| Baby on
board 04.11.2001 |
| I
have not updated this site in some time. We had a
new baby boy in November (our third) and
priorities have taken over. Not that priorities
have changed, just one of them became bigger and
this site unfortunately has fallen below the line.
Soon I'll be back at it. |
| Meanwhile,
check out this guide to underground web design. |
| Now I'm really
somebody 10.26.2000 |
| I should soon be
recieving junk mail from several custom plaque
manufacturers trying to exploit my ego. |
| I (and 2 co-inventors)
were recently awarded this
patent for
a UI enhancement. |
| The Flash
Usability Challenge 09.29.2000 |
| WebWord.com had offered
a cash reward to the first person who can
identify an existing Flash-based website that is
usable (and profitable). They
have a winner (sort of). Although the winning
site used reasonable restraint in it's
utilization of special effects, it's navigation
is not all that usable and still takes too long.
I suspect they needed to prove that they were
really going to give the prize. |
| The Flash e-commerce
experience is usually kind of like asking a store
clerk for a recommendation, getting thirty
seconds (or more) of silence, then a brief song
and dance before getting the answer (maybe not
the answer you were after). |
| Anyway, besides
the winner, there is a list
of all the submitted entries. Some of them are quite
interesting if you have the time. |
| Interacting
with Air 09.15.2000 |
| Researchers are
experimenting with computers
that can detect hand motions as part of the user
interaction. The uses described are somewhat
mundane but could lead to interesting innovations. |
| It would be
useful to have some kind of feedback when pushing
around air. Contrast this with the enhacement of forced
feed back input devices. |
| Fools!
I'll crush you like insects! 08.30.2000 |
| And you thought
Microsoft was big? Check this out. |
| The Tab
Metaphor 08.29.2000 |
| Amazon recognizes
they have a user interface expandability problem.
This is a classic problem with the tab metaphor,
which breaks down as the number of tabs increases.
Their solution has some obvious
compromises but is far less intimidating that the
alternative. |
| Token
Update 08.25.2000 |
| I have to get
back to regular blogging. Yes, I'm still working
on my kitchen. It's amazing how little you can
get done on evenings and weekends working alone. |
| Here's a link of
actual interest to interaction designers. GE's
corporate web UI style guide. Very comprehensive. |
| Kitchens
are my life 06.08.2000 |
| Four months is a
long time away from writing in this weblog. I
have been super busy at work and nearing
demolition day for my kitchen project. I couldn't find any
contractors that are reliable and want
to work on my small job. friends (if So, I any will be doing much of the work
myself, with help from show up). |
| OS X
Strategy? 01.28.2000 |
| OK. So I wrote an
epinion
about Mac OS X. Here are some snipets: |
| …The
most noticeable changes were cosmetic. Though
insignificant from a development perspective and
trivial to usability, this has great value as
part of the larger strategy… |
| …
The attention to design details and "personality"
has resulted in a pleasant user experience. In
contrast, the large customer base Windows enjoys
could vanish virtually overnight if a competitive
OS could painlessly replace it… |
| …
this could be the killer operating system -
capable of running apps from the "other"
two major operating systems, with the Macs
familiar easy to use interface. This could enable
Mac to regain entry into Internet, corporate and
educational markets…Read the full article. |
| Flames
for OS X 01.12.2000 |
| Here's an
interesting mob reaction to the new Mac OS X. Most
flame it! This discussion revolves around the
interface design as they are only able to react
to pictures and video. |
| Here's a sample: |
| ...And
some of us thought that 8.x was an atrocity,
appearance-wise... how depressing to hear that OS
X carries this crap even further. I wonder if in
future years people will look back on some of
these "innovative" computer interfaces
with the same humor that (some of us) now regard
1950's tailfins (the really huge ones) or '60's
beehives... more... |
| Candy
Buttons 01.10.2000 |
| Apple has
previewed their new
user interface for Mac OS X. On the plus side,
they have nicely leveraged the design language of
the iMac. They include translucent dialogs,
colors and textures to mimic the Mac hardware
flavors. Nicely differentiates their product,
however, they haven't significantly improved the
usability of the original 1984 design. (In fact
this release may diminish that usability.) |
| The window
control buttons for minimize, maximize and close
look like translucent colored gumdrops. (It is
unfortunate that Apple decided to use color as a
distinguishing characteristic for buttons because
of the high number of users with colored
blindness.) When the mouse is over the window
controls, the icons for those controls appear
beneath their seemingly transparent skin. Some QT
animation on their
site shows
this in action. Interesting idea but hopefully
they don't use this approach too often. |
| Lots of
throbbing, flashing, fading and moving. This will
have a momentary "cool effect" become
on some users but should quickly irritating. |
| I suspect that OS
X can be customized to the Mac "flavor"
you choose. The new
IE 5 for Mac has announced customizable themes
to match your Mac. In fact, elements of the
interface are actually HTML files, allowing you
to create custom "skins." Those of you
who don't have the sweet tooth for "candy"
might tolerate the graphite theme patterned after
the G4 Macs. |
| Previous Interaction Design thoughts |
