Tapping on arm allows users to scroll through menus and select options
Touchscreens may be popular both in science fiction and real life as the symbol of next-gen technology, but an innovation called Skinput suggests the true interface of the future might be us.
Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University unveiled Skinput recently, showing how it can turn your own body into a touchscreen interface. Read more »
Touch Screens that Touch Back
Forget putting your phone on vibrate. A novel “high-definition” touch-feedback display can give a touch screen the feel of a textured surface. The technology was developed for mobile devices by the San Jose CA-based company Immersion, and is a step toward mimicking the feel of physical buttons on flat screens. Read more »
Color in design is very subjective. What evokes one reaction in one person may evoke a very different reaction in someone else. Sometimes this is due to personal preference, and other times due to cultural background. Color theory is a science in itself. Studying how colors affect different people, either individually or as a group, is something some people build their careers on. And there’s a lot to it. Something as simple as changing the exact hue or saturation of a color can evoke a completely different feeling. Cultural differences mean that something that’s happy and uplifting in one country can be depressing in another.
Our avatars are coming. Those mobile and 3-D and interactive technologies being created around us are about to beam us into a new world, filled with workday holograms, avatars and stuff we called magic only a few years ago. Read more »
The history of the visual design of user interfaces can be described as a gradual change towards more realism. As computers have become faster, designers have added increasingly realistic details such as color, 3D effects, shadows, translucency, and even simple physics. Some of these changes have helped usability. Shadows behind windows help us see which window is active. The physicality of the iPhone’s user interface makes the device more natural to use.
In other areas, the improvements are questionable at best. Graphical user interfaces are typically full of symbols. Most graphical elements you see on your screen are meant to stand for ideas or concepts. The little house on your desktop isn’t a little house, it’s «home». The eye isn’t an actual eye, it means «look at the selected element». The cog isn’t a cog, it means «click me to see available commands».
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This list of ten features should be embraced by game designers
Steve Krug argues in his book Don’t Make Me Think! that a good program or product should let users accomplish their intended tasks as easily and directly as possible. The less time it takes a person to complete a desired task (even if only by a few seconds), the more satisfying it becomes. When that happens, people are more likely to use a product in greater frequency and return for more. So in the spirit of improved usability, here are ten standard features every videogame designer should embrace. Read more »
(CNN) — In the shimmering fantasy realm of the hit movie Avatar, a paraplegic Marine leaves his wheelchair behind and finds his feet in a new virtual world thanks to “the link,” a sophisticated chamber that connects his brain to a surrogate alien, via computer. Read more »
In the virtual reality game, the player’s avatar mirrors the player’s actions. Credit: Tedjokusumo, et al. ©2009 IEEE.
(PhysOrg.com) — With a new immersive multiplayer game system, researchers are further blurring the line between gaming and the real world. Using a mouse and keyboard sounds kind of quaint compared to the system developed and tested by Jefry Tedjokusumo, Steven ZhiYing Zhou, and Stefan Winkler of the National University of Singapore (Winkler is currently with Symmetricom in San Jose, California). Read more »
