“The IndieHIG project is an initiative created out of the necessity to document the new look and feel aspects of the Mac OS X experience, outside of the supervision of Apple itself.” – courtesy of slashdotorg

“One of the most well-understood and salient principles underlying the ergonomics of graphical user interface design is Fitts’ Law. Named for Paul Fitts, a psychologist at Ohio State University, Fitts’ Law is a mathematical model of fine motor control which predicts how long it takes to move from one position to another as a function of the distance to and size of the target area. Papers outlining what became known as Fitts’ Law were published in 1954 and 1964.” (Jensen Harris – An Office User Interface Blog)

“These guidelines are targeted primarily at developers who are building tools for the OLPC laptop. They provide an in-depth view of the various features of Sugar, the laptop user interface, and focus closely on the parts of the UI that pertain directly to software development and the ways in which applications, presented as ‘activities’, interact with the operating system. However, as these guidelines are intended to provide a comprehensive overview of the user interface, these pages should also be of general interest. Hopefully the descriptions of the various UI elements, particularly in the Laptop Experience section, will quench the thirst of all who want to better understand the project and its goals.” (The OLPC Wiki) – courtesy of usernomics

“In 1988, Apple Computer produced some video scenarios showing how future computers would be able to understand hand gestures, read text, and respond to voice commands. Almost 20 years later, the world is still waiting for a natural way of using computers—though we are beginning to see some of our wildest dreams slowly emerge from the chaos of high technology and become real. In 2006, it is easy to believe that the masses will soon be able to use a computer without any keyboard or mouse. Beyond the constrained space of our personal computer’s monitor, keyboard, and mouse, I’m looking for the sort of revolution that would overtake the wild dream of Blade Runner. I can envision huge 3D virtual worlds and systems that are smart enough to feel a user’s mood and respond intelligently. Now, where do you want to go today?” (Leandro Agrò – UXmatters)

“This course explored the operational, organizational, and strategic impacts of user experience groups within product development companies and provided a conceptual framework for relating UX activities to strategic business processes.” (Pabini Gabriel-Petit – UXmatters)

“Whenever the topic of interface development comes up, I’m always surprised to see most software engineers cringe as if they’re being told they need a root canal. Almost all modern applications require some sort of graphical user interface, and yet the UI is commonly the last consideration of development. Worse yet (particularly when it comes to web development) the user interface is often created by a graphic designer who isn’t familiar with software development. The resulting separation that occurs between the application’s internals and its interface can cause serious problems with the project.” (Nate Kohari)

“Like many UX practitioners, I’m often involved in designing products that will be sold across the globe. Half of the challenge is acknowledging there is no one-size-fits-all set of design criteria. The other half is knowing the tradeoffs when choosing between usability methods for requirements gathering and evaluation. What many may find surprising is that our tried-and-true methods themselves can have limitations, depending on the context in which we apply them.” (Michele Marut – UXmatters)

“The key to any successful marriage is compromise. While things may not always go the way you want them to, in the end, coming to an agreement helps you to achieve a greater good. The same holds true for user interface (UI) design. After all, what else is the user interface if not a marriage of form and function?” (Mike Padilla – Digital Web Magazine)

“One of the great things CHI offers to both practitioners and academics is an opportunity to reconnect with people from their respective communities. Though the intermingling between these two separate communities is not what it might be. Over the many years since this conference began in 1982, conference attendees have forged and annually – or at least from time to time – renewed friendships with their peers from around the world. Unlike conferences focusing on a particular UX specialty, attendees represented the diversity among practitioners – including designers, usability specialists, user researchers, and UX managers.” (Pabini Gabriel-Petit – UXmatters)

“Tracing the history of interaction design, software/web design and the future of environmental design through the humble button.” (About HotB)

“When I signed up to attend CHI 2006, for the very first time in my seven-year career, I didn’t expect that I’d spend most of the event helping to staff our company’s exhibit space and drive hiring for the St. Jude Medical Human Factors Engineering team. In 2001, a paper I’d co-authored with Robert Reimann was accepted for CHI, but I was unable to attend due to conflicting project duties. Over the years, events always seemed to conspire against my attending CHI, although I’ve had the pleasure of attending other conferences such as DIS and DUX. At CHI 2006, I hoped to educate myself about leading research and fresh trends in the field of computer human interaction, as well as network with folks I’ve worked and communicated with, especially through the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). In the end, though, working the St. Jude Medical booth consumed the bulk of my time.” (Elizabeth Bacon – UXmatters)

“In April of 2001, a small dotcom sent a young Webmaster to a conference called CHI in Seattle. That was my first CHI experience. I had been forced to read The Design of Everyday Things, the author of which was some guy the owner knew from when he was working on his PhD at the University of California, San Diego—that’d be Don Norman. I’d never been to Seattle, never been on a business trip before, knew hopelessly little about the concept of usability—except that I was grateful when somebody blamed her problems with doors on the designers of the doors and not her inability to intuit in which direction a door will open—and was chaperoned by most of the dotcom’s management team.” (Jessyca Frederick – UXmatters)

“(…) a XML-compliant markup language that describes the UI for multiple contexts of use such as Character User Interfaces (CUIs), Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs), Auditory User Interfaces, and Multimodal User Interfaces. In other words, interactive applications with different types of interaction techniques, modalities of use, and computing platforms can be described in a way that preserves the design independently from peculiar characteristics of physical computing platform.” (UsiXML.org)

“This plenary is the story of why customer connectivity is hugely important – Cook insists this means not doing surveys which can reinforce the company’s existing mindset, but to get out into the customer’s actual space – to get out the old ideas and let new ideas come in.” (CHI 2006)

“We’ve added 87 videos from the Assocation for Computing Machinery (ACM) annual Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) conference. These videos were digitized from the CHI conference VHS video proceedings for the years 1996 through 2002, with the exception of the video proceedings for the year 2000. We expect to add videos for the year 2000 and 2003 video proceedings soon.” (The Open Video Project)

“This demonstration was simply amazing — all running real-time off one laptop and all designed by grad students. I suggest that you take a look at their video that demonstrates the multi-touch interface.” (Robert Kaye – O’Reilly ETech)

“Sketching and modeling are integral features of the design process, critical for both the generation of ideas, and the communication of concepts to others for discussion and evaluation, particularly in the context of human-centered design. While these methods are a natural component of the designer’s education and professional tool kit, there is immense value in exposing other professions involved in the development of products and interfaces to at least a limited set of these same basic tools.” (Bruce Hanington – uiGarden.net)

“In this article, I provide some practical tips for designing usable RIAs, based on fundamental principles of HCI.” (Donna Maurer – Digital Web Magazine)

“Many software programs provide access to, and let users work with, large amounts of information. In addition to interactions that allow users to create, edit, and expand massive data sets, these information-rich applications must also support effective data interpretation.” (Luke Wroblewski – UXmatters)

Audio presentation and slides by Jensen Harris (Microsoft) – “This talk will provide a historical perspective on the evolution of the Office user interface and the battle against the mounting complexity of the product. You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at the different design iterations, and an in-depth look at the new Office UI constructs, including the Ribbon, galleries, contextual tabs, and the MiniBar.” (BayCHI)