http://www.usabilityblog.com Blogging about usability and the user experience Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:53:41 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Bet you didn't know that showers had operating systems. (Click to see picture full-sized) Originally uploaded by Dan Szuc of Apogee Hong Kong. http://www.usabilityblog.com/index.php/2008/12/03/shower-os/ Say what you will about Wil Wright's Spore. One thing he and the team got right: the creator interaction. Ever since I downloaded Creature Creator, my 5- and 9-year old have been building ships, buildings, and creatures endlessly. And more importantly, they've discovered how to do this with minimal intervention ... http://www.usabilityblog.com/index.php/2008/11/30/spores-creator-great-for-kids/ This week I went to Washington DC to attend the U.S. National Design Policy Summit, a gathering of academics, government employees and representatives of professional associations who were focused on raising the profile of design in the United States. The gathering was organized by Dr. Elizabeth Tunstall of the University ... http://www.usabilityblog.com/index.php/2008/11/13/mr-sherman-goes-to-washington/ Long time no post. Sorry. Been too busy obsessively following the U.S. election at www.FiveThirtyEight.com. If you're a hardcore stats junkie, this is - or was, after Tuesday - the site for you. Anyway, since my last post I traveled to Hong Kong and Shenzhen to take part in the User ... http://www.usabilityblog.com/index.php/2008/11/03/my-user-friendly-2008-kick-off-presentation/ I have kept politics off the table during my 3+ years of running this blog. I just think it's a private thing, and not germaine to the topics I cover here. Suffice it to say I'm a something like a rabidly capitalistic social-liberal-fiscal-conservative-with-a-libertarian-streak. Or a Second Amendment-supporting Democrat (befitting my ... http://www.usabilityblog.com/index.php/2008/09/07/making-politics-easy-to-use/ File this post under "more signs of the USPTO apocalypse." In a story reminiscent of The Onion's parody news article "Microsoft Patents Ones, Zeros", iTWire reports on Microsoft's patent "Method and system for navigating paginated content in page-based increments"... which is a fancy way of describing the Page Up and ... http://www.usabilityblog.com/index.php/2008/08/22/1s-and-0s-not-far-behind/ I believe Samsung has surpassed Apple with this OOBE... Samsung Omnia i900 Unboxing: Greatest. Packaging. Ever. :: Digg Blogged with the Flock BrowserTags: OOBE, mobile, UX http://www.usabilityblog.com/index.php/2008/08/20/now-this-a-great-out-of-box-experience/ This article has been making the rounds today. Thought I'd do my part to keep the meme alive. OK, this isn't really a meme. But it's an interesting little compilation of UI concepts. Of course the author cites Adaptive Path's Mozilla Labs effort called Aurora. My last article for UXmatters also ... http://www.usabilityblog.com/index.php/2008/08/19/smashing-magazine-article-on-futuristic-uis/ A few colleagues have pointed me to the article by movie director-sounding blogger Matthew Paul Thomas entitled "Why Free Software Has Poor Usability, and How to Improve It." I've given you the link to the original Thomas article, but I'm more interested in discussing Johnathan Gruber's take on it. Says Gruber ... http://www.usabilityblog.com/index.php/2008/08/05/gruber-on-thomas/ We moved from the suburbs of Atlanta Georgia to Austin Texas this weekend. Actually, we started on Thursday night. The trip turned into a 1,000 mile odyssey. We were traveling with our two kids, the babysitter who has family in Austin and came along for the ride, and Petunia. So ... http://www.usabilityblog.com/index.php/2008/08/03/short-strange-trip/ Gizmodo cites an article from the Australian site PC Authority that claims the computer mouse is going the way of the dodo. The main thrust of the argument is that alternate input devices and modes will soon supersede the mouse. I'm not saying that the computer input domain isn't ripe ... http://www.usabilityblog.com/index.php/2008/07/25/computer-mouse-rip-in-five-years/ Just found a good article at ZDNet that talks about the LinuxHaters site. It's not really a site for true haters, it's more a site where people can socialize and discuss particularly egregious usability or functionality issues Linux has...and the community can figure out what to fix. If it helps ... http://www.usabilityblog.com/index.php/2008/07/25/h8ing-linux/ This week was a good week for usability and voting. The New York Times ran an editorial about the importance of usability testing when deploying new voting systems, and BusinessWeek.com reviewed the book "Design for Democracy" by Marcia Lausen. Marcia is one of the leaders of the AIGA's Design ... http://www.usabilityblog.com/index.php/2008/07/25/voting-and-usability-double-shot/ Let's go off-topic again with another stunning visual of the Earth and Moon, this time from the Deep Impact spacecraft. This is a movie of the Moon transiting across the face of the Earth, seen from 31 million miles out. Thank you Bad Astronomy for sharing this. HOLY FRAK! Moon Transits Earth! ... http://www.usabilityblog.com/index.php/2008/07/18/lets-go-ot-again/ If you remember back a year or so ago, I took issue with the customer experience associated with Adobe Acrobat Reader. Look here for my original nanorant. I believe I quoted someone who referred to Adobe Reader's update manager as an "attention whore". The blogger over at microBlog has written an ... http://www.usabilityblog.com/index.php/2008/07/05/microblog-%c2%bb-thank-you-adobe-reader-9/ (Click picture to see full-sized) Yes, this is off-topic for a blog focused on user experience. But I could not resist sharing this picture. It's a shot of Earth and Moon from Mars orbit, taken by the Mars Polar Orbiter. It's one of the most awe-inspiring pictures I've ever seen. Just look ... http://www.usabilityblog.com/index.php/2008/06/28/off-topic-but-stunning/ Profuse apologies for not posting in over a month. Standard excuses apply - swamped at work, volunteer tasks overwhelmed me, and I didn't want my girls to think that Daddy was completely checked out. I'm getting myself back into the blogging habit by pointing y'all to an article forwarded to me ... http://www.usabilityblog.com/index.php/2008/06/26/duh-enterprise-apps-not-so-usable/ <Blowing own horn> Check UBlog out at http://ui.alltop.com/. </Blowing own horn> http://www.usabilityblog.com/index.php/2008/05/21/guy-kawasaki-likes-me/ 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, ... http://www.usabilityblog.com/index.php/2008/05/07/stanford-hci-lectures-in-itunes-u/ 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 ... http://www.usabilityblog.com/index.php/2008/05/07/rant-finding-the-finder-in-os-x-with-spaces/