A condensed description of Quora’s design approach.
For Quora, [design] means designing for whys (the product) and taking the most straightforward route possible for the hows (the interactions).
The hows are then driven by the answers to the whys—after all, why a user must enter a flow dictates how they progress through it.
The Kano model is a theory of product development that has a great way to describe user’s reaction to product features as well as help prioritize feature development. Of course, it is neatly flattened and visualized with two axes. I’ll take the upper right quadrant, thanks.
I have been leaning towards more textured interfaces. Although I’ve never really liked inner shadows, the examples here suggest a quick experiment with some CSS wouldn’t hurt.
Simon Willison is genuinely excited:
That technology is Ryan Dahl’s Node. It’s the most exciting new project I’ve come across in quite a while.
At first glance, Node looks like yet another take on the idea of server-side JavaScript, but it’s a lot more interesting than that. It builds on JavaScript’s excellent support for event-based programming and uses it to create something that truly plays to the strengths of the language.
Beautiful new theme from Khoi Vinh and Allan Cole. It’s full-featured and comes equipped with everything you’d expect in a theme (although probably don’t need). The best part, which I’ll undoubtably be stealing for some future project, is the presentation of the archives in the right-most sidebar.