First Person User Interfaces
Combines most of my late posts about future ux into a handy presentation. So, either this stuff is glaringly obvious, or I think like a Yahoo bigwig… :)
Source: lukew.com
Jesse Schell (@jesseschell, former Disney Imagineer, game developer and professor at Carnegie Mellon university talks about “Design Outside the Box”.
Although this talk is already six months old (which, by internet-time, means 2 years) we only now begin to see a more widespread pondering of concepts like FPIs, game mechanic oriented social networks (like foursquare and gowalla) and augmented reality applications trying to connect the real world and the virtual world in interesting ways.
I think his depiction of the future may be a bit black and white, but it’s visionary and in many ways spot on.
Source: g4tv.com
Especially the part about Cognizance is a nice visualization of how raw data turns into wisdom, aka From Noise To Pattern.
Source: Flickr / parthclicks
More FPI Samples
Lately, articles and pre-concepts of FPI’s seem more abundant then ever.
Check out this interesting take of US Homeland Security on how the future of fire fighting and crisis management may look like. /via Andrew Vande Moere
Next, there is this fascinating look behind the scenes of Iron Man 2’s FPIs, done by Perception. During the movie I admired most how natural and fitting the interfaces appeared. This was not some lanky and akward SciFi concept, this was very much how interacting with data should feel like. At least for me, it also proves that a third (and fourth) dimension can do a lot for comprehending data. /via @smeidu
Source: blank
How UX Can Drive Sales in Mobile Apps
Excellent Interview with Jeff Powers of Occipital, creator of the iPhone App RedLaser, on how a change in UX perspectives dramatically enriched the app.
Source: uxmag.com
Curators of the Real-Time Web
Interesting article on how SwiftRiver distills chatter to relevant, actionable information. A lot about trust, and in extension thereof: quality.
Source: uxmag.com
iPad Usability: First Findings From User Testing
Yes, it’s Nielsen, but it’s still an interesting read.
UPDATE: Interesting response to Nielsens findings by Fred Beecher:
Source: useit.com
Understand the Web
I totally agree with @benward’s perspective on the recent discussion about web apps vs. native apps, started by @joehewitt.
On the Quality of Business Ideas
Something can be perceived as good if it is useful, beautiful or beneficial to exist.
In common vernacular use, the term quality refers to to a high degree of excellence and therefore means either usefulness or beauty.1
Nature shows us many examples of great quality.2 That’s why I believe that great quality attracts people all by itself. It just feels right and provides a satisfying experience.
So, if your product absolves a pain with it’s existence, is useful in nature, excellent in its handling and beautiful to behold, it possesses great quality. Therefore, it will attract people all by itself.
Those who use it, will talk about it. They will do so with passion and spread the message of it’s existence. The product itself will resonate with and convince those discovering it. Because It can stand for itself.
If you strive for quality, you product will attain that fabled aura attributed to so many Apple products, as described by Mr. Jobs himself:
It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
1) If you consider aristotelian quality to be functional, and platonic quality to be aesthetic, you can even come to a metaphysical, absolute perception of quality as defined by R. Pirsig.
2) After all, emulating nature is what the science of bionics is all about.
Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.
