Monthly Archives: April 2010

Fast Company has an article 3 Ways the iPad Could Kill QWERTY. I find it unlikely that QWERTY as a typing construct is going to go away, as the system and the keyboards we know now have evolved over decades to its current refined state. See, for instance, this collection of early typewriter keyboards. However, I do think tablet PCs such as the iPad offer other possibilities for typing, especially given that typing using touchscreen keyboards as they currently are, well, sucks.

Two new typing configurations I’ve considered revolve around how we hold tablet PCs. Typically, unless you are using a stylus, a tablet is held with two hands, with thumbs on the front or side of the device, and your four remaining fingers on the back. It’s a natural, grasping gesture for humans. This leans me to think there there could be two possible new typing methods: one typing using your fingers on the back of the device by making use of ghost fingers, and another typing with just your thumbs using the screen on the front of the device. Continue reading 3x2x2: A New Method of Thumb Typing for Tablet Computers >>

Filed in Interaction Design, Product Concepts, Touchscreens | Comments (4)

• "Running a country? There's an app for that." Stranded Norwegian PM runs country by iPad: http://is.gd/bzmR1 #
• Using Laptop Accelerometers for Earthquake Detection http://is.gd/bzQNA in the Quake-Catcher Network http://is.gd/bzQST #
• Map of a Tweet http://is.gd/bzRfG Much more than 140 characters

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What you have here is what I call cinematic reading. The “camera” moves from item to item like a camera would, or like your eye would if you were scanning the page, then stopping to read different items: text to partial image to fuller image to whole page, in a variety of configurations. You can, of course, manually override it via double tap or pinching/spreading. But it offers a solution that could be applied to other combinations of text and image: that is, reading that isn’t books or mostly text articles. Namely: magazines. Continue reading Cinematic Reading >>

Filed in Interaction Design, Touchscreens, Visual Design | Comments (1)

• Tired: One Laptop Per Child. Wired: One Mobile Phone Per Child http://is.gd/boIE0 (via @mcrate_s) #
• DASH7: Bringing Sensor Networks to Smartphones http://is.gd/bpJWV #
• 56 Best Websites To Create Awesome Royalty Free Sound Effects http://is.gd/bq9aM #
• Happy National Robotics Week!

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• It was awesome of our building management NOT to inform us of the massive construction project happening below our office. #
• Critical (but honest) review of the iPad: http://is.gd/bg1L8 (We're enjoying ours, but it is flawed.) #
• RT @rzaragoza: Helvetica cookie cutters for the new

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Every once in a while, there are rumblings about how the design process should be more like the scientific method. Although I profoundly disagree with this (more in a moment), I can understand this impulse. Continue reading The Design Process and the Scientific Method >>

Filed in Process, Theory | Comments (10)

I’m surprised there wasn’t more discussion last year when Roberto Verganti’s Design Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean came out. It’s fairly controversial, striking as it does at one of design’s current sacred cows: user-centered design. Continue reading Review: Design-Driven Innovation >>

Filed in Book Reviews | Comments (4)