Category: Interface

I just had a look at the WWDC 2004 keynote (did I see Francis Ford Coppola in the audience a couple of times?). The upcoming release vo Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger comes with a collection of features that in general appear to be focussing on productivity and efficiency. Spotlight – the instant searching –…

Apple posts some notes on developing software for Macs. Brent Simmons recommends it not only for other developers but also for anybody who enjoys thinking about software.

ZDNet recently published a Meta Group report by analyst Mike Gotta that suggests collaboration is a business strategy, not a tool strategy. Through 2004, organizations will rein in tactical collaboration products (instant messaging, teamware, and Web conferencing) for companywide deployments, driven by architecture needs, product standardization benefits, and shared infrastructure flexibility. By 2008, “contextual collaboration”…

What users will see in the next few years is a replacement of the filesystem storage paradigm with a database storage paradigm. Microsoft is working on it and Apple seems to develop something similar as well. Oracle already stretched their database to accommodate some kind of filesystem like access – which is not aimed at…

Andrei Herasimchuk wrote an open letter to Jakob Nielsen in response to this Alertbox story: […] Mr. Nielsen, I respectfully request you stop posting articles like this. You do yourself and the usability field a disservice by speaking in terms that are vague, not backed up with research data, and filled with hyperbole. Further, until…

Whitney Quesenbery has a very memorable explanation about usability: The 5Es are helpful in planning your usability testing, because each suggests specific techniques:

Some people like to do “designer bashing” from time to time. I was just in the mood to do some “developer bashing” today. There are a number of reasons why user interfaces of many software packages fail. I assume (slightly unfair and inaccurate), that in many cases there is no interface designer involved with user…

Ingo Hinterding pointed to the SphereXP project and Sun’s Project Looking Glass. Sphere looks quite easy to use – but doesn’t seem to be an incredible enhancement. Sure: you could have open 130 windows and see them all almost at once — if you rotate fast enough! All the 3D approaches I have seen have…

Michelle Levesque contemplates about the role of Interface Design in Open Source Software: The lack of focus on user interface design causes users to prefer proprietary software’s more intuitive interface. Open Source software tends to lack the complete and accessible documentation that retains users. Developers focus on features in their software, rather than ensuring that…

Paul Thurrott runs a site that discusses Windows UI (esp. XP and Longhorn): “Now, because I present this information, I’m somehow labeled a Microsoft lover and/or an Apple basher. That’s silly. But Apple has done very little to make its UI better per se, beyond simple enhancements to what is, again, a classic desktop OS.…

»Read it to Me creates a playlist of MP3 files in iTunes from your unread items in NetNewsWire using Apple’s Text-to-Speech that you can sync to your iPod.« [inessential.com]

A great visual analisys and reflection on how to use images in order to shape people´s minds: News delivery in this country (USA) is increasingly comprised of carefully crafted displays of visual information. As consumers of information, however, most of us have never been taught to critically read or decode images and other graphic displays…

Bruce Tognazzini: »The following principles are fundamental to the design and implementation of effective interfaces, whether for traditional GUI environments or the web. Of late, many web applications have reflected a lack of understanding of many of these principles of design, to their great detriment. Because an application or service appears on the web, the…

There seems to be what Worlds.com or ActiveWorlds (formerly »Alphaworld«) always meant to be. I was once asked to do a concept for a similar project called Nikoworld. The company hired 80 people that were working on 3D enviroments and high-end machines – no concept. To deliver a concept I asked to set up my…