A few days ago I saw on Mashable, a notification bar pop up with a Google+ call to action. It was a great little addition to their site, not overly intrusive, that I really wanted to add to my own. So, I built out the Google+ bar, and added it to my own blog.

I also packaged up all the files you need in order to add this feature to your own site. I had to use Google’s Catull font, which is not included in the ZIP file for copyright reasons.

Download The Google Plus Bar Example (google-plus-bar.zip)

I hope to find or recreate the missing images from my posts soon. At least the content is back. To everyone reading this, take the time to backup your blog!

While this experience has worked great for the user that visits a site by computer, it fails when visiting a site by phone. You can’t point your phone’s camera at your phone’s screen. That’s why I propose a new standard for using QR Codes on websites.

When posting a QR Code on your site, always:

• Make your QR Code at least 100×100 pixels for easy scanning.
• Put the link in the alt and title parameters of the QR Code image
• Encase your QR Code image in a link tag that has the same link as your code.

By doing this, you will ensure that you are maximizing a person’s ability to make use of your QR Code. Those users that are visiting your website via their phone’s browser, will be able to click on the code with the same result as if they scanned it. Users that visit your site via browser, can still scan the code, and will be able to see what the QR Code is providing by hovering their mouse over the image.

Here is an example:

<a href=”market://details?id=com.android.flashLight”><img src=”http://flash-the-brain.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/qrcode.png” style=”border: none;” alt=”market://details?id=com.android.flashLight” title=”market://details?id=com.android.flashLight”/></a>

A very thought provoking image appeared on Astronomy Picture Of The Day yesterday. The boys at NSF ran the sun’s light through a spectrum to see what visible light the sun produces. As you can see from the image, there are swatches of color our sun doesn’t make.

This understanding might have a practical application in the Usability space. We as humans have evolved over the years to see color. But, humans may have difficulty discerning certain colors due to their rarity in nature. This may be something to take into account when trying to decide on the use and application of certain colors in the products we create.

Food for thought at least…

I myself still feel quite the novice to Interaction Design. My background is in Computer Science. While this has helped bridge the gap between design process and development process in a corporate environment, it hasn’t helped much with cognitive psychology or design research. For that, I ravenously devour books on the subject, and make it a point to design every day.

Designing every day doesn’t require a lot of time. In most cases, it’s just a few seconds. My popular tapestry is the office kitchen, since it’s in a constant state of disarray, and problems surface easily. Take for instance the milk for coffee.

Here we see the creamer cartons as someone placed them into the refrigerator. Which of these is the open one? It can be hard to tell. They’re all facing the same way, some are in front, others are in back, colors differ. In a few seconds, I can redesign this space to make it clear as to which of these cartons is the open one to be used.

If you truly love Interaction Design and it’s something you want to be, seek out small design projects throughout your day. Constantly analyse the world around you. Look for areas of difficulty or confusion no matter how small and trivial. Seek to make a space more functional when you leave, than it was when you entered it. Practice makes perfect.

There is nothing that I can write about this video that will do it justice. My mind is swimming with excitement and possibilities.

(via Engadget)

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  gesturecons.com

  Vector based icons created to aid in the design, development, implementation and promotion of multi-touch interfaces.

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  1stwebdesigner.com

  A roundup of free user interface icons packs, categorized, and linked for easy download.

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  famfamfam.com

  The personal site and web playground of Birmingham (UK) based developer Mark James.

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  fatcow.com

  1000 free icons that fatcow web hosting made available.

For those of you that don’t already know, Apple Inc, release a new tablet computing product called the iPad. It’s hard to make judgment on a device when it’s on stage with Steve Jobs, and the whole energy of the release would make you want a pile of crap if it was sprinkled with gold.

So, I let it marinate a bit overnight, and have come to a conclusion.

What Apple Got Right

While I haven’t handled it yet, I feel fairly confident they got the form factor right. Everyone on the stage, and in the videos appeared to use it with ease, and handle it confidently. It certainly “looks” like the tablet computer we all dreamed existed.

The other aspect I think Apple got right, was the User Interface. Traditionally, as with Microsoft Tablets, software companies would just slap a few band-aids on a desktop platform OS and say “Done!” I like the fact that Apple is taking the path less traveled on this; requiring software companies to rewrite their applications to work differently with hand based interactions.

The polish. When the eBook application rotated like a giant bookshelf to reveal a bookstore on the back, I started feeling warm inside. Then, the purchased book floated up, the shelf rotated back, and the books all got out of the way to make room for the new book’s decent; I wanted the iPad to have my baby. Each animation is short enough to not steal from the action, and designed to provide some feedback as to what, or why something is happening. The polish that Apple applies to their applications is undeniably fantastic.

Lastly, the price. $499 for a base model surpassed all my expectations.

What They Got Wrong

There’s already plenty of posts out there that mention it’s lack of Adobe Flash support, multitasking, and camera. Although I agree with all of them, I don’t want to spend more time on that. Here’s a few more thing I feel are missing.

The first thing that came to my mind, was a lack of synergy between the iPad and the iPhone, or other mobile phone devices. The iPad is designed to be a light, and easily portable device. Whenever anyone travels, they all carry around their cell phone. I would have liked to see an iPhone pass pictures to the iPad. I would have liked to see an iPhone share it’s Internet service via Bluetooth DUN. I would have liked to see the contacts application in the iPad automatically dial a number on a paired iPhone. None of these were demonstrated, nor hinted to.

Using the tired iPhone desktop was a huge disappointment. Apple had an opportunity here, to truly rethink their traditional home screen. I would have liked to see something like Bumptop (see video below). Their lack of ingenuity and interaction with their home screen is in sharp contrast to the polish from the rest of their applications. Their focus on the singular application for everything, leaves me skeptical about the future of the iPad/iPhone platform.

Oh yeah, one last thing, the name iPad was a terrible choice.

Conclusion

Still, my opinion remains undecided. There are things to like, and things to hate about this device. Furthermore, it’s not even available to purchase yet, and I haven’t had my hands on one. It could very well be that many of the cons were simply not demoed due to lack of time or perspective. All will be revealed in upcoming months.

I was forwarded this article by a friend (Thanks Lauren), which is a very interesting read. You see the progression of icon detail being applied all over the place, especially in operating systems like Linux, where every distro release adds a new set of icons.

Another pitfall to watch out for.

One of the main topics discussed at the IXDA Interaction09 conference was, how to change complicated stuff. Marc Rettig, lead an hour long session on the topic. He tried to establish how to make a change, the new normal. In summary, he basically made these two points:

“Work of change is social. Deliberatly plan to be social and nurture that.”

“Relationships are more important than the things themselves.”

Finding ways of creating those relationships is not easy work. Especially, when the change that you’re trying to make, is more difficult than the alternative. In the video above, the designers use fun in order to change people’s behavior. The fun of using the stairs, creates a relationship between the task and the individual, bridging the gap of difficulty.

When creating solutions for professional business clients, do not overlook the power of making things fun. While on the surface it may be viewed as childish, or unprofessional, making something a game may be able the achieve the result you’re after.