Physical Email

I've been thinking about some sort of physical email for sometime now. Something that recaptures the tactile nature of receiving a letter while maintaining the convenience of email.

I stumbled upon this the other day – genius.


Tableau: physical email from John Kestner on Vimeo.

You can read more about his work here.

Zen Tools by Giulio Parini

After taking a shower and when the bathroom becomes filled with steam, use the zen tools to decorate and play with the foggy mirror. Cool idea from here

Nice low tech interface

I don't even know if this app exists, but it looks great. 

Imagine google maps with this kind of look & feel.

Don't depend on rollovers

Look at a site on an iPad, iPhone or in fact any touch device and you will notice the rollovers no longer  work. Yes this is pretty obvious, touch has no hover state, but it means that if you are relying on this to let users know that they can interact with something it's not going to work on a touch device and you users will become confused and frustrated.

A good example of this is Light box. On a touch device those little arrows that indicate you can click on the left and right of the image no longer appear. So users who have never seen this before don't know they can interact with the image to see more. Another example is mystery meat navigation, suddenly this becomes impossible to understand and requires wild guessing to navigate.

As more interaction takes place via touch devices we can no longer depend on rollover states to inform users of how they can interact. Sure we can still use them, but just don't depend on them.

Blurring reality and fiction: Theoretical Block by Aron Lorincz

Theoretical Block by Aron Lorincz from Dezeen on Vimeo.

I love the concept behind this, this kind of subversion of reality.

Pressure-Sensitive Drawing on iPad

Loving the potential of this.

Brilliant idea: Bottle Bank Arcade - TheFunTheory

Brilliant

Wimbledon Mobile App

Nice integration of augmented reality, although the app looks a little complicated - feature bloat?

Interaction design meets architecture

I've recently been thinking about whether interaction/user experience design can be elevated to the same level as architecture.

In many ways I think there are significant similarities between the two. Considering the increasing amount of time people are spending digitally interacting with systems and each other, this field is certainly growing in importance within society.

With this in mind, I spotted this article about Interaction Design and Architecture on Johnny Holland. The videos explore the point at which architecture and interaction design meet. This one is fantastic



Dan Hill-Keynote: New Soft City from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.

Shantell Martin talks about the power of collaboration

Talking about collaboration she says
"... and they get to put a little spin on your work and you get to take that and spin it back. And the more you do that the more you create something that is propelling it self much higher than you could ever do by yourself."

10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design

Watch presentation

Tokyo Marathon via social media

Joseph Tame is possibly bonkers but what a great experiement. From PechaKucha Tokyo. (if you don't know what PechaKucha is find out here).



Live from the... Tokyo Marathon!

Brands are interfaces and interaction

The ascent of interaction design to a critical role in brands is largely due to the changing nature of brands themselves. The new reality of brands is that they’re programs to deliver value through customer interfaces and interactions. They’re no longer the realm of top-down symbols, slogans and promises. In their new mode, brands are more social and cultural than “corporate.” They’re collaborative expressions of companies and their customers, formed in a structured process that builds the brand from the customer up. 

Some definitions:

• A brand interface is where the brand works with customers
• A brand interaction is how the brand works with customers

Yes, brands work with customers. The brands that count are working brands, not display brands. They’re brands that roll up their sleeves and team with customers to get things done.

 From Interaction design: the new key to brands

6 Foundations of Great Digital Creative

Interesting although foundation number one should be a "bloody good idea".

Tim Brown urges designers to think big

Fraser Davidson Showreel 2010

Fraser Davidson Showreel 2010 from Fraser Davidson on Vimeo.

Microsoft, maps and augmented reality

Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos augmented-reality maps at TED

Amazing timelapse tilt shifted film

One day around the tower (Zaha Hadid - Marseilles) from Exmagina on Vimeo.

One day timelapse tilt shifted film around the new Zaha Hadid tower of CMA-CGM in Marseilles - South France

Shot between June and december 2009 with Sony EX1, Letus Elite and Nikon D90.

Edited in Final Cut Pro, post and grad in After Effect.

Score performed by His Boy Elroy : Revolve (R Mix)
avalaible on iTunes & Amazon

Things to do with video online

Lots of interesting ideas in this presentation. Including this great video.

Keep it simple stupid

This article asks the interesting question of weather the traditional web is dead and if we are moving to a more app based model? A model where we access online content via apps rather than the browser window.

The ipad will certainly increase the amount of content accessed via applications, I guess the next question is whether a standard application platform will appear for none mac devices, will this be an Adobe platform Flex or Air or HTML 5 and jquery. 

What ever the answer, and their is probably not just one, the key lessons to be learnt from the app model is that successful solutions  "distill their apps down to the very basics and focus on only the most essential features"

As they say: keep it simple stupid.

Crowdsource video

This is brilliant, I wonder how long until we see this as a TV ad.

Genius, a capillary calendar

Ink Calendar makes use of the timed pace of the ink spreading on the paper to indicate time. The ink is absorbed slowly, and the numbers in the calendar are ‘printed ‘ daily. One a day, they are filled with ink until the end of the month. The calendar enhances the perception of time passing and not only signaling it. The aim of the project is to address our senses, rather than the logical and conscious brain.

