Author: Victor

Wider is better

Someday in the not-too-distant future I will start pestering you all with urges to start leveraging auditory interfaces. But first I’ll pester you with the potential for horizontal scrolling. It seems quite useful on-screen, and those who are doing it now benefit from the novelty factor. One example is the current version of Ftrain.com, as if Paul’s writing wasn’t compelling enough, and another is Kottke’s portfolio, as if his work samples weren’t compelling enough. Seen others that rock? Lemme know at victor (at) victorlombardi.com.

Update: Owen deflates the novelty element, with good reason, and Nick sends us Shutterbug’s tour of the Sydney International Airport, a wonderful way to tell a story in pictures. As I scroll it feels like turning contiguous pages. If this could snap into detents the way we want the backslider to it could do wonders for children’s “books”.

Joy Mountford Interview

I’m happy to see a new interview with Joy Mountford, as I entered this whole field after hearing her lecture at New York University (during her tenure at Apple) over 10 years ago. The idea that someone with a psychology background was making computers easier to use was revolutionary for me. This is only a chat, but she includes some good points…

I think that every five years there has been a shift of the interface paradigm that I have worked within, which also paralleled technology industry waves. Defense business interests shifted into the AI knowledge worker space, then from the specialized AI work into personal computing (Apple), and then consumer electronics (Interval). Now my interests are in ubiquitous computing or the advent of “smart everyday objects.” …Businesses ask me to offer insights on the future of “computing”. That’s obviously a gigantic subject, so I usually talk to them about those user interface paradigms transitions…

I invited some film people to come and work in my group (at Apple) and create new uses and directions for it. They helped create Navigable Movies, which was the precursor to QuickTime VR… I think this was a really good illustration of what happens when you put technology in the hands of people who think of doing different things with it. I believe interface people should foster such creativity and experiments by encouraging some different things to happen.

I’m actually obsessed right now about why everything’s so miniature. People are not getting smaller, yet the displays and control surfaces are. I want the biggest buttons. I don’t care what it costs.

There’s a big difference between industrial design and interface design. …experience design takes place over time… A solution may be found quickly but experience occurs over time — belonging to a bigger space.

I miss the purity of products. I like to know that when I buy a phone it just makes phone calls and is optimally designed for that.

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Categorized as People

Amazing Internet Phone Service

I recently signed up for Vonage, an Internet phone service in the US and Canada, and love it. Also known as Voice over IP, it uses your Internet connection rather than a phone line to connect. Here’s some highlights of why I like it:

  • Cost: By far the best reason to switch is the savings. My wife and I don’t use the phone much, but we have family in Canada and Germany and these calls were expensive. Our bills averaged US$95, and now they average $25. We have the 500 minute plan for $15 and calls to Germany are only $.03/minute. They also have unlimited US/Canada plans for $30.
  • Easy to set up: they mail you a device that gets plugged in between your computer and your Internet connection. Then you plug your normal phone into the device. Done. The computer doesn’t need to be turned on or even plugged in.
  • Same phone number: Vonage can transfer your current number to their system, so I kept my precious 212 Manhattan area code.
  • Features: Their website records all information in real-time, so I can use it as caller ID, listen to voicemail, manage features, and view current activity as well as all the usual billing info.
  • Networked: Just as you might plug into the Internet from anywhere using your laptop, you can do the same with the Vonage device. So if I’m on a business trip I can bring the device to a hotel and use it with their Internet connection.

Their customer website is well designed and their customer service is responsive. I’m so psyched to find a company who is doing things right I’m recommending them here. If you’re considering signing up I can refer you and you’ll get a month free (and I’ll get a credit too), just email me at victor (at) victorlombardi.com.

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Categorized as Hardware

IA Education Survey

The AIfIA Education Initiative is surveying IA practitioners to get a better picture of our skills and what skills we think today’s students will need. We will use this information to help form a recommended educational curriculum. The survey only takes a few minutes to complete; help out if you have a chance.

The survey results will be reported in aggregate on the aifia.org website. No personally identifiable information is recorded.

Thanks!

Everyone’s punk rock band

The nice people at Amazon recently delivered a book on design history along with all-time quarterback from Death Cab for Cutie songwriter/frontman Ben Gibbard, a lo-fi homemade recording. Reading one while listening to the other is oddly complementary. Gibbard, playing simple and melancholy pop songs, self-reflexively sings of his relationship to his punk rock influences…

And if we could break the rules that were already
Broken before we were born,
Then we could hold them to their guns
Cause we’d be a punk rock band too

In the book, they recount the design trends of the past. Art Nouveau, in UX terms, emphasized esthetics while the Bauhaus emphasized usability. The Modernists did away with all decoration, having the form follow the function, and so on. And of course the effects of all this on people and society was argued through essays as well as artifacts as passionately as we do today.

So now when I see gurus come along with something like expectation design it looks like they’re treading on well-worn ground. Yes, the intracacies of digital design are new and different, but the higher level of how design affects people has been addressed for a hundred years. I start to understand why the traditional design press doesn’t always take UX design seriously. When it comes to design theory we’re green.

I didn’t know about design history because I hadn’t lived through it, and had never read it. I’m now feeling more sympathetic to all those LIS folks who feel like they’ve been doing information architecture for decades. When you look at their artifacts it seems they haven’t, and yet in conceptual ways they sometimes have.

