v. clever illusion

via Matt(IC) - who was a runner up on the Guardian's BBBlog competition
Getting from Research to Personas: Harnessing the Power of Data
by Kim Goodwin, Director of Design, Cooper

see also:
perfecting_your_personas
and the many other useful articles
and as I mentioned previously newsletters

Leonardo's Laptop - Sample Chapters!

loads of grt links
zone-art - photo / sound / experiments
descriptions in french
+ abrv8ns @ o-:
also from DgtlWebMag

Digital Web Magazine - Keep It Simple: Fluid Thinking "The fluidity of the Web is not the problem, it's the solution. If you accept that your site will never be viewed exactly as you want it, you understand the spirit of the Web and its standards."

gerry is getting ahead of himself
he's already in October in his
A step-by-step approach to
web classification design
"Learn how you can effectively design a robust,
reader-friendly web classification"

but 'spells it out' nicely


kaleidiscope

[pointless but pretty]
when you view a ppt file within IE
the logo is replaced with that of Netscape
(I guess to do with view files of type settings)
but quite funny non-the-less



the content is from errrm:
http://www.louisrosenfeld.com/presentations/020920-umbs.ppt

Kibo quote: " 'Zurich', a very faithful but unlicensed clone [of Universe]"

other fontastic info here - via (hopefuly not auto)Matt-IC

C-:

is there such a thing as a left-handed(facing)-emoticon ¿ {-|


text-e.org

e-readable :)

Neave's Webgames - Pong, Snake, Pacman, Space Invaders and more
of the Old Skool variety

IC matt keeps - going on about games - I think I'd rather just play them :)

David Siegel
what a life!


Trapped by the web!


robertpenner.com || Flash 5 Actionscript experiments in math and particles
Patterns and Software: Essential Concepts and Terminology # The Quality Without a Name
baadidea

here's
mine



still going backwards,
Tom Erickson paper for DIS 2000 Lingua Francas for Design: Sacred Places and Pattern Languages "A central challenge in interaction design has to do with its diversity. Designers, engineers, managers, marketers, researchers and users all
have important contributions to make to the design process. But at the same time they lack shared concepts, experiences and
perspectives. How is the process of design-which requires communication, negotiation and compromise-to effectively proceed in the
absence of a common ground?"


must check out what happens at the drs's common ground
or you might prefer common ground



all functions should be available at all times!

quote from:
Summary of The Humane Interface"In present systems, work gets done in applications (which are sets of commands that apply to certain kinds of objects). Tasks are not accomplished at the desktop, and desktops (or launching areas in general) should disappear as interfaces improve. The idea of an application is an artificial one, convenient to the programmer but not to the user. From a user’s point of view there is content (a set of objects created or obtained by the user) and there are commands that can operate on objects. Commands should be independent of applications and be applicable at any time and to any object."

Surely this would make managing the miriad of function that are available even within a single application impossible - how could every possible function be available all the time - and with it's own unique gesture? - this sounds like using semiphore to communicate with someone who is sitting next to you - restricting the channel and probably increasing the likelihood of errors by a factor of n++

modules and modelessness

quote from: Summary of The Humane Interface "The present paradigm of desktop, applications, and documents can be replaced by a simpler, modeless concept of content and commands. In such an environment, vendors will sell command sets and transformers rather than applications, and a user may not have to deal with a huge application when all he wants is a few new abilities. Such a reorganization will also eliminate much redundant code now present in the multiple applications we use (consider how many different text editors reside on a typical personal computer: There’s one for the word processor, one for the file name editor, one for dialog boxes.... But there need only be one set of commands for word processing functions)."

But even within so called 'word processing' functionality there is a great deal of variation that is required - sometimes you need different capabilities (spell check, html viewer,

(if this was transcopied then I wouldn't be worrying about potential infringement :)
some comments on Raskin's humane interface summary (i have got the book - but this is a much easier place to start)

quote from:Summary of The Humane Interface "The twin problems of navigation and limited display size can both be ameliorated by using a video camera paradigm, where the user can zoom in and out and pan horizontally and vertically over a universe of objects. Objects (documents, pictures, games, anything that has a visual representation) can be grouped into visible clumps and clusters, which can be marked with colors and shapes, and left in locations that are in themselves memorable (the address book is in the upper left corner of the world). Zooming out from your computer can give you a view of your local network, and going still farther, the web comes into view, as organized by a universe vendor (comparable to today’s portal vendors)."

