2 posts tagged “learning”

    Interaction design not only requires a bundle of testing but it requires a lot of personal experience. As a developer, it would be incredibly difficult to design a product without any familiarity to the end result. Without personal experience to the end product, emotional attachment will be bias in favor of ease of development. As an interaction designer it is important to remember that product experience to users, no matter what the product, count on tasks being obvious.

    Taking a quick glance at the two remotes above, what tasks can you determine will be obvious to complete. Let's suppose that the person will be watching TV in the dark. Without being able to look at the remote, will it be easy to figure out what buttons to press? The remote on the right uses differing shapes, placement and space around the buttons to distinguish tasks from one another. The user will be able to learn how to use the remote during daylight or under the light. Familiarity with the product soon begets the obvious nature to complete tasks.

    Of course, on the left, lights allow the user to see which button is which and how to complete a task like changing the channel. However, due to the number of buttons and the few spacing there is between them - the user will have to look at their remote every time they want to use it.

    Obvious interaction is not so obvious when it of course depends on perspective. Anyone on a team will have a differing perspective of obvious interaction when they are looking at the same product. However, the key point in making things obvious is about taking away prerequisites. So for instance, in the remote example lighting was taken away. Without looking at the remote which is easier? How often will the user need to relearn the interface? How long will it take to learn the interface the first time? These are a few important questions when thinking about obvious interaction.

Vista-Ultimate-MediaGames

Hey everyone! How are the holidays going for everyone?

Since the break started I've managed to watch, well a ton of movies. Thank goodness for my Dad's Comcast OnDemand. I've been watching Numb3rs and HD CSI. Plus a lot of other series that I haven't caught up on in a while. (Darn schedules :P) Anyways, I'm over here with my family during the holidays in SLC. I'm managing to relax more than usual, but I still get trapped into making something new and learning something new (you know me :D). With all the holiday free time, I'm starting to explore all the online communites that I usually delved into a while back when I had free time. All the Japanese learning communities and people around the world, especially in blogs :D. I'm really enjoying my holidays here but I would love to hear from other people about any adventures for the holidays. Leave me a comment if you can.

Vista Ultimate Installed On T60P! Horray!

Vista-Ultimate

There's a lot of neat features in Windows Vista. Lester from MSDN has a nice post about some tip and tricks to Vista here. The first time I installed Vista Ultimate was actually an ISO that Dustin left at the house. Turns out that the image is the Beta 2 Build 5384 of Vista Ultimate. So, naturally .NET 3.0 was in pre-release mode and there were a few bugs when I went into sleep mode on my laptop. There were a few compatibility issues that prevented the use of installing XNA and any Expression components. However, as of today I have the latest RTM of Vista Ultimate and it's running great on my T60P! :D

As I mentioned, Expression was something I tried to install and use on my T60P. I got it ready and working on this install and I've been going through some of the tutorials. Blend is a nice tool to use. I've been using XAML for some time now but it's nice getting to use CTP and RTM versions of the framework and tools. There are still some issues with the Expression suite that I'm not used to. Seeing as Designer is a vector graphics tool, the shortcuts and layouts are definitely different to that in Raster tools like Photoshop. Blend is really amazing though. You really don't have to know very much XAML to get into the new .NET 3.0 framework. Microsoft is really taking things to the next level in easing the development process. I find that one of the coolest features of the new framework is Control Templating.

Control Templating

In control templating you can take any .NET windows control and make it look and behave however you would like it to look and behave. As I mentioned before in easing the development process, creating UI to look and behave how you want it without hindering the controls functionality useless is the essentially the Holy Grail in effective development. Take this next example:

Fish Button

Believe it or not, the above picture is actually a regular Button. It's pretty neat with the kind of behavior and look you can create in this new suite and framework that Microsoft came out with. It really follows the Alan Cooper methodologies on effective interaction design and efficient separation methodologies. I look forward to working with my fellow developers and especially my roommates on projects using these new tools and framework features. We've all been really excited in our studies in Design Patterns and HID (Human Interface Design) classes; noting the software methodologies of Alan Cooper.

New House, Maybe Snowboarding

My dad has told me that he plans to move into a new home fairly soon. From what I hear, it's going to be right after Christmas. I don't want to give out too many details about the house, but it does overlook the Salt Lake Valley on an amazing mountain side. My brother is also coming into town this week so we can go Snowboarding when he gets in. Plus I think his best friend Nick is also coming into town. (If you remember from a previous post; I talked about a friend of my brother's named Nick. He was the friend I was with when we were in Las Vegas posing as Bodyguards for my brother Diego and his girlfriend Racheal. Click here to read the full post.) So that should be fun. Hopefully, I'll get to do some snowboarding pretty soon this week. Meanwhile I suppose I'll explore more of my Dad's Comcast while I dive into this new world of development and learning...

メリークリスマス も　あけましておめでとう
Merry Christmas and Have a Happy New Year!