typography - How to design the letter ß (eszett or sharp S)

Looking at existing typefaces there seems to be a some variations of how the character is designed.

It seems that the letter (called an Eszett or Sharp S in English) originated as a ligature for ſs (a long s - not an f).

Some examples in different fonts with related characters:

There are at least 2 distinct ways of creating the character - One being based of a lower case f (or ſ) & lower case s, the other being based on a lower case f (or ſ) & 3. Some designs extend to the cap-height and some extend to the ascender height. Most do not have a descender but some do.

As someone who doesn't speak any languages that use the eszett/sharp s, I am unfamiliar with it's usage or form. I therefor don't know if any of these variations in design are incorrect.

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An article on Typography.Guru by a German typographer explains how to design the capital ẞ, but doesn't give any information on the lowercase ß I am interested in.

UPDATE: Since this question was posted, an article by the same author as the previous article has been published, detailing the design of the lowercase ß. The article can be found here:

Answer

Today there are two standard models for the design of the ß character. [...] They are recommendable for most of today’s typefaces.

Using a ligature of ſ and s is the usual choice for humanist typefaces and is used by both serif and sans serif typefaces.

Designing the ß in this way should be simple, since it is just an ſ and s connected with an arc. The similarity between the ſ and f characters mean that typefaces without an ſ design often use an f without the crossbar.

The connection between the ſ and s is important.

The connection however is mandatory today. While an unconnected design is a historic variation, it won’t be accepted by today’s readers.

A continuous or abrupt connection

The connection between the ſ and s shapes usually connect as one continuous curve, but there are typefaces which emphasize the different characters clearly by making a distinct change of direction.

German readers without a background in typography see the ß as one character. Stressing ſ and s as individual parts of that design is neither expected nor necessarily helpful. Just as a W exposing its origin as ligature of two V is a possibility, but not necessarily helpful.

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This design is used more with geometric or constructed typefaces as the two arcs work better than the flowing form of the connected ſs ligature. The connection of the two arcs shouldn't connect with the stem and the bottom should not be closed, as not to confuse the design with a capital B.

Around 1900 an official German orthography was established and a committee of type founders and printers met to define rules regarding the design and use of German characters like ß, ö, ä, ü [...] The design proposal that was chosen had similarities with an unusual letter used in the 17th century by the printer Abraham Lichtenthaler in the city of Sulzbach and is therefore now known as “Sulzbacher Form” (Sulzbach design).

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The half-crossbar on the ſ is ok but isn't needed

The ſ sometimes has a horizontal stroke on the left side. If so the ß should have this stroke as well. This isn't however required in the case of the ſ or ß—or even desirable.

In my opinion, it only supports the confusion of ſ and f and therefore the horizontal stroke might also be omitted for ſ and ß in modern typefaces. Either way, ſ and ß should always follow the same principles.

The descender

The ſ character will normally have a descender in italic or script designs and the ß should follow this design. This is also standard for german handwriting.

Blackletter ß

Another design sometimes seen is derived from a blackletter ß. This is not a standard design however and may not be desired.

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All images and references from The Multifaceted Design of the Lowercase Sharp S (ß) by Ralf Herrmann

inkscape - How to remove the part of a shape that is not within the rectangle?

How can I keep just the part of the shape that is inside the rectangle?

I would like to do something like this:

Here's the original video I've seen this from: (StackExchange doesn't allow me to post more than 2 links, so I'll put the link in a comment to this question).

What is the technique used by the designer to keep just the part of the circles that are within the rectangles? I tried slowing the video down to 0.25, and all I've seen is that he went to the Path section, but I don't know what he clicked on.

Here's my "remake"

As you can see from my "remake", the circle is above the rectangle, but I can't hide the part that is not within the rectangle.

"placed" Photoshop images in Illustrator - blurry when saved as .pdf?

I've edited some images in Photoshop to be used in a .pdf I'm creating in Illustrator. In PS, the images looked great and were saved with the following settings: .jpg/CMYK/Image Options: 10/Maximum. I "placed" them into the Illustrator file, everything still looked great, but when I exported the whole file as .pdf, the images came out slightly blurry. I've used standard, High Quality Print, and Press Quality settings- didn't notice much of a difference between them.

Any ideas on how to have crisp, clean images in the .pdf?

Answer

171x100 pixels gives you an image that is slightly more than 1/2 inch wide at 300 pixels per inch. I'm taking a guess that this is not the size you specified in the Illustrator document, which is why your output was pixellated, and when you worked in inches inside Photoshop you then got a correct result in Illustrator.

A 2 inch image at 300 ppi is 600 pixels wide (600/300 = 2). Any time you are sizing an image to place in a print layout, the important numbers are inches or cm at the output dpi. Unless you can do the arithmetic in your head easily and accurately, it's safest to work in linear units in Photoshop rather than pixels.

career development - Getting into UX as a CS graduate

I'm graduating from university next summer and I'd like to go into a UX/usability/interaction design job, but my degree is a straight BSc Computer Science. What can I do to convince people that I'm capable of working in the field and maximise my chances of getting a job in it?

I don't want to do a masters because it's so expensive, so I've already been doing the following:

• Writing about UX on my blog


• Reading loads of UX books


• Picking all the related modules on my course


• Choosing a dissertation with UX in it


• Joined the UPA

Is there anything else I'm missing that you would advise?

critique - Logo design: is this too simple or boring?

I'm currently designing a logo for a film production company, but I am struggling a bit and would be grateful some feedback. This is my progress so far:

I've received some feedback from people on instagram and most seemed to have positive responses but some mentioned the general lack of colour and one said that it is more a badge rather than a logo and is "trying to be an illustration but it is not".

I'm also not sure if what I have done is too safe/obvious and whether I should perhaps come up with something more abstract? Or if it is too simplistic, but then I'm not entirely sure if that's necessarily a bad thing!

One idea which was raised was to go with something completely different and use an icon of a hatchet - as Baltag means hatchet apparently, but I feel that is beyong my logo design abilities.

The company is called 'Victoria Baltag Production', and in terms of design I haven't really been given anything else to go with aside from the name, and that it should convey that it is for a production company.

Answer

• I recently made a comment on another design, but that also applies in this case: avoid designing from our remote memory, on the contrary, take as a starting point a real reference and elaborate the abstraction. Especially when we are not very good at drawing. Is the logo a pictogram of the profile of a film camera?

• You are using a Gestalt Law: Figure-Ground. But then you self-sabotage the effect of your design by adding a parallel shadow! It's a nonsense.

Figure-ground perception refers to the tendency of the visual system to simplify a scene into the main object that we are looking at (the figure) and everything else that forms the background (or ground). The concept of figure-ground perception is often illustrated with the classic "faces or vases" illusion, also known as the Rubin vase. Depending on whether you see the black or the white as the figure, you may see either two faces in profile (meaning you perceive the dark color as the figure) or a vase in the center (meaning you see the white color as the figure).

• How many size reductions the word "PRODUCTION" will support?

• There are two relatively unrelated typography families: an Egyptian with a humanist sans-serif. This means one with an equal stroke and hard rectangular serif with a sans-serif with modulating strokes. As a contrast it is valid, but perhaps it should be more accentuated to not be interpreted as a graphical mistake.



• Red arrows: three different stroke/serif unions, if the typography is like that, in a two oversize characters playing with figure/ground, brings more confusion than quality to the design.


• Orange arrows: two different stroke/serif unions


• Green arrows: three different gaps between shapes

• This is a simple logo with eight shapes, six of them with different shape typology, will be good to find a formal meeting point to relation them. Shapes 2, 3 and 6 are very confusing perceptively. In a reduction, shape 2 looks like a mistake.

• A positive perceptive point you should enhance: the conjunction between V and B gives a point of support in the V and directionality in the B, perfect to finish with the camera lens. Don't be shy showing it, at the original design the whole lens is nearly hidden or worse, together they are a formal wall that stops the dynamics of the logo.

forms - Date of birth input... best approach?

