Towards the end of watching a terrible Bill Buxton prestation video on youtube, I heard him mention this book. As the completely impressionable person that I am, I immediately went to Amazon.com and bought it. It is well worth the money and time.

The book is short. If you wanted, you could read it in a weekend. But that doesn’t mean there is lack of content. The ideas expressed in this book are dense, and well thought out. I actually read it quite slow. Reading a few pages, then chewing on reach concept, and thinking of how each applied to my current work environment.

The book is actually written for company managers. An interaction design manifesto, that’s short – sweet – and persuasive, as a way to try and get management behind the idea and process of design. Each topic is reinforced with anecdotes from the authors life.

One thing that frustrated me with the book, was Scott’s first design break. He redesigns his microwave interface. Having been so angered over my own microwave interface, I planned to make a big long blog post about it’s redesign. I was bummed to find my original idea was not so original.

Whether you’re an interaction designer, or a manager trying to figure out what all these design junkies and smoking, this book has been the best that I’ve read, to put it all in something quickly digestible.

What? You didn’t get the memo?

Apparently, it was interface day on the web last weekend. There were three large announcements of different gestural interface concepts this weekend. I have to say, I like Microsoft’s, “Computer, make me a sandwich” approach the best. Check them all out!

Sony and Atracsys 3D Interface (via Engadget)

Wearable Gesture Interface Device (via ostatic)

Natural User Interface Microsoft Research Project (via istartedsomething)

This application idea is one that I’ve been wishing I could do for quite some time. My mother happens to be part of a large bird migration study on lake Ontario, recently reported on Science Friday. Having gone bird banding many times, I can tell you that they are doing things practically in the stone age. Building a smartphone application to assist them with the banding process would be extremely helpful, but completely unprofitable.

The Bird Tag application I have in mind would help facilitate the entire process of bird banding. The application’s features could include:

• Geo-tagging net locations. So you know where your bird nets currently are, as well as where you placed them last time you were out banding.
• Net cataloging. Since you know where your nets are, and which net you caught a bird in, you could start building a map of where you’re most successful at netting birds.
• Photographing and sizing. It would be great to build some kind of dock that a smartphone sits in, so that you can just photograph a bird’s wing, and the camera distance is all worked out to measure it.
• Real-time data syncing. Currently, all records are hand written on paper, then mailed in to be data entered somewhere. Having data entered and transferred digitally would be a huge improvement to speed, and data accuracy.
• Bird recognition. Facial recognition software could be used to figure out the type of bird your banding. Often, non-bird fanatics (like myself) assist in banding the birds. Helping them classify the birds would be a huge help, and free up the leader’s time.

The goal would be to find ways to assist and improve both the ease, and accuracy of bird banding data collection.

I came across this video while reading a question on the UXExchange. If you’ve never done usability testing for your product, I highly recommend watching it. This is a model example of “think out loud” usability testing of the Wizzgo website.

The goal in usability testing, if you’re not familiar with it, is to have a person perform some scenario while you watch. In the example above, they’re clearly asking the participant to try and find pricing on their site. You want them to “think out loud,” so you can gain insight as to what they’re thinking, and what they’re expecting. When doing many of these tests, you can start to draw correlations in the expectations of your audience. You can then cater your product’s functionality to meet them.

It’s always important to record these sessions. You want to be able to review them for things you missed. You also what to be able to review yourself, and see how your presence, or your assistance influenced the participant. They are likely using Morae, or some other similar software to record the test. I, myself, have done something similar on the cheap using Camtasia Studio, an Axis network camera, and VNC.

Saw this one engadget this morning. You can read the original news article here. Most “geeks” are seeing this game as an epic fail, but I think it’s kind of inventive.

All jokes aside, it’s kind of an interesting user experience their creating. Where before you had an inanimate doll, you know have a full blown computer powered brain. With the accelerometers, it could detect if you’re holding your baby wrong, if you’re trying to sooth your baby, etc. I like the use of the speaker in the remote too. Now, you’re giving audible feedback. It would be cool if they could get putting in a bottle in it’s mouth to trigger one of the remotes buttons, so you know when it’s being fed.

