Targeting is a core usability metric that measures how easily users can acquire on-screen targets like buttons and menu items. Errors in targeting can cause frustration and lost time. Designers should therefore minimize targeting errors by providing targets of sufficient size and stability. An interface element is considered stable if its targeting surface neither moves …
Design fiction – lessons in innovation from Hollywood
g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo. Minority Report was released in 2002. Nevertheless, to this day I continue to hear non-designers refer to natural interfaces as “Minority Report UI.” In 2008, Oblong’s spatial operating environment, known as g-speak, made Minority Report UI a reality. The lesson is clear. As Alan Kay put it, …
A culture of innovation is a culture of play
Imagine, for a moment, what would happen if you tried to convince your company to embed a game in its flagship product. Would you be dismissed with arguments of scarce resources, higher priorities, opportunity costs, and low return on investment? Or would the response be giddy: “That’s so fun! We have to do it.” At …
16 techniques for innovation (and counting)
Claude Shannon once told me that as a kid, he remembered being stuck on a jigsaw puzzle. His brother, who was passing by, said to him: `You know: I could tell you something.’ That’s all his brother said. Yet that was enough hint to help Claude solve the puzzle.—Manuel Blum, Advice to a Beginning Graduate Student Transposition – …
20+ questions to find the simplest design. How to cut features and enjoy it.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Simpler products are easier to maintain and use. Finding the minimal design among more complex alternatives is a process of what-if questioning. Try asking these questions about your design and its features: …
Don’t delete files, *obliterate* them. How #Google #Chrome inspires confidence with word choice.
Chrome was misbehaving, so I decided to purge the cache. I got the run-of-the-mill dialog you see above…But then it made me smile. I wasn’t merely going to delete my files. No, I was going to obliterate them. Dude, that’s got to be like 3x-4x stronger than standard Delete and maybe 2x stronger than Secure …
“Intuitive” interfaces defined. Where iPod+iTunes screws this up.
Nowadays, everyone in product marketing wants an “intuitive” interface. The problem is, the word “intuitive” is fuzzy. If we’re not careful, “intuitive” is just jargon for “good.” How can designers create and measure “intuitive-ness”? One piece of the puzzle is response compatibility, the degree to which a control communicates its function. In this article, I’ll …
When a word is worth a thousand pictures
In signs, one sees an advantage for discovery that is greatest when they express the exact nature of a thing briefly and, as it were, picture it; then, indeed, the labor of thought is wonderfully diminished. Gottfried Leibniz Leibniz’s quotation is prescient on the value of visualization, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. As …
Shoe-ser experience – Why Vibram 5 fingers sell themselves
i can’t count the number of times that people have noticed my five finger shoes and struck up a conversation to learn more. i’ve had people ask to touch them—this is unthinkable in some parts of the world—tracing their fingers along the soles in disbelief and exploration, “are they really shoes?” i myself was über-curious …
Designing for the extraordinary, an experience that goes to 11
When a volume setting of 10 just will not do, you design the door to 11—a hitherto unexperienced level of performance. This is one place in experience design where convenience and ease of use are not the primary design goals. Before we continue, how many keys are required to operate an automobile? Would it not …
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