Usability week ending May 2nd

Thursday, 29th April, 1:24 PM
Flash was made for PCs and mice. The mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards: http://j.mp/bTEU81 #ux

Wednesday, 28th April, 2:20 PM
You've heard of evidence-based medicine (eg., House). Here's the art & science of evidence-based #design: http://j.mp/aPmQ8X #ux #ia #ebd

Tuesday, 27th April, 11:42 AM
The interface design piece we most often overlook is emotional pleasure: http://j.mp/bFOtMv #ux #ui #design #userexperience

Tuesday, 27th April, 8:49 AM
@sugarsock If you live on remote servers, Transmit 4 really is that much faster. Panic Transmit 4, Mac OS X FTP + S3: http://j.mp/bVTbQT

Monday, 26th April, 6:41 PM
Maybe it's not a "bounce", maybe your visitor searched and then read just one perfectly relevant page: http://j.mp/bAmzzR #stats

Monday, 26th April, 12:20 PM
Five #iPhone #app #design mistakes, and how to fix them--dpi, storage, MVC, HIGs, orientation: http://j.mp/bOR48A

via twitter.com/terretta

Usability week ending April 25th

Friday, 23rd April, 6:22 PM
Rethinking the #usability of "utopian" open platforms versus "proprietary" walled gardens: http://j.mp/9UTbb7 #ux #apple #iphone #ipad

Friday, 23rd April, 6:18 PM
LATCH -- Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, and Hierarchy -- the five ways of organizing information: http://j.mp/cTfBjL #ia

Wednesday, 21st April, 10:54 AM
The most effective #wireframes are made by people who can see how a site is a series of connected interactions: http://j.mp/92QNv1 #ia

Tuesday, 20th April, 9:43 AM
For a good user experience on a touch input tablet, all the apps, and the whole OS, need to be designed for touch: http://j.mp/aIPNWV #ipad

Tuesday, 20th April, 9:09 AM
"Push me! Wait, you can't..." -- perceived affordances and designing for task flow: http://j.mp/aZLT6m #ux #ui

via twitter.com/terretta

Usability week ending April 18th

Friday, 16th April, 11:12 AM
Our brains are set up to do two things at once, but not three, reports Science journal: http://j.mp/awh9yv #iphone #ipad #multitasking

Friday, 16th April, 11:00 AM
Typography is important--understanding web #typography for beginner typographers and designers to do web #design well: http://j.mp/bxOe0E

Thursday, 15th April, 8:21 PM
If it's impossible to evaluate designs without real copy, why bother reading copy out of context of designs?: http://j.mp/cKpaqq #ia #design

Tuesday, 13th April, 12:21 PM
"The iPad brings hands and eyes back together" -- a reality check on designing for iPad: http://j.mp/bDi7ig #ux #ui #gui #ia #ipad #touch

Monday, 12th April, 9:39 AM
"Losing differentiation is death by low margins." Sane view of "The Adobe - Apple Flame War" by Jean-Louis Gassée: http://j.mp/9oaA6O

via twitter.com/terretta

Apple's 0.7 megapixel 4:3 EDTV media viewer

via tuaw.com

Come on, Apple—Jobs needs a new set of glasses. The iPad is only 1024x768. That's miserly for the HD video age.

A widescreen 1280x768 would have been a megapixel, and HDTV means at least 1280x720. Five years ago, Gateway's CX200 Tablet PC offered that, making portrait view perfect for viewing full page documents including the menu bar, taking notes with Microsoft OneNote—and landscape view ideal for watching movies.

With its 9.7" diagonal and 131 DPI, the iPad offers sharper resolution than Apple's 30" cinema display (4 megapixels at 100 DPI), and the same resolution as the 17" Macbook Pro (2.3 megapixels at 133 DPI), but is less crisp than the iPhone at 164 DPI.

Let's hope the pixel grid is oriented for portrait mode so fonts can use subpixel rendering, or reading will be tiring compared to the Kindle. (It's hard to tell from Apple marketing which is the preferred orientation.)

Sadly, this iPad is not the portable Hulu player I was looking for. Aside from the pixel count barely exceeding Apple's iFrame video format, with HDTV shot in 16:9 and most widescreen movies filmed in 1.85:1 or 2.35:1, there will be a lot of letter-boxing on planes and trains this year.

