Mark A Powell.com

Man, Adobe really loads up on the stuff it puts into the default folder when installing on Windows. I don’t remember what it puts into the folder on Mac, but I really had to cut through the clutter

Before

After

Ahh! That’s better.

Just saw this for the first time on a flight from Chicago to Minneapolis.

My Brazilian Embaer 175 had a “Turn Off Electronic Devices” light instead of no smoking, which is brilliant. In looking into the details a little further, it appears that they could only safely make this change as late as 1989 for flights under 2 hours, 1990 for under 6 hours and 2000 for all flights (in the US). I had no idea you could have flown a plane as late as 1989 with someone right next to you smoking away. Next it’s going to be the rise and fall of cell phones on planes…

When you exit the Dell QuickSet control panel from the “notification area” you’re presented with this dialog box:

Blech! Most people won’t read the language and click “Yes.” Which means that it’s going to launch with your system every time you log on to your machine. But I don’t want this panel to ever launch, which means I need to exit the program every time I log on.

Cut to the chase. “Yes” and “No” are not commands that have any significance to what the actual program is asking for.

Here’s what I think it should say:

While looking at Windows Messenger I thought I’d take it upon myself to remove needless status updates next to people’s names. If there’s a clear icon and a good mental model of what it means, the extra text clutters the interface.

Business purpose: Communicate activities of the Office of Workplace Inclusion; Provide publishing platform for Employee Resource Groups
Audience: Internal employees
Services provided: Information Architecture; Visual design; XHTML Coding; Usability Testing; Accessibility Considerations; Publishing Model

For the Office of Workplace Inclusion I worked closely with the administrator of the site to create a site that can be used for communication both by the office and the Employee Resource Groups. This provided a unique challenge in that the site needed to provide a consistent platform visually and navigationally. In order to accomplish this I used a tab-based navigation for the majority of the site and a left nav for the ERG sites. This way the tabs remained visible and provide an indicator of location, and allowed the ERGs to have a longer navigation scheme.

Because one of the ERGs is a group for disabled employees I worked to create an accessible site. I used high-contrast navigation colors with large target areas. I also employed a text-size switcher that increases type-face size by 50%. Lastly, I employed semantic mark-up with all text-based navigation.

Business purpose: Communicate value and services of the Talent Management department
Audience: Internal employees
Services provided: Visual design

This mock-up was created for the Talent Management group within Medtronic for their intranet site. The design was based on the central element of a tree growing. The tree symbolized the growth of the employee through the organization and their career. Reflecting this theme I created a site using a subtle nature inspired palette. I also used glass buttons and an open content area to keep the site looking clean and professional.