The problem with this can be seen very clearly on the itch site and on a crowded desktop

- the reason for this is two fold (at least), first, to get a complete picture of even a reletatively small set of objects requires one to zoom out too far to be able to see clearly what the groups/objects are and secondly, this still relies on the user to determine where and how to sort their information (as they do with traditional file systems). The notion (mentioned by various people - inlcuding me) of tagging files with context relevant icons and sorting into context related groupings would help - but the ability of software to identify accurately the context related objects (i.e. which relate to the same project or activity) is questionable....

10 choices that were critical to the Net's success

and long may they live!


was looking for this comment by PeterMe on Matt's post about humanising technology - and finally found it - no search on PeterMe and it didn't come up on google - what I had forgotten was that I had already posted a comment - of sorts

so I back linkedup

interesting to see that Matt's post was even mentioned in the recently linked to digital web magazine





so much talk recently about location based services - for me this upsideclone piece - The Campaign for Real Advertising was much more interesting (and funny) when it come to utilising location related information - and all from a simple postcode

0xDECAFBAD: Zauri, BlogWalking, Smart Mobs and other oddities

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nice signature file decoration

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Still Going Back, to April 2001 a Refreshing Comment which means we can all be included :) - From Issue Number 2 of
Loop: AIGA Journal of Interaction Design : Interview with Terry Swack
“...when I use the term “experience design,” it refers to a community of practice, an industry sector, if you will, not a field, and especially not a single type of practitioner.”

Answer Machine the famous Durrel Bishop physical answer machine concept (in brief)

parrot

a great companion to sf... as posted yesterday - because it is so unplayable
itch ball
this small shockwave movie simply demonstrates the various behaviours that can be asigned to duplicate movie clips
[switch between the control keys for the best result]

finally remembered to go back and check out the first matt (of the jones variety)'s blog and found this great interview with Ian Banks (without an M)
who says "I just pick up my stories as I amble along, little bits of this, little bits of that. It gets easier the longer you've been at it." now I must try and start my lj!


don't know why I didn't mention this when I posted about the brokers pda design...
the info originated in action reaction interaction a blueprint interaction design special which is extended here

Information overload: learning to take your time: August 05, 2002 issue of New Thinking
Not so new but definately worth thinking about - sometimes it's worth going back in time, but slowly :) Loads of other interesting articles on gerry's site (author of content critical)


Lab6 SFCave Old School

addictive with a capital T
- just need a palm now -



Best Practices for Web Publishing Conference

some very useful -if massive- mp3 files - notably for me -
Christina Wodtke
Putting the 'Eye' in Interface: Effective and Beautiful Interface Design
(MP3 41.5Mb)

Publications - Whitney Quesenbery - wqusability.com
some top notch articles by an experienced practitioner - who has just gone freelance!

Fletcher, Alan. - The art of looking sideways. - London : Phaidon, 2001 - 0714834491

what a great (in two senses) book - it weighs in at 1067 pages with quality illustrations - quirky, fun and thoughtful

inspired this very time consuming experiment
with FlashAmazon (this darker links go both ways)




- it is of the [strong] coffee table variety - described by a friend as a design blog in a
book - and has some excellent quotes and accompanying visuals - one that stood out was a text
description of the capabilities of an elephants trunk (by Stephen Pinker no less) in the shape of an ele... - with some brilliant snippets by John
Fowles



Great Idea The "Not the Best Weblog" Project

Mine is another vote for Matt - which won't surprise anyone who has read mine...



I think one of the reasons why I like Matt's posts are they are delivered via email!
The downside is the lack of a decent search on interconnected/home


Web Page Design for Designers
great piece about CSS Positioning: How the browsers cope
with a link to Joe's FunWithFonts

Ubiquity - Interviews
with the movers and the shakers!
including recently Don Norman and Terry Winograd (who is off to work with Google!)

also worth checking are:
interactions
and the student mag
crossroads


anti banners from soul bath using their very nice 3D building interface

don't know what is going on with the hi-res site - you can't read a damb thing

Goldman Sachs Wireless NYSE Handheld Device

This project outlines a very interesting approach to designing an information appliance - the method adds novel digital functionality to existing physical activities. The idea was to 'bring the technology to the project gently'. I am currently (finally) reading information appliances and beyond so this is sort of timely. A good review can be found at uidesign.

Also on the DIDI site is:
TextArc
a very unusual visualisation of large bodies of text which provides clues as to the importance of words by highlighting their individual occurrences, it also provides a pattern of the flow of the story through the individual key words (the result is visually attractive but the functionally or purpose is totally opaque)