A lot of designers think that a work is part of a person, that it has come from some mysterious place inside. How it will sell depends on who we are as individuals. But an interesting thing for me is that I think we ourselves change from time to time. I may be Tung Chiang,…
Testing my new RSS feed I am having some trouble coding up my new RSS feed. If you’ve got a content aggregator, and you’d like to let me know how my feed works for you, please let me know. BTW… What’s a content aggregator? Similar:It's been a Dwarf Fortress afternoon. AwesomeTeachers finding games give a…
Diaries and journals are a longstanding fixture of writing and foreign language classes. Journals are also commonly employed in other subjects, including lab notebooks in the sciences, and sketch books and portfolios for teaching the arts. Teachers often encourage students to keep notes of their own, and sometimes use these notes as an additional indicator…
Better Dialog BoxJerz’s Literacy Weblog) I recently wrote about a survey with a confusing dialog box… while trying to download a Microsoft update, I came across this dialog box, which does a much better job. Similar:Mobile is a "really punishing format" for indies, says inkle's Jon IngoldMobile is a really punishing format for …BusinessCaptain Gearheart…
Voice recognition systems have come a long way in the last decade and are used in places like call centres, home PCs and even mobile phones. Dashboards are becoming the hub of the car But over the next 10 years, we could even be holding virtual conversations with the car dashboard. —Richard Taylor —Talking to…
Thousands of patients in NHS hospitals are being forced to watch television for up to 15 hours a day… Matt Durcan, an IT specialist, said he complained to staff at North Hampshire Hospital after he was unable to turn off the TV set beside his son’s bed. —NHS patients ‘forced to watch TV’ (BBC) Didn’t these…
‘Click Cancel to Proceed’: Pop-Up Dialog Rhetoric A little while ago, I got an e-mail from a Ph.D. student working on a research project. Would I mind filling out an online form that asked questions about leadership and religion? The form says I can leave certain questions blank. So I do. After I’ve filled out…
Do you know the origin of term BSOD aka ?Blue Screen of Death?? Well, the term ?Blue Screen of Death? was not the original acronym for BSOD. The original term meant the ?Black Screen of Death? and was seen when running under Windows 3.0. A user would attempt to run a DOS application and instead…
After looking at my teaching evals from last term and talking with the boss, I can see I need to spend more time discussing my assignment expectations. I’m teaching mostly freshmen, which means they are perhaps more needy than the students in the upper-level tech writing classes I used to teach every term. But I’m a freshman too.…
Many advocates of computer-mediated distance education emphasize its positive aspects and understate the kind of work that it requires for students and faculty. This article presents a qualitative case study of a Web-based distance education course at a major U.S. university. The case data reveal a taboo topic: students’ persistent frustrations in Web-based distance education.…
People use these devices [i.e. remotes] while watching movies or TV shows at home. Given this, two key elements of the user’s situation are likely to be: Wearing glasses for distance viewing, rather than reading Low levels of lighting Of course, a young designer whose vision hasn’t yet started to deteriorate wouldn’t have the first…
“[T]he world’s first consumer application of an electronic paper display module in Sony’s new e-Book reader, Librié, [is] scheduled to go on sale in Japan in late April. This ‘first ever’ […] display utilizes E Ink’s revolutionary electronic ink technology which offers a truly paper-like reading experience with contrast that is the same as newsprint.”…
—Old School Moveable Type (MGK) Real moveable type. Ever since I investigated the meaning of the name of the character “Shurdlu” in Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine, I’ve had a longing to learn how to use an old-fashioned printing press — one that actually presses the paper. As much as I love the power of “push-button…
Andre Torrez has found a way to use some new technology to get in touch with an old friend. He’s been spending a lot of his down time — in airports and waiting for friends — playing old-school Infocom interactive text games like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. —Daniel Terdiman —Bots Open Door to Gaming…
—Graphical User Interface Gallery Guidebook (Politechnika Szczecinska, Akademickie Centrum Informatyiki) Here’s part of a screen capture, showing the development of the “file manager” icon in Windows, from the original release to today. (On the site, clicking the icon takes you to another page that has screen captures of the interfaces for the various applications.) The development…
The effects of music on performance on a computer-mediated problem-solving task were examined. Participants completed the task in anonymous dyads as they were exposed to either Classical music, Punk music, or No Music. Results indicate that those in the Classical music condition performed better on the problem solving-task than those in the Punk music or…
those in the humanities tended to distrust the technology, and those in the sciences often considered humanities-applications to be wasteful of a precious resource. Specific kinds of projects, however, were more readily assisted by 1960s technology, even if character-sets were inadequate because computer-printers had either an all-uppercase or upper-and-lowercase character-set that was designed to represent…
It’s a dangerous mistake to believe that statistical research is somehow more scientific or credible than insight-based observational research. In fact, most statistical research is less credible than qualitative studies. Design research is not like medical science: ethnography is its closest analogy in traditional fields of science. —Jakob Nielsen —Risks of Quantitative Studies (Alertbox) Note… he’s…
Email newsletters continue to be one of the most important ways to communicate with customers on the Internet. Newsletters build relationships with users, and also offer users an added social benefit in that they can forward relevant newsletters to friends and colleagues. Still, users are highly critical of newsletters that waste their time, and often…
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings…