king talk

Every good designer has known that an applications or websites success many times rely on how well designed the User Interface may be. We as designers, should do what works best for us and our users. The dzineblog published a great resource for Interface Designers. Below you will find a optimized version of a different excellent User Interface resources that will allow you to access, redefine, and create a well designed UI. You should use these resources first as inspiration, and second as somewhat of a guide as to what your users may need when they come face to face with your UI.

1. Interface Design Libraries:
MephoBox
UI-Patterns
Yahoo Design Pattern Library
Pattern Tap
Pattern App
Icon Finder

2. Interface Design Blogs:
UX Mag
UX Booth
Designing Interfaces
UXmatters
inspire UX
Usability Post
Boxes and Arrows
Signal vs Noise
Konigi
Usable Web

3. Interface Design Inspiration
atebits
made by giant
Icon Dock
Versions App
Pure Volume
Threadless Typetees
Silicon Prairie
css edit
Pallian Creative

4. Interfaces for Web Apps
Subernova
Copper Project
Typetester
PXtoEM
Let‘s Freckle
Twitter
Adobe Kuler
Crazyegg
Google Analytics
LaterThis

When we were at Campus Futuro in Madrid to showcase our installation Quasar Interactive, I had a short conversation with the people from La Catedral. They now published the video. Enjoy!

I usually tend not to recognise one blog’s personal similarities to another blog of the same nature because they more or less always provide similar content. But i stumbled across this specific type called ‘Ignore the code’ and found it to be an exception from the familiar similarities you tend to come across. It has its ‘personal’ authorisaation touch to it and it uses good language to focus on one particular subject rather than a whole entire internet feature.

The blog focuses primarily on interface GUI’s and more specifically on Apple’s interface design and its good marks, bad marks and marks that could be improved by your average student designer or your ‘never gonna be employed by’ Apple ‘web developer.’

Worth a browse and revisit everytime a new Apple product or software update is released. The blog is authored by a chap called Lewis Mathis and i find it quite an useful insight. Get involved. >>>> Ignore the code <<<<

Digging in the Crates is an interactive installation which offers possibilities to explore Sampling as a production technology of modern music. While dynamic data visualizations will be navigated using modified turntables, information graphics as well as auditory contributions helping to understand complex contents and relations.

Visitors can choose from 50 old records of the 70s and 80s. All of these records contain one or more samples, which can be analyzed in the following. To analyze the samples to the record must first be placed on the turntable. A projection onto the record itself shows included samples as shaded areas. The old records can either be played or analyzed. To choose between these two modes, the on / off switch of the turntable is pressed. A modified turntable as an tangible interface is used to navigate and anaylze each single sample on the launched record.

Depending on user interests, Digging in the Crates offers different approaches to the topic. The visitor acts in a totally free interaction-space, which allows him to consider sampling from completely different perspectives. The straight interaction with information is just as important as the possibility to deal with “sampling” in a passive way. This means the user can slip into an active role in which he has full control over the visualized information as well as taking a rather passive attitude to get inspired by the interactions of others.

This installation was the Bachelor thesis project of Roland Lösslein from FH Augsburg using different tools like Arduino and Processing. Well done Mister!

I think you’ll know the crazy japanese guy who stimulated his face with electronics. It’s Daito Manabe, a very experimental guy who likes to play around with himself, but he and his partners (Alvaro Cassinelli and Yusaku Kuribara) have more stuff to show…

»scoreLight« is a prototype musical instrument capable of generating sound in real time from the lines of doodles as well as from the contours of three-dimensional objects nearby (hands, dancer’s silhouette, architectural details, etc). There is no camera nor projector: a laser spot explores the shape as a pick-up head would search for sound over the surface of a vinyl record – with the significant difference that the groove is generated by the contours of the drawing itself. The light beam follows these countours in the very same way a blind person uses a white cane to stick to a guidance route on the street. Details of this tracking technique can be found here.

Sound is produced and modulated according to the curvature of the lines being followed, their angle with respect to the vertical as well as their color and contrast. This means that  »scoreLight« implements gesture, shape and color-to-sound artificial synesthesia; abrupt changes in the direction of the lines produce trigger discrete sounds (percussion, glitches), thus creating a rhythmic base (the length of a closed path determines the overall tempo).

via Ishikawa-Komuro Lab

After we reported about Microsofts new Xbox project called NATAL, we have to tell about about this new concept for that console. It´s called Milo, a little 3D avatar boy which could be your new friend. You can share your problems with him, go outside in his world, play around and have fun with Milo. The real world is connected to the virtual one via 3D gesture recognition. You even can draw something, share it with Milo and talk about it… Maybe you can use another outstanding project from Microsoft called Songsmith to sing together with Milo. Everything is possible with this extraordinary masterpiece of absurdity.

Come on Microsoft… What´s wrong with you? It looks like you want to create a tool for all the little Bill Gates nerds which are unable to feel real emotions while they are having a real talk to real people making real fun in this really extra evil world. Well done!

via SimpleAndOpen

Due to high work traffic at envis we couldn´t manage it to visit one of europe´s finest design festivals. It´s the OFFF …

Computerlove has made a nice review, which made us feeling like we have been there. A nice documentation about the talks of Neville Brody, Karsten Schmidt, U.V.A., OneSize, PES, Paula Scher, Joshua Davis, SiScott Studio, Digital Kitchen, Stefan Sagmeister and Kyle Cooper. Maybe we will visit Portugal next year  ; )

The third installation which was featuring multi touch technology at the CeBIT booth from Telekom was big virtual garden pond.

People could play around with the fishes or watch some content about Telekom offerings.

A pink plate was the tool to access the information. The menu items were placed around the plate. Read the rest of this entry »

The Telekom CeBIT costed about 11 Mio. EUR. Users could play around with 3 (!) different multi-touch tables scattered around. The tables were made by cube and featured different content like a german map with some objects on it which could be rotated or just dragged around.

The next one was huge semicircular table with a multi player puzzle game. Another one was looking like a big virtual garden pond (see Telekom fishy table).  All things considered, the applications were playful but mindless and superficial  : (

The last talk of the night was held by Joshua Davis. He´s a New York based artist, designer and technologist producing public and private works for companies, collectors and institutions. Davis is renowned for pioneering an original method of computational, generative-art known as Dynamic Abstraction. Davis talked about his exploration with the technical and aesthetic limits of software programs like Flash and Illustrator to generate unique visual compositions according to rules-based, randomized processes.« He was one of the early users of Flash for creating generative content. In 2002 he wrote the book flash to the core, which was an interactive sketchbook for generative design. His talk was very dynamic and full of inspiration, but unfortunately the last one of the night…

… So we´re looking straight forward to see the 5th TOCA ME in 2010  ; )