aktually

the art of the rethink, where business meets design

Archive for the ‘user interface’ tag

Who Knew “Universal” Would Be So Much Work?

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TSU9200_ftl_reflThe Philips Pronto series of universal remotes was on my short list for handling my little home “theater” setup.  After seeing some interesting reviews (here and here) I decided to take the plunge.

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Written by Andrew

July 1st, 2009 at 8:00 am

What’s Wolfram Alpha for?

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wolfram_alpha_logoThe other day, I was preparing a quickie assessment of the biggest office suppliers in the US, and I thought “Instead of trying Google or Wikipedia, I’ll use this newfangled Wolfram Alpha thingy that’s out now.” And after approaching that query, along with some other spur-of-the-moment questions, I’ve finally realized what Wolfram Alpha is.

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Written by Andrew

June 3rd, 2009 at 9:00 am

The Design of User Interfaces and Scaling to Content

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Apple is a fantastic case study for a topic like this and I would start off by comparing the new Shuffle (3G) versus the prior version.

Controls The 2G Shuffle The 3G Shuffle
Primary Input 5 buttons (press or press-hold variations) 3 buttons (click, hold, or multiple click variations)
Feedback Method Visual (LEDs) Visual (LEDs), Audio

Scaling the controls to the content is extraordinarily important and the problem here is that for 10 functions, one product uses 5 buttons and the other uses 3. Read the rest of this entry »

Written by Andrew

March 19th, 2009 at 3:37 am