Quick links #5

As fun & useful as it is to get all hand-wavey about big design issues (design thinking! innovation! stop designing products! soylent green is people!), sometimes it's equally fun & useful to take a good hard look at just one design element.

• History of the Button - "Tracing the history of interaction design through the history of the button, from flashlights to websites and beyond." (thanks Phil!)
• The dashed line in use - "Even though the dashed line has emerged from a designer’s shorthand and from the limitations of monotone printing techniques, it has a clear and simple visual magic, the ability to express something three- or four-dimensional in two dimensions."
• And an oldie but a goodie from Luke: The History of Amazon's Tab Navigation. Long live the uber-tab.