• Read more about Literary Aestheticism: Our Designers' Reading Lists

They say you can tell a lot about a person just from their bookshelf. Here is an inside look at our design team's current reading lists!

Our UX Designer, Ben Markowitz, draws much of his design inspiration from comic books:

"I enjoy comics for the intricacies in design and layout more than anything. Comics are a form of visual story telling which is much different from most other mediums; the artists (much like web designers) work elegantly within the constraints of the medium to create the most effective and moving experience for readers. Balancing artwork with content, they leverage limitations in usable space by using only the most poignant and effective elements to tell the story.

I approach UX design in a similar manner: define the optimal experience for users using the minimum set of design elements. This isn't minimalism, it's just responsible design. I aim to deliver a defined and powerful experience to the user by removing unnecessary complexity."

You know him as Chris Tate, our Director of UI, but we know him as Batman. His presence is sophisticated, his designs are rad, and his reading list? A thoughtfully cultivated set of inspirational pieces:

Here is Ted O'Meara, our Director of UX, whom we know as Superman (no, really).

As a graduate student at UMBC in the Human-Centered Computing program he focuses on developing software for the cognitively impaired. Ted's reading list is a reflection of his passion for creating accessible software through intelligent design:

• Generative Art (Matt Pearson)
• How We Decide (Jonah Leher)
• Envisioning Information (Tufte)
• Design Pattern TRABING?: Touchscreen-based Input Technique for People Affected by Intention Tremor (Evaluation, 2010, 267-272)
• The design of a real-time, multimodal biofeedback system for stroke patient rehabilitation (MULTIMEDIA 2006, 763)
• ...and Raising Unicorns.

Ask Ted about his tragic unicorn history at his next conference.

Jurgen Altziebler is our Managing Director of UX and he always means business. His seriousness is visible within his designs; nothing less than pixel-perfect will do for this designer.

His reading list might reveal his Austrian-born penchant for modern, light designs balanced with high functionality and subtle beauty.

• Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams (Gestalten)
• Grid Systems in Graphic Design (Josef Muller Brockmann)
• Designing Universal Knowledge (Gerlinde Schuller)
• Ein Handbuch, Gestaltung, Typografie, etc. (Claire & Damien Gautier, Published by Niggli)

Javier Rios, our UI designer, is unambiguous and systematic. Maybe even a little crazy. (Ask him how many times he's been hit by cars while running!)

The practical, heuristic lineup of books in his reading list exemplify his approach to design: functional, clear designs that create a straightforward user flow path.

• HTML5 for Web Designers (Jeremy Keith)
• Responsive Web Designer (Ethan Marcotte)
• Mobile First (Luke Wroblewski)
• Designing For Emotion (Aarron Walter)

Style: The Main Ingredient

Based on their books alone I would conclude our design team is a group of calculated, discerning, artful design addicts. One thing can't be ignored though - they've got some serious style. It's that style that infuses every design they create, every user experience they develop, every carefully colored pixel on a page. As A Softer World once pointed out in their comic, "Everybody dies. Every single person. So, style counts."

Style counts.

• Read more about Acts as Readable - Drop-in 'mark as read' functionality

When writing an application there’s a number of times where it can be very useful to know whether or not a user has seen or accessed a piece of information. I recently had to write a solution to such a need and have wrapped up the result in a plugin for your enjoyment.

ActsAsReadable allows you to create a generic relationship of items which can be marked as ‘read’ by users. This is useful for forums or any other kind of situation where you might need to know whether or not a user has seen a particular model.

Installation

To install the plugin just install from the GitHub repository:

git clone git://github.com/mbleigh/acts-as-readable.git vendor/plugins/acts_as_readable

You will need the readings table to use this plugin. A generator has been included,
simply type

script/generate acts_as_readable_migration

to get the standard migration created for you.

Example

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base   acts_as_readable end

bob = User.find_by_name("bob")  bob.readings                      # => []  Post.find_unread_by(bob)          # => [<Post 1>,<Post 2>,<Post 3>...] Post.find_read_by(bob)            # => []  Post.find(1).read_by?(bob)        # => false Post.find(1).read_by!(bob)        # => <Reading 1> Post.find(1).read_by?(bob)        # => true Post.find(1).users_who_read       # => [<User bob>]  Post.find_unread_by(bob)          # => [<Post 2>,<Post 3>...] Post.find_read_by(bob)            # => [<Post 1>]  bob.readings                      # => [<Reading 1>]

And that’s all there is to it! It’s not an incredibly complex set of features, but I find it to be a pretty useful one. If you have any questions or issues, please feel free to post them on the public Trac