Right before Your Eyes: Visual Recognition Begins with Categorization

"Take a moment and look at a picture near you. What did you see? How long did it take you to understand what was in the image, meaning how long did it take you to realize the green blob was a tree? Or that the orange circle was a piece of fruit? Most likely you assume that it took you no time at all, you just knew.

Psychologists who study how we perceive images used to think that, before the process of object recognition and categorization could begin, the brain must first separate the figure in the image - such as a tree, or a piece of fruit - from its background. However, new research shows we actually categorize objects before we identify them. It means that, by the time your brain even realizes you are looking at something, you already know what that thing is."

In the (Cognitive) Zone

"Alright, you're a designer, we all know you've had it happen to you; Your final presentation for a project is due tomorrow at 9:00. It's the night before at 10:00 and you've been working straight for 6 hours already. Everyone else is long gone. You had been feeling tired and distracted for the first 4 hours, and you were hungry. But then something strange happened. Call it a second wind, call it 'rallying the troops', call it caffeine; at hour 4 you entered a state of total concentration. You worked almost without thinking. You completely forgot the late hour, how tired you were, or how long it had been since you had eaten. You, my friend, were in a congitive state psychologists call 'Flow'. And understanding how to harness it will allow you to make designs more effective and powerful than was ever possible."

Yesterday, the New York Times published an article about Flow; Specifically, they looked at how interface designers can use clever tricks to keep users more focused on the task at hand. The researchers interviewed in the article propose solutions like e-mail notification sounds which wait until key events--like a save command, or program window change--signal a break in the user's flow. Beyond that, though, the article is short on details of where else this opportunity can be exploited, or even what exactly this magical state is.

iPod Shuffle - brief usability report

"My iPod shuffle has arrived at last, and after a quick few goes on it (far too few to really do this, but hey), here is my view on the iPod Shuffle.

First up, a disclaimer - I have never used a "proper" grown-up iPod. I haven't even used a portable MP3 player either, so I have nothing to compare the Shuffle with. Is this bad? Perhaps, but then I am approaching this from a position of not having my views coloured already. Naivety can be a good thing in this line of work."

A nice review ...

High-tech crime fighters

"In a corner of the display showroom at this week's California Police Chiefs Annual Conference sat an ergonomically designed Sacramento police squad car, handcrafted by Hewlett-Packard to bring policing into a paperless world."

The four "solutions" on display this week at the Sacramento Convention Center and neighboring Grand Sheraton Hotel included a digital pen that writes in ink and simultaneously captures the pen strokes digitally.

A new "rugged" computer notebook is being distributed to patrol officers so they can call up and write crime reports from anywhere in the city. Officers also have computers mounted in their squad cars equipped with durable keyboards that allow them to communicate with each other as well as write reports.

Meanwhile, new global positioning technology in squad cars allows dispatchers, supervisors and other officers to know where other patrol officers are in the city.

Evolving the UI

"When using agile methods, it is not uncommon for the contents of a release to change dramatically. This can create problems for up-front user interface design as it is created with the expectation that certain functionality will be present in the released system. As UI design is created across features using techniques such as scenarios, it is especially vulnerable to changes. A user interface design also assumes that functionality will be implemented in an order that makes navigating from one feature to another possible. However, if the customer's priorities do not match the flow created by the UI designer then the design may have to change substantially.

One option for dealing with this uncertainty is to delay creating the UI design until later in the release, after the corresponding functionality is complete. The developers start by implementing the simplest possible interface that delivers the required functionality. This does tend to produce a pretty ugly user interface, but I have found that most customers tend to be understanding as long as they are getting their desired functionality. I have been on a large project that used this approach quite successfully: interaction designers were brought in halfway through the release and suggested a set of improvements that were incorporated before the release. However, the scope of the suggested changes were limited based on the time constraints of the release and the overhead of making changes to the implemented system."

Words are Pictures Too

"The saying 'a picture is worth a thousand words' is a hotly contested topic on the Internet. Is a picture worth more a thousand words? Is it worth less? Can they be equivalent? My guess is that the answers and question will be around for at least a few more centuries, or for as long as academics are around."

