Readability 2.0 is disruptive two ways
RELEASED LAST WEEK, Arc90′s Readability 2.0 is a web application/browser extension that removes clutter from any web page, replacing the typical multi-column layout with a simple, elegant, book-style page view—a page view that can be user customized, and that “knows” when it is being viewed on a mobile device and reconfigures itself to create an platform-appropriate reading experience.
Four Steps To Great Usability Testing (Without Breaking The Bank)
I’m involved in something called the Product Design Guild in San Francisco. It’s pretty cool — we talk about ideas, and do guerrilla usability testing of concepts. There’s a really smart group of people there, and they know great products only come out of testing an idea over and over again.
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Is Realistic UI Design Realistic?
We’ve all heard the sound — that tinny shutter clicking sound point-and-shoot cameras make when you take a photo.
There’s no complex mechanical mirror assembly swinging upward when the shutter opens. No matter, though. The cigarette box sized camera burps out a faux ka-click anyway. The mechanism producing this noise was quite necessary for its predecessor, the SLR/DSLR camera, but now functionally irrelevant in the newer point-and-shoots. This design cue (audible in this case) inherited from an ancestor is referred to as a skeuomorph, and they can be found everywhere in our daily lives — air intakes on the electric Chevy Volt, window shutters that don’t shut, copper cladding on zinc pennies, nonwinding watch winders. Even the brown cork-pattern on cigarette tips is a holdover from the days when cork was used as a filter.
Touch Notation
Within the last twelve to eighteen months, I’ve crossed a threshold whereby the vast majority of my work is now aimed at touch-screen devices. I often have to sketch out feature specs, interaction designs and so forth, and I enjoy working on paper whenever I can. I quickly encountered a problem: touch-screen gestures are difficult to describe concisely. To solve this problem, I created a means of talking about such gestures symbolically; I call it Touch Notation.
Panic’s Pixel Perfection
A few months ago, a very special email dropped into my Inbox. “Dear Mayor McPreshit,”, it greeted me. I was one of the very few lucky recipients of that email, one of the very few who were selected to test drive an update to the internet’s oldest known, possibly the most beautiful Truck. Originally known as Transit, the gorgeous and powerful Truck went through hundreds of bug fixes and enhancements and was finally unveiled to the public on April 27th, 2010.
When a stranger reads your blog
I had a surreal experience the other day. I was sitting in a coffee shop and watched someone (at the recommendation of a friend who didn’t realize I was within earshot) open up my blog and start reading it. Right there, out of the corner of my eye, someone was experiencing me (well, digital me) for the first time.
iPad Application Design
I held a 6-hour workshop at NSConference in both the UK and USA recently, focusing on software design and user experience. Predictably, an extremely popular topic was the iPad, and how to approach the design of iPad applications. I gave a 90-minute presentation on the subject to start each workshop, and I want to share some of my observations here.