For little girls/boys who like to play mother/father, I think the remote interface has some great potential. I think where it might fail, is in the game portion itself. If the game is task oriented, I don’t think it would be as enjoyable as if it was just open ended, and continued to interact with the doll as the child plays in the same room as the Wii. It will be interesting to see the experience this product creates.

Here’s a new study that’s being worked on, the idea of using muscle gestures to interface with computers. This is clearly a case of research driving plausibility. But, I like the fact that they’re using use case scenarios to display functionality. Just think, in a few years, this could all be sewn right into a shirt or jacket, that interfaces with your phone, car, whatever. Pretty exciting stuff.

Still, this does add a layer of discontinuity. There are arbitrary correlations between touching your pinkie, and skipping a song track. Or, making a fist to open a car door. I see a lot of parallels being formed here, that relate to Donal Norman’s issues with telephone systems.

If you’ve had the G1 since its initial release, chances are you’ve heard of, or downloaded the game Zombies Run. The game has to be played in real time and space, so many people expecting a plane flight game were disappointed. But, of you want to make your morning jog interesting, the game can be a log of fun. The one thing that the game lacks, is realism.

Zombies Run AR (augmented reality) would make the game a little more interesting. Imagine a blend of the current Zombies Run, and Layar. So, by holding up your phone and looking through the camera view, you would actually see the invisible brain eating swarms chasing you.

Zombies Run AR could also incorporate the crazy virtual reality goggles, and solidify your geeky-ness.

One of the magical moments that I think is lost with online dating, is the chance encounter. You don’t get to have that special feeling of meeting someone when your out with friends, grocery shopping, having lunch on your work break, whatever. The Blind Date application would facilitate a way of reintroducing that experience.

How it might work: a person would leave the application running on their phone. The application would track where they are, and then notify them that they are some proximity away from a compatible individual. If they decide to try a chance meeting, it would allow them to hone in on them. When they get close enough, it could provide them with a picture so they know who they’re looking for. Inversely, the person who is trying to be met, could also be notified, and accept or reject the encounter.

The goal would be to allow single people to chance upon a compatible partner, rather than actively seek them. It might also provide a level of excitement and anticipation knowing that at any moment throughout their daily routine, they could become part of a blind date.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m way behind on my goal of 52 apps in 52 weeks. I’m going to try and catch up this week, and post a bunch of ideas.

A few weeks ago, I was up in the New York Finger Lakes Wine Region touring wineries. I was the designated driver, so I only tasted a few wines. Still, I found myself loosing track of the wines I liked as we hopped from one to the other.

The winery buddy would help you with your wine tour. It could:

• Scan barcodes of wines you like, and archive them.
• Check wines for recent awards in competitions
• Compare winery prices and inventory against those at your local liqueur store.
• Help you plan a route through wine country, so you can visit as many as possible.
• Track how many tastings you’ve had to keep you sober.
• Allow for some synergy with your recipe assistant application, and suggest wines that would best go with your favorite meals.
• Track your purchases, and hold you to some predetermined credit limit, so you don’t overspend in your judgment weakened state.

The goal would be to create a tour with a unified experience, to what is largely a highly competitive and privately owned winery area. It would assist people in tasting and purchasing wines, who may know little about how to go about it, and give them an enjoyable tour and confidence that they’ll like what they’re buying.

One of the things my grandma struggled with in her old years, was when – what – how to – and how much medication to take. There are many solutions out there that help the elderly with this burden, but none (outside of a person) that can offer a dialog and step-by-step assistance. As more and more accustom cell phone users enter old age, a phone based solution for medication assistance may become viable.

The medication assistant would be a fully autonomous application that would help elderly with their medication. It could:

• Scan the barcode of each pill jar, and automatically build a pill schedule and alerts based one the pills instructions.
• Provide images with accurate sizes and colors of each pill they need to take.
• Alert them of what they need to take, and how.
• Report that they took their medication to family and doctors.
• Provide answers to frequently asked questions, and a way of communicating with someone if they need more assistance.

The goal would be to create an application that’s simple to use, provides necessary alerts without crying wolf, requires minimal interaction to configure and use, and gives a person peace of mind and confidence that they are doing everything correctly.