Selecting the wrong chart, like bad chart design, can obscure the data. Here is a simple model pick the right chart for your needs.
9 June 2009Steve Turbek
A designer focused on beautiful solutions to complex problems.steve (at) turbek.com LinkedIn @SteveTurbek
Mechanical Library
A museum exhibit to introduce students to Mechanical Engineering using motorized physical models. A connected website explains how they work and
where they appear using videos, and 3D models. The cabinets are designed to travel to schools and museums to support STEM education.
More at
Mechanical-Library.org
TheVerge.com podcast
I had the pleasure to do an interview with theVerge.com on remote control design, drawing from my essay
3 Kinds of Simplicity Part of it was excerpted on the popular
vergecast podcast.
More at
Vergecast on YouTube
NYTimes Goldman Sans
For the Goldman Sachs Design System, we had the pleasure of working with Dalton Maag on a new typeface, Goldman Sans. It was covered in a somewhat odd NY Times article
PrintMag Goldman Sans
A thorough and thoughtful Print Magazine article on Goldman Sans by Ellen Shapiro
Goldman Design System
As head of User Experience Design at Goldman Sachs, my favorite project was the Goldman Sachs Design System. I had the wonderful experience of
working with dozens of amazing designers and engineers to build an exceptional design system in Figma and code. Visit
Design.gs.com on archive.org
The GS Design system is freely available on Figma community.
My interactive GSDS color wheel.
Pratt "Robot in a Box" Class
I had the pleasure of creating a Pratt Institute design class with Deb Johnson and a
STEM not-for-profit NYC First, with whom I've had a long partnership.
The students developed new ideas for a low cost electronics education kit. NYC FIRST was an active part of the class, offering instruction,
feedback, and technical support ahead of the culminating usability test with a group of middle school students at NYC FIRST's STEM Center at Cornell
Tech on Roosevelt Island.
More at
Pratt press release
Bubble Calendar
A poster-sized calendar with a bubble to pop every day! (Now discontinued, was sold through MOMA, Uncommon Goods, & Amazon).
More at
BubbleCalendar.com
Bubble Calendar Press
Bubble Calendar got quite a lot of press when it debuted in 2008.
It was broadcast nationally on the Today Show on NBC, CoolHunting.com, BoingBoing, Apartment Therapy, Glamour Magazine, Daily Candy, PRINT Magazine,
Tangible (book), AP News Wire, Daily News article, Dwell Magazine, Time Out New York Holiday Gift Guide, Stuttgarter Zeitung Verlagsgesellschaft,
NEON Magazin (Germany)
Hex Flooring Table
Using leftover flooring to make hexagons tables.
Live Edge Bench
Reclaimed American Mahogony with Japanese-inspired joinery. Seat plates angle inward for comfort.
All-felt stool
Felt is soft, but surprisingly stiff when folded! Tied with string, this is a functional stool weighing just 8 pounds.
"Tractor Green" Table
A 2D metal curve repeated in three dimensions defines a form with interesting positive and negative spaces. Paint color came from a happy accident at the paint shop.
Classic Arcade Table
A table for the classic 80's arcade games that fits into a stylish living room. The joysticks fold under the screen of the mirrored glass.
Handmade Game machine
This completely hand-made and hand-coded arcade device was a technical demonstration, not a real product. It was written in BASIC for the PIC 877 microchip to play simple games like PONG and snake.
Re-Pete Coffee Table
This coffee table system can make tables with leg patterns composed from 3 to 10 legs.
Magic is powerful, but it also has a dark side. Could today's trend toward magical user experiences like gestures and voice spell doom for users?
3 Dec 2018Designers unique skill set can go beyond designing the UI of an existing product idea. Their tools and techniques can be adapted to define the product itself though early testing.
14 Apr 2017Remote controls are a great way to engage non-designers. These three examples show the difference between Engineering simplicity, Conceptual simplicity, and Aesthetic simplicity.
10 Mar 2017Apple TV Remote grip
The 2018 Apple TV remote has many design flaws, including not being obvious which way to hold it and being hard to pick up. This prototype grip
clips onto the remote, givinga clear front and back and raising it off the surface.
3D printing file is free to download
Submission to solvingsol.com, the Sol LeWitt tribute in code.
10 Mar 2017Submission to solvingsol.com, the Sol LeWitt tribute in code.
10 Mar 2017"White Knight"
Inspired by a cyclist friend who wears white jeans, this prototype chain guard for single speed bikes keeps your pants clean. The pattern of circles enables the atachment brackets to fit any sprocket.
How enterprise designers can use their special abilities to shape product strategy
17 Nov 2015How can design help real people use data in their lives?
16 Dec 2014Experiment to generate amoeba like creatures using bezier curves in javascript / HTML canvas
27 Dec 2014
A fun little puzzle iPhone game.
Formerly an iPhone app, it now works in Safari / Chrome. For desktop, use the arrow keys to steer.
Notes about the development of the Invisible Maze game
Getting the best of both worlds
19 Dec 2013UX team organization can make or break a company's design strategy
26 Nov 2013In a world of limited resources, code beats pictures. (published at BoxesAndArrows.com)
16 Jan 2012How good are you at reading charts? Which chart is the best? I created a small game to test chart skills and get some hard numbers on how well each chart works, including styles. Everyone says that pie charts are bad. But how bad? Let's find out.
18 January 2012When Bad Usability is Good User Experience
04 January 2012Having run a couple of marathons, I designed and coded some interactive charts to analyze the New York Marathon overall runner population and look up an individual runner.