Words are pictures too. They are just better than pictures sometimes. I can't imagine how I'd describe "word" with a picture that wasn't a word. It seems that the simpler the word, the more difficult it is to capture its essence as a picture. And it did take words for me to say that.

Microsoft Pitches Displays for Laptop Lids

"Microsoft wants PC makers to mount cell phone-like displays on the lids of laptop computers so users can check the time, battery status, appointments, or see if new e-mail has arrived without having to open and start up their PC."

The Redmond, Washington-based software maker is including support for such displays in the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, due out in 2006. Microsoft is developing software and reference designs for the displays, which it says will give users instant access to select data and save time and battery life because there is no need to open and boot up the PC.

The display on the lid of a laptop would be similar to a color cell phone display and powered by the notebook battery. Data pulled out of applications would be stored in a special memory cache so it is also accessible when the PC is turned off or in standby mode, says Sriram Viji, a program manager working on the "auxiliary displays" at Microsoft.

Creating Passionate Users: Spiral learning

"User experience designers (especially with games) often use a spiral model to keep cycling the user through stages of interest/motivation, engagement, and payoff (I described the user experience spiral here.

But where software developers and game designers use the spiral model, learning designers (teachers, instructional designers, tech book authors) often don't. Yet a spiral model most closely matches how learning really happens.

The typical training course or technical book takes a linear approach to the topic, teaching each topic completely before moving on to the next. Each topic/phase in the course depends on having mastered the previous topic/chapter. ('OK, that's done... now we can move to the next one.') This is usually wrong on so many levels..."

Webraska releases SmartZone Navigation 3 for Microsoft & Symbian mobile devices

"Webraska Mobile Technologies, the pioneering provider of GPS, voice-enabled wireless navigation applications and location-based services, is pleased to announce the release of SmartZone Navigation 3, a milestone in the software development in terms of both ergonomics and features. This major release is supported by the simultaneous release of Webraska's SmartZone Geospatial Platform 4.0 tailored to provide enhanced support for dynamic content integration.

The SmartZone Navigation graphical user interface (GUI) for touch screen devices running PocketPC or Symbian UIQ-based has been completely re-engineered, significantly improving product usability.

Subscribers can access all functions and menus by fingertip-control on the touch screen - the stylus is now completely unnecessary. No comparable vendor of GPS navigation solutions offers this for Symbian UIQ devices. "

Night-vision camera turns night into day

"A REVOLUTIONARY night-vision system developed for the Dutch military makes night-time video images look as clear and colourful as those shot in broad daylight.
The idea was to improve on the fuzzy grey or green pictures that are the hallmark of today's night-vision systems. Although these monochrome images are an improvement on unaided night vision, their lack of colour can make them hard to interpret."

Bridging the Gap: Folksonomy and Taxonomy

"I've been thinking about what makes a good folksonomy. It needs to be self-interested, so people will put in the time to actually use it. It also needs to be shared, or else all that interesting tagging never communicates any meaning to other people. I think Flickr and del.icio.us have cornered two very good markets, with images and bookmarks. Other kinds of media, like books or movies wouldn't be as useful, since a simple genre and rating is about all you can expect to find, beyond the wealth of metadata already applied to those items by experts and publishers. "

Attentional Spotlighting in User Interfaces

"Users who have no familiarity with the interface presented in front of them will pay more attention to what they are doing than if they are a seasoned user with hours of experience. I no longer look at the keyboard to open a new tab in Safari, I simply position my left thumb and index finger unconsciously and a new tab appears. Did I pay attention to the physical act of moving my fingers in a manner that puts them on top of the correct keys? Did I have to break concentration in order to remember the correct keystroke sequence to make a new tab? Of course not, because it is a learned response which requires no attention in order to perform it correctly.

