“Please press the cancel button and turn the adapter’s radio on”
An impressively awful dialog design from Dell. Bad on so many levels.
Charlie Brooker: “I love complex gadgets. What I can’t stand are idiots who don’t know which buttons to press”
There was a very funny tongue-in-cheek article on technorage by Charlie Brooker in Monday’s Guardian (21/01/08). Here’s an excerpt: Recently, I was on a plane, sitting beside an 80-year-old woman who couldn’t comprehend how the in-flight entertainment system worked. It
“Reply to all” on SMS would be good for everyone
Some passing thoughts: Wouldn’t it be so useful if you could have group SMS conversations via a “reply to all” feature, just like you can with email? Imagine how much more profit the mobile operators could be making. What a
This is a great deal* (*actually it isn’t)
Some stunningly awful usage of the evil asterisk by three.co.uk for their X-series package (The UK mobile operator) – Actually, if you dig into the Ts & Cs, the limit is 1GB a month. This is a big difference from
Buzzword: great user experience
Launched in early 2007, Buzzword is a web-based wordprocessor made using Adobe Flex / Flash. In terms of user experience, it craps all over Google Docs and the competition. I’m amazed I’ve only just heard about it. Try Buzzword now.
Wary of giving your password to yet another site? – OAuth to the rescue
Woah there! You’ve found yourself on an old article. Take note of the date before reading. I’ve just been doing a spot of reading about oAuth and thought I’d do a quick post on it. This was a hot topic
If you haven’t already seen the Adobe Thermo demo…
This demo video came out in December, but if you haven’t already seen it, you can watch this edited down version (without the warm-up chatter). Online Videos by Veoh.com Thermo is basically a tool for interaction designers (rather than developers),
The ‘Boxing Glove’ Wireframing Technique
I’ve been delivering a lot of User-Centred Design training lately at Flow, and I’ve noticed that when most people do paper UI sketching, they can’t help going “hi-fi”, and making very precise wireframes. It’s just too easy to get sucked
OLPCs: if you were leader of a 3rd world country, would you buy them?
Imagine you are the benevolent leader of a small fictional country somewhere in the third world. Your resources are limited. While your country isn’t as poor as some other third world countries, many of your citizens can’t read or write,
Three User Experience Guidelines for Ajax Sliders
Ajax Sliders are becoming an ‘in’ tool for filtering search results. They are also quite easy to do wrong if you’re not paying attention to the user experience. Before you read on, check out Properazzi and try out the price
Nokia increases focus on user experience
This is a pretty interesting presentation from Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia’s Executive Vice President (4/12/07). He says, fairly bluntly: Right now, the Nokia Handset User Experience has scope for improvement There are inconsistency problems between applications. Discoverability can be a problem
Disinformation design: parking signs that trick you
Imagine it’s 4.30pm on a weekday. Are you allowed to park here? if so, how long for? This is a great example of disinformation design from Haringey council in North London. Because the council profits from poor information design, this
Cool GUI whiteboard magnets
Coming soon – GUI whiteboard magnets from Eight Media in the Netherlands. These look quite useful for collaborative wireframe sketching sessions in front of the whiteboard. I’ll definitely be ordering some.
Rediscovering the Discussion Forum on IxDA.org
I’ve recently rediscovered the IxDA.org discussion forum, and I feel compelled to do a post on it – not only is the actual content great, but the web-interface is really nice, keeping the posts tidy and making them a easy
OpenID User Experience explained
A nice, clear explanation, found via Robert Scoble’s Link Blog. This discussion about the tension between convinience and security reminds me of this recent
Techsmith Snagit & Camtasia software give-away
The nice folks at Techsmith are giving away free copies of Snagit 7.5.2 and Camtasia 3. Both apps are really useful for UX professionals, and they’d normally set you back a few quid. They aren’t the newest versions but they
Eye tracking: some thoughts from an ex eye-tracking researcher
There’s been a fair amount of discussion over the past week about eye tracking. As someone who used to do a bit of qualitative eye tracking research at Amberlight, (a great London-based UCD consultancy that I used to work at),
Links for 18 Nov 2007
A fairly random selection of things I’ve been looking at over the past week or so.
Racing Pitch game:growl to make your car go, Blendie style!
You may have noticed that a few people are blogging about Blendie right now – the blender that you growl at to make it go. If you like the idea then try downloading Racing Pitch – a prototype PC game
What people say they do vs. what they actually do
I read a nice factoid on this topic this morning in Eric Schaffer’s Institutionalization of Usability book. It’s a quote from Jared Spool: In April of 2002, Princeton Survey Research Associates surveyed 1,000 adult Internet users about their concerns with