Moblog

Gyorgy Fekete put together a nice gallery of OS GUIs from 1981's Xerox Alto to 2009's KDE 4.

"Check out the video by Adrien Mondot for a demonstration of eMotion being used with a Wiimote. eMotion is a physics based visual tool for the Mac. It's designed to enhance performances by reacting to real world motion." Continue reading "eMotive: Physical Motion Effects"

I regularly browse through the list of new acquisitions of our university's library. Turns out there are a few interesting new books to read! Continue reading "Five New IT books: A To-Do List"

Dmitry Fadeyev from Smashing Magazine has posted some useful tips for (mostly Web related) interface design.

I've read two great books on interface design recently. Huh? Interface design? Who cares? I would go so far as to recommend this to any programmer, regardless of his personal interest in GUI design.

While "GUI Bloopers" is more focused on current, 'standard' elements of interface design, and how to avoid the most popular mistakes when planning and designing interfaces, it still contains a lot of timeless, important material on general topics and rules of interface design.

Raskin goes beyond current interfaces in his book on "Humane Interfaces". Based on theoretical founding ("one locus of attention"), he develops new ways of interaction with a completely revised system - including modified hardware. For example, he dismisses file names and paths as unsuitable to represent and locate information. Also, he explains why the Desktop metaphor as basis of our computer interaction is inherently flawed. And have you ever heard anyone else suggesting a two-part cursor?

Think of "GUI Bloopers" as the book you need to create good interfaces of today, and "The Humane Interface" to create great interfaces of tomorrow!
Continue reading "Interface Design und Usability"