I attended the annual Top Tech Trends event last week, put on by the Churchill Club. The panel included some of the top VCs from ’round here as well as Aneesh Chopra, the CTO of The United States. This year they had a team from SRI–a group of smart people, if…
Not too long ago, I attended a talk by Jeff Johnson hosted by BayCHI. He introduced his new book Designing with the Mind in Mind, which reveals the psychology behind user interface design. His lessons covered everything from Gestalt theory to blind spots, but what I found most interesting…
I recently completed a series of workshops at the Center for the Book in San Francisco in order to be certified to rent their letterpress printing equipment. After spending so much time on the computer designing complex interfaces and using programs to layout pages of content, it was refreshing to…
As a small agency we work with many companies in a wide variety of industries. As a Silicon Valley agency we work with a lot of tech companies. And I have noticed something that seems especially rife here in the valley; many companies simply don’t realize the real value of…
Measuring hesitation can be valuable. Already, devices like Google’s Android uses information from the phone’s GPS to detect traffic speed. The data is then sent to Google maps and appears as a visual overlay of information — red means there’s a traffic jam. Hesitation can also come in forms that…
In a recent post on startupcfo.com Mark MacLeod notes that some of the principals at Sequoia Capital saw that start ups that were able to explain themselves in a sentence or less were the most likely to succeed. I thoroughly believe that this is a good point, and that distilling…
After the impressive success of James Cameron’s Avatar, a pioneer of computer-generated imagery (CGI) returns to the big screen. Tron Legacy, a sequel to the 1982 cult classic Tron, is due to be released this December. The first fans to see the trailer were appropriately at the Comic-Con and are…
Google has expanded its adoption of HTML5 by releasing a beta version of YouTube using the new yet unapproved code (Feb 2010). However, the only browsers that support the code are Google’s Chrome, IE with a Chrome frame, and you guessed it if you read our earlier article, Apple’s Safari….
Our interaction with computers is rapidly changing as new devices, online applications, and operating systems continue to compete for a place in our daily routine. It is the role of a user experience designer to detect errors, ease the learning curve, and make these new interactions seem effortless and welcomed….
Most of the time it seems that having some level of uniqueness is a good thing–unless you’re one of those people who thrive on blending in with the crowd. But, what if your uniqueness is exactly what undermines your privacy? Where would you draw the line? I just found out,…