Difficulties arise when performing usability tests on subjects who are very familiar with their scenario and can breeze right through it based on learned interaction sequences. When you stop attending to the interface you are using and simply go on subconscious learned activities, the usability testing (and eye-tracking) is now biased and altered. The interface's spatial cues are there to inform the user about possible interaction paths, but when your attentional spotlight is not focused on the task at hand, the interface's spatial cues are bypassed and you are not interacting with the UI in the manner it was designed. Your familiarity with the interface is effectively blocking positive interaction, thus usability testing needs to be adjusted."

Uncovering Users In Your Own Organization

"This article is the first of a two-part series that recommends internal resources that you can assess. In Part One, we examine customer databases. In Part Two of the series, we will consider other internal resources, such as product managers, call support centers, field consultants, and corporate surveys."

“It’s still research, but from an internal perspective. There is a wealth of information at your fingertips in your own office, and surprisingly, some of it is usability-related.”

Artefacts for understanding

"Different disciplines look upon artefacts in different ways according to what the discipline requires. Many researchers have the material culture, the artifacts, as their empirical material, perhaps the only material they can acquire, like archaeologists for example. The artefacts are the physical remains of human activity, the starting point for understanding of a culture (Appadurai, 1986, Tilley, 1990).

Artefact derives from latin arte factum, which means artificial. In general, that implies an object made by the human hand, an artificial object. Artefacts are manmade for a specific purpose with an intention of fulfilling that purpose. Sometimes they also fulfill unspoken purposes. This paper addresses some aspects of the intentionally made artefacts and their way through the cooperative design process and how they will be attached to new meanings on the way."

SunCom Offers Firefly Phone for Kids

"With adults, teens, and even the elderly already using mobile phones, it seems inevitable that carriers would target the last remaining group of people who haven't joined the cellular revolution - children. The Firefly, a new handset made by Chicago-based Firefly Mobile Inc. and offered by US carrier SunCom Wireless, aims to put a mobile phone in the hands of children ages 8-12."

Instead of a numeric keypad, there are programmable "instant-call" keys with colorful icons representing mom or dad. There is also a parent-programmable phone book that holds up to 20 numbers, and a 911 button to summon help. Parents can restrict inbound or outbound calls to specific numbers, as well. The Firefly is small and light - it weighs just 64g (2.2oz) - and offers up to six hours of talk time.

Pocket Plus 2.5 released

"'Spb Software House has just released a new version of the world's most popular Pocket PC application - Spb Pocket Plus. Spb Pocket Plus 2.5 introduces new idea of Spb product integration.

Every new release of Spb products featuring Today plug-ins from now on can be embedded as separate tabs in Spb Pocket Plus Today plug-in. For example the updated version of Spb GPRS Monitor (starting from version 2.3) can be placed now in tab of Pocket Plus plug-in thus saving Today screen area. The new feature is implemented with the idea to save maximum Today screen user area and to provide better Pocket PC user experience."

Developing a winning stategy for medical device design

Design experts discuss the essential elements of setting a design strategy that results in the development of successful products.

"When medical device companies create a design strategy for a product, they must consider everything from company culture to financial investment to regulatory requirements. Four design experts discuss these and other pieces of the puzzle with the aim of presenting a clear picture of what makes a winning strategy. The participants included David Warburton, director of engineering at a medical device company in Acton, MA; Stuart Karten, president and owner of Stuart Karten Design (Los Angeles); Perry Mykleby, group product manager for Gyrus ENT (Bartlett, TN); and Michael Wiklund, a design consultant and former vice president of human factors research and design of the American Institutes for Research (Concord, MA)."

The Usable Consultant

"In the callow days of my career, I held consultants in awe. They drove fancy cars, wore great suits, carried themselves with certain gravity and always had quick answers to our problems. After a few years, their magic lost some luster. Too many were impolite, even brusque. Others didn't understand our business, trying to force our square peg into the round holes of their preordained methodologies. "

I eventually realized that there are people-centered consultants and process-centered consultants -- usable consultants and unusable consultants.

Everything I Know About User Experience I Learned While Scooping Ice Cream

"Well, not quite everything. But stay with me here.