Online video week ending January 24th

Friday, 22nd January, 6:35 PM
Why @Firefox supports the #HTML5 video element, but only for #Ogg #Theora: http://j.mp/8ngedQ @vimeo @youtube #vod #h264 #patents

Friday, 22nd January, 9:29 AM
Conan puts online #video distribution rights fees to comedic use, licenses costly Rolling Stones track for comedy skit: http://j.mp/8SI3Cd

Thursday, 21st January, 5:47 PM
In past 2 years, over 12 telcos/carriers entered CDN biz, all by re-selling or partnering with a pure-play provider: http://j.mp/5ZCZNq

Wednesday, 20th January, 9:47 AM
RT @TechCrunch: Watch Obama’s State Of The Union speech LIVE on your #iPhone next week: http://j.mp/7nJofi #streaming #video

Tuesday, 19th January, 3:36 PM
#Cisco says avg employee in enterprise watches 4.6 hrs of #streaming video a month, to double over next 2 years: http://j.mp/4TABIl #vod

Tuesday, 19th January, 2:55 PM
Got Windows 7 but no TV tuner? You don’t need one to watch streaming video (even popular TV) on a Media Center PC: http://j.mp/5TK8cs #vod

Tuesday, 19th January, 12:04 PM
À-la-carte pricing could inject huge uncertainty into cable, channels might not get enough subscribers to survive: http://j.mp/8iqz4M

Monday, 18th January, 6:44 PM
#ESPN could provide live streams of sporting events to #Microsoft Xbox Live: http://j.mp/5KJFpQ #streaming #vod #xbox360 #sports $MSFT $DIS

via twitter.com/advection

Droid's touchscreen can't keep your intentions straight

Touchscreen accuracy of the iPhone is much better than that of Verizon's Droid or Google Nexus One. When you're trying to tap a link, chances are you're going to be successful on the iPhone, and not on Android phones.

iPhones showed straight lines in tests with both light and medium finger pressure, while the Android phones showed zig-zag wavy lines across the screen.

"On inferior touchscreens, it's basically impossible to draw straight lines. Instead, the lines look jagged or zig-zag, no matter how slowly you go, because the sensor size is too big, the touch-sampling rate is too low, and/or the algorithms that convert gestures into images are too non-linear to faithfully represent user inputs. This is important because quick keyboard use and light flicks on the screen really push the limits of the touch panel's ability to sense."
via tuaw.com

Once again, comparing phones "feature for feature" doesn't tell the whole story.

Apple's uncompromising commitment to usability drives their engineering choices in ways that might not be obvious to engineers or even consumers seeing an ad, but are painfully obvious after you've experienced how the thing should work.

Usability week ending January 10th

Friday, 8th January, 5:53 PM
5 steps to designing and building social experiences: http://j.mp/53Sxnt #ux #ui #ia #userexperience #socialmedia

Thursday, 7th January, 10:46 AM
“Oh,” he said, “so this is how a touchscreen is supposed to work.” A #usability test of 10 phones: http://j.mp/5BbuwV #ux #ui #iphone #nokia

Wednesday, 6th January, 10:37 AM
Ambient user experience--design applied to the context in which users get things done while using a website: http://j.mp/7Bl7sZ #ux #ui #ia

Tuesday, 5th January, 4:26 PM
RT @brandon_wirtz: Really smart people -- Brandon Wirtz, Robert Scoble, and SEO: http://j.mp/5UR4Dg

Tuesday, 5th January, 11:13 AM
The "of course factor" at the heart of every great design: http://j.mp/6a86uW #userexperience #ux #ui #design

Monday, 4th January, 3:57 PM
Well-designed tech should build on familiar, emphasize simplicity, do wishful things well, offer better experience: http://j.mp/6c6u2X #ux

Monday, 4th January, 10:30 AM
Use the powerful design pattern "More Like This" to make search results nav quick, easy, and intuitive: http://j.mp/5XRD2j #ux #ui #ia

via twitter.com/terretta

Usability week ending December 6th

Friday, 4th December, 2:29 PM
For mobile, "don't look at features & technology, look at users' motivations & behaviors in the mobile context": http://j.mp/7DyjVO #ux #ui

Thursday, 3rd December, 7:18 PM
We naturally assume that the way we experience our world must be unique, yet experience *can* be designed: http://j.mp/5q4y5w #ux

Wednesday, 2nd December, 5:34 PM
"As the world fills with clutter at a disconcerting pace, good design should be quiet and generate a level of calm": http://j.mp/7IU3Fj #ux

Tuesday, 1st December, 2:06 PM
"... there are no lasting technological solutions to social problems..." Corporate culture v. Socialcast: http://j.mp/7BrsFM #ux #usability

Monday, 30th November, 7:55 PM
Usability is power -- comparing iPhone and Android application management: http://j.mp/8FDbB7 #usability #ux #iphone #android

via twitter.com/terretta