Nifty

Posted via web from bzipkin’s posterous

Check out this demo of new HCI paradigm that could have legs. Scrub forward to about 4mins to see the demo in practice.

From Graphpaper.com — don’t you miss the tactile feel of old phones?

Posted via web from bzipkin’s posterous

While he only worked at the newspaper for six months, Hemingway credited The Kansas City Star stylebook as “the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing.” The full stylebook doesn’t appear to be available in public domain. However, there are several high-level guidelines and excerpts that any modern writer will find valuable and striking in their simplicity:

The three tenets:

• Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative.
• Never use old slang.
• Eliminate every superfluous word.

More dogma:

• Be careful of the word also. It usually modifies the word it follows closest. “He, also, went” means “He, too, went.” “He went also” means he went in addition to taking some other action.
• Be careful of the word “only.” “He only had $10″ means he alone was the possessor of such wealth; “He had only $10,” means the ten was all the cash he possessed.
• In writing of animals, use the neuter gender except when you are writing of a pet that has a name.
• Try to preserve the atmosphere of the speech in your quotation. For instance, in quoting a child, do not let him say “Inadvertently, I picked up the stone and threw it.”

You can get more info on proper writing styles and mechanic from the Elements of Style, by Strunk and White, and the Associated Press Stylebook, which was influenced by classics stylebooks from the Kansas City Star, The Boston Globe, and others.

It looks like you can request an invite through the Inside Adwords blog.

Here’s a post from Tim Cohn that offers a brief preview with a screenshot.

At first glance, it looks like they plan to integrate more Google Analytics-like charting features and possibly more robust navigation.

Adwords is due for a UX upgrade. The current approach seems to be collapsing under the weight of all the new features. Some things I’d like to see:

• Easier exporting of tables and campaign information
• Better integration of reporting
• More robust integration with Google Analytics
• Improved role management between team members using MCC
• A better campaign or ad group comparison engine

Great concept and very true – when was the last time you used a device or application (from a company other than Apple) and found the experience actually…ummm…enjoyable?

So what is this user experience pleasure principle? Why do Apple products continue to inspire and dazzle users while products from companies like Microsoft and HP just tend to bore us?

UX designers are conditioned to think that user workflow, task completion and logic are the essentials of a quality experience. Elements like design craftsmanship and detail are often considered extraneous and wasteful—or are simply seen as just “adding color”. Many leading design firms and pundits have trumpeted this concept of simplicity over embellishment—function always trumps form.

It’s becoming clear, however, that interfaces don’t need to be stark and bland to be good. Some of the most interesting and powerful digital experiences can be seen in game UI. And companies like Apple continue to show that creating a sense of wonder in your product experience just may please customers as much as simplified design workflows.

Don’t me get wrong, Chrome is pretty cool and they’ve integrated a handful of user experience elements that are surprising in their logic and brilliance. Here are four that struck me.

1. Dragging a tab to the desktop creates a new browser window

One of the new innovations in Chrome is that each tab is treated as its own browser. A nice byproduct of this functionality is the ability to create new browser windows by simply dragging a browser tab Chrome to the desktop. Browser tabs were a great innovation a few years ago, but can be somewhat limiting—viewing two pages side-by-side requires the spawning of a new browser window. Chrome makes a thorny process a lot easier.

2. Maximum Screen Optimization

Chrome barely seems like an application. Extreme care and attention was taken to minimize the profile of browser controls and navigation, opting to dedicate as much screen space to the main window. The top navigation and menu controls have approximately 33% less profile than IE or Firefox (and this at the default settings…no toolbars added). Anyone who works in UX understands how difficult it is to maximize controls without sacrificing usability. Chrome does a great job at this.

3. The Omnibox

The multi-purpose search and URL box might take some getting used to, but overall is a nice tactic for minimizing and optimizing input fields. Although Firefox’s awesome bar has a better experience and is more legible, they still support a separate URL and search input box. I like where Chrome is going with this.

4. Kill Screen

Chrome displays a “kill screen” when it detects an unresponsive page. While this may not be that useful with web pages in general, this could be an incredibly useful feature with application development.

Finally, Chrome is built for speed. While new features and functions are always welcome with web browsers, if they come at the sacrifice of speed they are problematic. At first look, the UX of Chrome seems to be a step back from Firefox and Explorer, but after some experimentation and use it becomes clear that Google is looking beyond features and envisioning browsing as a user’s core computing experience. This minimalist approach may make users uncomfortable at first, but it should not take long for Chrome to gain significant share of the browser market.

Key issues:

• So what will this new search/information retrieval look like?
• How will our web browsing experience change?
• How can users design a search experience? What types of tools and UIs will they need to manipulate and customize their information?

These are questions I’ll be addressing with the team at RDVO. More coming soon, and any interesting ideas or links would be helpful!

Alan Cooper’s keynote address at the Agile2008 Conference, titled The Wisdom of Experience presents a deeply insightful perspective the software development process.

The presentation starts by painting a clear, broad picture of the software development landscape and then dives deeper into the development process. His main premise is that the Agile Methodology is the best (and only) way to effectively implement modern software projects because it facilitates true collaboration between engineers and interaction designers.

We try to use the Agile Methodology on all of our development projects at RDVO. I think we’re one of the few agencies that have embraced this approach–the majority of interactive design firms still use the broken Waterfall Model as their core implementation process. We’ve found that Waterfall essentially sets you up to fail. A reason most agencies embrace it is because it’s much easier to “sell” to clients. Go figure.

So back to Cooper…not only is the subject matter of the presentation important, he is a master of medium. The presentation is perfectly organized and executed. While it would have been interesting to watch the presentation, the main points are clearly organized in the speaker notes.

There has been a lot of talk about the Steve Jobs presentation style, and how all business presentations should follow his model. As great as “Jobsian” presentations are, they also have a lot to do with his subject matter. While this may sound nice, the vast majority of business presentations simply need more “meat” to be relevant. I think that Cooper’s presentation provides a perfect happy medium.

In preparation for a new project, I put together a quick presentation that compares design approaches for a number of prominent semantic search engines, including Powerset.com, Sindice.com, Cuil.com, Twine.com, and hakia.com. Specific attention was paid to general presentation, input methods, display or results, and categorical results approach.

Worth a look if you’re interested in semantic search.

For a lot of projects, copy and wording are considered “icing” or an element of the design process that gets fitted in later—often with little or no involvement from designers. While many user interface experts believe that digital interfaces cannot support copious amounts of copy (the concept that users scan rather than read), the trend in UI design is more copy, not less. Wikipedia and Facebook are both great examples of how text can be used as the core of the user experience.

The presentation also discusses new communication and expression trends that are evolving as aspects of Web 2.0 – the concept that “We aren’t writing, we are speaking in text.”

The presentation, Copy as Interface, is embedded below.