Having some struggle to color charts and graphs used in UI your designing? Using color palettes like Kuler is one thing, but we, UX practitioner, should be better than that. This article gives you a very quick and solid instruction based on human factors.

via PerceptualEdge

Windows 8: The Boldest, Biggest Redesign In Microsoft’s History

I’ve been Mac user since 2008. Before that I was Windows user all the way since 1993. I wasn’t a big fan of Microsoft UIs back in the day. It was just ok design and visually not interesting at all.

Now that Microsoft made the biggest UI design on their leading OS, Windows, I have to say it’s actually quite interesting change. Yes, I know some people had a very hard time finding how to turn off the computer or other very basic functions. That was quite messed up. However, it doesn’t simply mean the design itself is bad. If you look closely, there is many interesting designs in it and you can absolutely learn from it.

It’s more educational for UX practitioners to think about WHY they designed this way and WHAT intention was behind it. I recommend to do it, It’s quite a good practice.

Related note: Look at UI and interaction design around Control Panel. It was most painful part for most of users. See how they managed this part. It is not perfect at all, but you see lots of effort. 

It’s recommended to read this article both beginner and expert UX practitioners. It’s always quite interesting how other professionals setup their own lab.

Yes, they are likely to be forgotten when days are busy.

betweenblog:

Not new, but good to read it again.

1. Focus on the Primary Task
2. Elevate the Content that People Care About
3. Think Top Down
4. Give People a Logical Path to Follow
5. Make Usage Easy and Obvious
6. Use User-Centric Terminology
7. Minimize the Effort Required for User Input
8. Downplay File-Handling…

That applies ANY project. Great tip!

Don’t spend too much time for planning your study!
Sometimes do first improve next works much better. 

pmtips:

Your plan will never be perfect - it just needs to be good enough to point you in the right direction and should continually evolve.

What the…. it’s something really new….

In fact, there are disabled people who plays piano with their own tongue, so I think it is not too crazy as it seems.

Thanks joshbyard!

Researchers Develop Interface for Paralyzed to Control Machines With Their Tongues:

A group of engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a way to control… just about anything (but most likely, things like wheelchairs) with a combination of a magnetic tongue piercing and a paired retainer.

The user would press the tongue piercing against different parts of the retainer to send signals.

…The system is called the Tongue Drive, and it relies on a waterproof retainer on the roof of the mouth containing a Li-ion battery, induction coil for charging, and and several magnetic contact points to detect the position of the tongue-mounted magnet. It’ll then beam the signal wirelessly to a mobile device—iOS devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch are mentioned—and the mobile device shoots those commands over to whichever device is meant to be controlled.

(via Steer Your Wheelchair With Your Computerized Tongue Piercing | Popular Science)

Touch gestures on WIndows 8 and its usability issues

Here is one very good article about new Windows 8 UI, metro, from Windows developer group themselves. You can see neat breakdown of touch gestures in Windows 8 and potential issues.

Must read if you are interaction designer that involves touch gesture stuff.

Via: MSDN Blogs

HTTP STATUS CATS: HTTP STATUS CODES ILLUSTRATED BY CATS

It is being said visualize as much as you can, do not use jargons, and unnecessary task put aside to background. But web browsers still give us uninteresting codes for some reason. So, someone obviously tried to visualize them with cats for more intuitiveness.

Autonomous Vehicle - From Stanford Online AI Class

It’s not the SF story, but what if all the cars in the world are completely automated? Anyway, watch this video.

Human Factors experts know that automation can help people, but too much automation can cause boredom, confusion, frustration, and ultimately accidents. However, what if your vehicle is completely automated? Well, all cars in the world are automated, the story would be much different, I guess. And fully automated car is actually in a practice phase already.

AI cars that they tested look really intelligent and stable. You will be surprised the fact that  the technology is advanced this far.

One major aspect of usability study is to take out unnecessaries and well present essentials. In that perspective, minimalism is one significant design approach to get things right. This article will help you to think about “what is a proper way of minimalism” with out messing up.

pixelsign:

Minimalism, interestingly enough, is usually born out of excess. In all arts, in all ways of life, we start out by taking and adding whatever we can.

When we start to realize that more is not necessarily better, and that we can get by with less stuff, we try to simplify by removing unnecessary elements so we can focus on what’s truly important.

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