Possible Duplicate:

Most User-Friendly Form Fields for Entering Date/Time?
Whats the best way to display DOB form fields?

Entering your date of birth into a form should be straight forward, but I've seen a few different approaches to handling this.

The most popular choices seem to be

• Freeform (perhaps with an input hint to imply how it should be filled in)


• Datepicker (uses selects from a calender popup)


• 3 select boxes (makes sure data is valid, but for a large year range might not be easy to fill in)

What is the best approach to entering your date of brith you have seen? how would you handle this? Does anyone have any studies of usability tests for this?

Answer

Freeform with an input hint is probably the quickest and simplest. People tend to be very good at typing their birthdate (I guess I've typed mine hundreds of times).

For general date input, the other solutions might be good, but simple text input works well for birthdates. (The hint is necessary to remove ambiguity between d/m/yyyy and m/d/yyyy.)

technique - 1st person story, but the main character will die in the end and some of the story needs to be told after his death. How to solve this problem?

I personally like to read stories told by the the main character, it's more "alive" to me. But the problem is that my character will die and some of the story will need to be told afterwards. Maybe 1 or 2 pages max.

How to solve this problem?

Answer

There are a few ways to solve this:

1) Switch narrators.

Everything is told by your main character until his/her death, at which point some other character finishes the story.

2) Your narrator continues narrating from after death in some supernatural fashion.

Your narrator could become a ghost or spirit, wander disembodied, communicate through Ouija board/séance, etc.

This was done very subtly in the novel Song of Achilles, written from the first-person perspective of Achilles's partner Patroclus. Patroclus is killed by Hector. (I assume I'm not spoiling anyone for the Trojan War...) But for the Greeks, a person's soul couldn't enter Hades (the underworld) until s/he was given proper funeral rites and his/her grave marked. So Patroclus is able to stay on as a disembodied soul for the last 15% of the book, telling us what happened after his death. (I won't spoil the ending of that novel. Go read it. Moving, beautiful, amazing. I cried.)

3) Switch narrative styles.

If it's literally only a page and a half, change to a third-person narrative style, maybe even set it in italics, to make it clear it's an epilogue because your first-person narrator is dead.

Or have a series of newspaper articles, blog posts, emails, letters, etc. reporting/discussing what happened after your narrator's death.

ETA

4) See the answers to this question: Ways for main character to influence world following their death

I'd forgotten about this question earlier. It's not a duplicate by any means, since your story is not interactive, but you may find something useful in those answers.

Is there an icon set containing icons for different platforms/stores (e.g. App Store, Play, Windows 8 Store, etc.)

Is there an icon set containing icons for different platforms/stores (e.g. App Store, Play, Windows 8 Store, etc.)?

I am interested in grayscale icons similar to Glyphish and Glyphicons.

photo editing - How do I remove a green screen background in Photoshop?

How can I green screen in Photoshop? I am making a picture were I need to green screen, and it would be very helpful if someone could help me!

website design - Keyboard shortcuts overriding default browser action

I'd like to add some keyboard shortcuts to my website. How severely is usability affected if I override the default browser behavior?

• CTRL+B: bolds the text instead of open bookmarks.


• CTRL+N: go to next step instead of opening new window.


• CTRL+P: play the video instead of printing.


• CTRL+R: refresh small portion of the page via AJAX instead of refresh the whole page


• CTRL+S: save your email, not the HTML

Rarely used browser operations

My personal opinion is that it's okay to override rarely used browser operations. I've never used CTRL+N to open a new window. I always press CTRL+T to open a new tab. I'm not the average user, so I'm not sure if opening a new window is more common than I think.

Common browser operations

CTRL+B is a tricky one. I see Stackexchange overrides bookmark opening with text bolding. I commonly use CTRL+B to open my bookmarks, so sometimes I get confused for a few milliseconds when it fails. On the other hand, CTRL+B is so common in text editors, such as Microsoft Word, that regular users would expect it to bold text, and not open the bookmarks.

Unconventional actions

Have there been any studies on what are the best keyboard shortcuts for certain operations? I noticed that there are conventions that most software follows. CTRL+E, for example, focuses the search engine box on browsers and focuses the search box on Windows Explorer. Could someone provide the conventions for the following?

• Play video: WMV uses CTRL+P, VLC uses spacebar.


• Stop video: VLC uses S, I only know CTRL+P to pause in WMV.


• Full screen video: WMV uses ALT+ENTER, VLC uses F.


• Next step: I believe ALT puts an underscore under the "n", then hitting N executes.


• Previous step: Probably the same as next, except with P.


• Delete item from list: ???


• Toggle a switch on or off: ???



• Select next item in list: Tab? But overriding it would prevent user from tabbing around to various HTML elements.

VLC Media Player has horrible UI compared with WMV, so I'm guessing I shouldn't follow their lead. It's been developed by computer programmers. I doubt they ever hired designers.

Answer

It can be more of an accessibility issue. Normal thought is to not break default browser behavior if you can avoid it.

Since keyboard commands tend to be used by power users, I'd suggest making this an option that can be set for those that want them. Something along the lines of 'enable keyboard shortcuts'.

style - Acronyms in Technical Writing

I can't find a standard, is the most common use to have the abbreviation followed by the defintion? Example

NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization

fiction - Is sending your characters back to a different century a good way to disguise them?

In one of my novels, I took two "contemporary" real life people, and sent them back to the 18th century to fight the American Revolution. (Yours truly is one of them.)

My current understanding of the "libel in fiction," as in the Red Hat Club case was that the true "backstory" of the main character was so accurate, believable, and convincing, as to lead people to believe that the supposedly fictitious (and "defamatory") parts (about the main character's alcoholism and promiscuity), were also true. In other words, there was no "disconnect" between fact and fiction.

Does sending your characters back in time create such a "disconnect" (assuming that your characters are reasonably well disguised)? Put another way, is "18th century" a strong enough signal of fiction so that people would not reasonably believe other things you say about your character, whether or not they are true.

If you're a lawyer that can answer on legal grounds, great. If not, you can still answer as a prospective juror and "finder of fact."

Answer

Note: Not a legal expert

If you based a character in a historical novel on a real person from the present, it would take a fair amount of concerted effort for anyone to even notice, and even if that character had distinctive traits or speech patterns linked to the real person, one could make a good case that it was usage for satire. No reasonable person would read an account of a historical figure as representing accurate information about a living person.

The only exception I could see is if the entire book was a thinly disguised account of a group of contemporary people, where the actions described were generally true to their present-day counterparts --which would be a tough thing to make historically plausible.

interaction design - Hardware permissions in browsers

We're building an app that allows people to upload or record their voice or video using HTML5 (not flash). We've run into a problem where users can't seem to find the button to allow the app to use a microphone or webcam. On chrome it's a little topbar that slides down when an app requests permission to use hardware.

The users that we're working with are very low -> low in technical literacy.

Has anyone had a similar problem? how did you guys handle the communication?

forms - What is the best UI for overwriting previously saved values?

I am working on designing a standard for how overwrites should be handled on our software. I have come up with a couple different options for when a user needs to make changes to values that they have already entered previously. Please let me know what you think, or if you know of best practices for handling this.

options - Hedgefund-like behavior for covered call selling account?

I make money selling covered calls on FX spot options, and some of my friends want to buy in to this without having to trade their own accounts.

One method is for each of them to get an account, and have me trade it, but that doesn't scale well: I really don't want to be trading 10 accounts.

The other method is to let them "buy in" to my account. My question: how do I determine what "portion" of my account someone owns, assuming many people (including myself) deposit and withdraw money?

Is there a better way of doing this? What if I charge my friends a small fee to trade?

I'm guessing the answer is well known, since hedge funds/mutual funds have to deal with this all the time.

fonts - Embedding pdf in illustrator

So, I'm using adobe illustrator for creating vectorial figures, mainly for graphs.

In illustrator, creating graphs is not so well implemented, so I'm using another tool to make them (e.g. R, xmgrace, pyx, mathematica), and them export as PDF and "place" them in the illustrator, for further modifications and adjustments easier to to in illustrator.