Like some of you, no doubt, my first job was scooping ice cream at a Baskin-Robbins 31 Flavors Ice Cream store. In those heady days of the '70s, Baskin-Robbins was at the top of the ice cream world and by chance I worked at a rare company-owned store. I ended up staying for years, eventually filling several roles at headquarters - but it was while working in the stores that I learned the seminal lessons of user experience.

I'm serious. Scooping ice cream laid a rock-solid foundation for my user experience practice of today. Let me share a few of those insights with you."

Craig's Wisdom, Craigslist's Success

"When I'm asked for an example of a truly UXCentric site, I often point to Craigslist. No fancy graphics, no flashing ad banners - just a sea of categorized links. Its 1.8 billion hits from 7.6 million users in January 2005 alone demonstrate beyond a doubt its success in fulfilling the needs and wishes of users.

Founder Craig Newmark shares some of the values that undergird Craigslist in Why Craigslist Works at remarkable ChangeThis.com. His ideas read like a creed of UXCentricity:"

The Sweet Spot

"Every now and then you come across a site that does exactly what it is supposed to do - nothing more, nothing less. To me, this is the sweet spot of web design.

One of the things I really enjoy about web design is the balance between the technical (programming, functionality, navigation) side and the creative (graphics, typhography, layout) side. In my book, a designer hits the 'Sweet Spot' when those two aspects converge in perfect balance and the webpage gets out of the way and lets the user accomplish a given task.

One example that I always keep in my mind regarding this is blogger.com. It shouldn't surprise anyone that Doug Bowman hit the Sweet Spot with the Blogger site. Using appealing and purposeful graphics and typography, Doug designed the interface in such a way as to make it absolutely clear what exactly it is the user can do when he stumbles across blogger.com - create an account."

Guerilla Facilitation

"Having facilitated a few hundred one-on-one usability tests and focus groups, I've come away with several thoughts about the art of facilitation. I've seen too much written about the "right" way to facilitate. Consider these thoughts my first attempt at what I'll call "Guerilla Facilitation."

Anyone who has studied facilitation methodology knows the prevailing themes: Be as unobtrusive as possible. Give users a task. Let them run through it. Don't “reward” the customer. Don't give any instruction until they've spent x amount of time on a screen. Interject only when the participant is clearly stuck or not speaking up. When forced to speak, use only non-leading, non-loaded, Socratic responses (answer a “what is this?” question with “well, what do you think it is?”). There are even instructor-led classes where facilitators practice using an audible, non-specific, neutral response to encourage feedback without showing bias (it actually sounds a lot like Homer Simpson's “mmmmm...” sound, with a bit less pleasure). Rigid stuff indeed. That said, in the perfect world, I believe in such methods, and as best as possible, I do try to follow “the rules.”

Mobile Innovation To Deliver Exceptional Mobile End User Experiences with Macromedia Flash

"Mobile Innovation will create a range of concept user interfaces for handset manufacturers and network operators that demonstrate the advantages of combining Macromedia Flash with innovative mobile UI design. Macromedia Flash Lite is a version of Macromedia Flash Player specifically developed for mobile phones and devices so consumers can benefit from the power of rich interactive Flash experiences. Macromedia connects operators and manufacturers to over one million experienced Flash developers to create exceptional mobile experiences."

The Copyright Subway

"Baruch College of the City University of New York takes its faculty on a subway ride in this clever Interactive Guide to Using Copyrighted Media in Your Courses.

Built in Flash, the tutorial uses the metaphor of a subway system to help faculty determine if media can be used in classroom or secure online settings. Basically a process flowchart, the tutorial moves a little slowly, but its tools and information are well presented. Take a few minutes for a ride on the Copyright Subway."

A good example of interactive instruction ...

Microsoft Details New Longhorn Display Functionality

"When Microsoft delivers a first beta version of Longhorn during the first half of this year, it will include support for 'auxiliary displays,' company officials said Wednesday at the VSLive conference.

Microsoft first talked about the auxiliary display concept at the Windows Hardware Engineering conference in 2004. And Intel showed a prototype of a device with an auxiliary display affixed to a laptop lid at its Intel Developer Forum conference last fall."

