The 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.
Archive for the ‘user interface’ tag
Who Knew “Universal” Would Be So Much Work?
What’s Wolfram Alpha for?
The 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.
The Design of User Interfaces and Scaling to Content
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 »
