iTunes Interactions

I noticed recently that when you’ve finished listening to an album on iPhone / iPod Touch and unlock the device, the screen shows the final track playing before snapping back apologetically to the album listing. This seems like a negative interaction; like the device is caught off-guard, saying “Oh it finished, sorry about that! Well I guess you can look at the track listing.”

What would be nicer is if the playing screen slid down, or the album art transitioned into the smaller version, whilst the player controls faded to reveal the track listing. Something more elegant as if saying “…And we’re done. How was that for you? Want another listen?”

Journey PS3

Growing Collection by Andrea Kalfas

I got back from Kerala, India at the weekend, so wanted to put a photo or two up.

One of the joys of the trip was discovering the language of the state, Malayalam, and its script, which I hadn’t seen or heard before. As a crude observation it looks similar to Thai, which I had recently been appreciating in the Nokia Pure typeface.

Handwritten on walls, the text always looked amazing, often in bright colours. Unfortunately, shown on billboards — which littered the sides of streets and roads — graphic design featured mostly primary colours, with text-outlines or drop-shadows on everything. Which was better than the accompanying English text that was invariably set in either horizontally or vertically stretched Helvetica.

Pegasus by Michael Bierut of Pentagram

Square seem to change their site whenever I look at it. Always good though, and a great product.

Wo Hing General Store identity by Manual Creative

Mail-out Illustration / CV from Dan Woodger

Three of my favourites from the Designs of the Year exhibition at the Design Museum, London:

Shade by Simon Heijdens.

A translucent panel broken into triangular segments whose opacities flutter between transparent and translucent in waves across the surface. The timing and size of these waves are related to the wind outside the building. Simply mesmerising to watch. 

Mine Kafon by Massoud Hassani.

A beautiful structure with a huge potential social impact. It is used to sweep mines safely and cheaply: it can clear mines for as little as £2.50, where normal methods can cost £800 per mine.

Nokia Pure by Dalton Maag

The updated Nokia typeface echoes the characteristics of the brand perfectly. What interested me about this typeface is the fact that a large number of non-latin scripts were created alongside the alphabet, meaning that Thai, Devanagari, Hebrew and other texts work just as well in branded material .

Horse Play in Woodstock by Yayoi Kusama

Wooden Trees by Pen Pencil Stencil

I went to the IxDA Redux talk at Sapient’s offices in London last night. It was a series of seven 10 minute talks on the IxDA conference in Dublin, some spanning the whole conference, others focussing on a single talk.

Once again I forgot to bring a notebook with me (maybe there’s a reason I stopped doing industrial design) and so had to take down some notes on the iPhone. About half the people there were doing the same, being a room full of UX designers, so I didn’t feel like too much of a chump. I also realised that auto-correct whilst typing quickly doesn’t work anywhere near as well as handwriting: what would be illegible scrawls translates to either the right or wrong word. I guess digital will still be very binary for the foreseeable future.

From the notes mentioned above, here is some of the information I gleaned from the talks:

Innovation comes through disruption and disruptive technologies. Designers should provoke not predict, and be asking what could be done, not what should.

Wireframes don’t work for modern interactions. Things like sharing, syncing and working across devices don’t translate onto a single layout (responsive / mobile-first design approaches).

Users don’t have goals. Where the classic UX texts talked about users doing single tasks in the early age of interfaces, the same isn’t true anymore. Computers are omnipresent and goals are a product of several cognitive areas and are constantly shifting. A more interesting goal is that of users moving from novice to expert: the journey of experiencing a product.

Users will redesign and re-appropriate your design. As an example, Twitter has very tight limitations on what is generated, but the user’s pushing of these constraints is what has made the service so successful and in the case of the arab spring, instrumental in providing the vector for social reform. Applications should be very simple and provide few but strict rules, allowing users to be creative within the parameters set.

Rather than tasks and goals, modern interface design is about emotions, contexts and relationships.

Three important elements of web application design - UI, Blank State and Content Delivery.

Microcopy. Using text on buttons and short instructions to present a clear and uniform tone of voice throughout an application. Verbs are very important (Like, Tweet) and can become the hook for a service. But can also be inappropriate if not flexible enough to handle the variety of content going through your app: can you ‘Like’ all news articles?

Simple framework for microcopy: Who is the message for? How? Where? When? What tone?

The blank state of a system sets the tone for the application for new users. It presents the app’s way of thinking and introduces rules. The application should ask specific questions with regards to content being generated by the user: think Trip Advisor, not App Store.

Shapeshifting of content. Tasks follow you on your mobile, wherever you go, presenting a shift in contextual consumption. 

There is still an obsession with layout, a legacy of print design and fixed-width web design. Instead, design should be responsive. Wireframes are not appropriate anymore. (Yeah, we heard these ones already, but they kept coming up and for good reason.)

We are in an age of Natural User Interfaces (NUIs), and have reached the limitations of Graphic User Interfaces (GUIs). Interfaces are becoming more organic and integrated into natural gestures and the way we operate day to day.

Comfortable computing: iPad in bed. Invisible interfaces, first talked about 30 or 40 years ago are becoming a reality. We don’t have to deal with physical products to the same extent anymore. With a tablet, the television can come with us to bed, to the toilet or when traveling. 

Interactions accrue over time. Products facilitate exploration. Products sense intent.

Illustration by Dominic Owen

Icons for Brevia Consulting by Chris Gray

bbach82:

Various M&Co. business cards and sticker from our Tibor Kalman collection. (by Herb Lubalin Study Center)

Between Bears by Eran Hilleli

First saw this animated short at the OneDotZero Festival either last year or the year before. Re-watched it again today and thought I had to grab some stills of the journey depicted in the video (although I highly recommend watching it yourself). 

Reminds me of the visual imagery being shown from the forthcoming game Journey for PS3.

Woven maze by Ernesto Neto

I love this exhibit / net / hammock / playground by Brazilian Neo-Concreto artist, Ernesto Neto. Just wish I could experience it in the flesh.

Faena Arts Center, Buenos Aires

via Fast Co. Design

Overgrown by Yuko Michishita

Michishita’s work will be on show at Pick Me Up, Somerset House, London in March. 

via Design Week

Clear for iPhone

A beautifully colourful and blocky to do list app for iPhone. The UI and UX of the app look amazing. The aesthetic and sounds remind me of the game SpellTower for iPhone.

This will be replacing Wunderlist for me. Wunderlist is very useful in synching lists between devices, but is massively bugging and has questionable UI in parts. Can’t wait for the release.

via @millsustwo