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, …
Uniformity is undesirable. Symmetry is immanent.
In everything…uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting, and gives the feeling that there is room for growth…Even when building the imperial palace, they always leave one place unfinished.—Japanese Essays in Idleness via Marcus du Sautoy Sautoy opens with a vignette on Galois‘s quest to revolutionize mathematics the night before he died in a …
Biomimicry is nature-inspired design
via ted.com See Robert Full’s talk, http://bit.ly/cDaNmd, for a harder science take on the same theme. Posted via web from Aneesh’s posterous
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: …
Want innovation? Design for the bottom of the pyramid on Mars.
solving the problems of the world’s poorest people, the so-called “bottom of the pyramid,” nets innovation for the whole planet. so argues c.k. prahalad in an interview at wharton. shneiderman and plaisant agrued similarly that, by designing to accomodate elderly, differently-abled, and young users, the entire user base benefits. by designing for the bottom of …
Artificial versus natural design characteristics
table of artificial vs. natural design characteristics (adapted from robert fuller’s talk on engineering and evolution, with a little help from buckminster fuller.) Artificial Natural large small flat, orthogonal curved rigid flexible few actuators many actuators few sensors many sensors compression-reinforced tension-reinforced
systems laws to think about
gall’s law – a complex system that works evolved from a simple one that worked parkinson’s law – tasks expand to fill the time allotted for completion conway’s law – organizations are constrained to produce designs that mimic their communication structure i’m not sure how thoughts gain the force of law, but in practice i …
visual thinking for design, by colin ware
richly informative. and concise to boot. interaction designers, visual designers, researchers, people working in visualization, and the curious will find value in this book. careful readers will gain a deep understanding of how, why, and what we see. this understanding will inform the use of color, edges, contours, textures, layout, text, images, order and motion. …
sketching user experiences, by bill buxton
this is a wonderful book on getting the right design (divergent ideation) and the design right (convergent iteration). on the surface, buxton focuses on what it takes for interaction designers to create breakthrough products, but the ideas are equally applicable to research in hci and visualization. if students developed the habit of inexpensively “sketching” their …
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