I’ve been trying for a few days to write the blog post that sums up both the praise and criticism of Apple’s iPad. It’s really hard, seeing that so many talented people have already written extensively about it, and continue to do so. Don’t forget to follow my collection of articles and Twitter-favorites as well.
So far, my only comment on the iPad is this:
The platform is closed – and it doesn’t matter. There’s no Flash – and it doesn’t matter. It may lack this or that feature – and it doesn’t fucking matter.
It’s not made for me, and it’s not made for you. It’s made for the kids, the grannies and the people who are scared by the way computers work today.
Today, people compute, and the fact that we haven’t moved beyond that yet is absolutely beyond me. However, I think the iPad might be the first step towards a world, where the ones who want to tinker and hack away, are free to do so.
Then everybody else can start actually working with computers, not on them.
This is some serious 3D work. Love the way he creates the buildings and applies colors and textures afterwards:
via Kottke.
Pretty much sums it up in the headline…
The Plastic Logic Reader is pretty interesting. It can bend and is fairly sturdy form what I’ve read:
“Impress” is a touch screen based on a foam material that reacts to the user when it’s pressed down:
impress – flexible display from Sillenet on Vimeo.
TAT Foldout UI is a new type of interaction with a mobile phone:
Microsoft is capable of surprising every now and then, and even though it’s somewhat old now (technology-time wise), their Surface is still pretty cool. Here it’s used in an AT&T store:
AT&T Retail Surface Experience from Razorfish – Emerging Experiences on Vimeo.
Links:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_future_of_touch.php
http://www.tveskov.com/blog/2009/02/digitalt-dingleinterface.htm
http://vimeo.com/razorfishee
This is my final paper for the graduate course “Advanced User Interface Design” at Bentley University. I was lucky enough to get in on this course, even though I was only an undergraduate exchange student and I got a 3.7 (A) in the course.
The abstract for the paper which is called “The User Interface of FriendFeed” is as follows:
“The purpose of this paper is to give a qualified answer to the question of whether or not the interface of FriendFeed is bad. A subjective opinion is not adequate as a criteria for determining the quality of the interface, so various theories are applied. With focus on the “Likeâ€-function while still evaluating the interface as a whole, I apply theories on Metaphors, Glanceability, Ambient Information and Affect. Furthermore, to determine the efficiency of FriendFeed as a social network, theories on Groupware and Distributed Cognition are being used. The paper concludes that while the interface may be perceived as aesthetically unpleasing, its purpose of transferring positive emotions and involving the users is fulfilled.”
Basically, I try to give a qualified answer to whether or not there is some sensibility behind the design decisions they made when creating FriendFeed’s UI, and it really is well thought through. The contextual awareness for the content posted is superb, and the “Like” function serves its purpose fantastically well.
That being said, I still don’t like the service and think it’s too much of a conflict between my RSS-reader of choice, Google Reader, and microblog Twitter. It can’t really figure out what it wants, and is not nearly intelligent enough to really serve me those juicy posts I want (I don’t know exactly what I want either, so I don’t blame the FriendFeed-team, but computers in general and my attention span of a millisecond in particular instead).
The whole paper is embedded below:
The User Interface of FriendFeed
Saw this in class the other day and I’m really psyched about it – the text doesn’t do the video justice, but read it nonetheless:
I/O Brush is a new drawing tool to explore colors, textures, and movements found in everyday materials by “picking up” and drawing with them. I/O Brush looks like a regular physical paintbrush but has a small video camera with lights and touch sensors embedded inside. Outside of the drawing canvas, the brush can pick up color, texture, and movement of a brushed surface. On the canvas, artists can draw with the special “ink” they just picked up from their immediate environment.