Web Directions Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

Every other week, I recommend some links to articles and online resources I think you might enjoy reading over the weekend.

Pixar in a Box

Regular readers will know of my love of (perhaps obsession with) animation, particularly the animation of Pixar. In conjunction with Khan Academy, Pixar has just released “Pixar in a Box“, ‘a behind-the-scenes look at how Pixar artists do their jobs. You will be able to animate bouncing balls, build a swarm of robots, and make virtual fireworks explode’.

Designing conversational experiences

Conversational interfaces, while having been around for a long long time, are incandescent right now. But we’re really only at the beginning of what many feel is a revolution in UI (and others feel are overhyped fads.)

I vacillate to some extent (and am currently watching Her, Spike Jonze’s 2013 film centred on the idea of conversational AIs and the relationships their–owners? employers? what exactly?– form with them) but do think there is probably a “there” there.

Google’s design team certainly does, and has brought together a range of resources to start implementing conversational interfaces.

Read it online, or download it as a PDF.

Expect much more on this at our events in the coming months and years.

Friction

When building products, you’re always either removing, adding or masking friction.

Back in 2009 for the original Scroll Magazine (which we resurrected last year, with a new edition is in production as well speak), I wrote an essay on friction and how the Web enables new things by removing it.

At the time I used the then still quite novel option of booking travel online, but it’s what underscores ride sharing, the teribly named “sharing economy” and other entirely new categories of business that have since emerged.

In this piece, Kintan Brahmbhatt, the Director of Product Management and Engineering at Amazon, who’s also deeply interested in the idea of friction, looks at examples of how reducing friction can make products, including Amazon’s conversational (see, it’s everywhere already) Alexa a more seamless experience.

I send out my links for Weekend Reading in our weekly email newsletter, alternating each week with an article I write myself. If you’d like to get our newsletter in your email inbox each week – and score yourself a complimentary digital copy of Scroll magazine – use the form below to sign up. Your info is safe with us.