that should make it both more robust, and easier to use.
Some of the new additions users will notice are:
-A new background image to polish the design a bit
-a revised more cohesive color palette
-a server indication bar at the top of the screen allowing the user to know which server they are currently using
-a revised channel bar to highlight channels where the user has direct Private Messages, as well as normal messages
-slight revision of the button layout to switch channels
This is only the main chat window layout, and I hope with in the next day or two , to be able to also go through some of the options menus and tighten up the layout there as well. Stay tuned for more in the next couple of days…
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March 18, 2010
[Alt Design Concept] Pandora Android App
Here is the first in what will hopefully be a small project I am undertaking to improve some android app layouts and keep up on my graphics chops while I search for a new design gig. If people like this I will do some others and continue to post them here. Enjoy.
-Travis
The Issue:
This concept UI assumes that most Pandora users run the program in the background while they browse the web and take care of other business, which may or may not be true. I personally use Pandora often in the car and while commuting (or used to, haha awww). One thing that struck me about the app was it was not friendly to the user on the go who may only have a few seconds to interact with the program.
One of the most confusing things about the stock layout is the controls are small and hard to see at a glance, and could possibly be mistaken for the actual built in virtual keys on the N1 and other new phones. I also am somewhat concerned by the placement of the album artwork as the most prominent design element, which I doubt anyone really looks at for more than 3 – 4 seconds.
Generally I thought the usability could be cranked up about 1000% by simple things like making buttons larger, and placing them far more strategically in the middle of the screen, replacing the less important artwork. In this version, artwork is in the background, blurred to give a more interesting texture than the normal black and adding a layer of depth to the UI.
Most of the button functions stay the same, with the addition of the bookmark song button. Action buttons (Play & Next) are larger, and set on opposite sides of the screen for muscle memory.
Song title and artist title have been changed to a larger size to be more legible at a glance. Hopefully this facilitates finding the song title you are listening to quickly, then with the other improved elements, just as quickly being able to rate it, play the next track, change stations, or bookmark the song.
In general I think this would be a good starting point for a redesign for the app, or at least the addition of something similar for car use, much like the built in Google dock adds easier functionality to other programs
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Full Screen "Battery Saver" edition
Improved Notification Bar Controls
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February 12, 2010
Firebug for Firefox, and site improvements
I must admit, I have not always been a huge fan of Firefox for Mac, but the plugins available for FF are just great. Firebug in particular is a awesome tool to debug the xhtml and css on sites like this one, and if you’ve been here before you may notice small changes here and there. I really went through the site, trying as much as possible to adhere to a pretty strict grid, but the glory of xhtml and css is it’s not the same thing for all users. Firebug really helped me cut down the time of tracking down lines of css by having a great split screen UI in the FF browser that very much resembles the split screen of Adobe’s Dreamweaver.
The icing on the cake is that in addition to viewing the code, you can alter the code and see a real-time version of what that alteration would look like. Mind=Blown.
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February 4, 2010
Glory to the Canon i9900
Back when I was attending Ringling, I held a variety of jobs–everything from making espresso at the local opera house to mixing paint at a Home Depot. Somehow through the trials and tribulations of all these jobs I saved enough to purchase my first good quality printer, a Canon i9900. At the time I had to print on several different paper types at sizes from the very small to 13″x 19″ almost on a daily basis, and the i9900’s 8 separate ink tanks appealed to me. Also part of my choice was based on the Canon not being locked into a specific paper like many of the similarly equipped Epson models were. So I purchased the i9900, and it became a cornerstone of my computer design setup. (more…)
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January 4, 2010
Hello world!
Site finally up and running…now with resume downloading action! Next step is to retheme this blog to be consistent with the portfolio site, and add return navigation in. Time to start looking for some themes to hack.
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