All posts about
HCI

The study, planning, design and uses of the interfaces between people (users) and computers. (source: Wikipedia)

Information, Physicality, Co-Ownership, and Culture

Added on 29 December 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Tangible computing has a long history of interest in technology circles; like augmented reality and computer-supported cooperative work, it has long been the focus of research studies in academic institutions, and not ironically, the focus of a large quantity of science fiction movies, too. It is only in the past half-decade, however, that the stars have aligned to support tangible computing in practice.” (Richard Anderson and Jon Kolko – ACM SIGCHI Interactions XVII.1)

Make It So: Learning From SciFi Interfaces by Nathan Shedroff and Chris Noessel

Added on 12 October 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Make It So explores how science fiction and interface design relate to each other. The authors have developed a model that traces lines of influence between the two, and use this as a scaffold to investigate how the depiction of technologies evolve over time, how fictional interfaces influence those in the real world, and what lessons interface designers can learn through this process. This investigation of science fiction television shows and movies has yielded practical lessons that apply to online, social, mobile, and other media interfaces.” (Nathan Shedroff and Chris Noessel – Huffduffer)

The Ever-Evolving Arrow: Universal Control Symbol

Added on 5 October 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Symbols and icons can be both friend and enemy to UX designers. They can convey a great deal of information in the span of just a few pixels or utterly confuse users, depending on the context. The careful application of icons, however, can greatly enhance software, enabling quick access to a feature or function, using a minimal amount of screen real estate.” (Jonathan Follett – UXmatters)

(Preso) Designing Social Interfaces: 5 steps, 5 principles, 5 anti-patterns

Added on 18 September 2009 Peter Bogaards
“In this presentation we share a family of social web design principles and interaction patterns to help user experience designers and strategists grapple with the social dimensions of their products and services. The family of patterns, principles, and practices provides a framework and starting point for the conceptual modeling of any interactive digital social experience.” (Erin Malone & Christian Crumlish)

HCI 09: Interaction gets all Emotional

Added on 15 September 2009 Peter Bogaards
“The ubiquity of computing means it’s now present in all aspects of our lives, and – perhaps not unexpectedly – that increasingly means our emotional lives. Emotions drive a huge proportion of what we do and likewise, our interactions with technology impact on our emotions. Emotion as a ‘property’ to take into account during design and usability evaluation featured in many papers – hinting at a whole new field of emotional design to come.” (Usability News)

Inside Out: Interaction Design for Augmented Reality

Added on 19 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Many people enter the inside-out world of augmented reality (AR) by doing something as ordinary as visiting a major city like New York and trying to get to a local friend’s favorite pizza shop, somewhere deep in Brooklyn, via public transportation. Standing in Times Square on a summer evening, they might hold up a new smart phone and pan it slowly around the Square to see a pointer to the nearest subway entrance overlaid on their phone’s video display of the buildings around them.” (Joe Lamantia – UXmatters)

Managing UI Complexity

Added on 19 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Interface complexity is an issue every designer wrestles with when designing a reasonably sophisticated application. A complex interface can reduce user effectiveness, increase the learning curve of the application, and cause users to feel intimidated and overwhelmed.” (Brandon Walkin) – courtesy of lievenbaeten

Zooming out from the desktop: The use of metaphors in Human-Computer Interface design

Added on 10 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“The desktop/office metaphor is at the base in the interface of the majority of computers currently in use. The desktop metaphor was introduced in late 1970s to make computers friendlier to office workers. Today this type of interfaces and metaphors are not adequate with computer users needs. This dissertation explains why this obsolete concept is still in use. Then some alternative, emerging interfaces are presented. The last chapter then describes the One Laptop Per Child project as an example of how interface design can successfully take different routes from what is considered the industry standard.” (Giuseppe Costanza)

Change: moving on to the next level

Added on 6 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“The HCI community has always been quite successful in adapting to the constantly changing technological opportunities, human needs and trends in society. By discussing our work amongst colleagues we have incrementally improved our methods and techniques, but apart from that it is important to respond adequately to changing practices and thinking in other fields. At the moment there seems to be a big opportunity and urgency for HCI experts to contribute to the development of the relatively new field of service design. We should not let that opportunity go to waste. This talk is an appeal to the pioneers in the community to get involved in this new area. A lot of the thinking and practices of HCI naturally fit in, and may even lead the way for some of the other disciplines involved.” (Geke van Dijk – STBY)

Designing is at least quadricentric

Added on 6 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
Video registration with multiple brain crackers. – “Interaction Design stresses human-centeredness. A strong focus on people is essential, but we also must focus on craft materials, their form and their function. While some design practices focus too much on means (the ‘what’ of design), avoiding commitments to explicit ends (the ‘why’), we cannot ignore design means. Also, we must further distinguish the purpose of design (‘why’) from its beneficiaries (‘who’), and also between both of these and the ‘if’ of designing, i.e., between evaluation, purpose and beneficiaries.” (Gilbert Cockton)

Book: Search User Interfaces

Added on 8 July 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Search is an integral part of peoples’ online lives; people turn to search engines for help with a wide range of needs and desires, from satisfying idle curiousity to finding life-saving health remedies, from learning about medieval art history to finding video game solutions and pop music lyrics. Web search engines are now the second most frequently used online computer application, after email. Not long ago, most software applications did not contain a search module. Today, search is fully integrated into operating systems and is viewed as an essential part of most information systems.” (Marti A. Hearst)

The Future of HCI: Intelligent User Interfaces as Agents of Change (preso)

Added on 2 July 2009 Peter Bogaards
“The predominant interaction paradigm for the last 30 years has been Direct Manipulation. This metaphor is starting to crack under the weight of information it has to deal with. The Indirect Management approach taken by systems such as Intelligent Agents aim to alleviate the cognitive load on users. This presentation shows the constraints we face in the user experience field and some future opportunities and threats.” (Christopher Khalil)

Pattie Maes on interfaces and innovation

Added on 1 July 2009 Peter Bogaards
“There is a wealth of information available, and most of it these days is digitized. I feel that we still don’t have good ways to know what information may be available and what is relevant to whatever we are currently doing, to be able to access information, especially while we are in the middle of something. The current computers and the interfaces that we use, they are not really the ideal information-accessing devices.” (MHT)

Building Better User Interfaces

Added on 30 June 2009 Peter Bogaards
“A great user experience starts with the user interface. In this talk, we will explore best practices in user interface design in a learn-by-example approach of the good, bad and the ugly in user interface design. From web sites to rich client, you will learn how areas such as navigation, layout, typography, controls and dialogs can make or break the usefulness of an application. At the end of this talk, you will have the tools and tips you need to bring great user experience through best practices in user interface design.” (Microsoft NL DevDays 2009) – courtesy of all2gether