Mint Usability

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”

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”