SpatialKey

ritsch ratsch click

At least someone starts to think about camera UIs. But none of them is really convincing, or has the wow factor.
BTW_ I like to see a camera that can be controlled just by touch – i mean just with your fingers without the necessity to look at the screen all the time.

Information Architecture TV

Jan Jursa colected more than 300 presentations and clips over the last 2 years. Bring some time to watch the show...

ease of search vs. ease of scrolling

Some websites (read: their web developers) want to be smarter than the user. They try to anticipate my behavior on the page -- and fail. I talk esp. about flickr's search results.

Shake it, baby

A couple of new window management features of Windows 7 are quite remarkable. First of all the shake of windows, that hides all other screen clutter. Shake the window again and the other windows come back. This is an excellent, fun, and easy to remember gesture to remove distractions and focus on the current task. For me on Mac the shortcut Cmd-Opt-H has a similar effect. It hides all windows from other applications. But I suppose it is not as much fun, and not consistently implemented across all applications. Back to Windows' gesture, I would expect just one caveat: The trigger MouseDown-RapidSmallMouseMovements works best with a mouse -- a trackpad is not the best graphical input device to perform this gesture.

Two other gestures grabbed my attentions. Move a window against the upper border of the screen and it maximizes. Move it to the right or left border to use the right or left half of the screen. These gestures simplify the task to compare two documents side by side. A small, yet powerful aspect to work with windows.

There is another shake gesture that becomes fashion. Shake Apple iPods and you get a new random song. I would like to see this feature for iTunes as well. Shake the iTunes window to randomize to the next tune. Alt-Click on the forward button is my most used function in iTunes anyway.

pick your chart

Nirmal Patal found (Jan 2009):

Creating Career Paths for UX Professionals

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: ux iasummit2008)

Handouts available at_ Creating Career Paths for UX Professionals

Impress Task Pain

Each and every time I open an Impress window I have to close the task pane. No, I don't want it. I don't need it. It just consumes screen space. If I need it I want to be in control and open it myself and close it afterwards when no longer needed.
RFE: The state of the task pane should become a persistent Impress setting.
ISSUE# 95600

C. /IBM says: Indeed, this has annoyed me for years already; in search of the hidden option to turn off this "feature", I came across your post. Thanks for raising this!

Xing's brokn buttons

Firefox 2 on Windows, default font size - ok:

Firefox 2 on Windows, increased font size -- the Find buttons show some strange artifacts:

Firefox 2 on Mac, default font size - ok:

Firefox 2 on Mac, increased font size -- the Find buttons show the same strange artifacts as on Windows:

Firefox 2 on Mac, incredible increased font size -- aha! This is how the UI is implemented. And I suppose Xing can also do better regarding accessibility:

MetaSquares is back

MetaSquares, the smart and addictive game by Scott Kim is back -- for iPhone, for MacOS X (soon), and a tryout verison for the web.