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Blog posts tagged "Design"

Talking about gestures to Fast Company

Presenting Ubuntu on phones last month caused a bit of a stir in the tech press. One of the main takeaways has been its assertion on an interface that’s based on direct and instant access to common functions via the edges of the screen. Since this is quite a disruption from traditional hard-key or soft-button

Raring to ringlead this cycle

Raring Ringtail is well under way with delicious new visual elements being dropped in all the time, and the new default wallpaper has already landed. Now it’s our turn to add some community contributed assets to the mix in the form of the wallpapers submitted by us, the users of Ubuntu. Last cycle we limited

Behind the scenes: Notes

With the recent reveal of Ubuntu on phones, and now the release of an example “Notes” application and toolkit , we thought this would be a great opportunity to share a summary of the process we went through for the design of the application itself. Why it is needed There has been a lot of research

Viva Ubuntu!

Wow! How do you know you’ve made something great? Some good indicators are press coverage, an award and a visit by Will.i.am. The first day at CES showed that the mobile industry and many, many (no, really!), many people are impressed and intrigued by Ubuntu for the phone. 1. Amazing interest Online, on the first

Designing the new Ubuntu for phone pages

As you’ve probably seen, Canonical has just announced Ubuntu on phones. We’re all very excited about it, especially since so many of us have been working hard on this project. Here’s an insight into the design of the new phone pages on ubuntu.com. Deciding what to say The tricky part when designing pages to show

Ubuntu comes to the phone, with a beautifully distilled interface and a unique full PC capability when docked

Leading open PC platform with huge global following announces mobile version for network operators, OEMs and silicon vendors Fast, beautiful interface for entry level smartphones Unique PC experience on superphones when docked with a monitor, keyboard and mouse Ubuntu raises the bar for mobile UI design, for richer and more immersive apps

Design and arts in education

Ubuntu’s design team supports #includedesign, which is a important initiative – supported by many design organizations and companies.

Solving design problems

To solve a design problem, define the target user, test the existing solution (if any), evaluate alternative solutions, and test with real users. The more of these steps you can follow, the better the results.

Back to Lecturing for the day

In my last post, I spoke about my transition from academia to industry. One thing that I felt I would miss were the opportunities to speak to students, and watch their progression throughout the year. So when I was asked to go back to the University to give a talk, I jumped at the chance.

A fresh-looking Design Blog

It’s been a long time coming, but we’ve finally done it: the Design Blog has a new look! Let me take you through the main aspects we wanted to improve on. Why change? The last blog design was nearly four years old. With its small font sizes and crammed pages, the text was difficult to

The UDS Design Track

One week to go! We’re looking forward to UDS. For me personally it will be my first and I’m thrilled to check out all the interesting sessions and hear your stories about Ubuntu and design. There will also be a very exciting design track in which we hope to work together on many cool topics,

Academia vs Industry

I have now worked at Canonical, ‘The company behind Ubuntu,’ for almost 4 months. The time has flown by, and I am finally getting up to speed with the working environment, the people and the atmosphere. So what differences have I noticed between the academic setting and the industrial setting? My biggest fear of moving

12.10 wallpaper selection finalised

Here they are! Our lovely wallpapers for the 12.10 release of Ubuntu. Fine plumage I think you’ll agree! As you’ll have seen elsewhere on the web these landed in the release at the time of the freeze last week. A massive thanks to everyone who contributed, the standard was very high this time around, people

12.10 shortlist so far

12.10 shortlist, a gallery on Flickr. Today the group closed on submissions for the 12.10 wallpaper selection. The team of us involved are still working to add/ remove and refine this collection before the 30th. We’ve got a few more than our 10 target, we’ll review this number tomorrow based on quality and what we

Prototyping Navigation with JavaScript

I wondered if I could make an easily updateable, prototype site in order to test a number of different IA’s using an XML file to represent the sitemap. This post is about what I did and how to get some sample code if you want to use or extend it for yourself. The XML The

Calum and Mika’s cakes.

We are blogging a lot of cakes, so to economise on space, I’ve paired Mika and I’s latest baking attempts. Last week was my turn to bake a cake. I was nervous. There’s a lot of pressure, and it is no easy task! So I chose to bake a loaf (but relying on one design