There are two "types" of placing: either a link to the original pdf, or embed the pdf in the illustrator, converting its data to illustrator's "notation".

When embedding, it is frequent that the illustrator does not have the fonts of the PDF (e.g. LaTeX symbols), and thus screws all the symbols/text of the original pdf during embedding.

I currently know one way of "solving" this for images, as pointed out here: by converting the pdf to a postscript without fonts, using (on Mac):

gs -sDEVICE=pswrite -dNOCACHE -sOutputFile=nofont-Myfile.ps -q -dbatch -dNOPAUSE Myfile.pdf -c quit  

For simple formulas, this seems to be equivalent to export a formula from LaTeXit as "PDF w.o.f." (without font) instead of just PDF (this utility appears during Drag of the formula)

However, for images, this requires one step on the process (the terminal command) just to create a new file, for them passing from pdf to Illustrator.

Does anyone knows a better solution than this one?

Answer

When embedding, it is frequent that the illustrator does not have the fonts of the PDF (e.g. LaTeX symbols), and thus screws all the symbols/text of the original pdf during embedding.

This seems to be your main problem, correct?

Instead of opening the PDF file in Illustrator, place the PDF file. While the PDF you placed is still selected, go to:

Object > Flatten Transparency > CLICK "Convert all text to outlines"

This will take care of any font issues you have with your pdf's and allow you to continue to edit in Illustrator.

fiction - What can one do to get the most from limited writing time?

I do make an effort to write every day, and usually succeed, but I just have too much going on in my life right now to give my writing the time it would like to have. When I do have time, blog posts, tech papers, etc. try very hard to crowd out the fiction I do for fun (not that I'd mind publishing it some day, I just don't have the time to put in to pursue that goal in earnest right now).

• 
  

  I can't always take "just" a half hour or an hour or two more to get to a stopping point. I hate stopping when I'm on a roll, but it's just a fact of life. How do you grab what you had when you left off and lose as little of the "juice" as possible when you sit back down to write?

  
  


• 
  

  How can one shorten the time from "sitting down to write" to "oh, yeah, that's where we were..." and productive writing?

  
  


• 
  

  Are there any productivity tools you recommend to make the planning process less disjointed? I'm happy with my editor; however I'm using mindmapping software for general notes, and paper index cards for rearranging timeline, and would like to replace the index cards, or possibly both, with something better suited to the task. (I'm not interested in an IDE-like all-in-one such as WritersCafe.)

  
  

Any other tips re: productivity despite limited writing time would be appreciated, too.

Answer

When I'm on a roll writing, I always make sure I stop before the roll ends. In other words, if my "writing time" is almost up, and I have a great idea and I know what I want to say, I will often stop before I'm done, take a few notes on how I want to complete the idea, then stop for the day.

While on one hand it may be stupid to ignore the flow, this approach allows me to get started quickly the next day - I scan where I left off, and have little problem getting right back to the pace of the previous day.

I can't do it every day, but I do it when I can because it has never failed to get me into the "writers zone" quickly.

Make the logo smaller without being blurry

How can i get a small version of my logo? Like a favicon. I tryed but it results blurry!

Which is the best way to get my logo really small? Do you have any tutorial for this?

Thanks

physical - What are the benefits of non-QWERTY keyboards?

I'm stuck with QWERTY, but have been tempted to try Dvorak. Dvorak advocates claim it's faster.

Are there any studies that compare these two (main) keyboard layouts? Are there other layouts out there that are more productive than these?

Answer

If you are already used to a QWERTY keyboard and you feel that the benefit of changing (which doesn't include speed) will be worth the time taken, as well as not easily being able to use someone else's keyboard, then you should take a look at the Colemak layout.

It has fewer changes from QWERTY than Dvorak, and keeps the position of many of the shortcut keys in particular (cut, copy, paste). In tests, it is as good as Dvorak in terms of finger distance travelled (in English) and moves high frequency keys from your small fingers (which is a weakness of Dvorak).

Overall though, there is little evidence that Dvorak or Colemak is faster than QWERTY (see http://hi-games.net/typing-test/ as an example), but there is evidence that it helps with fatigue, RSI and carpel tunnel syndrome.

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Fun fact: It's a common misconception that QWERTY was designed to slow down speed - one held to almost as doctrine by many people. It was designed by Christopher Latham Sholes based on a letter frequency study (by Amos Densmore) and some general trial and error to prevent key sticking. It did this by alternating left and right hands (which is what helped with keys not sticking). As it turns out, his also happens to help with faster typing, and is exactly what most other layouts also do. (For a speed comparison between different layouts, see http://hi-games.net/typing-test/)

In fact, a major study in 1956 conducted by the U.S. General Service Administration found Dvorak to be no faster than QWERTY. This was followed up by other studies into the 1970's all confirming the 1956 study.

adobe illustrator - Best way to send layouts with editable text to writers/editors who don't have design software

Here's a common design workflow problem, probably most relevant to in-house designers, but also to agencies who have a lot of non-design writing or research staff, or freelancers who work with in-house writers. Many designers encounter it and have a way of dealing with it: I'm interested in what our collective design experience can come up with for the best way to deal with it.

Here's the problem:

• I'm making a text-and-images layout, and I need to send early drafts to writers for copy editing.


• These writers don't have design software and never will: buying it in isn't an option. Assume they have MS Office, and that maybe one person in the office has Acrobat but they can't access it easily. (In my case, these people are writers and research experts, there are loads of them, and copy writing and editing for designs is a small portion of what they do)


• The copy editing is somewhat dependant on the layout: the writers need to be able to see the flow of the page to see how each chunk fits in, and how much space they have for each chunk. I'm thinking of cases like infographics and diagrams with detailed labels where the text, imagery and layout go hand-in-hand, rather than cases like books or magazine layouts where we'd just say "give the designer between XXX and YYY words and trust them".



• The layout at this stage doesn't need to be exact on their end, but they need to be able to get an idea of it. It doesn't matter if what they send back to me is a bit of a mess visually, I'll just be extracting and using their editted text

So, what are the best methods for giving people an editable rough approximation of a layout?

Any answer should ideally be better than my current method - which is to email around PDFs showing the rough layout alongside flat Word documents with the text, hoping that the writers will understand and respect the layout and understand how much space they have... They rarely do... and since copy writing and editing for designs is a small portion of what they do, this is not likely to change.

Ideally, it should be less clunky and time-consuming than creating a separate PDF form and re-creating every text box as an input element to create a sort-of editable PDF, or, re-creating an approximation of the layout by hand in something like Word.

I'll accept answers starting with any common design software. In my case it's mostly Illustrator, but tricks that work starting with designs in InDesign, Photoshop, Corel, Inkcape etc are all relevant.

adobe illustrator - How to fill a shape with color in a way that doesn't follow the outline?

I have created this shape in Photoshop and exported as PNG:

I then imported it to Illustrator and now I am trying to colour it exactly as the logo below. Any help?

creative writing - Publishing fiction: when do I start looking for an agent?

I am just about finished with the first draft of a novel I've been working on. I've been writing novels for about ten years and I've self-published a couple, but I'm looking to peek into the world of "real" publishing. I've been struggling to find resources about how this process should actually work. I didn't study anything related to creative writing or even writing at all in college (beyond my gen ed requirements) and my "normal" job isn't at all related -- this has just been a longtime passion/hobby of mine.

So, my question is: how much editing should I realistically do before I start sending in query letters? I know it would be helpful to have beta readers or anyone to give advice, but unfortunately no one I know has time for that! Supposing I finish my draft by the 15th I'll have written about 100k words in 2.5 months, so fairly quick but nothing crazy. I'm planning to do a full pass through after that, catch the smaller errors and also take detailed notes on the structure so I can tackle it more thoroughly moving forward.

