brightly colored food

I’m doing a bit of research on best practices, lessons learned, design patterns, good examples, etc. relating to the design of web-based applications (webapps, weblications, call them what you will). If you have anything to add,
- freeware
var linktext = “send them my way”;
var email1 = “chad”;
var email2 = “brightlycoloredfood.com”;
document.write(”” + linktext + “”)
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In other news, I’m working with Dan Wu of “Oriental Whatever” (a zine) on his first (short) film, doing all of the post-production sound work. It’s pretty good, it involves two assassins each hired by one spouse to kill the other. And there’s no dialogue. If you’re any good as a foley artist or you’re a whiz at Final Cut Pro and you live in the Bay Area, get in touch with me - I could use a hand.

I ran across a couple of sets of UI guidelines today, then a ton at EPSS InfoSite, so I took it as a sign.
Microsoft Inductive User Interface Guidelines
KDE User Interface Guidelines
IBM: User Interface Architecture Guidelines

Academic paper [.pdf] looking at how new musical inputs (they used to call them instruments) can be improved by looking at HCI research. It’s a nice overview of things like Fitts’ Law, a bit more approachable because it’s in a musical context.

If you geek out on this stuff, there’s more at this archive for the New Interfaces for Musical Expression Workshop, from CHI2001.
From hexidecibel

I’m on a Victor Papanek kick these days, and I found this book that he co-authored at 9th Avenue Books yesterday (across the street from Arizmendi Bakery, only the best bakery in the whole freakin’ city). Take a look at the cover. Oh yes, it’s that kind of book, but he’s an inspiring communicator/designer and there are actually some pretty clever ideas amongst the 70’s cheese.

Definitely worth reading is his classic, Design for the Real World : Human Ecology and Social Change

More on Papanek: Review of his last book, The Green Imperative

Also, whilst googling the man known as Papanek, I found this class out of MIT: Design that Matters: Open source collaborative prototyping studio for design with real-world communities. There’s an associated website called ThinkCycle, which “seeks to create a collaborative community of individuals and organizations engaged in working on design challenges posed by our environment and the developing world”.

From Design for Community via elearningpost
Good stuff from Derek Powazek (whose new book just came out), Matt Haughey, and the crew at Evolt.

From Tremendo
Flash presentation on color theory with good examples and exercises.

Janice Crotty Fraser from Adaptive Path on improving the user experience of registration systems. Contains practical advice about redesigning and also stresses the importance of understanding how business and engineering needs affect registration systems.

Knowledge Mapping for Complex Social Messes
Web Design and Information Architecture
Advance for Design Summit #4 Summary
All from the world of Infodesign

Interview at Salon with Neil Young (not the musician), creator of Majestic, which is described as “an interactive, immersive and invasive online mystery that combines fiction with (debatable) reality in a very Webby way”.

What’s interesting is how the game creates an environment that transcends the computer screen. It relies on multiple modes of communication (phone, fax, email, IM, websites), and leverages existing internet content: “the Internet is such a fabulous medium to blur those lines between fact and fiction and conspiracy, because you begin to make connections between things. It’s a natural human reaction — we connect these dots around our fears.”

Stolen from Amazon.com:

In the twenty years since its original publication, Space and Place has not only established the discipline of human geography, but it has proven influential in such diverse fields as theatre, literature, anthropology, psychology, and theology. Eminent geographer Yi-Fu Tuan considers the ways in which people feel and think about space, how they form attachments to home, neighborhood, and nation, and how feelings about space and place are affected by the sense of time. He suggests that place is security and space is freedom: we are attached to the one and long for the other. Whether he is considering sacred versus “biased” space, mythical space and place, time in experiential space, or cultural attachments to space, Tuan’s analysis is thoughtful and insightful throughout.

Been reading this and really enjoying it. I haven’t really seen this mentioned much as part of the User Experience canon, but it should be.