A contributor to the IxDA discussion list posted about the availability on iTunes of Stanford University lectures in human-computer interaction.
I just browsed the list of lectures. Looks like real good stuff. Some lectures I’m particularly interested in hearing:
- The Design of Implicit Interactions, Wendy Ju, Stanford, Spring 2007
- Designing Interactions, Bill Moggride, IDEO, Winter 2007
- Innovation on User Research Methods During the Development of Windows Vista, Gayna Williams, Microsoft, Fall 2006
You can point your browser to this link to get to the class listings within iTunes.
Here’s a mini-rant about the usability of Apple’s Mac OS X:
I use Spaces, the multiple desktop feature found in OS X 10.5. It’s a nice feature for us Windows-on-VMWare-Fusion (or Parallels) people. I assign Fusion’s window to a separate space, and cmd+arrow down or over to get to my Windows window. I’ve assigned the Finder to be present in all spaces. (I only use the default four spaces.)
The problem I run into is the stupid no-op that sometimes occurs when I’m in Space 1, the Finder is in Space 2, 3, or 4, and I click on the Finder icon in the dock. Sometimes – but infuriatingly, not all the time and with no predictability – a click on the dock’s Finder icon does absolutely nothing. It doesn’t bring the Finder to my current space, nor does it pop me over the the space where the Finder window currently resides.
What I have to do then is cmd+arrow all over tarnation trying to find my frakking Finder window. Lame.
Interestingly, I just tried to reproduce the problem, and I couldn’t. So I don’t know whether it’s a strange interaction between the behavior of several OS X features, or an actual bug. One thing it definitely is is annoying.
