jeremy johnson (online)

Last week I gave my Gamification 101 presentation to the local Refresh Dallas meeting. This was the second meeting since bringing Refresh back, and I was glad to see around 40+ Designers, developers, and other creative types attend.

Back in July I gave a talk during Big Design’s Gaming track on… what else, but one of the hottest UX topics around: Gamification. This was kind of a Gamification 101, to get everyone tuned into what’s going on, what people are doing with it, where you can learn more, etc… With over 150 slides of Gamification goodness – you got a good high-level view – and I’m giving the 101 again – with some updated tweaks at this month’s Refresh Dallas.

With Steve passing, my RSS reader and twitter stream filled up with stories of how Steve (or a product created under Steve) had made life better. Or that he inspired, and challenged people in their lives to do something big. To do something more interesting, to strive for great – or insanely great. I’ve been an Apple owner for some time, and owe most of my career to Apple’s products. Not that I couldn’t do great things on a PC, but something about the Mac – creating great things just comes naturally on something that is itself great.

The first thing I’ve really been excited about in facebook for some time – the timeline. I’ve always been interested in showing my data in more interesting ways, and as the owner of much of my data, facebook is ripe to take advantage of it. While others have been trying to visualize parts your life, you really won’t need to look much further any longer. Let’s take a look at what my data looks like in the new timeline.

The word this week from the Wall Street Journal (of all places) that Amazon.com is redesigning – for the tablet age. And while there may be some truth to that, I think it’s funny how modern, clean design – automatically equals designing for a tablet. Design trends are always informed by the dominate devices in its time, and mobile is where our trends for today are starting. And since I’m now in the e-commerce space, I’m obviously interested, and took the new design for a test drive.

If I remember correctly, Refresh started in 2005 by @eris while working at Bright Corner. Eris and Garrett (who is speaking this Thursday) spearheaded the idea along with help from Jeff Adams. 2005, six years ago. That’s a long time in web years.

The perfect laptop for the airport and airline? – with the MacBook Air 11″ you don’t need to take out your laptop when going through the TSA line, and it actually fits on the tray – with your drink! #WIN

I agree with http://daringfireball.net/

I do work on the road using a MacBook Air, not an iPad, because I’m one of those users for whom the iPad’s design compromises get in the way, and slow me down. But I like having the iPad as a separate device, for reading and video. The marvel of the iPad is not that it can replace a Mac. It’s that it opened the door to all sorts of things that a Mac was never all that good for.

Overall my experience with the 11″ and Lion has been great, and the extra screen space is rarely missed and it performs like a champ. If only it had the iPad’s battery life, it would be the perfect travel machine!

Two weeks ago HP dropped their TouchPad by $100, Staples had a coupon for an extra $100 off that. A 16GB Tablet for $299. Sounds like a pretty good deal… The next cheapest option would be to get a Nook for $249 – but I really like WebOS. I like the attention to the design details, the gestures, the notifications – I could go on. But in the end, and as the events of this weekend showed – only when at the bargain price of $99 does it beat out the iPad in buzz and sales for a short time before its demise.

Year three. Really? Yes! The team from Big Design put on another great year – and I was glad I could help in some small way. From bringing in top talent to Dallas – to being the one big event each year where all Dallas area designers can meet and mingle – Big Design is great at providing a low cost way to become inspired and network with like minded designers, developers, and social media mavens. Check out my cameo in the above video, and for more check out this year’s photo gallery.

This week the local Dallas UPA held a Big Design Preview event, where 40+ people got to hear 10 minute previews on some of the great upcoming talks here at the GameStop office.