Sure, there's good food to buy but that's not the only reason I'm a fan. While not really liking the sort of half baked tiki/naval/Pacific Islands aesthetic of the store, I like being there. I know that as soon as I pass the produce section I'll find some coffee to sample and sip while I shop.

Also, I look forward to seeing what employees have drawn and written on the signs. Here is my favorite from earlier today.

I'd like to know how many people take the time to read these little quips.

What's a good indicator that an organization is effectively capturing the hearts of their customers? Without solicitation, a customer makes a commercial for you.

Active Furniture is inconvenient on purpose. Reminds me of one of the times I heard someone say that they didn't want their library's furniture to be "too comfortable."

10/GUI is an attempt to move away from the mouse, into realistic multi-touch computing. Don't forget, somebody (Douglas Engelbart) had to invent the mouse too.

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

This is a nice way to facilitate some positive interaction.

Check out the URL too. It is semantic and, especially for an airline, pretty short.

http://jetblue.com/help/contactus/help_contact_compliments.aspx

With its old-timey feel it really stuck out among the (sterile looking in comparison) printed signs.

Let me caution, however, that this is nearly varsity level signage strategy. The imperfections of this sign are an asset only because it is surrounded by decent looking professionally designed signs. Much like library websites need to be easy to use before they can be filled with social goodness, signs in a library would have to be cohesively well designed before they could benefit from something like this.

⌘ Grid aligned webpages using firebug & gridfox.

⌘ Mark Boulton's classic Five Simple Steps to Designing Grid Systems.

I've often wondered if the "close doors" button in elevators really do anything. Turns out that sometimes they do, sometimes they don't but they do alter our perception of what's happening.

For more on placebo buttons and the illusion of control, see the NYT article For Exercise in New York Futility, Push Button.

[pic via]

We need both both halves of the brain to work together and channel that brilliance through our hands and propagate ideas throughout our world. We all wonder why Apple's products have that je ne sais quoi that draw us in. I'm beginning to think that it's not just that they understand the power of simplicity, or the power of software. It's that you can see they were born from a person, from two dirty hands, from just a little bit of technology, and from a massively powerful IDEA.

Read more from John Maeda at the Huffington Post