Category: Interface Design and Usability

24 ways to impress your friends is a great set of essays (24 of them, surprise, suprise) on good practices for web design. See for example, Day 19, Putting the World into “World Wide Web”, which is as good an introduction to internationalization as I can find.

Banff, what a place to hold a conference! Would you stay inside to hear papers on Computer Supported Cooperative Work when in Banff?

Thanks to John Bonnet at Brock for this.

iPod’s Popular Earbuds: Hip Or Harmful? is one of a number of articles on hearng loss and iPods. The problem is the length of time people listen to iPods (they last longer than earlier devices like the Walkman), the lack of distortion at the high range (analogue devices would distort at the high end), and the bud-type earphones that further raise the volume. In Europe the iPods are sold with the a lower maximum volume for these reasons. See also Macworld UK – Experts warn of iPod hearing loss.

I’ve found myself listending at almost full volume, especially in noisy situations where I want drown out sound. Hmmm …. What did you say? Speak up.

The Charles Booth Online Archive has a neat interactive version of Booth’s Descriptive Map of London Poverty, 1889 synchronized with a modern street map.

StrangeBanana: Computer-generated webpage design is “Just Another Website” with a twist. You can see a random new design for the site just by pressing “refresh”. They also show you how to use any design you like for your own page. I got this from the Biased History of Interactive Media site blogged before.

Hunting and killing online – Mouse Click Brings Home Thrill of the Hunt. Yes, now you can subscribe to an online hunting experience where you can control a gun and fire it remotely (you do need a valid Texas hunting license). What can I say.

Thanks to Matt Patey who pointed me to Greasemonkey which offers a Firefox extension that allows you control aspects of page’s design using DHTML.

There is a story on Wired News: Firefox Users Monkey With the Web about this.

If this catches on it will return some control over the interface back to the browser in the never ending see-saw between designer and user control over the interface.

After years of making fun of the arts, it turns out that design skills are the new IQ (Imagination Quotient) for business (and, for that matter, engineering.) From a meeting with Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) folks and from Audrey Carr I have heard about the new Rotman & OCAD collaboration, see The Business of Design.

Web Pages That Suck is a blog about mistakes of web design. I found the site looking at a site I rather liked, one art | design for use, which claims its readership went up when it got an honorable mention.
The idea of teasing bad design is a good one. This should be good to use and read for classes.

The Logitech Advanced io2 Digital Writing System is a pen which stores the paths that you write and draw for downloading to the computer. It works with special paper that has a pattern of tiny dots that are tracked by a sensor under the nib. (See LogitechÆ io‚Ñ¢ Digital Writing” href=”http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm?PATH=products/features/digitalwriting&PAGE=products/features/digitalwriting&CRID=1545&REF=CRID=1545&countryid=19&languageid=1″>Logitech Products >Logitech’s Digital Writing site.
The underlying technology is called Anoto and it is also being used in products like LeapFrog’s FLY pentop computer for kids. Fly lets kids draw out a piano keyboard and then lets you play the piano by pressing the pen to the keys. A sound synthesizer plays the note.
Such pen and voice systems suggest a whole new type of interface that is not screen or touch pad based. You could have a pen shaped phone where you just write the phone number down and it calls it. The trick is the paper that lets it tack its absolute position even if you raise the pen and move it. I’m sure we are going to see innovative uses for this technology that take advantage of what you can do when you don’t need a screen.
Continue reading Digital Pens (Anoto, io2, and Fly)