I was flipping through Marc’s copy of Tog on Software Design and was intrigued by the “SunPad” in Tognazzini’s description of Sun’s Starfire film (which itself is very reminiscient of Apple’s Knowledge Navigator concept):
She looks at the SunPad display, which now has the camera controls slaved to it. It’s as if the SunPad were a […]
The recent attention to Apple’s patents on “piles” reminds me of an entertaining conversation Ryan and I had in 2005.
We were caught up in the HDR fad, and lamented how poor iPhoto is at managing photos meant to be grouped, as when auto-bracketing exposure or shooting for panorama stitching. As I said aloud that […]
I know it doesn’t matter, but I have so many things I wish my next phone/PDA could do, I’m going to list them for my own amusement. Even though most of them won’t happen very soon, at least while the iPhone remains closed to native third-party applications.
I could manage data with specialized tools. […]
The Diebold touchscreen machines are clunky, with blocky, aliased text against a pink background, and the printout is behind a door that most people don’t think to open. Don’t you think a few hours with someone who can spell “usability” might have been called for?
I voted mostly in line with Steve Patterson, but I […]
I just unpacked my new high-falutin’ clock radio (with has an awesome user interface) and inexplicably paged through the manual, where I happened upon this:
CONNECTING THE FM ANTENNA WIRE
The FM antenna comes pre-attached. If the antenna is disconnected, follow these steps to reconnect it:
Push the “F” connector plug on the end of the antenna wire […]
Sébastien Paquet blogged some lessons from Jared Spool. Besides pointing out that “above the fold” is not as show-stoppingly critical as some believe (but still important, see the “Iceberg effect”), he articulates an important concept in HCI. Users are seeking a destination (either action or information) and it keeps them happy to reward […]
Technorati has a wonderful solution for shielding users from accidental destructive action: offer an undo link along with the response message:
This is much less disruptive than an “are you sure?” dialog, which are often ignored by confirmation fatigued users. It may seem too subtle, but designers are already tasked with tastefully drawing attention to […]
I just happened upon an excellent mini-rant from Elliotte Rusty Harold about not
letting your UI be the ultimate leaky abstraction.