The ink colors are based on a spectrum, which relate to a “color temperature scale”, each month having a color related to our perception of the weather on that month. The colors range from dark blue in December to three shades of green in spring or orange and red in the summer.

More 

The problem is not ideas...

"The problem is not ideas, ideas are there, the real problem is to know which ideas you invest in and which ideas you give time to" – Ron Arad

Brilliant Animation: HP – invent from Tom and Matt

HP - invent from Tom and Matt on Vimeo.

Unique interface

Maybe the audience could txt messages onto their t-shirts and guitars??

Lexus LFA Digital Speedometer

Nice interface

Friday Fish

Kuroshio Sea - 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world - (song is Please don't go by Barcelona) from Jon Rawlinson on Vimeo.

Make sure you watch it full screen

We set out to broaden our ambitions; to create a design philosophy and world-class design standards that all designers across the business could adhere to. We wanted to find the soul of the BBC. We wanted something distinctive and recognisable; we wanted drama. We knew whatever we created needed to be truly cross-platform and that we needed to simplify our user journeys.

From a fantastic post on the BBC blog charting some of the work that is being done on the redesign of the BBC site.

A New Dimension to Touch

Looks like pressure sensitive touch screens could be just round the corner according to this article on the BBC.  The added dimension this could add to interaction is pretty exciting with a few examples shown here and a bit more about QTC, the magical material behind this, here.

And in a completely different vein, but some how related, is this amazing video.


Glass Is Liquid. from Mike Call on Vimeo.

Stefan Sagmeister - Things I have learned...

...in my life so far

Worlds first augmented reality t-shirt

This is great - what a lovely idea.

Personality in UX = Brand

Here's a good article on about whether technology should have personality.

I agree with the idea that interaction design should consider personality, but I don't think it is as simple as just making the technology and interaction nice and friendly.

I think we need to look beyond this and start thinking about Brand interaction. That is ensuring how we interact with something is a reflection of the personality of the Brand it represents, whether it be a website, application, mobile phone or some other piece of technology.

Dieter Rams’ ten principles to “good design”

Good design is innovative
Good design makes a product useful
Good design is aesthetic
Good design makes a product understandable
Good design is unobtrusive
Good design is honest
Good design is long-lasting
Good design is thorough down to the last detail
Good design is environmentally friendly
Good design is as little design as possible

A Digital Scrap Book that works

For years I've collected things I find interesting and inspiring, most end up in a folder somewhere on my computer, the better stuff will end up on the wall. All the guys I work with do a similar thing, but we all agree, we rarely look at all the stuff we have collected.

So yesterday I grabbed all my files and put them into a little digital photoframe, it sits on my desk and serves up little nuggets of inspiration through out the course of the day.

With a bit of luck the video will be working soon.

The fold is dead, long live the fold

This article from CX Partners demonstrates, based on the findings of user testing, why it is no longer vital to get all your content above the page fold.

However, how we design the area above the fold does effect the likely hood of somebody exploring further down the page. For example, having less above the fold actually encourages exploration as shown in the results of this eye tracking test for Bristol Airport.

Here are their three tips to encourage user to explore below the fold:

Less is more – don’t be tempted to cram everything above the fold. Good use of whitespace and imagery encourages exploration.

Stark, horizontal lines discourage scrolling - this doesn’t mean stop using horizontal full width elements. Have a small amount of content just visible, poking up above the fold to encourage scrolling.

Avoid the use of in-page scroll bars - the browser scrollbar is an indicator of the amount of content on the page. iFrames and other elements with scroll bars in the page can break this convention and may lead to content not being seen.

Read the full article here.

Next Generation Symbian UI

Screen shots of what Nokia wants to see in the next generation Symbian^4 UI.


As posted on The Register

The titlebar has new, more compact signal strength and battery indicators that appear no matter what app you're in. The title is application-dependent - on the homescreen, it would name the operator, for example - and would double-up as a tappable space to call up a dropdown Options menu, signalled by the down-facing triangle.

Read the full article here.


Edit
Here is a little more about this story

Ambient User Experience

An article about Ambient User Experience, that is the elements that don't server a vital function on a web site, but none-the-less build part of the overall experience.

For me this is all about the personality of a site or application, and how the UX should reflect the Brand it represents.




Here's a couple of examples of stores that reflect very different personalities  through the UX: Nike vs Dell

Obviously they are visually very different, but look beyond that at the way they function. Nike is playful with lots of gadgets while Dell is almost purely functional and yet both allow the user achieve a similar objective, to choose, customise and buy a product.

Gesture based interaction comes of age - maybe

The cheesy promo videos I have seen about Project Natal to date have always put me off...

...but watching this, I'm thinking again.



Loads more info about Project Natal here.

Don Norman and Emotional Design

Don Norman's book The Design of Everyday Things was one of the first books I read about user experience, or ergonomics as we were calling then. Here he talks about the emotion side of UX and how it can make you happy.

Oakland: A Word-of-mouth Guide

From Cool Hunting,  see the top five Cool Hunting videos from 2009 here