Adobe on transforming the magazine experience with Wired

Adobe and Condé Nast (publisher of various magazines including Vogue, GQ and Wired) unveiled a new digital magazine experience based on WIRED magazine at the TED conference in Long Beach, California. Built on Adobe AIR and developed with Condé Nast, the tablet prototype illustrated the possibilities for magazine publishers to reach readers in new ways. The concept enables immersive content experience in digital form and allows new interactive features to stimulate reader engagement, including

  • content designed specifically for the touch screen experience
  • easy navigation methods, including an innovative zoomed-out ‘browse mode’
  • the ability to browse image slideshows
  • embedded 360 degree object viewers
  • support for video and audio content
  • the ability to rotate content using device accelerometer functionality

Related links

Adobe
Condé Nast
Wired magazine

My analogy on User Research

Designing a product without conducting user research is like running with your eyes closed.

Small usability issues across your product but one too many?

About the small usability issues across your application that you think you can ignore, think of them in this way- one small crease on an ironed shirt is okay. But creases all over and you have an un-ironed shirt.

What is Information Architecture (IA)?

Information Architecture (IA) is both the process and the product of organization of information to facilitate efficient access to that information by its intended audience.

This is my definition for IA which is also my entry for the the Explain IA contest.

Update: I won a copy of Peter Morville’s new book Search Patterns at ExplainIA. I am looking forward to receiving it since the sample chapter I read was promising.

Dave Gray on basic rules for napkin sketching


(length: 3:30 minutes)

In this video, Dave Gray provides an introduction with 5 basic principles for making better napkin sketches.

About Dave Gray

Dave Gray is the Founder and Chairman of XPLANE, a leading consulting and design firm focused on information-driven communications. Dave’s researches and writes on visual business and speaks and coaches educators, corporate clients and the public. He is also a founding member of VizThink, an international community of Visual Thinkers.

He is author of the book (on consultative selling) called Selling to the VP and is currently working on a book for O’Reilly media Sunni Brown called The Visual Thinking Playbook, which is due out in January of 2010.

Related links

Xplane, VizThink
The book: Selling to the VP of NO
Dave Gray Info, Communication Nation, Visual Thinking School

10GUI- a conceptual intput device and supporting GUI as an alternate to the mouse

10GUI is Calyton Mill’s concept for an input device that uses all fingers that expands the bandwidth of interaction that is otherwise restricted by the mouse. The video talks about how the mouse restricts interaction and how multi-touch monitors are stressful because the user has to stretch out to use it- (something I fully agree with and believe will lead to its failure). It goes on to illustrate a GUI that is better optimized for usage with the proposed input device.

Related links

10GUI website
Clayton Mill’s website

Laika- a dynamic typeface created with Processing

Laika is a dynamic typeface. Via a custom designed control panel, kerning, italics, size and other properties of a typeface can be adjusted. Laika can be responsive to any possible input. The final project installation included type that which was responsive to passers-by.

Laika was done as a bachelor thesis project by Michael Flückiger and Nicholas Kunz.

Laika was created using Processing. In case you did not know, Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. I recommend you have a look at it if you have not.

Related Links

Try Laika at it’s website
Processing

Fixing the sIFR 3 text wrap issue

If you are facing the issue of sIFR text wrapping in Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, just like I did while trying to implement it on my new website meant for the user experience community: UX Quotes , then you should find this post useful.

I am assuming this solution should work with all version 3 revisions though I have particularly tried it with sIFR 3.436.

Try one of the two arguments given below to fix the text wrap issue.

1. forceSingleLine

The forceSingleLine argument forces text to be displayed in a single line.

Values
True, false

Note
Note that if you have a very long line of text, then it will flow beyond the width of the container it is placed in. This argument is different from preventWrap. The preventWrap argument results in text getting clipped or cut off when it exceeds width. Think of singleLineWrap as overflow:visible and preventWrap as overflow:hidden declaration/ value pairs in CSS.

Example

sIFR.replace(test, {
  selector: 'h1',
  css: '.sIFR-root { color: #cccccc; width: 100%; text-align: left; letter-spacing:1;}',
  wmode: 'transparent',
  forceSingleLine: true;
});

2. tuneWidth

The tuneWidth argument adjusts the width of the Flash movie for adjusting the space around the flash movie.

Values
Positive or negative number

Example

sIFR.replace(test, {
  selector: 'h1',
  css: '.sIFR-root { color: #cccccc; width: 100%; text-align: left; letter-spacing:1;}',
  wmode: 'transparent',
  tuneWidth: 1;
});

Lionhead Studios demos the capabilities of Microsoft Project Natal

Code named Project Natal by Microsoft, this sensor device that will be able to be added to any XBOX 360 will allow for a controller-free gaming experience. Through Natal, the user will be interact with the Xbox 360 using gestures, spoken commands or presented objects and images instead of the regular game controller we use today.

To be released in late 2010, the Project Natal sensor is the world’s first to combine an RGB camera, depth sensor, multi-array microphone and custom processor running proprietary software all in one device. Unlike 2-D cameras and controllers, Project Natal tracks your full body movement in 3-D, while responding to commands, directions and even a shift of emotion in your voice.

In this video that demo’s project Natal’s capabilities, the user interacts with the video game character called Milo who is capable of recognizing the user’s face, voice and emotions and respond accordingly.

This is quite a feat as it significantly reduces the ‘amount’ of suspension of disbelief required to immerse one into the game than is required otherwise at current.

Related link

The Project Natal website

Jen Fitzpatrick on the Science and Art of User Experience at Google

In the Google TechTalks video from 2006, Jen Fitzpatrick talks about the art and science behind Google’s design process and share examples of how design, usability and engineering come together at Google to create great products.

About Jen Fitzpatrick

Jen Patricks is an Engineering Director at Google, who at least was then managing Google’s user experience team. A founding member of Google’s UI team, Jen has also led the UI design, testing and implementation of numerous features and changes to the Google.com site.

She joined Google in June 1999 as a software engineer and has also served as Engineering Director for Google Adwords and Google’s Internal Systems engineering group.

Jen is a graduate of Stanford University where she received a B.S. in Symbolic Systems and an M.S. in Computer Science.