background preloader

A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design
So, here's a Vision Of The Future that's popular right now. It's a lot of this sort of thing. As it happens, designing Future Interfaces For The Future used to be my line of work. I had the opportunity to design with real working prototypes, not green screens and After Effects, so there certainly are some interactions in the video which I'm a little skeptical of, given that I've actually tried them and the animators presumably haven't. But that's not my problem with the video. My problem is the opposite, really — this vision, from an interaction perspective, is not visionary. This matters, because visions matter. This little rant isn't going to lay out any grand vision or anything. Before we think about how we should interact with our Tools Of The Future, let's consider what a tool is in the first place. I like this definition: A tool addresses human needs by amplifying human capabilities. That is, a tool converts what we can do into what we want to do. That's right! And that's great!

http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/

Related:  electronics

In praise of impractical programming Although it’s become a cultural mainstay now, I still remember when I first saw that thick book — the one with the wizard on the cover — about a school for magic where wonders are easily conjured by those who know the proper spells. Of course, I’m talking about the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. There was that other book with the spells, but the “Wizard Book” sincerely claimed to teach magic. For the past few years, I’ve been working as a software developer in the newsroom, where perceptions of my kind have changed from novelty to a necessity. Recognizing this, some journalism schools now even require programming courses to teach students practical skills with databases or web frameworks.

Animated Short Movies » Life-Changing Arts Movie shorts, or short animations are a unique form of art, which can inspire and enlighten just like any other art form. Sometimes even more so. Here is a selection of inspiring, or for some reason animated short movies, here shown in their original full length. The Plutchik Emotion Circumplex And The 8 Primary Bipolar Emotions Robert Plutchik (1927 – 2006) was Professor Emeritus at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and adjunct professor at the University of South Florida. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and he was also a psychologist. He has authored or coauthored more than 260 articles, 45 chapters and eight books and has edited seven books, and the primary focus of his research included the study of emotions, the study of suicide and violence, and the study of the psychotherapy process. Plutchik’s psychoevolutionary theory of emotion is one of the most influential classification approaches for general emotional responses, where he considered there to be eight primary emotions: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, anticipation, trust, and joy. He proposed that these ‘basic’ emotions are biologically primitive and have evolved in order to increase the reproductive fitness of the animal.

Web Design And Development Community Treehouse Wants To Teach You How To Code, Get You A Job Fresh off a $600K round of seed funding, developer education startup Treehouse is launching to the public this morning, using videos, quizzes and badges to take ostensibly anyone from n00b to 1337 in months. Unlike Codeacademy and Lynda, Treehouse offers a breadth of expert-curated web design, development and iOS development topics (HTML, CSS Foundations, Technology Foundations, Aesthetic Foundations, Introduction to Programming, and others) and is already profitable as it charges users from $29 to $49 dollars a month to use its programs. What also sets Treehouse apart from others in the space is that users win badges (see below) for getting five questions in a row correct on its quizzes or completing in-browser code challenges, with the objective of building out their public profiles at To further increase the employability of its members, Carson plans on adding more courses — e.g. iOS 5 Foundations, Ruby Foundations and PHP Foundations — to the Treehouse curriculum as soon as possible.

Arduino Buying Guide Arduino Buying Guide Let’s face it, there are a a lot of different Arduino boards out there. How do you decide which one you need for your project? With this table, you can not only compare features between all the different Arduino boards we carry, but you can also see why these differences are important. What is an Arduino? 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness The eight-circuit model of consciousness is a theory proposed by Timothy Leary and expanded on by Robert Anton Wilson and Antero Alli. The model describes eight circuits of information (eight "brains") that operate within the human nervous system. Each circuit is concerned with a different sphere of activity. Leary, Alli and Wilson have written about the model in depth and how each circuit operates, both in the lives of individual people and in societies.

The Principles of Experience Design Whitney Hess is the cat’s meow in the web design world. She’s an independent user experience designer, consultant and prolific web logger based in New York City. Today, at the Future of Web Design, Hess took the stage to share a universally applicable set of experience design principles that designers should all strive to follow to take a site or product to the next level. Hess defines guiding principles as the broad philosophy or fundamental beliefs that steer an organization, team or individual’s decision making, irrespective of the project goals, constraints, or resources. She first laid out the visual principles of design including harmony, unity, contrast, emphasis, variety, balance, proportion, repetition, movement and texture.

Freaklabs - Open Source Wireless - Weatherproof Wireless Enclosure Build Tutorial Hi all. No, I haven't been dead these past few weeks. I've actually been spending a lot of my free time researching how to build a weatherproof enclosure for the rice farm sensing project in the Tokyo Hackerspace. I've mentioned it previously and the project takes place in Kamogawa which is about an hour and a half outside of Tokyo. The place is a complete contrast to Tokyo and has problems with monkeys, boars, poisonous snakes, and some nasty bugs. Overall, quite interesting, although I am a bit scared of poisonous snakes.

30 Essential Controls By Theresa Neil As Bill mentioned in an earlier post, we don’t want to limit this blog to just the principles and patterns found in the book. For that you can check out our Explore the Book section. This is the second article in a three part series on patterns and principles for RIA design. Standard Screen Patterns: 12 patterns w/100 examplesEssential Controls: 30 controls for RIA design and developmentComponents for Commonly Requested Features: 15 patterns and examples Every designer has a set of controls they rely on to communicate an effective UI.

Are You Ready For A Web Design Challenge? - Smashing Magazine - Aurora Advertisement This is not a normal Smashing Magazine post. I’m not going to teach you something new or inspire you with examples of great work. Instead, I want to encourage you to complete a Web design challenge. I believe this will help to address a weakness that exists in many of our design processes. If you complete this challenge, it will make it easier for clients to sign off on your designs, and it will improve the quality of your work.

Building Wireless Sensor Networks Create distributed sensor systems and intelligent interactive devices using the ZigBee wireless networking protocol and Series 2 XBee radios (available here). By the time you're halfway through this fast-paced, hands-on guide, you'll have built a series of useful projects, including a complete ZigBee wireless network that delivers remotely sensed data. This resource- and reference-packed book is ideal for inventors, hackers, crafters, students, hobbyists, and scientists. Get ready to create distributed sensor systems and intelligent interactive devices using the ZigBee wireless networking protocol and Series 2 XBee radios. By the time you're halfway through this fast-paced, hands-on guide, you'll have built a series of useful projects, including a complete ZigBee wireless network that delivers remotely sensed data. Radio networking is creating revolutions in volcano monitoring, performance art, clean energy, and consumer electronics.

20 lines of code that will beat A/B testing every time Zwibbler.com is a drop-in solution that lets users draw on your web site. A/B testing is used far too often, for something that performs so badly. It is defective by design: Segment users into two groups. Show the A group the old, tried and true stuff. Show the B group the new whiz-bang design with the bigger buttons and slightly different copy. After a while, take a look at the stats and figure out which group presses the button more often.

Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: September 2011 - Smashing Magazine Advertisement We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork. And as designers we usually turn to different sources of inspiration. As a matter of fact, we’ve discovered the best one — desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd. This creativity mission has been going on for over two years now, and we are very thankful to all designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing each month.

Related:  Marketing