“(…) many blogs suffer from interface design shortcomings. Unlike issues of spam and authority, these problems have relatively straightforward solutions that could considerably increase the utility of blog content. Assuming a blog is not filled with spam content (splogs), spam comments, or spam trackbacks, there’s often a wealth of information to be found therein: information that is frequently buried deep within archives and comments. This article looks at ways to bring that information forward.” (Luke Wroblewski – Functioning Form)

“Emotion is becoming accepted as an important ingredient of successful humancomputer interaction design. It has always been important in design, but as a discipline rooted in the methods and mindset of the cognitive psychology of the 70s and 80s, HCI has been slow to accept that affect (as exhibited in feelings of happiness or anxiety) is an essential component of reasoning about the world, not an opposing force. Although we may loosely speak of emotion versus reason, both too much and too little emotion will have a negative impact on cognition, with the latter being the more pathological.” (John Waterworth – uiGarden.net)

“So, at the end of the talk I re-asked the question about what Web 2.0 means to people. I felt like there was a general consensus: that Web 2.0 is a big deal, especially the architecture of participation. We’re turning to new methods to find value for us, and those methods are systems built upon the notion that users add value.” (Joshua Porter – Bokardo)

“In the current paper, three dimensions of multimodal access to content are explored: tangible media, use of gestures and sound. To this extent, the current study considers the role of sound feedback in support of user-product communication and gestures towards accessing voice mail via a tangible interface. In the case of voice mail representations, information can be directly represented by the recorded media, whereas the use of abstract sound representations creates a higher level overview of content.” (Marco C. Rozendaal and David V. Keyson – The Journal of Design Research)

“User interface design, a part of the broader field of ergonomics, has been a challenging field to work in since man first tried making a tool for somebody else. Consider the lowly garden trowel. A trowel is simply a piece of wide metal connected to a handle, whereby its wielder may move small amount of earth to place seeds or seedlings in a garden.” (Warren M. Myers – ACM Ubiquity)

“This seminar presents the current state of the art of evaluating user interface designs using models of human performance that are based on cognitive architectures. Such models can yield usability results without the delay and expense of user testing of prototypes, but because they are new and still under development, whether and how to apply them is a challenge. This seminar will survey current theory and practice; no ‘how-to’ of actual model construction will be presented; rather the goal is to enable a good choice of whether a modeling approach will be useful, and which type of model would be best to pursue.” (School of CS – CMU)

“As Google and Yahoo! continue their volley of product offerings, I thought it would be useful to compare the interface design solutions each company employed to solve similar user needs.” (LukeW – Functioning Form)

An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments – “Human Technology presents innovative, peer-reviewed articles that explore the issues and challenges surrounding the human role in all areas of our ICT-infused societies. The journal seeks to draw research from multiple scientific disciplines with an eye toward how applied technology can affect human existence or how it can, for instance, foster personal development and enhance research and development in industry, education, communication and other fields.” (Agora Center – University of Jyväskylä) – courtesy of usabilitynews

“Why did computers come to adopt the GUI as their primary mode of interaction, and how did the GUI evolve to be the way it is today? In what follows, I’ll be presenting a brief introduction to the history of the GUI. The topic, as you might expect, is broad, and very deep. This article will touch on the high points, while giving an overview of GUI development.” (Jeremy Reimer – Ars Technica) – courtesy of lucdesk

“You might say it’s the toughest problem to solve in the modern world of computing; it’s certainly the hardest to define. This month more than 1,800 designers, programmers, academics, professional researchers, industrial engineers, artists, and musicians gathered in Portland, Oregon, for another bash at the question, How do you make these monstrous electronics we’ve created easier and more pleasant to use? Welcome to CHI 2005, the annual meeting of the Association for Computer Machinery’s special interest group on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI).” (Quinn Norton – O’Reilly Network)

“Beginning with conversations on interface design and creating a better computer, Our footage reveals a remarkable man who changes the lives of people around him. Passionately described as an inovator with an unfailing moral compass and a gifted educator with an active commitment to play Jef attributes his success in part to a foundation based on music, math and physics.” (Dave Burstein) – courtesy of cityofbits

“(…) on Saturday February 26th, 2005 our condolences go out to Jef’s family, friends and wider community.” (DigiBarn Friends) – Jef’s spirit will live through.

“This is a report of the NordiCHI 2004 Workshop on Aesthetic Approaches to Human-Computer Interaction, which took place in October at the University of Tampere.” (John Knight – Usability News)

Video Lecture – “ePresence Interactive Media is a research project of the Knowledge Media Design Institute at the University of Toronto.” (Bill Buxton – KMDI)

“(…) design bugs that have been around so long that we’ve begun to think of them as folk heros. However, the usual requirement for turning a public enemy into a folk hero is death, not longevity, and so it should be for these worthies: Their executions are long overdue. These bugs aren’t necessarily fatal. The are all at minimum highly irritating, and they have all survived for a minimum of five years or five product release cycles, whichever came first.” (Bruce Tognazzini – AskTog) – courtesy of slash dot org

“The use of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) for complex, transactional web applications is a significant leap forward for user interface design and development. It fundamentally changes the foundation of the presentation tier for today’s web applications.” (Benjamin Wigton – Avenue A / Razorfish Perspectives) – courtesy of brett lider

“In this paper, it is shown that a teddy bear skin spongy mouse is a better option than a conventional plastic mouse design and that a portable arm rest mouse pad platform is far better than the conventional mouse platform placed to the side of the keyboard tray.” (Bhaskar Gupta – ACM Ubiquity)

“Even prominent websites make elementary errors in the use of basic user interface controls. The main guidelines are clear, but there are ten other things you should consider when using checkboxes and radio buttons.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“The paper describes developments to date in ambient intelligence and its closely related counterpart, ubiquitous computing and communication. It discusses the driving forces behind this digital information technology, describes the equipment and devices involved, the obstacles to implementing ambient intelligence on a large scale in real-world scenarios, and considers the future outlook. The authors believe that the introduction of this digital information technology will have wide-ranging implications, which will for the most part be beneficial and valuable.” (Mahesh S. Raisinghani et al. – Journal of Digital Information 5.4)

“Keyboards and mice will face competition from motion-sensing, gesture recognition and haptic technologies.” (Computerworld) – courtesy of lawrence lee