Given the variety of our backgrounds (my education was in the liberal arts, and training was first in IT), a lot of us probably haven’t read the design history. We all want to invent punk rock, and it’s a little humbling when we realize we’re just repeating what Thonet did 140 years ago. As Mr. Gibbard would say,

What could they possibly do next to shock the crowd?
“We’re gonna rock rock rock you, make you scream out loud”
Bad boys whatcha gonna?

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Corporate Blogging and Power

Elizabeth Albrycht on Corporate Blogging and Power: ‘I think blogging is one of those new technologies that makes the negotiations about power visible…. Power needs secrecy. Humanity needs openness. Ergo – blogging actually works on the side of humanity….’

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Categorized as Blogs

DIY Home Projector

Though I quickly corrected my broken TV problem by picking up a used model on Craigslist, I’m still fascinated by the projector option. Here’s a guide to a $200 DIY projector using an LCD panel and an overhead projector. Part of the appeal is having a school-like overhead projector in your living room, very retro. During parties you could leave some overheads next to the machine and see how people reacted.

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Categorized as Video

Razorfish acquired, again

This time for $160 million, by aQuantive, who owns Avenue A. SBI had picked up Razorfish for $8.2 million less than two years ago, but also added MarchFirst, iXL, Scient, Lante, etc. to the mix. Would be interesting to do the math and see how much SBI actually made on the flip (sorry to put it in cold financial terms, but I think that’s all there is to it).

It’s an amazing brand story as well. Consider the strength of the Razorfish name:

  • In the early days Razorfish acquired several other companies but always kept the Razorfish name.
  • After SBI aquired the companies mentioned above, it only rebranded after acquiring Razorfish.
  • And now it lives on as Avenue A/Razorfish.

That name is probably a temporary combination to educate the market, it’ll be interesting to see what the final name becomes. Certainly a lesson in building a brand reputation, even an infamous one.

Contrast with how Semaphore — along with some others — was recently folded into Arc, part of the Publicis group. I’m kinda sad to see the old Semaphore site go away, they had a niche that made sense.

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Categorized as Razorfish

Dynamic Text Replacement

Once the HTML is finished loading, our script will search it for specified elements (h2, span, etc.) and replace the text inside of them with an img tag. This dynamic img tag has its alt attribute set to the original text, and its src attribute set to the URL of the PHP script that we just installed. The PHP script then sends back a custom PNG image, and voila: custom headings.

That is whacked.

Published
Categorized as Markup

What do markets buy?

‘Markets don’t buy products, customers do.‘ —Tom Peters

A great argument for complementing marketing with design.

Textpattern auto CSS?

I’ve been thinking about ways to edit CSS from a content management system, and fascinated by Dean’s description of Automatic CSS mode in Textpattern…

Automatic CSS mode, style sheet editing is taken to a sophisticated new level, using an editing interface and organizational method intended to make CSS parameters more readable and logical. Any existing style sheet can be ‘poured’ into the editing interface and modified indefinitely.

Any Textpattern users out there? Does the Auto CSS mode UI look the same as this, or different? My email address is over there in the nav bar.

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Categorized as Markup

Projection TV

We came back from vacation on Monday and when my wife pressed the power button on the TV remote all that happened was click, click, click…

I’ll check in with my local repair shop tomorrow, but I thought it was a good time to figure out the brave new world of televisions. My current set is a hand-me-down from my father, so I haven’t actually bought one in over 20 years (a 13″ Emerson to use with my Commodore 64. [sigh]).

In short, it seems like good old fashioned CRTs still look good and provide the most bang for the buck. The ‘flat’ CRTs aren’t as flat as LCDs or Plasmas but are much thinner than our father’s sets. LCDs and Plasmas look great but aren’t that big yet and are molto expensive. Rear projection sets are giant, affordable, and look crappy.

Then there’s front projection, like in a movie theater. My friend Leah had talked about using a projector as a TV years ago, and now the price has come down to where they are being marketed (and sometimes tweaked) for home theater. It’d be nice to ditch the big box, and have gorgeous, huge video projected on the wall (with the project 11 feet away from the wall, the screen will be 65 inches diagonal minimum). Drawbacks seem to be 1) connecting the projector — which is close to your sitting position — to the audio gear which is across the room, and 2) putting a screen on the wall.

ProjectorCentral is an excellent resource. Their recommended list makes shopping easier and their projection calculator is perfectly executed.

On the bargain side (< $1000), Infocus seems to have the lead with performance in their X1 and X2. Here's a thorough X1 review. The X2 seems to be the successor, increasing the brightness for the same price. Here’s a story — not entirely complimentary — of someone who upgraded. Apparently Infocus subtracted some features to sell a premium version of the X2 labeled the 4805 for $200 more.

Also interesting is this Dell vs. Toshiba shootout in which the Dell wins, but they mention the Infocus might be a better option for movie use and the Dell better with more computer use. The comments section there is very astute, but this one is more emotionally charged. The Epson Powerlite 10 is similar, as is the BenQ 6100 which, with the current $100 rebate from Amazon, would be my first choice.

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Categorized as Video