The cranky user: Performance anxiety

"Computers are getting faster all the time, or so they tell us. But, in fact, the user experience of performance hasn't improved much over the past 15 years. Peter looks at where all the processor time and memory are going.

About 10 years ago I remember people complaining that Microsoft Word was too slow on the Mac. You could type faster than the processor handled input on such a large application. Imagine my disappointment when I recently discovered that the same thing still holds true. Similarly, my first computer with a hard drive loaded a small command-line utility in under a second and a large graphics program in perhaps half a minute. Those are good specs, but isn't it kind of sad that they haven't changed much in the past 15 years?

So the question is, where is all the CPU power going? How is it possible that a machine with a full gigabyte of memory can run out of room to run applications just as quickly as a machine with six megabytes of memory did 15 years ago? In this month's The cranky user, I'll get to the bottom of this big mystery. But first, I want to revisit an old adage and see where it stands today."

Biro comes top as best invention under 10 Pounds

"The design world's greatest minds offered suggestions for the best low-cost innovation, but the public knows a good thing when it sees it and chose the biro. They say that simplicity is elegance and the Hungarian journalist Laszlo Biro's 1930s invention - a long-lasting pen with quick-drying ink - is certainly simple.

It was chosen as the best design under 10 Pounds by visitors to an exhibition, Under a Tenner - What is Good Design?, at the Design Museum in London."

PDD Helix to Revolutionize the Clamshell Handset

"PDD has confirmed to MobileMag that they will be displaying the Helix concept phone at the 3GSM World Congress, we have also gathered more information about this masterpiece that we think will raise the bar for everyones expectations of what is coming out in Cannes.

Ian Heseltine, Telecoms Manager of PDD explained to us that if the design is adopted, we may see a future Helix handset with a minimum of 20GB storage for MP3s and photos, an OLED display and a 5.0-megapixel camera. This handset design is aimed to become the total multimedia appliance, not just a mobile phone. All may be possible nearing the end of 2006 or early 2007 if everything goes as planned and a manufacturer picks up on PDD's innovation."

The ATM Experience

"Visiting the ATM these days has become quite an ordeal. More often than not, you would end up waiting in a long queue. I've been using the ATM for the past couple of years and have had my share of experiences. This particular bank that I'm talking about (and I'm sure others would follow suit), has two teller machines close to my office and is usually crowded during business hours. A typical scene at the ATM is as follows -"

A Fireside Chat on KDE Usability

"Recently, our very own Fabrice Mous asked if I might write an article about usability and KDE development. At first I was hesitant, and not just because I have a lot more hacking to get done before KDE 3.4 is released (which is soon). I often get asked about usability and the Open Source process, and even I sometimes get tired of having the same old conversations over and over. I thought that this time it would be refreshing to ask someone else these questions and see what they had to say. So I arranged to meet up with several people on IRC who are involved in software usability and the KDE project. Here's what ensued... "

iDash: Mac mini for Your Car

As much as we'd like to flatter ourselves by claiming to be the first to notice the Mac mini's car stereo-sized form factor would be a perfect fit, it was an idea that probably was obvious to anyone who has installed a car stereo (or in our case, made sandwiches while watching someone install it). And lots of people are ready to take stick one in their dash (or elsewhere), since its relatively low power draw and small size would make a great car computer. Classic Restorations have already installed a couple.

But the missing element to turn the Mac mini into a proper car PC is a proper front-end software, something I am excited to see being taken up by the 'iDash' project. They're just getting started, but are aiming for an open-source, modular Applescript front-end that will allow people to pop a Mac mini in their car, hook up a touchscreen, and go. They've got a lot work to do—integrating external hardware, developing software module standards, setting up Bluetooth cellular voice and data connections, etc.—but it's got promise.

PDD Helix Dual Swivel Mobile Phone

" UK product design firm PDD will show off a new concept phone next week at 3GSM in Cannes.

