Yesterday I attended the CSS Day conference. This year only the first day, that focussed on designing user interfaces, less the building of it. Here are the key take aways for those who thought going through all slides is too long, or didn’t went.
In an earlier post I wrote about invisible design and it might have seemed that I am a big proponent of invisible design. It is, however, important to distinguish between invisible design as a design approach where designery attributes are not being articulated and design where the sole purpose is to design experiences with no user interface at all. (Visible) user interfaces may actually play an important role in creating seemingly undesigned and invisible experiences by making them frustration- and stressless; invisible can be frustrating.
Invisible can be frustrating
The technology that powers the promised invisible interaction is not really “just not there”. To understand how something works it is sometimes good to reveal something about how it works, instead of hiding it away. Especially since every now and then, how well designed a system may be, ‘errors’ can occur. These errors may be technical errors, but also…
Wired explaining that the movement towards invisible design1 should be nothing new to desingers:
> In the early 1980s, Dieter Rams laid out his now canonical 10 Principles of Good Design. Rams taught us that great design is as little design as possible. It doesn’t draw attention to itself; it merely allows users to accomplish their tasks with the maximal amount of efficiency and pleasure. At its best, it is invisible.
btw: the link to a less secondary article was added by me, it is Ram's 10th principle
Wired is stretching Dieter Rams famous “less is more” design attitude to the logical max: nothing left (the extreme of less) is invisible. Hence follows: good design = invisible design.
Rams is popular among designers in de digital sphere. [Oliver Reichenstein, famous for his design agency iA and …
Well, iOS has gone flat. We've, as interaction designers/human-computer interaction-specialists, traditionally been taught that a button should look like a button. And as we heralded Apple for its great interaction design some tend to be a bit sceptic / pissed.
The idea that something you could click on should look like a button comes from the idea of affordances; a button should expose the affordance of click-ability (or tap-ability if you like). More or less like a chair exposes the affordance of sit-ability, like a lying tree trunk does.
Affordance is a concept introduced in human-computer interaction by Don Norman in the late eighties who derived it from James Gibson. Don Norman's original reading on the concept has been popularized quite a lot, whereas James Gibson's work hasn't (at least not in interaction design-schools). But Gibson's idea of affordance was quite different from Don Norman's simplification. Later Don Norman revised his original concept of affordance…
Mensen vragen mij wel eens wat ik doe. Zo’n gesprek loopt vaak uit in
schaamte weglachende opmerkingen over dat zij ook zo veel moeite hebben
met het gebruiken van de nieuwe apparatuur (veelal oudere mensen),
waarop ik gelijk op kan reageren dat dat nou precies is waar ik mijn
bijdrage denk te kunnen leveren. Jongere mensen reageren vaak zo van,
uhuh… (ze zijn immers alleswetend) en beginnen over coole gadgets,
waarna ze in de loop van het gesprek er ook achter komen dat de techniek
toch eigenlijk niet zo werkt zoals ze wilden dat die zou werken.
Techniek frustreert toch nog steeds te vaak. En dan kan dat ene apparaat
wel perfect werken, toch moet er vaak ook informatie van het ene
apparaat (lees ook b.v. software) naar het andere apparaat. En daar gaat
het, ondanks dat we in dit moderne leven zo vaak informatie
uitwisselen, nog vaak mis.Dus. Wat kan ik voor uw organisatie betekenen? Wel, volgens mij kan
een bedrijf op de lange termijn alleen maar succes…
Because computers can multi-tasks
doesn't mean they should. People are actually quite bad at multi tasking. Computers, like any other tool, are made to support tasks. Make things easier to
accomplish. Requiring users to multi task is far from supportive. Every interruption, which switching interfaces is, takes time to
recover from. Hence, instead of promoting the idea of multi-tasking,
computer makers should think more about completing tasks users are
confronted with.
Instead of designing top notch 'solutions' for an entire 'office in a machine', computermakers should design solutions for a single clerk's
job, or maybe even just a part of that job and find a way to nicely integrate in that clerk's job. Computers, or the softmachines powered by them, should be attempts to support an entire
task without forcing the user to switch interfaces during task
execution. Bad and good designs should be tested against the vision of
perfect support for a single (ty…
Preamble: This post was lying in my Google Docs account for
almost a year. Its time to publish it, because it may soon be
obsolete. The traditional OS, that focused on managing files on a disk
is disappearing. Mac OS X and Ubuntu are
becoming old generation OS'es if they don't
adapt to the task focussed applications
we see today.To the Dutch readers: Anders dan
mijn laatste
posts, een Engelstalige…
deze lag al
een tijdje
op de planken
en was geschreven in een periode dat ik nog twijfelde of ik nu in het Nederlands of het
Engels zou moeten
bloggen ;)I'm not the average Joe. I've studied
Interaction design, and a graduate in Human-Computer Interaction (about
the same as interaction designer, but with an extended theoretical
foundation :) ). I'm interested in what is going on in the software
world, and somewhat of an open source enthusiast, am even able to edit
configuration files to some extent, not afraid of searching
inaccessibl…
Sommige problemen zijn complexer dan ze op het eerste gezicht lijken.