But how many drafts should I get in before I start seeking advice for publication? My dilemma here is this: When I self-published, I was pretty lax about editing. I didn't want to put a ton of time and energy into a technically perfect piece when I was mainly just writing it for myself and a small audience (those projects weren't taken very seriously, but I'm still proud of them). I had some amateur friends give them a read, but for the most part it was all me.

I'd rather not spend a year of my free-time-life editing something and THEN get mountains upon mountains of rejection letters, if that makes sense. I'd rather know now if I have a chance of publishing professionally -- becoming a NYT bestselling author isn't the goal, just getting a book on the bookshelf and going through the process been a dream of mine since childhood -- but like I said, I have no clue how this process should work!

Basically, any guidance as to how I should approach my editing and promotion after finishing a first draft would be GREATLY appreciated.

Sorry if I was a bit rambly and disorganized with all that... I should really be asleep but I was up late writing. Again. Surprise! Anyway -- thanks, all, in advance!!

Generic "get in touch" icon

I usually use the phone call icons, or email, sms, and so on.

But in my case we found the need for a generic "get in touch" icon, which will lead to either email, or phonecall, or sms, depending on what is available.

Is there an icon for such a feature? Right now I'm looking at hybrid icons with a phone over an envelope for example, but while that would do the trick, I'm curious if there is anything more to find out here.

Is there an icon that exists for such an action?

EDIT: adding context to understand my question :

I have a list of contacts and in that list, each cells displays quite a bit of information : complete name, company, role, email, a couple of other tags, and 3 possible phone numbers (home/work/mobile).

All that is quite a lot to display in one cell ; it was the original design but it's just too much.

Touching a cell simply selects it and is outside of the scope of this question.

Right now, you can also tap on the phone numbers/email to send an email or call the person. Which forces us to leave enough space on the cell to select it easily (I'm in a mobile app), which makes the cells quite big on top of displaying a lot of information.

But there is zero use for our user to actually know the phone number of the contacts, in our case, we really just need a "call home", not a "call 123456789". We tried reducing it to text (call home) but changing the number to text does not solve the issue.

We then decided to simply add a button that opens a picker modally, with "Call home, call office, send email", etc. depending on what was available in the contact information. Then selecting somethign in that picker initiates the actual phone/email action and switches you in the relevant app.

We're happy with that, the cell is quite small, we can see more contacts on 1 screen, and it does not obscure the experience to hide the numbers and emails (you never really look someone up by email or phone number).

I'm talking about that button, the one that opens the picker, this is the icon i'm looking for. It's a contact that person using whatever mean is available, which probably includes an email and at least one phone number, which could be home/office/work button.

I hope this provides enough information and context :)

Answer

I would think merely a "conversation" icon would work well....

or

... or something to that effect.

This because the overall goal appears to be to contact the individual for a conversation.... regardless of the means of contact.

vector - Smart object anti aliasing Photoshop CC 2015

I get the new version of photoshop CC 2015. Now when I past a vector from illustrator directly on photoshop they create me a smart object but they are no anti-aliasing at all.

May someone help me? Thanks

forms - Are Placeholders good for default values?

I read (and believe) this article that data entry tips in HTML placeholders are generally harmful and should be avoided.

In-context descriptions or hints can help clarify what goes inside each form field, and therefore improve completion and conversion rates. There are many ways to provide hints...Unfortunately, user testing continually shows that placeholders in form fields often hurt usability more than help it.

I'm starting to see placeholders being used for default values, and it seems this would be a better use for them. They would represent what the field will "do" if no value is entered, and are thus a literal placeholder for no value.

The idea is that, while a placeholder hint disappears when the user most needs it (when they are interacting with the field) a placeholder default value disappears when the user has decided they don't want it.

Example:

If you leave the breed field empty, this form will return all available dogs regardless of breed. The "Any" placeholder denotes that.

NOTE: Please don't get hung up on "breed" - it could just as easily be "postal code" or anything else that accepts free-form entry. This question is about placeholders, not about when to use different kinds of input elements.

Is there any analysis to back up/refute whether this is a good pratice? Does anyone have experience trying this?

Ref: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17800328/show-placeholder-instead-of-the-default-value-in-html-form

Answer

I am not an english native speaker so I only knew of the term placeholder when I entered Web design/development. So I just searched Wikipedia about the meaning of the word and read this interesting (for me) information (emphasis is mine):

These placeholders typically function grammatically as nouns and can be used for people (e.g. John Doe, Jane Doe), objects (e.g. widget), locations ("Main Street"), or places (e.g. Anytown, USA). They share a property with pronouns, because their referents must be supplied by context; but, unlike a pronoun, they may be used with no referent—the important part of the communication is not the thing nominally referred to by the placeholder, but the context in which the placeholder occurs.

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Placeholder as a generic example:

If I understand correctly, placeholders are generic examples in a certain context. They might be real cases but I guess the more generic the better to understand it is an example.

So Placeholders shouldn't substitute labels and shouldn't substitute extra information needed to complete the input.

In your example it might be tricky to use a generic example as breed. A concrete case could work but the more specific the placeholder the more difficult it is to understand that it is supposed to be generic.

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Placeholder as the default value:

It is useful if you want to reduce the amount of interactions but it is a bit more complex to understand. Also it is not working as a generic example as there is no "Any" breed.

This case is tricky because it is a simplified version of:

^{download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups}

(In the image, "Any" and "Pomeranian" text should have lower opacity)

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Conclusion:

Generally I would stick to using placeholders as generic examples (one example, by the way).

• It helps understand the expected value to be entered


• It is no longer needed once read and on focus


• It doesn't assign checkbox functionality to inputs (as the "Any" does)


• It is not left empty which can lead the user to question what or how is the value expected to be entered


• A generic example is useful as in some occasions labels are not 100% clear or are ambiguous

confirmation - Verifying that a user acknowledges and understands a given message without adding excess inconvenience

Say the user wishes to perform a dangerous but necessary task, from which there is no recovery or going back (for example, erasing a hard drive, or permanently deleting an online account after confirming they don't want to simply disable it - these are just examples, it could be something done more frequently).

There is of course always the issue that the user has not entirely understood the implications of the actions they are about to take (or even understand the action itself) - so of course it is necessary to prompt the user to confirm their choice of actions.

Bearing in mind the seriousness of the task they might be about to do, how can you get a user to confirm their choice of action and acknowledge that they understand the consequences in such a way that:

A) They aren't inclined to ignore warnings or messages explaining what's about to happen and just jump straight to whatever button/tickbox will move to the next step.

B) The user experience isn't degraded by excessive prompts, warnings and hurdles that may bore the user and increase the problem outlined in A.

C) Allows you (the service provider/developer) to have some indication that they really did see any warnings you gave them so they can't turn around afterwards saying they didn't see a warning when they actually just ignored it.

C would seem the tricky one. My first inclination would be to require the user to answer a question about the task.

So in the case of erasing the drive, you might ask them "What will happen to any personal documents stored on the computer? A) Nothing, B) Permanently destroyed, C) Automatically backed-up" - and if the user answers anything other than B, don't allow them to continue. While this may work in that particular context, I can't think quite how you'd adapt this to other situations, and it does seem to beckon point B again where you're interrupting the user.

Answer

I would recommend clearly going with an approach which clearly calls out the the potential impact of the action they are going to provide and require them to provide a second level of confirmation. The second level of confirmation can be perhaps done by using a checkbox (like how you have in terms and condition boxes) and then only enabling the delete or affirmative button or even requiring the user to enter a specific text to confirm the action.

You also need to look at the design of the confirmation popup to ensure it stands out and is not dismissed by the user as one of the many popups which the system might show accepting whom which have no real impact on the system. A excellent example can be gleaned from this article The UX of Confirmation Modals.To quote the article

In the app I design, there used to be a way to delete many of the important objects in the database. This was an important feature, but also a dangerous one for obvious reasons. Saying “This will delete these leads, are you sure?” was no working. People ignore these sorts of messages. I needed to get them to think more clearly about the problem. This is what I came up with:

Several “features” of this modal.