The Helix mobile phone is an innovative variation on a clamshell handset design that incorporates a secondary smooth swivel motion (see image below) to get maximum use from its multipurpose display screen. "

Accidental Smarts a la mode (a response to just about about any body who is interested)

"...I should pause to say that I'm not a natural for "tags." I've hardly ever used deli.cio.us tags. I didn't begin tagging my pictures for flickr for ages; even now I'm liable to tag pretty cursorily (no, I don't mean "with a computer pointing device"). I don't use categories in my own Moveable Type posts, although the Seabury site that used to be (and may someday live again) integrated categories into its architectural rationale. And once I started thinking about tags, I felt chagrined; the folksonomized Web that David envisioned, that Kevin and Stewart and all had begun to implement, presents such a tremendous opportunity - but here I was, too lazy to tag. I had worked on my to care about valid mark-up, and I emphasized this aspect of the Seabury site. But I just wasn't sure I had the determination to add Technorati tags to my posts. You're too polite to complain, but I get long-winded - how would I tag my monologues without repeating most of the words? I was going to be a stick between the spokes of the organic semantic Web, when my friends were building and turning the wheels."

This is a long but insightful article ...

Voicemail software recognises callers' emotions

"A voicemail system that labels messages according to the caller's tone of voice could soon be helping people identify which messages are the most urgent. The software, called Emotive Alert, is designed by Zeynep Inanoglu and Ron Caneel of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US.

It might be installed at the phone exchange or in an intelligent answering machine, where it will listen to incoming messages and send the recipient a text message along with an emoticon indicating whether the message is urgent, happy, excited or formal."

Mind-Numbing New Interface Technologies

"Dr. Richard Marks, one of the creators of the Eye-Toy, talks about new directions in interface design."

At first it didn't look like much: Dr. Richard Marks, who helped create Sony's awesome Eye-Toy peripheral, walked us through some PowerPoint slides talking about different game interfaces. Then things got crazy.

Game interfaces often get the shaft. Developers invest tons in graphics or sound or physics, but nobody ever invests tons of time into the control scheme. Often people don't even really think about it. Game controllers are ubiquitous. You push a button, and stuff happens. But the interface is literally a player's connection to the game: it's where the action happens.

And after a couple decades of stagnation (game pads are basically the same as they were for the NES, save for more buttons) we're finally on the verge of some crazy new technologies for how people interact with games. The Eye-Toy is leading the way, proving that there's an opportunity for new concepts to hit mainstream.

Barcode Meets Pizza, Surfing and Ramen

"Design Barcode, Inc.developed unique barcodes that look more interesting than existing ones. Nikkei Design's website shows some of their sample barcodes: a pizza barcode, a surfin' barcode, and a noodle (ramen) barcode."

Some of these barcodes will actually be printed on popular bottled green tea products in Japan: Catechinshiki Green Tea and Aminoshiki from Suntory Ltd. So, the company might actually make some good money out of these things.

Introducing the all new Gavin Laking paper - usability

"Creating an easy to use interface is quite difficult, but I've discovered another practice which helps me to develop interfaces which can be used by all types of people from all walks of life. Inspired by a joke image I was sent via email from a trusted friend, I started thinking about the ways in which people interact and share information. The image depicted Google as it would have been in the late 1800s- a printed sheet of paper with a small form, which would have been posted to Google headquarters and returned to the sender on completion of the search along with the result of the search.

This of course started me thinking about paper. Now, being a proponent of the paperless office, it is hard for me to consider using paper for anything because I'm too busy trying to remove it from everyday life. I try very hard not to waste it, and I build tools that I consider to be clever enough to prevent the requirement of a paper-trail. I rely on tools built by others to hold my world perfectly without the need of a hard-copy. I trust both the tools I build and the tools I use to never let me down and force me to use paper as a storage device."

Google Maps proves "It's the experience, stupid"

"Google proves it again with Google Maps - it's the experience, stupid. There's no new data here, just a better experience. There's so much more to Google Maps than just the BIG maps, but even if we just focus on that for a second it becomes clear who "gets" what people want from a map.

