I'm getting tired with the design of this site, so I'm starting to work on a new redesign of the site focusing on dark greens contrasting with lighter greens and blues.

Once again kirupaForum has helped me out; throughout the two-week cycle of the first two versions of Rain, I have relied on kirupaForum and its experienced and talented body of users and moderators to provide helpful and insightful feedback. One user specifically, who goes by haam, has been extremely helpful by providing important feedback on user psychology and design of the application.

A Blaring "F"

I try not to fail in what I do. But sometimes I just can't seem to get it right; with Rain I've had so many ideas and inspiration with the design I was hard pressed to achieve consistency throughout the application. Once of the most obvious examples of this is the discrepancy in the overall design of the main window and the Posting and Settings windows. The main window focuses on a dark blue color scheme with rounded corners and a 6 pixel border. Completely different from the main window, the Posting and Settings windows have a dark gray 8 pixel border and a white fill with absolutely no rounded corners. This is obviously a failure in design.

Restitution

To make up for this mistake I plan to restyle the main window to look exactly like the Posting and Setttings windows, with possibly a couple additions in the background and a more complex overall interface.

When Rain v1.0 was released I also created a thread on kirupForum asking for critiques of the user interface and the software as a whole. I did not expect such a big response from the thread, with a lot of major people participating in the discussion. I got some very good feedback on the application and an insight into the reasoning of users.

Something I needed to hear.

A few moderators and another user pointed out something important. Very few users know what AIR is, even fewer feel like installing more software to run a simple application. Although it is frustrating, it made me realize that to gain a shred of attention or popularity I would need to make this application worthwhile. And that I would need to make it extremely easy to use yet still powerful.

On a warmer note...

I did get some very positive feedback about the interface, along with some tips on how to improve it. Even pushing version 1.0 of Rain out has given me a new perspective on designing desktop applications. I highly doubt that my work on Rain will stop anytime soon.

Jus a little teaser, Rain version 1.1 should be out by this Friday; it will feature a built-in help section, Facebook status updating, and a couple other features to make posting to your favorite sites even easier!

With the house empty and a empty DSL line I sat down tonight to get to work on the design for Revision Magazine. Although Brian Gardner's theme is nice and WordPress is powerful; to really get this going Stuart and I decided that we'd need a custom Zine Management System. While he dove into the intricacies of the CodeIgniter framework I decided to tackle the design; aiming for a highly usable design that would put a ton of content right at the reader's fingertips. With this goal in the spot light I'm aiming for a gridded design with the most important items focusing in the top left with everything else spreading away from it in circular patterns. For those of you anxious to see some stuff, screenshots will hopefully come soon.

Have you ever actually looked at the overall design of the modern glass? There's actually a lot of complex design evolution behind it. It's specifically engineered to give the correct usage model in our heads. It's tall and long, perfect for being easily used by a single hand. It widens at the top for easy pouring, either into or out of the glass. Glasses have also evolved into many different forms, including multi-layer ones for insulation, wine glasses (Almost a world of their own.), plastic cups, beer mugs, and thousands of others. Each is specially designed for a specific purpose; we can instantly recognize many different types of glasses and know exactly what goes into each. It is also interesting how glasses evolved into the tall and narrow shape they are today instead of flat and wide, like a bowl. Hundreds or thousands of years of revisions and improvements led to the complex design of the simple glass. The history of the simple object, such as a glass, is often more rich and vibrant than we imagine.