• Imagery. On the one hand, it wakes people up. ”Ooh, this looks serious!” On the other hand it is partially whimsical. ”Ooh, that’s cute!” It simultaneously pokes the user in the brain in two different ways.



• Language. I say, “Delete, Destroy, No Going Back, Can Not Undo, Erase”. I tried to use every conceivable language that will get the user to think, “Hmm, will this really delete these leads?”


• Makes them think to complete the task. The bottom right button is disabled until they put in the correct number of leads that will be destroyed. Additionally, they need to check the box. You can’t just click YES. You need to think to come up with the correct number.

This modal was an unqualified success. The problem (“I accidentally deleted my leads”) has never happened since the modal was put in place. Additionally, several comments on it’s effectiveness have been received. I love this modal because it accomplishes its goals without being mean to the customer.

I also recommend reading this article How To Prevent And Minimize Errors: Part III for additional inputs on best practices for creating confirmation messages

affordance - Which is more intuitive to open content when the arrow is on the right, arrow pointing in or out

When looking an expandable panel, such as those which one might find in an accordion and considering the situation where the arrow is positioned on the right hand side of the element which is to open, which of the following two arrow directions is the most likely to imply to the user that the panel content opens below the heading:

^{download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups}

To be precise, I am looking specifically for answers that concern controls where the arrow moves on click to indicate something opened and ends up in the down pointing position to indicate that the panel is open.

python - TOIS (CHF), TONAR (JPY), AONIA(AUD) in Quantlib

I am looking for the TOIS, TONAR, AONIA in Quantlib for discounting. I only could find the EOINA, FEDFUNDS, SONIA etc.Do I miss something? In case they don't exist how can I use the corresponding rate helpers in quantlib (python).

Answer

Not all overnight indexes were given a specific class.

As a workaround, you can create an instance of the OvernightIndex class and pass it the relevant parameters (fixing calendar, day counter etc.). E.g., if there wasn't an EONIA class already, you could build an instance of it as:

index = OvernightIndex("EONIA", 0, EURCurrency(),
                       TARGET(), Actual360(), curve_handle)

where the parameters are a name for the index, the number of settlement days, the currency, the fixing calendar, the day counter, and a handle to the curve used to forecast the fixings.

If you find yourself doing this often, and if you can write some C++, you might also consider writing a specific class (like EONIA and the like) and possibly contribute it to QuantLib. You can compare the code above with the contents of ql/indexes/ibor/eonia.hpp and ql/indexes/ibor/eonia.cpp to see how that can be done.

color - Why is pure blue darker than pure green?

If I convert 100% green and blue to grayscale, the blue one becomes about twice as dark.

I can see that green looks brighter, but I also want to understand reason behind it.

Looking at colors in rgb model:

• pure blue = 0 red 0 green 255 blue


• pure green = 0 red 255 green 0 blue

So why is pure green brighter than pure blue?

Answer

Human perception isn't the same for all colors. Our eyes have different color pigments which absorb different frequencies of light.

There's a bit about this over in Physics.SE: Why do green lasers appear brighter and stronger than red and blue lasers? From this question a chart is presented that shows the absorption of different frequencies of light. The three cones are represented by their colors and the rods are the dotted line.

Note here that that something that is in the blue range, while it will trigger the blue cones, but poorly trigger the rods or the green or red cones. Meanwhile, something that is deep red will trigger the red and a bit of the green cone, but not much of the rod or any of the blue cone. The sum of these pigments absorption peaks in the green making green look the brightest.

There's even more about this in the cone sensitivity curve found at Visible Light and the Eye's Response and the spectral sensitivity wikipedia page. When looking at these graphs take care to note that many of them have been normalized into a 0 .. 100 scale.

There is also an aspect of distribution of the various color cells. More on this can be read about in "Blue" Cone Distinctions at HyperPhysics which notes that outside of the Forvea Centralis (most densely packed area of the retina for maximum sensitivity) they are only about 2% of the total count of cone cells (which then suggests that there is a 'blue amplifier' in our perception of the signal). The reasoning for this is likely because the blue light will get bent differently than red or green and we would have significant issues with chromatic aberration in our own eyes if we were to sample blue outside of the main focus significantly (just thinking about that gives me a headache). The root of the color vision tree at HyperPhysics is Color Vision Concepts which is a good read.

This predisposition for green being the important color can be seen in the various Bayer filters used in digital cameras which sample green more than red or blue.

Bryce Bayer's patent (U.S. Patent No. 3,971,065) in 1976 called the green photosensors luminance-sensitive elements and the red and blue ones chrominance-sensitive elements. He used twice as many green elements as red or blue to mimic the physiology of the human eye. The luminance perception of the human retina uses M and L cone cells combined, during daylight vision, which are most sensitive to green light.

^{_{From Wikipedia Bayer Filter: Explanation}}

This can again be seen being utilized in the program ppmtopgm which converts a color image to grayscale. It uses the formula: l = .299 r + .587 g + .114 b - note that green is more than twice as the other colors combined when creating the gray value, and 5x more than blue. _{^{Btw, be sure to read the quote in that man page... its quite amusing - especially when taken in context of its origins)}}

And thus, why green appears to be brighter than the other colors.

Professional designs and their effect on sales

Is there any evidence to suggest that a prettier more professional design results in the user trusting that site more and therefore that website results in better sales? Are there any examples of this?

For example, Marks & Spencer spent 2 years redesigning their new site – and reportedly spent an enormous £150m on it. By the time it launched, it was already outdated. Furthermore, its online sales plunged by 8.1% in the first quarter following the launch of its new website. Reference: https://econsultancy.com/blog/65244-where-did-the-marks-spencer-website-relaunch-go-wrong.

This is a small example but I'm curious if, for example, http://www.worldofenvelopes.com/ improved their design to be more appealing and professional would this increase conversion rate due to users trusting the site more and is there any evidence of this?

user behavior - Is a "zero" value in a legend necessary?

Background

I'm working on a calendar display for my application. I'm using the Cal-Heatmap library, however I've modified the legend.

With this calendar library in particular, the square representing the lowest values in the legend always says less than when the user displays the title by hovering, while the square representing the highest values displays greater than . The libraries example is below.

Standard lowest value:

Standard highest value:

In the version I've built for my application, there is a zero bin, then it ranges the first colored bin from 1 - (see below)

My zero bin:

My lowest values:

My highest values:

The data I have is dynamic and since I've put the zero bin in, I've been having some issues getting the correct hover text to display. My concern however, is that the user won't know that the white values in the calendar mean the value is zero.

Question

Do I need a zero bin to be displayed to users in the legend or would they assume that anything that isn't (in this case) green has zero for a value?

Answer

Zero values are important to include in legends and are often wrongly overlooked.

In fact, there's a case for why the zero value is the most important value in the legend to explain. Unlike other values in a legend, 'zero' can have multiple meanings...it could mean 0, no data available, not enough data, or a very small amount.
Without a legend, the ambiguity can lead to wrong user interpretation of the data.

• For example, you have a heat map of cancer rates in the Europe, and Belgium is blank. Without a legend, you cannot tell if that means Belgium has a zero cancer rate, a small cancer rate, the study didn't include Belgium, no data is available, etc.


• As a result, readers may come to very wrong conclusions like: "there is no cancer in Belgium!" (when in fact the country was actually excluded), or "cancer data isn't available for Belgium" (when in fact data is available and Belgium happened to have the lowest cancer rate in Europe).

For your application I suggest:

• 
  

  You are considering removing the zero value because it's hard to place the hover text. This is "allowing the tail to wag the dog". The question you should be asking (on another forum like StackOverflow) is: how do I get my hover text to be placed properly?

  
  


• 
  
  

  Hover-over is not a good way to present a legend. Especially one where there is a scale of values. Users can't compare the ranges...they have to hover over each one which is incredibly frustrating. It's better to have a swatch of colors, or an icon which the user can click to pop up a proper, full legend which shows each color next to each value.

  
  

Hope that helps.

sort - What ways can I present sorting options for individual drop downs in a web app?

Say I have a drop down with a full employee name and an ID, comma delimited...

Some users may want to sort the values in this dropdown differently, in this example we'll say they may want to sort based on the first name, last name, or ID. Currently we're making the text next to the dropdown (in this case it'd be "Employee") have a hover-over that allows you to select the sorting options.

Do you think this is intuitive enough on it's own? Are there standards for providing sort options to the user for individual dropdowns?

We at one point had separate dropdowns for sorting next to the field. In some cases it could take up a relatively large amount of real-estate though. However, perhaps it's worth it?

Is there a single text color that is acceptable on both dark and light background?

Is there a single text color that, when used on either dark or light background, produces a readable (or at least tolerable) output?

If it makes it easier, constraints can be put on the hue, saturation or brightness of the backgrounds and/or the text color, as necessary.

---

Motivation: Although there may be other uses of this, my motivation is from a user's point of view. I prefer to use dark themes both on my OS and my browser, but many applications and websites set only either the background or the text color, while at the same time doesn't bother with setting the other one. The default theme in my OS and browser is dark text on light backround and that's what most applications expect. I would like to select a color that is acceptable when an application is not respecting my themes.

Answer

Try something around #777 grey. That should give you tolerable contrast on black or white.

print design - Queries from Printers about my booklet created with photoshop, please help

I sent my artwork for print and they have returned it with a few queries. I would be very grateful if anyone could help me understand what they are asking of me. They said:

1) No bleeds , no trim marks in the artwork

2)Small elements prepared in CMYK colours. Printing from that file may cause those elements to be unreadable, or making them blurred. This effect is occurring due to standard misregistration in offset printing method.

3)To preserve high quality of printing could you please set all black (now prepared in cmyk) texts and logos to outlines. (not as a image) and prepared in black only.

accessibility - empty cells in accessible html tables

For an html data table in which each row represents an item (such as an email) would screen-reader users prefer empty table cells to be empty or to have a placeholder like a dash?

In my brief experience I think a dash would be useful because it keeps navigation consistent among the rows, but I want to make sure that this intuition is correct.

Answer

JAWS will read an empty cell as "BLANK" as noted here, which is why it's a good idea to avoid lots of empty cells (and table based BLANK layouts BLANK). Placing a dash will cause it to read the dash as well, which would make a lot less sense than BLANK.

I believe JAWS will also read a table cell with   inside as BLANK but I can't test this. It seems to read such elements as BLANK.

If the table is proper tabular data laid out correctly, BLANK is the logical way to read a blank row.

Also note if you leave a dash in an empty table cell it might make less sense to sighted users too. What does a dash mean for "Mother's Maiden Name"* for instance?

_{*Aside from Le Dasha}

discovery - Which way should I display time zone names to make them easily pickable?

We have to present a list of time zones to the user from which they select the one that applies to them.

We have a choice about how we display this information - either:

Time zone name (Offset)

or:

(offset) Time zone name

Windows uses the latter approach, but I'm not sure.

How do people pick their time zone? Do they look for the name (Central European Time, Pacific Time, etc.) or do they use the offset from GMT or UTC?

This leads onto a supplementary question - should the offset be displayed relative to GMT or UTC? Windows XP used GMT whereas Windows 7 is using UTC - or at least that's the case for the machine I'm using.

Answer

In the few times I've done this, we've always followed the format: Time Zone Name (offset)

In very brief user testing, we found that users looked primarily for their time zone name and didn't always know the offset from GMT (or UTC). So we have that field first. I don't believe our users knew (or cared) about whether the offset should be from GMT or UTC.

This was for a form available to a broad public audience in the US. Our findings might not be the same if your audience is more technical or outside the US.

volatility - Continuous delta hedge formula

When we buy a call and continuously delta hedge using some implied volatility $\sigma_i$, what is the formula for our aggregate profit given that the actual realized volatility is $\sigma_r$?

Say $S_0 = 1000, \sigma_i = 0.25, \mu = 0.10$, and the call has expiry a year from now.

How does the formula look like in terms of $\sigma_r$? What happens if $\sigma_r =0$? $> \sigma_i$? $< \sigma_i$?

variance - What is the difference between overlapping and non overlapping returns

My prof asked me to make an Variance-Ratio test for overlapping as well as for non-overlapping returns.

What is the difference between overlapping and non-overlapping?

Answer

An example of non-overlapping one month returns: the return in January, the return in February, the return in March, etc.

An example of overlapping 30 day returns: the return from January 1 to January 30, the return from January 2 to January 31, the return from January 3 to February 1, the return from January 4 to February 2, and so on.

There are far fewer non-overlapping returns than overlapping returns. The non-overlapping returns are statistically independent of each other, the overlapping are not. If you are going to use overlapping returns you must use specific statistical procedures that are designed to take the dependencies into account.

typography - What font types are good for a technical document?

What are some good fonts to use for a highly technical document? Is there any specific type that should be used/avoided?

Answer

Technical documents will have a deeply nested, hierarchical structure, and also make use of footnotes, different types of emphasis, cross-referencing, pull outs and side bars of one sort of another and captions. The main distinguishing feature of technical documents tends to be complex structure.

For headings, you can use any reasonably legible font; this could be serif or sans-serif. It should have a complementary style to your body text, but the headings should provide an obvious visual structure to the document.

A decent serif or sans-serif typeface is fine for the body text if you have a lot of prose. If you have a lot of illustrations with labels or captions, pull-outs or tables you might want to use a sans-serif font for the body text and a serif font for headings. Footnotes will be smaller than the body text, so don't use a font for the body that is too small.

For emphasis, the italic or oblique version of the font should have a noticeably different texture to the body text.

For tables, captions and pull outs you should use a sans-serif font in most cases. If you use a serif font for the body text make sure the texture of the sans-serif font complements but does contrast significantly from the text type.

If you intend to have code listings or other monospaced items in the document then you will have a third typeface for the monospaced text. This should visually complement any sans-serif typefaces. Don't use Courier for this as it is relatively wide; other monospace fonts such as Lucida Console will give you more monospaced characters in the same width for the same point size or general legibility. Also, Courier doesn't really go with anything and the version that ships with most O/S platforms is very light and not terribly legible for reading large code listings.

If you have the option of buying in the fonts then you can pick any combination that looks appropriate; many resources on the web have helpful suggestions for this.

If you are stuck with fonts supplied by your operating system vendor then the story is slightly different. Although I briefly worked as a typesetter about 20 years ago most of the technical documentation work I do these days is functional specifications and I am typically constrained by the software available in the client's standard desktop build.

Some options are:

Palatino is quite a pleasant typeface for text if you are writing large bodies of prose. It got done to death in the DTP era as it came bundled with most Postscript printers, but that is a bit of a dying memory so it can stand on its own merits. It will go with any of the Sans-serif fonts (Arial, Tahoma, Trebuchet, Calibri etc) that ship with Windows. MacOS and most Linux distros also come with a decent rendition of Palatino from Adobe or URW.

The Lucida family is designed for this type of work, and has serif, sans-serif and monospace fonts. It has a pleasant, contemporary look and works well. Another big plus is that most O/S platforms come with Lucida fonts. The Lucida family was also designed to render well on low-res output devices such as screens or early laser printers, so it is a good choice in a font intended for PDF output.

Stand-bys Times and Arial (or Helvetica) work OK, although I find that Times italic tends not to stand out very well on laser printed documents. The document will look like something done with MS Word, but the typefaces are serviceable. The main reason to avoid these fonts is personal taste or a desire to avoid looking like amateur word processing (which may be more important than you think if you need the document to be taken seriously.)

Traditional old-style or transitional types (e.g. Garamonds, Bembo, Baskerville) look quite nice and are legible in text, but have a low x-height so they need to be set in larger sizes. Mixing these inline with a sans-serif typeface with a bigger x-height can look strange. ITC Garamond (Used extensively by Apple in the 1980s and 1990s) is a re-imagining of Garamond with a larger x-height, so doesn't suffer from this problem.

