Leftium

Naver has one of the best graphical temperature visualizations. Simple, clean, with the right amount of information. You can probably figure it out even if you can't read Korean or don't use Celsius. Web sites in Korea are usually usability disasters, but every so often I come across a true UX gem. Take Naver's visualization of temperature over time , f or example.  I've seen many other temperature graphs, but Naver adds one tiny feature that makes theirs immensely more usable: the temperature from yesterday and the day before. That extra little bit of historical information makes the current temperature and forecast temperature much easier to read.

Dear Wells Fargo, The fragment of my Wells Fargo debit card taped to this letter attests to the fact I was your customer for 24 years. Today I closed my Wells Fargo accounts. Let me explain why you are losing customers like me. Who knows how many hundreds or thousands of other dissatisfied Wells Fargo customers simply switch away from your bank without even explaining. Like my brother did. I closed my accounts due to the atrocious Wells Fargo banking experience. For example: one day, with neither warning nor explanation, my checking account just vanished from the Wells Fargo site. If that wasn't frustrating (and scary) enough, what should have been a simple fix with a single phone call was drawn into an agonizing month of repeatedly contacting various incompetent representatives. From my experience, it seemed like the representatives were paid by the number of cases they handled per hour. Their responses looked copy-pasted from generic boilerplate templates and often, in the...

To commemorate the release of  Dojo Toolkit 1.8.0 , I'm sharing my bookmarklet to inject Dojo into any web site from the browser. My Dojo-fy bookmarklet is based on this  jQuerify bookmarklet . Besides the obvious change, I've made a few improvements: Works over both HTTPS and HTTP The status message is removed on mouse over Some aesthetic changes To use the bookmarklet, drag the following link to your bookmark/favorites list: »  Dojo-fy  « Full source code after the jump:

"The Element of Creativity!" Inspired by Adobe's CS3 icons , I designed my logo to resemble a cell from the periodic table of elements. The Leftium logo features an over-sized "Le" that pops out and forms a leftward arrow. lef·ti·um n. Symbol Le The element of creativity! John-Kim Murphy's online identity/username. Yes, in a moment of sheer brilliance I combined the word "left" with "-ium", a suffix commonly used to form the names of chemical elements (think " Titanium ", " Einsteinium ", or " Adamantium ".) The result is a personal online ID that I am very proud of because "Leftium" is: Short—only seven letters long. Yet the domain leftium.com was still available (obviously!) Relatively easy to convey over the phone. Most people know how to spell "left" and can guess the rest from the sound. Much easier to explain than "wonsungi", anyways! Unique. Before I star...

A few of the monkeys I started drawing and collecting to go with my username. I initiated my quest for a personal online ID over sixteen years ago. While teaching myself computer programming, I discovered the demoscene . Mesmerizing pieces of audio-visual digital art, demos were often signed by their authors with "handles", or pseudonyms. As an aspiring programmer, I desired a cool handle like "Abyss" or "Psi". My real name, "John", was too common. In fact, once there were four John’s in my grade school class of twenty-four students. Even "John Murphy" was fairly common. There were at least six other students named John Murphy enrolled at my university. Later, while employed at both Lockheed Martin and Microsoft, I got numerous e-mails and some phone calls that were intended for some other John Murphy. Also at airport security I was inevitably always delayed due to some naughty John Murphy from Ireland.

Bunnies . Pencil on construction paper. 1999. Pulled from my high school Drawing III sketchbook. Based on a figurine from my house. A quick post to celebrate Easter and the fresh spring weather. I wouldn't have realized it was Easter if my Mom hadn't mentioned it in an email. In Korea, Easter is not marked on most calendars (although Christmas is). Instead, Koreans recognize other holidays like the upcoming Buddha's birthday . Can you find the Easter egg hidden in this post?

Mad Pumpkin. Marker on construction paper. 1996. I drew this freshman year of high school (Drawing I). Perhaps if this pumpkin focused on the positive aspects of life he wouldn't be so angry! October's been a busy month! I've been juggling four business partners and just as many different projects. I've also been making minor contributions to various open source projects. It's far too easy to pick out the bad things in our lives and complain about them. For instance, I have many more ideas for the UX Hall of Shame than the UX Hall of Fame . We usually take the good stuff for granted until it's gone, then complain about its disappearance. It's much easier to highlight bad experiences, especially in Korea. So, bucking this trend, here's a run-down of good things that happened to me in October: