Involution's hGraph, an open source health metrics visualization, was recently featured in Wired Magazine online, highlighted in the article, “How Restyling the Mundane Medical Record Could Improve Health Care.” The Wired spot discusses hGraph’s strong social component: By tracking the data for entire families hGraph illustrates how some conditions, like obesity and heart disease, can be affected by collective health choices.

Health IT Buzz, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services innovation blog, also mentioned hGraph as a notable entry to the Patient Health Record Graphic Design Contest, where it inspired the judges and challenged the status quo. The article notes that Involution designers “weren’t afraid to think outside the box.” A simple-to-use tool like hGraph has the potential to improve patient care, prevent medication errors, and supply clear health metrics. By making health records usable and interactive, this software can empower doctors, caregivers, and patients to make better health decisions and save lives.

Involution client uTest has launched Applause, an analytics tool that offers clear, explicit data about what users truly feel about mobile apps. Applause enables app-owners to see how each version of their app measures up and the ability to compare their app to those of their competitors. Applause features sleek multi-version app graphs and a revolutionary rating scheme, with user interface design and development by Involution.

We’re excited to announce the debut of our Design Axioms card deck, which encapsulates essential software design wisdom from industry luminaries including Andrei Herasimchuk, Luke Wroblewski, Dirk Knemeyer, and Juhan Sonin.

Four years in the making, the first card set has been published as a physical deck, available via Amazon, and as digital art on designaxioms.com. The initial deck, which includes 21 beautiful cards illustrated by Sarah Kaiser, provides a simple but powerful reference set to inspire and excite UI designers and engineers. Perfect for use during brainstorming sessions, design critiques, or as a day-to-day reference, Design Axioms is the fun gift that UI and UX practitioners will want to give themselves. It is not only a fantastic design education, but a piece of artwork as well. Best of all, the content is open source and ready for anyone to creatively remix, share, hack, and make these ideas better. The Design Axioms content from illustrations to words to concepts are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.

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.