Moderns such as CM or Century Schoolbook got done to death in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, so they tend to come with a lot of cultural baggage. I find moderns make a document look like something from the Victorian era or the 1920s or 30s. While they are quite practical and legible, I must beg to differ with DEK about their appropriateness for technical documents.

Take the usual hints about care when mixing humanist and geometric typefaces. Note that highly geometric sans-serifs like Avant-Garde Gothic or Futura aren't really suitable for text type for a technical document. Although they may be OK for headings, if you have a lot of captions, labels or otner sans-serif artifacts in the document they will clash with AGG or Futura if not set in the same typeface. This is a strike against using these fonts for anything but major headings such as chapter titles. Similar issues apply when using any sans-serif font with a highly distinctive look.

From memory, I have had good results with text type set in Times, Helvetica, Charter, Palatino, Frutiger, ITC Berkeley Old Style, Calibri, Tahoma and one or two others in various technical documents I have been involved in writing.

Some combinations I have used are:

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  Times text and Arial headings, captions and labels with Lucida Typewriter listings (dictated by corporate standards)

  
  


• 
  

  Palatino text and Helvetica headings, captions and labels (Adobe fonts, designed to be rendered to PDF without having to embed fonts so I stuck with the 35 standard PostScript fonts). The document was produced with Framemaker.

  
  



• 
  

  Palatino text and Tahoma headings with Lucida Console listings. In hindsight, the bold on Tahoma that comes with Windows is too heavy.

  
  


• 
  

  Cambria headings and Calibri text - defaults with Word 2010, and look OK together. Shrink down the heading styles from the default sizes - the bold is quite heavy and it looks too strong against the body text. Also, the default style inserts quite a bit of leading in the text styles.

  
  


• 
  

  Charter, CMSans, - document produced with LaTeX. This used the basic 'Charter' style that comes with LaTeX, modified a bit by hacking about the includes.

  
  


• 
  
  

  ITC Berkeley Old Style/Helvetica. Headings and text done with BOS and captions and some other bits done with Helvetica. I like Berkeley Oldstyle as a font (try setting the word 'Quidditch' in it) and it works for both display and text type. The ITC version (predictably enough, I suppose) has a fairly large x-height, so it works with sans-serif fonts.

  
  


• 
  

  Lucida - comes with pretty much every major OS platform, is highly legible, and is designed to render well on low-res output devices such as laser printers. There is a whole family of serif, sans-serif and monospaced fonts available. They render well on screen, look nice in print and have good ergonomics for technical documents.

  
  

EDIT: Actually, this reminds me of a story. At the university where I did my bachelor's degree they had a course that (amongst other things) teaches LaTeX and the joys of structured documents. My friend was a tutor for that paper at one point. One of the students complained about LaTeX thus:

But if I use LaTeX all my documents look like they were done in TeX

To which my friend replied:

Could be worse. Could look like they were done in Word.

The student saw the point.

A corollary to that is that one of the lecturers actually did some stats on this at one point and found a correlation between grades for assignments and using LaTeX. He swears that using LaTeX for an assignment is worth about half a grade on average. Whether this was due to the structured documentation effect and auto look-and-feel features of TeX or just because the smarter students tended to used it wasn't made clear, although I think he may have attempted to correct for the average grades of the student.

Long Forward Rate Agreement, short Eurodollar futures

For this question

If you are long a FRA and short a ED future with the same fixing dates, do you have positive convexity or negative convexity?

The answer is positive convexity, because a Eurodollar future has no convexity and the FRA has positive convexity. What are the implications of this from a trading perspective? Specifically, under what conditions does this lead to an opportunity for arbitrage?

Answer

hypothetically if we assume that $R_{fra}=R_{fut}-\frac{1}{2} \cdot \sigma^2\cdot T^2$ holds (convexity adjustment) and you are able to observe $R_{fra}$, $R_{fut}$ and $T$ then you can extract implied volatility of reference interest rate. If your view on volatility is different then you can make a bet: long convexity position (if you expect volatility should be higher); or short convexity position (if you expect volatility should be lower).

Vectormagic.com-style-design by Inkscape with Bitmap-trace aka potrace?

I have used the Vectormagic.com -hxck i.e. copy-pasting to get quantified and nice-looking pictures fast but doing this is too slow with overwhelming amount of pictures. My friend is mocking that this thing cannot be done quickly with offline -tools but I feel the story is different, it probably requires some expertise to use the tools such as bitmap-trace in Inkscape correctly.

For simplicity, suppose you have some simple comic character with 10 colors, background transparent and alpha-channel added. How can you improve the quality? Inkscape uses the term quantification with bitmap-trace but I cannot yet understand what is actually happening under the cover when Vectormagic.com does the trick and makes the photo looking good.

Please, explain. And special plus if you can provide reproducible commands, look potrace/autotrace are commandline tools eventually.

Perhaps related

1. https://photo.stackexchange.com/a/7798/9379

adobe photoshop - What software is best for GUI design?

I've used Photoshop extensively, but the fact of the matter is that it's a photo editing tool. It has some complicated effects built in, such as the drop shadow and inner and outer glows etc., but it just isn't enough when designing a graphical interface. You can't add multiple editable gradients, for example. And you have to trick the tools into pulling off the effect you want, when they weren't designed for that.

I've also started using Fireworks, and there's a few things I like, such as being able to keep changing the curves on a rounded rectangle, but the color picker in that program just isn't usable. When you go into the mac color picker, it says the color is something different to what it is, due to Fireworks not handling color profiles correctly. This makes adjusting colors a very difficult process. And the software as a whole feels like a pre-release version (and maybe it should be).

So, I'm wondering what software everyone would recommend for creating a GUI? There must be some software out there which allows you to have a range of editable effects which you can change, change the order of, move around at any time, along with all the other tools required to create great graphics.

Can you characterize a user by their choice of Internet browser?

I would like to know if usability is different across different Internet browsers and if this is caused by varying demographics. Below, are some interrelated questions addressing this issue:

1. Does age, gender, or profession affect a user's choice of browser?


2. Are users of certain browsers more tech savvy and do they muddle through usability problems more easily than users of the remaining browsers?



3. When conducting usability tests, will forcing the participants to use a browser that is not their preferred browser corrupt the findings of the test?

Answer

1. 
   

   It's consistently been shown that Firefox is more popular with younger demographics than IE and Chrome is the most popular browser amongst young and tech savvy users. IE is still most used by older users. Don't take this to mean you can assume your IE users are old or that your Chrome users are young, however.

   
   


2. 
   

   Historically it's certainly been the case that less tech-savvy users are less likely to install different browsers, thus Internet Explorer and Safari are common on the PCs and Macs of less tech-savvy people. Chrome was shown to be a bit more popular for users that spent more time on the internet but the survey is from 2010; I haven't been able to find much recent information broken down by demographics.

   
   

   However since Firefox and Chrome have grown (and have been very effective at simplifying the install process) the browser wars are less tied to tech savviness; it's no longer an indication of tech-savvy to have a different browser installed.

   
   
   

   Don't just assume that because you have 60% chrome users that your demographics can be extrapolated from that figure. Make your own demographics surveys and ask these demographic questions manually when doing testing. This is the best way ot know if your assumptions appear to fit reality.

   
   


3. 
   

   Of course asking people to use software they're not comfortable with will affect usability. Whether it will "corrupt the findings of a test" is questionable; structure your test so that the browser is all but irrelevant.

   
   

   Unless your page requires use of browser-specific features like bookmarks I don't see why allowing your users to pick Chrome, Firefox or IE makes a significant difference as long as your site displays and performs comparably in all of them. Letting their use their typical browser is "normal" for them, forcing them to use otherwise will likely have a greater effect than the effects caused by different browsers regardless of user comfort.

   
   

   Consider A/B testing users with the different browsers if you feel this does have an effect. Browsers can certainly have an effect on the experience if you're asking them to do things like install add ons or download/install files. If it's a brief test you can easily run a within/between subjects design asking multiple or the same subjects to perform the same tasks in different browsers.

