April 2003
So, I’ve just bought and downloaded my first album online via Apples new music store. I’m sure it ain’t perfect, but it’s the closest I’ve seen to a model that might actually work. First of all it was freakishly easy to use. I opened iTunes, clicked the “Music Store” item, typed in a search query, previewed a song (all songs have high-quality 30-second previews), and clicked “Buy Album.” Maybe 10 minutes later the album was on my computer. But the important part is that I can burn copies onto CD (to take in my car, to backup, etc), and the price is more or less reasonable (I think $0.99 is a bit steep for one song, but they discount the album price, so most albums are $10-12, i.e. less than you’d pay at Tower Records who must be fairly terrified these days). In short, it’s easy and cheap enough, and the restrictions on use are mellow enough, that I’d rather get my music this way than by hunting for pirated copies on LimeWire. My biggest worry now is self-control.
Rumor has it that the next rev of Mac OSX may implement “piles.” For more on piles, see this Ask Tog column, this Slashdot thread, and the Apple paper on piles from CHI ‘92 (‘92!!) (PDF, link courtesy of peter).
Another gem from Scott at uiweb is his compilation of the Best of CHI-WEB and SIGIA-L, two lists that goodness knows need filtering.
I’d swear I posted this long ago, but can’t find it now. Anyhow, Why good design comes from bad design is a nice little piece about the need to leave space in your design process for failure. The author, Scott Berkun, quotes an industrial design student as saying “I don’t know what a good idea looks like until I’ve seen the bad ones.” The main point is that if you’re afraid to fail, it’s hard to succeed. I couldn’t agree more.
I didn’t realize that search engines don’t really use the Meta Keywords tag any more: Search Engine Features For Webmasters.
I just had an interesting online experience. I wanted to sell my old digital camera. First I listed it on craigslist, which is essentially a glorified newspaper classified. Multiple people expressed interest and arranged to come see the camera but then never showed up, thereby wasting a fair amount of my time. Finally I listed it on ebay. The up-front effort of wading through the (none-too-spectacular) ebay interface was a bit onerous, but then a magical thing happened: someone won the auction (for more than I had expected) and the exchange went smoothly, camera sold.
What I find noteworthy here is that, while interaction designers often talk about software enabling human interaction, in this case, the main benefit was that the software reduced the amount of human-human interaction. In many cases, I’d rather deal with a machine than a person, no matter what Clifford Nass says.
Marc Rettig’s Interaction Design History in a Teeny Little Nutshell (3.2 Mb PDF) is a lovely snapshot of the present (by way of the past and future) state of human-computer interaction design.
Books with Voices describes a research project that uses books (you remember those arcane tree-based data storage mechanisms) as an interface to video files. Hurray for the physical world! (via nooface)
Nice Steven Johnson column on David Gelernter’s concept of mirror worlds. The idea of a data layer that lives in parallel to physical space has many wonderful applications. One of which is the lovely HIPS project in Sienna.
Every single project, I find myself having to explain to someone what a “blurb” is… Maybe Blurbs: Writing Previews of Web Pages will help. (via xblog)
The NY Times has an article on these killer digitized vintage maps of Japan. For example, there’s a “40-foot scroll map of the roads of Japan in 1687.” I guess people have had to deal with scrolling interfaces for quite some time.
So, I’m sure you know that Yahoo! just launched an updated search interface (they must have some killer PR folks; I saw a mention on CNN that actually managed to break into the relentless stream of war news)… Anyhow, on first glance a lot of what they’ve done seems to be playing catchup with Google. But their Search Shortcuts feature is hella cool and may well get me to start using Yahoo! instead of Google (which is the point here, right?). It’s one of those obvious-in-retrospect features that I feel like I’ve seen before (in fairness, Google sorta, kinda, half does this, but it’s just nowhere near as useful or elegant). Type in “map” and an address and you get a map. Type in “define” and a word and you get the definition. Type in “weather” and a city and, well, you get it. Nothing radical, just a really nice implementation of a truly useful feature. So, I just want to say congratulations to Christina et al. Nicely done!
Alex posted his usual cogent take on Macromedia Central. Now, of course, the issue with something like this is getting enough “real people” to take the time to figure it out. But it seems plausible to me, and as Alex points out, there are a bazillion Flash developers out there (although, as with Winamp skins, there are a much smaller number of good ones).
From the AIIA, some sweet little IA Elevator Pitches
India: Hole-in-the-Wall is a worthwhile quick read. Among other things, it deeply reinforces the (should-be obvious) idea that usefulness (or, related, desirability) is key to getting people to use a product. The most easy to use interface will fail if there’s no reason to use it. Likewise, even the early craptacular ebay interfaces proved “usable.” (via eh)
Free Ruler for Mac OS X is a lovely little bit o’ freeware.
It must say something about the state of contemporary culture that the Corbis home page devotes equal real estate to professional and personal users. (Links under “for personal use” include “Crafts Pictures” and “E-Cards”). What’s interesting to me here is something about the democratization of visual communication—the idea that more people are communicating graphically (not to mention via animation) than ever before. Only a generation ago, choosing a font was an esoteric task for a specialized caste of professionals. Now, Corbis sees a viable consumer market for stock art.