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, …
Natural interfaces in 5 min.
Click image to play video. How to prototype iPad apps with PowerPoint You don’t need an iPad or an engineer to tantalize your product team with the possibility of a natural interface. With just a few minutes, a computer that isn’t touch capable, and the equipment listed below, you can work like Tom Cruise in …
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 …
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 …
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