Would you like to come and work with me on a green-fields Java, Web 2.0, Social Network application using frameworks like Seam and using Agile and TDD techniques? If yes, then please apply through this Seek advertisement. Updated advertisement.
User Interfaces, Design and interaction interests me and I stumbled across this web site http://www.dontclick.it/ where they experiment with an interface that removes the need to click a mouse button.
Very interesting indeed.
So what interfaces do users really want and what do they really like ?
Over at Fully Personal Interface they are finding out with a verify interesting survey on different aspects of ‘interface’ and you can see a report on them. Please take a moment to take the survey.
When I visited the site I was survey participant 2010.
Also check out this good eZine on making your life easier and your interfaces, called Smashing Magazine.
I am passionate about every aspect of design, and not just software or user interfaces, but other areas too. Architecture, Industrial Design, Clothing and many other aspects are of interest to me. This is why I read the book “Sketching User Experiences, getting the design right and the right design.” by Bill Buxton.
The book is inspirational and educational as well as long and with small print. It makes you think about the role of design the the importance of taking the time up-front to do designs. It also takes you through many practical approaches to designing for different mediums, including the User Interface. I practice Agile XP software development and I think there is still a need and a place for design, but I wont discuss that now. If design and the process of designing is important to you, then please get this book.
There are some quotes from the book which I just have to share:
In reference to spending time on Design -
”
Let me end this section by addressing a comment that usually comes up at this stage:
This is all well and good, and in an ideal word this might be fine. But in the real world, we have to meet deadlines and work under limited budgets. We simply don’t have the time or money to add this kind of process. Shooting for the ideal is just not realistic. ‘Good enough’ is all we have time for.
My standard response to such comments nearly always takes the form of the following two counter-questions:
How is it that we can never afford to do proper planning and design, yet we always seem to be able to afford to pay the cost of products being late as well as the cost of fixing all of the bugs that inevitably result from inadequate design, planning, and testing?
How can this be when the cost of design and planning is nothing compared to the cost of being late to market or having a defective product?
”
Sketching User Experiences goes on to show how Design as a profession is as rich as math or medicine, and I totally agree. Here is another nice quote from the book to drive this point home:
“Being able to add up your grocery bill does not make you a mathematician. Likewise, decorating your home does not make you a designer.”
Design is everywhere, but not all design is good and not everyone can design although they can play a part in the process of design. The Design Files is a nice blog about the design in different products and industries. The content and imagery may move you, and that’s by design.
I was looking around the net for some examples of how to represent related data in a three dimensional way on a HTML page using just Javascript and came across this site http://www.dhteumeuleu.com.
The creative interface explorations along with clean simple code make Gerard Ferrandez javascript legend in my book.
Please take some time to have a look at the examples and how you could possibly use the interface elements in your next web project.
I have been waiting for the game incrysis to come out for some time. It looks simply amazing as this video can attest.
I’m going to upgrade to whatever is required to play this game to it’s full potential. Now if the virtual worlds out there looked like this then I’d be tempted to hang around in them.
I really like unix/linux and a love Macintosh OS X, but why do nontechnical people run screaming from Unix?
This article by Eric S. Raymond tells a story and is worth reading if making interfaces ‘humane’ is of interest to you.
I dont think unix/linux is as bad as described but Im going to configure printing in my ubuntu installation today and report back.
Do you have some UI war stories to share?