Geboorte datum invoeren bijvoorbeeld. Geboortedatum is van het type
datum… dus geven we een datepicker, zo'n klein kalendertje waar je
door kunt bladeren om een datum aan te wijzen. Dom. Blijkt toch niet
echt te werken. Als je moet bladeren vanaf nu tot zeg in de jaren 70…
dan heb je een lamme wijsvinger. Toch tekstinvoer dan maar? Het probleem
is dat computers toch graag gestructureerde input krijgen. Mogelijk dat
we binnenkort een standaard component hebben om alle mogelijke invoeren
te ondersteunen, maar helaas, tijd is te kort. Dus wat is een goede
oplossing. Een verslag van wat iteraties. Beperken van de input zodat de
gebruiker niets anders in kan voeren dan verwacht wordt… mensen zijn
geen machines!Iteratie 1: naamloze tekst invoer veldenHet oorpsronkelijke design bevatte drie velden, ongelabeld, waar een
datum ingevoerd moest worden. Er was verder ook geen toelichting,
behal…
Note: My ticket was sponsered by The Bean Machine I'm working
for. Thank you!SoundCloudThe best talk of the day. Free is not important. Its about the bulb,
not about the light. What happens around something is interesting. Any
sufficiently interesting content is indistinguishable from cnotent.
Kelly defines things that add value to something free. Context can
'make' (or the lack of context can probably break, ed.) the music.
Relevance is defining the personal quality of music. The block buster
approach doesn't work as well anymore. New schemes of music publishing
arise. Use other people to help and promote your music, involve users in
creation. Build relationships. Allow them, at a premium price, get
additional material (e.g. multitrack version). SoundCloud makes it more
accessible.3voor12Cool concept from 3voor12: FIY, film it yourself.
Concert registrations done by combining video recordings from many.iMeemChaotic talk. API's, talk about the product, all mi…
Ryan, at the 37 signals' signal vs. noise blog, quotes an article at
techradar about 'Why
Apple is great at interfaces when others are not':I like how Nick draws a connection between good UI and ‘fun’.
We don’t talk much about fun in usability circles.In the techradar article, elements like the nodding password entry
box when a faulty password is entered, and other supposedly minor
adjustments to the interface are making the interface more 'fun' to work
with. But I'd say that that isn't really about fun, but has more to do with 'identity'? The computer can be made more
personal with only slight tweaks. It can be made to have character.Fun to me is more like little features that may make you smile every
now and then… that, however, doesn't make a great interface. Character,
identity, on the other hand, could. It allows you to get to know the
beast in front of you. Connect. Understand. Understandable interfaces
make usable, user friendly, machines. Machines you…
For little over a month, I'm working at a start up named 'the Bean Machine' based in Enschede, The
Netherlands. It's a fresh new startup with a clear vision on project
management: doing it with scrum. So if you were wondering where murb is
hanging out, its over there. My ideas about agile development and how my
passion of user experience/interaction design can be integrated in this
development method are mainly posted at the beanblog
(sorry, in Dutch only). I will try to post the interesting things on
this blog as well… especially when I'm at a stage that I can really
share best practices (I'm still learning).
ContectSonification is another way of looking to adding sound to your
computer environmen. This was my graduation Thesis for the European Media Master of Arts (EMMA) programme PrefaceThe first version of ContextSonifier was created in 2004 by
Maarten Brouwers. It was the result of his Master-thesis:
'Context Sonification'. You can download his thesis
here or just continue reading it in HTML format.The whole process has been supervised by:: Martin Lacet
(thesis), Janine (project), Tom
(project) and David Garcia (project) and was first published in
Hilversum, August, 2004.When communicating from one human to another, visual, auditory
and/or haptic cues are being used for communication. When
communicating to another person directly a person communicates
more than a plain message. It communicates also a state of being,
a soul. Somehow also mechanical devices and environments are able
to communicate this 'state of being'. Communicating not only in
true/false messages. To…
Note to English readers: This was my Bachelor Thesis (Interaction Design) on auditory interfaces. Since this text on auditory human technology interaction is in Dutch, you
might be interested in my other text
on this matter written in english (and more up to date too), it's
title is context
sonifier.InleidingDoelstellingMet dit document tracht ik zo'n breed mogelijk licht te werpen
op de ontwikkelingen en mogelijkheden omtrent auditieve
ondersteuning van een mens-machine interface. Het primaire doel
is om een beter inzicht te krijgen in hoe een visuele interface
uitgebreid kan worden met auditieve elementen. Mogelijk vloeien
hier nieuwe ideen uit.Uniforme auditieve vormgevingWanneer men kijkt naar de bestaande richtlijnen voor
dergelijke interfaces, als Microsoft Windows, Apple OS-X, KDE,
dan valt het op dat er weinig tot geen aandacht wordt geschonken
aan voorschriften die leiden tot een meer uniforme auditieve
vormgeving van het systeem.ToepassingsgebiedDe toevoe…
