Ever since the U.S. started on its long road to recovery from the Great Recession and tech companies began expanding the ranks of their employees again, there's been a dearth of talent to choose from, especially those most important senior level team members in engineering and user experience. This lack of readily available personnel has driven not only an increase in salaries, signing bonuses, and perks, but also a variety of unorthodox recruitment strategies, not the least of which is acquiring small companies for their talent, not necessarily their technology. Facebook, for example, has executed some high profile acquisitions to bring top notch designers into the fold, buying both software design shop Sofa and product firm Push Pop Press.

Here’s what we’re reading online, this week at Involution, on design, tech, and the digital life, in our links round up.

The History of the Game Console
If you were a console gamer back when it all began in the late '70s, and have sweet, sweet memories of playing Atlantis on the Magnavox Odyssey 2 or TRON Deadly Disks on Intellivision, then you'll revel in the nostalgia of Consollection, a Web site collection of (almost) every gaming console ever made. Over 170 consoles are featured on the site, all from the personal collection of Phil Penninger. Consollection truly gives us the history of video gaming product design; with an overview page dedicated to each and every system.

In this age of ubiquitous information, knowledge workers and organizations can be overwhelmed, even paralyzed by the mass of data presented to them daily, unable to make sense of it all. Our ability to collect data has increased exponentially as our lives and careers have become increasingly digitized. From e-commerce transactions to bodybug health sensor info to digital video capture, we produce more data than we can hope to consume. We have too much information to analyze and don't quite have all the right tools to do it yet.

I've had a few brushes recently with different tracking technology deployed in automobiles used by professionals. When the Geek Squad came by to help with printer problems, the tech explained that his company-provided car has a tracking device that logs where the vehicle is at all times. Today I read an article, pointed to by Jason Long, about similar technology being used in the truck driving industry. In the later example, the author lamented how these devices contribute to "draining their enthusiasm for this life." I'm not surprised.

Here’s what we’re reading online, this week at Involution, on design, tech, and the digital life, in our links round up.

Tech Talent Wars: Boston
The Talent Wars are heating up in Boston, as tech companies of every kind, from start ups to Fortune 500 firms, unload their best artillery fire in the recruiting battle. One of the most original recruitment efforts in the fight so far comes from the rapidly growing, venture funded HubSpot, which is trying to encourage software developers at big companies to make a "prison break" for HubSpot's hipper environs. Of course, Boston and the surrounding tech burbs are filled with many of the aforementioned large company "prisons" for devs to break out of, and HubSpot is willing to make it worthwhile for experienced talent, with a $1K bonus for each year spent at a big firm. A 20-year veteran of an enterprise software giant could stand to get the equivalent of a new car as a signing bonus … not too shabby. Whether other cash rich, talent strapped companies in Boston will counter HubSpot's aggressive move remains to be seen, but it's clear that the war for development brainpower is escalating in Beantown, with no end in sight.

At Involution, our software design methodology approximates that of the industrial design process: Designers take an overall, system wide view of the product, and are responsible for specifying, as much as possible, the final form and function. This means that, just as an industrial designer understands her materials, be they metal or silicon, so too must the software designer understand his, be they pixels or code. Ours is a rigorous and broad perspective, which requires that the designer be fluent with everything from concept sketching to pixel pushing to prototype coding. In the end, asking a user interface designer to understand all of these parts of the process gives them a powerful set of tools for creating effective and beautiful software, which is always our goal. And while taking this path to creation can be challenging, we find it yields positive results.

Here’s what we’re reading online, this week at Involution, on design, tech, and the digital life, in our links round up.

The Therapeutic Touch of the iPad
The iPad may be the most important new computing device since the PC, as evidenced by its beautiful interactions, rapid adoption, and stunning sales numbers. With the iPad and the proliferation of tablet devices in general, we could be at the cusp of a revolutionary new age of personal computing: We've only just begun to see some of the numerous ways these devices can truly benefit users and improve their day-to-day lives.

As an experienced musician and occasional audio engineer, I was excited by the prospect of producing The Digital Life, a podcast on design and technology, which is sponsored by Involution Studios. Over nearly a year of production, we've learned a great deal about creating an online radio show. Every so often we get requests from friends of the show to describe how we go about generating the podcast. We're more than happy to share our knowledge, so, we thought we'd pull back the curtain today and reveal a few of our production methods.

Here’s what we’re reading online, this week at Involution, on design, tech, and the digital life, in our links round up.

Lion Roars
Apple launched the latest version of their ground breaking OS X operating system today with a host of UI innovations culled from their iOS mobile platform. As might be expected, these innovations were met with both cheers and jeers.

At Involution, when we design software, we draw upon a process akin to industrial design, where—after we engage in an initial product architecture to understand the feature grouping, flow, and functionality—the next step is often sketching.

If you haven't done it before, sketching concepts for a software user experience may seem like a daunting task located in foreign territory: Aren't we creating for the digital realm? Am I a good enough artist to do this? Where do I begin? However, the benefits to sketching can be great and change your overall design process for the better. So, here are five reasons to give it a try.