1. If it is functional in the physical version, it should be functional in the multi-touch digital version.
2. Do not be afraid to alienate users without the appropriate domain knowledge to operate the physical object a skeuomorphic multi-touch interface is based on.
3. When it is possible to add features that will make a heavily domain knowledge dependent design more accessible without negatively impacting the experience for expert users, do so.
4. Go one better, but keep the experience of the original object intact.
5. If it is functional in the physical version but cannot be functional in the multi-touch digital version, provide feedback about how to perform that function.
Interaction Award Winners 2012
The winners of the first-ever Interaction Awards, recognizing 26 projects from all over the world for their excellence in interaction design. The criteria for evaluating the entries were based on context, impact, craft and overall presentation, and selected by an international panel of Jurors.
Designing for touch — very practical advice.
We are back to the days of command-line interfaces where everything had to be memorized, or looked up in a manual. I can only remember the gestures on my Macintosh by launching the “Settings” application, finding the trackpad control panel, and reviewing the four gestures under the tab “Point & Click,” the four gestures under “Scroll & Zoom,” and the six gestures listed under “More Gestures.” What ever happened to Apple’s image of “ease of use?” In the early days, one didn’t even have to read the manual to use a Macintosh. Now I am forced to read the same section of the manual on a regular basis.
There are no Five Simple Steps to making your UX fabulous, there is no simple fix. All of these things are hard and most of them start much higher up in the organisation than the average UX designer ever gets to. Good UX is cultural. If you want to hire a freelancer to ‘do UX’ , it’s like putting a plaster on gangrenous leg.
In human cognition, flow is describes as focused attention, deep engagement and a feeling of mastery. People describe this state as very productive and creative. Games are good examples of experiences that often manage to put users in a state of flow. The phenomenon was first described by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi .
Z & Human/Machine Interface
Gesture recognition is the first step to fully 3D interaction with computing devices. The authors outline the challenges and techniques to overcome them in embedded systems.
Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle (by CUSEC)
Interaction-Design.org — excellent source of educational materials on interaction design. By world-class designers. And free!
Smart E-Book Interface Prototype Demo
(Source: youtube.com)
What is UX design, LittleBigPlanet-style.
(Source: vimeo.com)
Landscape between the lines — a see-through church.