Here's the default map I get when I search for our office on Yahoo Maps, MSN Maps, Mapquest and Google Maps. Is there any question about the value of design and the customer experience after seeing this comparison? Google slaps them down again. So, where are you going for your maps next time?"

Check out the relative differences between maps. You have to experience it to see the difference ...

Let's Ramp It Up!!

"We have read a lot about usability, functionality, sustainability, but yet little has been mentioned in our readings about the emotional design factor; even though we know that emotion provides easy access to our minds as well as our hearts (Heller, 2004). When one thinks of emotions many things can come to mind; fear, sad, anxiety, rage, pleasure, joy, happiness, and the list goes on. Emotion does not act alone, it interactions with affect and cognition. "

Getting Real, Step 1: No Functional Spec

"Getting Real is all about starting from the user interface and customer experience and then building out. Visual design first, programming second. The more traditional process is starting from the abstract (documentation, diagrams, charts, etc.), coding a skeleton app, and then homing in on the real by finishing it up with an interface. We think that's backwards.

Over the next few weeks I'll be writing more about our Getting Real process, but I wanted to jump in by first talking about step 1.

NESTA Futurelab - Literature Review in Learning with Tangible Technologies

"When we think of digital technologies in schools, we tend to think of computers, keyboards, sometimes laptops, and more recently whiteboards and data projectors. These tools are becoming part of the familiar educational landscape. Outside the walls of the classroom, however, there are significant changes in how we think about digital technologies - or, to be more precise, how we don't think about them, as they disappear into our clothes, our fridges, our cars and our city streets. This disappearing technology, blended seamlessly into the everyday objects of our lives, has become known as "ubiquitous computing". Which leads us to ask the question: what would a school look like in which the technology disappeared seamlessly into the everyday objects and artefacts of the classroom?"

NESTA Futurelab - An interview with Nick Mee, Director, Virtual Image

"Connections in Space, a new project targeted at older teenagers, is an attempt to show just how exciting maths can be. The CD, which can be used either as a library resource or in conjunction with an interactive whiteboard, was created by a multidisciplinary team, consisting of Nick (a physicist and software designer), John Barrow (an astrophysicist and mathematician), Martin Kemp (an historian of art and science) and Richard Bright (an artist).

The idea behind Connections in Space, which has been designed as both a CD-Rom and a website, is to examine the connections between artistic and scientific representations of space. By clicking on a particular topic, such as 'Cosmic Structure' or 'Hypercubes', the reader can read text relating to the topic and see visual representations, some of which are animated.

The clever bit, though, is that the visual interface is based on the London Underground map, so that the topics are presented as stations along a particular line. Along the red line, for example, which the key tells us is about 'spatial visions', stations (or topics) include 'The Sun', 'Camera Obscura' and 'Curved Space'. Just like the real tube map, some stations have more than one line, so from 'Curved space' you can connect to topics along the black 'Higher Dimensions' line."

Siemens SK65 review

"Siemens turned some heads (pun sort of intended) last year with their announcement of their SK65, a pretty radical form factor departure from the regular QWERTY keyboard-equipped mobile communicators out there. And what's more, they produced a version with BlackBerry Built-In (a fancy way of saying it's got a bunch of BlackBerry software, and runs with BlackBerry servers and services). But, as you may have heard, Siemens's cellphone business at home and abroad has been languishing lately, and there was some concern that the SK65 might never get produced in any large number. And would you know what? We got our greedy little mitts on one and gave it the once over - click on to read what we think!"

Twist to access keyboard ...

Threat and Error Management

"Dedicated teams of flight safety researchers from the airlines, government and academia have developed a concept called 'Threat and Error Management' which is enhancing flight crew performance measurably while at the same time minimizing the number of errors.

To begin, representatives from the Air Line Pilots Association, the University of Texas Human Factors Research Project, and NASA-Ames Research Center set out to answer the question, 'What makes the difference between a pristine flight when nothing goes wrong and a flight in which nothing goes right?' The things influencing the answer are plentiful: ATC, weather, maintenance, heavy traffic, unfamiliar airport, automation, equipment malfunctions, flight diversions, time pressures, terrain, passenger events, distractions, interruptions, cabin crew and ground crew, just to name a few. And each increases the potential for flight crew error.