   
   

The dice game and derivatives trading

I happened to a interview question:

Give a equal dice, you will gain the money which is the number you roll, then how much will you pay for the game.

Naturely, the answer is 3.5. But the interview said, the dice game is not the derivatives, you have nothing to hedge it, then you are a speculator. So the answer is not 3.5.

What did he mean?

Answer

The interviewer meant that he's smart. Quoting Senior VP of People operations at Google,

On the hiring side, we found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time. How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.

Putting that aside, one possible approach would be to invoke Von Neumann-Morgernstern expected utility to construct a certainty equivalent value for the gamble based upon your level of risk aversion.

Utility functions are used to define a total order over possible outcomes and hence can represent complete, transitive preferences: outcome $X$ is preferred to $Y$ if and only if the utility function assigns $X$ higher utility. Expected utility extends classic utility theory to stochastic outcomes by defining the overall utility $U$ of a stochastic outcome $X$ as the expectation of a bernoulli utility function $u$ whose curvature $-\frac{u''}{u'}$ formalizes a notion of risk aversion.

$$ U(X) = \mathbb{E}[u(X)]$$

(Small note: the curvature of $u$ here is extremely important, representing risk aversion, while the curvature of $U$ is irrelevant: any monotonic, increasing transformation of an overall utility function $U$ represents the same preferences.)

A nice Bernoulli utility function $u$ to use is power utility. In a special case this is simply log utility: $u(x) = \log(x)$.

Let $w$ be a scalar representing your wealth. Let $Z$ be payoff from the dice roll (i.e. 1 dollar if dice rolls 1 etc...) Let $c$ be the certainty equivalent of the gamble. The certainty equivalent gives you the same expected utility as your gamble hence $c$ solves the equation: $$u(w + c) = \mathrm{E}[ u(w + Z) ] $$

With log utility:

$$ \log(w + c) = \frac{1}{6}\sum_{i=1}^6 \log(w + i) $$

If we have log utility and a wealth of one million dollars ($w = 1,000,000$), then I compute the certainty equivalent of the gamble as $c = 3.49999854$. So it's not 3.5 dollars, but really, it's basically the same unless you pump up your risk aversion or scale up the gamble. (And that wealth is probably dramatically too low if you take into account the present value of all future wages.)

This analysis of course doesn't take into account the value of the time wasted talking about this gamble. A few dollar bet is almost certainly too small to be worth meaningful analysis.

software recommendation - Simple, hosted file tracking

I'm looking for some advice on a simple, hosted web-based digital file management system. We have a design team that creates a lot of assets needed by engineering, marketing, and many other people in the company. However, we already manage timelines, feedback, etc in a ticketing system. Dropbox/git may be possible, but these solutions require checking out/syncing everything which could be a lot.

What I'd like is a hosted system where a designer can upload their digital assets, associate them with a ticket (perhaps via folders), and track file changes. Ideally, non designers could log into the system and obtain the files too.

So far, I've found http://www.brandregard.com and http://www.mediasilo.com, but both seem to be focused on specific types of digital files.

Answer

What you're asking for sounds tailor-made for Gridiron Flow. It has versioning and collaboration tools, time management and asset management tools specifically for design workflows. It knows about graphics files (even tracks the names of layers inside a PSD) and the relationships among files (e.g., it will keep track of all the assets you've brought into a Photoshop or After Effects composition and can even show the relationships in a map). Since it automatically (and instantly) saves versions, Flow can be a lifesaver.

It may also be that Filetrek is what you need. I've not used it myself, but since it looks like it's by the same folks, I expect it's very robust.

Adobe will be releasing the Creative Cloud shortly, which may be another solution. Since it comes complete with the entire Creative Suite, it may well be the most cost-effective solution.

I'd be willing to bet that at least one of these would fit your situation, but you'd have to check out the details yourself.

research - Tips for ethnography

I'm doing my first ethnographic study next week and I was wondering if anyone had any tips, specifically for studying how people use things in their homes.

Are there any common pitfalls? Any good techniques that aren't obvious?

adobe illustrator - Select anchor behind other anchor on SAME object?

I have an object like this—

and there a two anchors, one on top of the other like this–

I'm drawing it like this because I will be animating the path of the SVG I export from this drawing and I need it to draw in the correct way. I cannot join the anchors, make them separate objects, or any other method.

How do I select the anchor that is behind the front anchor when they are part of the same object?

Note: cmd + click does not work in this case ( when they are a part of the same object ).

fiction - How much repetition is too much repetition?

This is a question that'd been bothering me for a while. Here's an example:

My heart racing, I wriggled to the edge of the bed and fumbled for Travis' hand. Just make sure to hold onto it, he'd said, whenever you get the chance. I searched for a few minutes until I finally found it—smooth and warm, sprawled on the cold surface of the floor. I gave it a light squeeze, but there was no response. Maybe he was asleep after all. Or just pretending to be? The easiest way to find out was to get up and ask him. Yes, that was what I had to do.

But, I didn't.

Funny, I had no problems with the idea of killing myself. But when it came to love, I was a complete coward.

Every time I see repetition like this, I remove it:

My heart racing, I wriggled to the edge of the bed and fumbled for Travis' hand. Just make sure to hold onto it, he'd said, whenever you get the chance. I searched for a few minutes until I finally found it—smooth and warm, sprawled on the cold surface of the floor. I gave it a light squeeze, but there was no response. Maybe he was asleep after all. Or just pretending to be? The easiest way to find out was to get up and ask him. Yes, that was what I had to do.

However, I didn't.

Funny, I had no problems with the idea of killing myself. Yet when it came to love, I was a complete coward.

Am I improving my writing with this? Or just being unnecessarily paranoid?

Answer

I think it's generally a good idea to be on the lookout for words you use too much, and swap in something else. You should look for repetitive sentence structure and repetitive phrasing as well.

My only suggestion for your example is for the second iteration, I would drop the word altogether, and just write "I didn't." It's more powerful that way.

color - Opacity problem over white object in Illustrator

I have a problem. I'm working with an object at 50% opacity. When it's over the artboard itself the color looks great, but when I put a white object behind it I get this weird color that doesn't look accurate.

This happens with every object and only in CMYK. I'm pretty sure this never happened to me before so maybe I changed something in the settings or I don't know.

Does anyone have any idea?

fonts - Is it acceptable to use different but similar typefaces for print content and web content?

To be more specific, is it acceptable to have two different typefaces used for headers?

One will be used for web content and the other for print or more static content where the type won't be at the mercy of someone else's font collection.

And along these lines, is it acceptable to use two very similar typefaces for these two cases or would it be a dilution of brand identity?

adobe photoshop - Change the color of multiple layers at once in CS4

I apologize if this question has been answered already, I'm not experienced with Photoshop and not sure what to search for. I'm using CS4. I have a grid made up of different layers, basically like a checkers or chess board, where each square is a different layer. I've decided to change the color of some of the squares. I'm trying to find the best way to do this.

It seems I can do this by setting tolerance to 0 on Paint Bucket, since my squares are monocolor. However, in the future they might not be. Is there another way to do this, besides selecting exactly the right pixels first?

I saw a suggestion that I can "lock" the layer pixels so that transparent pixels aren't overwritten. However, the options are not available in my Photoshop version.

Answer

Photoshop is vast so there are 12,000 ways to do everything, but here's what I would suggest:

If you are going to change the colors more than once, merge the layers of the same colored checker squares.

1. In the Layers panel, click the first checker layer


2. Ctrl + click each additional layer of the same color


3. Right-click and select Merge Layers


4. Select the newly created layer



5. In your Layers panel, next to the word "Lock:" there is a transparent square icon called Lock Transparent Pixels click that. See the image below You should have this because I'm using CS3 and its there.


6. With this selected, you can now change the color of your squares without losing transparency.


7. Repeat as needed for checker layers for the other color