21 November 2011There are no dumb users, but people are not just users.
20 April 2011
by Ben Kleinman, Stephen Turbek
Timezone dataviz to highlight the best times to call global offices
NYTimes on Furniture
Nice small note in print NY Times of my late 90's furniture business. I learned the hard way
Conference Table
Conferencing tables designed for the Razorfish conference rooms. With rollerblade wheel feet, they are easily reconfigured into multiple shapes. An aircraft fuel tank stopper can be opened to run laptop cables neatly through the leg.
"Happy Feet"
(Shown at Art Bots 2003) Happy Feet is an installation of 5 pairs of elegant footwear. Each shoe is mechanically articulated, enabling it to tap. The shoes are then free to dance, to create chorus line patterns, to interact with the audience. When unattended, the articulated shoes to tap rhythms. When a person steps on the foot pads, the shoes copy their steps.
Flat Pack Bench
Inspired by occasional large dinner parties with friends, this flat pack bench that could be assembled without tools. The sitter's weight locks the wooden rods in place.
Fastener-less Shelving
Non-parallel metal tubes keep the shelves in place without screws. The organic forms were derived from the stresses on the supports.
Carved Plywood Chair
An organic-form chair from carved layers of sheet plywood. Seat hollowed out for comfort.
Curved Plywood Bar
Custom designed and built, the curved plywood front dramatically swings open to show contents.
Folding Table
A traditional Shaker sideboard-table updated with organic forms.
Molded Plywood Bench
Springy and strong, the plywood forms can be used for home or public seating. The single repeated element can create concave or convex curves by altering the spacing of the aluminum connectors.
Cane Concept
Prototype of injection molded frame over aluminum core, with neoprene cuff, adjustable along molded ribs.
Pepto Bismol Bottle
Concept for a Pepto Bismol bottle. The evocative shape also served a purpose - the goose neck top delivers a measured dose when tipped back and forth.
Pratt Student Mailboxes
Competition-winning entry for Pratt Architecture student mailboxes. Hand made polypropolene.
Timberframe Pavilion
Designed and built in the summer of 1992-3, this structure combines traditional timberframe joints with unusual geometry.
A little formal fiction fun.
2009To an expert user, it is easy to forget the obstacle that registration and login pose to many users. Here are a few tips that can make the process easier.
August 2009Personas are a popular user experience deliverable, whose purpose and use are often misunderstood. This article suggests ways to make personas useful, and not just a pretty face.
1 March 2008Advanced search is the ugly child of interface design -always included, but never loved. Websites have come to depend on their search engines as the volume of content has increased. A progressive disclosure approach can enable users to use precision advanced search techniques to refine their searches and pinpoint the desired results.
16 January 2008From April till December 2006, I conceived, designed, and coded survee.com in the evenings. Though I dropped the project, it was very satisfying and taught me some harsh, but useful lessons.
15 April 2007As updating Tables of Contents in Visio is very dull, I wrote a macro (a small program) that automatically generates a Table of Contents list for a Visio document.
4 April 2007Realistic wireframes are easier for users to understand and respond-to in wireframe tests. Published at BoxesAndArrows.com
19 September 2006A whitepaper on a way to improve usability in website navigation.
20 May 2006A whitepaper on financial services business challenges and solutions.
30 March 2006A presentation at the 2006 Boston Usability Professionals Association Mini-Conference
30 March 2006This presentation summarizes research and workflow techniques for designing complex applications, and was presented to the Intranet Benchmarking Forum. As always with presentations, much more was said than appears on the slides.
21 March 2006Use these lazy techniques and spend your time on more interesting problems than lining up little boxes! Published on BoxesAndArrows.com
29 Jan 2006Project management techniques can determine the success or failure of an outsourced project. The discussion of IT outsourcing has been dominated by the advertisements of the companies selling it and the concerns of US workers. Less discussed is whether it makes sense for a US company to actually outsource major software projects.
13 April 2005Some tips on arguing, and how to avoid common logical errors.
17 January 2004Our products solve physical problems, not intellectual problems. Intelligent devices won't be useful until they can take action to achieve their tasks. This may be more difficult than making the device intelligent.
2003What food additives say about us as consumers.
23 March 2002A short paper on login best practices.
1 March 2001
by Gavin Shepherd, with Stephen Turbek
This report is a discussion of the issues regarding using audio elements and sound tracks in modern interactive environments.
by David Neier, with Stephen Turbek
The Open System Interconnection (OSI) model describes the way in which information travels across a network. This report illuminates some of the
inner workings of your computer as it browses the Web.
XML, the eXtensible Markup Language is a simple, flexible, open system for sharing data between organizations. Though generally invisible to the user, it is rapidly changing the way information is exchanged and is used in thousands of applications.
22 January 2001Secure Internet transactions have been as important as the Web browser in making the Internet useful. This report gives an overview of Public Key encryption and a brief history of cryptography.
12 January 2001Collaboration with distant colleagues is one of the biggest challenges in the new workplace. Here are some ways to make it easier.
11 December 2000What does it mean to be "digital"? Why has the word "analog" become synonymous with natural, old, or human? Why exactly is the future digital?
4 December 2000Plug and Play technology is poised to make computers much simpler, if only we can agree on a standard.
6 November 2000Cookies have been fingered as agents against personal privacy, but in reality, they work for you.
23 October 2000Digital media can be easily duplicated, making it difficult to control the supply. A new model for commerce must emerge.
2 October 2000Games illustrate what a good interactive experience can be.
28 July 2000The French culinary technique, the 'Gallantine'.
9 June 2000Notes from the work of the master of information graphics.
6 June 2000
by Ben Kleinman, Mary Quandt, Stephen Turbek, Neil Werhle
Tacit knowledge is used in all communities to keep people informed and engaged.