Yesterday I launched new web application – Coco Tracker (www.thecocotracker.com), an application which tracks and aggregates all the various Conan O’Brien themed twitter accounts out there.
The idea was born when, as a Conan fan, started following all these new Conan themed twitter accounts (like @ConansSquirrel), which seemed to spawn to life whenever “The Big Red” tweeted about something (ConansSquirrel became live when Conan tweeted about him interviewing a squirrel). When I was following all these accounts, the became quickly clear that most of the interesting interactions these accounts have together, is lost into the jungle of non-related tweets, thus the Coco Tracker was born.
It’s still in it’s beta stage (as most web apps) but I’m hoping it’ll become better as I’ll keep working on it (release early, release often. Right?). Oh, and if I’m missing an account, or two, let me know.
Today Apple unveiled the much rumored iTablet called iPad. The abilities of the device (or lack of) have already caused lots of conversation out there. I naturally decided to concentrate just on user interface of the device. So, how does the Apple’s new toy go around the bends? I’ve made a quick analysis via Engadget’s hands-on video, and the pictures I’ve seen since the launch. The pictures in the article are also from that same video.
Now, granted, I do not have an iPhone here and do not possess the greatest of memories, so some of this stuff might have been already on current version of iPhone OS but, nevertheless, I’m addressing the issues still.
The Groundwork
The iPad is running new version of iPhone OS, version 3.2, so for iPhone owner the basic UI should be rather simplistic experience: few desktops, side by side, full of icons and few “permanent” icons down at the tray. Tap any icon and the application launches, simple as apple pie. Since it has no multitasking, the application handling is also as easy as it gets – There simply is no such thing. You’re either in or out from the application.
The Basics
The basic navigation within applications is simple enough – if you drill down within an application (think of artist -> songs) by tapping the top left corner of the screen, the OS always takes you back one level, to the state where you were earlier. Simple enough. This is the basics of tried and true iPhone OS. However, it’s after this foundation where the things start to get hairier.
Continue reading “Quick analysis of Apple iPad’s User Interface”
A fellow in University of Art and Design, in Helsinki has created new user interface prototype as his master thesis. It’s made with Flash and what’s more, you even get to play with it.
It has quite distinctive OS X taste and smell on it as it’s clearly Apple inspired. It’s hard to make any conclusions about the prototype since it’s basically an oversimplified version of something that could be an OS user interface, but I think the “row of windows” idea might work, at least in netbooks. Desktop systems would probably have more problems with it, since the amount of running software, and their status, is much more complex. One of the biggest problems that I see with it from the get-go is that Stripes doesn’t have any clear way of handling notifications on the go, or how does the system work with applications which need multiple windows, like Live Messenger or Skype?
Anyways. Head on, past the break to see an introductory video (in glorious HD), the prototype can be found from here
Continue reading “Man makes Flash OS UI prototype as master thesis”
It seems that Synaptics are about to release new touchpad, one that it able to register 10 fingers at the same time. Tech itself seems mighty compact and quite ready for some serious manufacturing. Also, with the new touchpad, they’ve developed a demonstrator which has an OLED screen underneath and the new multitouch touchpad above. It’s also demoed in the video, check it from the full post.
Engadget also has pictures of the device: Engadget
Continue reading “Synaptics 10 finger capacitive touchpad, devkit now out there”
It’s interesting how the web interfaces, now that the web is actually becoming a platform for real applications, are doing some of the same exact mistakes that desktop interfaces have done in the past years (well, in all fairness, some are still doing). I’m guessing one of the reasons for this is that the visual designers (who usually do the designs for web sites) usually don’t have user interface background, thus making the same mistakes. Another factor could be the introduction of AJAX, which brought the possibility of cool interfaces, which as an idea is good but often is quite hard to pull off without proper knowledge of the interface design.
Why Modal Windows are bad?
Modal windows (Modal Window – Wikipedia) by themselves aren’t bad inherently but they have only a specific use in the user interfaces, and it is this specific use that it’s usually neglected in these new breed of web interfaces: Modal windows are designed to stop workflow and to force the user to pay attention to specific information and/or task. Good example of this would be an alert of some sort, that is so crucial that the user simply has to pay attention to it, before doing anything else, thus restricting access to the rest of the interface.
An example of modal window would be Digg.com’s login window (even though it’s not actually a true modal window, see below):
In this case, there are another problems: The login window doesn’t fade the background away (with darker overlay, for example) and the background of the window is practically even the same color as the page underneath, thus making it harder to perceive than necessary. What’s more is that the window in question acts like a normal page element, moving with the page when scrolling, thus not coping with the rules of window behavior.
Continue reading “Modal windows are bad, ok?”
Welcome to the small things, covering the small things in the area of user interfaces that without no apparent reason (at least usually), one way or another hinder the user experience.
Todays receipe: Google Chrome + lots of open tabs + missing title bar
I’m a power user of tabs (like everyone who has seen any of my browser windows open knows), which means that many times in a day, all of my tabs are so small that only the first letter of the page title is shown, like so:
Now, you would get the same kind problem with any browser, but that is not the problem I’m referring to. The problem becomes evident when you are say, reading a longer article and you want to check what was the title of the article, or have lots of pages open from the same site and have to distinguish the difference between them. Normally (Firefox, IE and whatnot) you would just glance the title bar of the window and be done with it, this method however doesn’t work with Google Chrome since it’s lacking the title bar. What you have to do in Chrome is you either look around the page, to find a clue about the title of the page or hover the mouse pointer over the tab for few seconds, until the title appears as a tooltip.
Continue reading “Small things: Google Chrome page titles”
Couple of guys in University of Toronto have come up with prototype for pen (stylus) driven computers/displays. It utilizes the usually untapped resource of pen pressure as part of input system. The great thing about stylus pressure is that it’s analog input, meaning that you can have “infitine” (at least when compared to digital) amount of different levels. In the video they use it for fluid zooming, video track control and dynamic controls. I personally loved the zooming eyedrop tool. Why doesn’t my Photoshop do that?
Video in the full post, head on.
Continue reading “Stylus interface with dynamic, pressure sensitive, controls”