Don Gunther, director of Human Factors and Safety at Continental Airlines, went back through reports in his carrier's Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP) to discover any common threads in the events. As with NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), pilots filing with ASAP are given confidentiality and immunity on the events reported."

LeapFrog unveils pen that can talk, do math, translate

"LeapFrog Enterprises Inc. on Wednesday announced the launch of its FLY 'pentop computer,' a talking, computerized pen that can translate words into other languages or help with math and spelling homework.

LeapFrog said the product will give users audio feedback as they write and draw on special FLY paper.

For instance, the company said a user can draw a calculator, touch the handwritten digits and functions to perform an operation, and then hear the answers announced. "

Cascading Drop-Down Menus

A complex cascading menu system in a recent Web application design project had me revisit the pros and cons of “fly-out” menus. The benefits are probably most obvious. Cascading drop-down menus:

- Use up little screen real estate
- Don’t overwhelm users with too many exposed options
- If implemented well, can be useful to speed up navigation for users who repeatedly interact with a particular application

Some disadvantages, however, come to light when cascading drop-down menus meet user goals. Most notable is the impact these menus have on casual users who are unlikely to invest too much time exploring a particular site or application.

Stewart Butterfield on Flickr

At the O'Reilly Emerging Tech Conference in 2004, a startup called Flickr introduced a funny little social networking app that let you upload digital photos into chatroom and IM conversations. While the original launch met with rave reviews from attendees, the Flickr team kept adding features and evolving the service. By July 2004, they had achieved a critical mass of features, and Flickr was becoming the hottest thing on the net. In January 2005 alone, Flickr has been profiled in Wired, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and the Washington Post.

As of this writing, Flickr boasts 270,000 users, four million photos, 30 percent monthly growth in users, and 50 percent monthly growth in photos. (As a datapoint, when I interviewed Stewart about ten days ago, those numbers were 240,000 users and 3.5 million photos.) And these numbers don't even begin to tell the story. Flickr is a phenomenon, a fundamentally different way of using digital photography and the Internet. Flickr is simply the manifestation of the perfect storm of camera phones, consumer broadband, blogs, RSS, and folksonomy tags.

Usability or Donkey Design? (Or, Why do you love usability?)

An interesting newsgroup post by John S. Rhodes ...

"I am passionate about usability. If you are reading this you are probably passionate too. At a minimum, you are probably interested in usability and you think usability is valuable. I have something for you to think about. Are you really interested in usability for the sake of usability? Or, instead, are you really interested in the results of usability? Here's something to think about. Let's pretend that you could improve a web site 350% by getting a donkey to stomp all over your keyboard. We'll call this Donkey Design. In this situation, we can see that Donkey Design is superior to usability.

So, what really matters? Do we really need to care about users? Do humans come before technology? Do you really care about usability or do you care about the results of usability? Does Donkey Design sound better than usability now that you know it offers excellent ROI, particularly in relation to usability? This isn't quite as silly as you might think. If you just embrace usability because it works, you'll be blind to other options. You won't explore other ways to increase ROI. And trust me, there are other ways to improve ROI. Usability is just one way to get what you want. It isn't the only way.

We should constantly be looking for ways to improve our designs and web sites. In some cases we can improve by using different technologies. In other cases we can improve by doing more editing and proofreading. In still other cases we improve by optimizing our sites for search engines.

The key is to understand your goals. The are many ways to get what you want, including ROI, without usability. Match the methods to the goals. Don't just"

Handheld Usability

"I just finished reading Handheld Usability by Scott Weiss and I have to say I was initially disappointed. Scott's book should have been named 'The Process to Handheld Usability'. Don't get me wrong, the book goes into some good detail on what you should do to create the best user interface you can for your handheld product. The problem is I had a pre-conceived notion that this book would tell me how to create a usable UI for my handheld application."


Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create & Communicate