Designing for touch interfaces

I was reading this article the other day and felt the need to comment it. Here is what I said.
Leave me a comment saying if you agree with me or if I’m wrong, and how. Thanks.
I don’t see where you’re trying to get with this video, I don’t see the problem of the hover in a touch screen as technical, but as a design problem. With touch, the hover would probably be hovering the finger above a button, and that doesn’t exist yet (and wouldn’t work anyway obviously). When you “hover” those flashes, it’s a click. Imagine a dropdown, it’s not usable to be scrolling with your finger all over the menu, and just letting go when in the option you want. Scrolling a dropdown is a click, and a click is a movement that shouldn’t be overused. And as many people have said, in some sites, hover and click have different functions. How can you use a tooltip in a touchscreen device?
Once again, it’s not a “we can’t hover so flash will be banned” discussion. Flash was put away for iMobilestuff because of battery consumption and performance. But nevertheless, the designs should be thought to a touch-screen device, and that’s why the iPhone was so successful. The touch-screens are around us for a bunch of years now with all the WinMobile pda’s, that, and sorry for the expression, sucked really bad before HTC started developing new interfaces, but even then, the touch was bad and you would have to press hard to have an event detected.
So please be aware that we should design and think something to go according to our best needs and best performance, only because it works it doesn’t mean it works good.
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Processing and cool mouse tracking

So I started working with Processing the other day for the Master’s Degree, and I’m remembering some stuff from my time with coding in Java, and a friend of mine showed me an app developed in Processing that tracks your mouse and shows the activity on your screen. This was made originally by Anatoliy Zenkov, and you can see his work here at his flickr.

It’s a very simple app that tracks the mouse movement and when the cursor is stopped makes circles that increase in size while it’s stopped, so that you can see very easily where you rest your cursor more time. See some of my examples below.

I really like the way that you can visualize your movement, you can study patterns and even understand how you can change an interface if there’s many unnecessary movements.

Props to Anatoliy for the idea and development and to GMorais for showing me this*

You can download Anatoliy’s app here (PC) and here (MAC).

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“You know, awesome”

After watching a video about a co-op between Griffin and Threadless, I felt that my professional gut was injured. Seeing designers explaining and defending their work so bad made me weep a little inside. This guy in the minute 3:05 basically says that he drew a thunder (cos they are cool now) and filled it with pretty swirls that look like clouds. Put some more passion into it man, een if it’s only a t-shirt graphic. Otherwise we remain forever in peoples eyes as people that make a couple of doodles, put a name on it and BAM! Design’s done.

Oh, and by the way, I just love the guy from Griffin’s Marketing departament, by the end of video, explaining the quality of a already known simple product (come on, it’s a decorated phone case, you can’t really put much detail into it, it doesn’t serve much purpose besides protecting the phone AND being pretty), with something like this:

“You know, awesome. Completely brilliant. And awesome. But more brilliant than awesome. But still brilliant.” Mark Mcglon

…Oook, awesome, or brilliant? Or both?

If you want to promote your product, be humble about it. If it’s complex, if it’s needed, if it’s really important, talk about the features, the advantages and how it works. If it’s a design, explain the inspirations, the idea behind it, the workflow and process of the work. If it’s a damn printed phone case, don’t try to sell it to me like if it was a major life saviour, an awesome idea and a really well thought product made solely to respond to my own needs, Ok Griffin Marketing Design?

Here’s the video

Threadless + Griffin = one awesome case! from Threadless.com on Vimeo.

And here’s the co-op page at threadless: Threadless + Griffin = one awesome case

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What’s Next in Web Design?

Do you ever think about what’s the next step in Web Design?

Along with the new technologies and design trends, the way we communicate and interact with the web is changing every day. We are more directly related to the content and most of the times we create the content. This blog post made me think about of the need to simplify what we do, and how we do it. Think more about doing it well than doing it pretty. When was the last time that you created a wireframe for a website? That’s right.

http://informationarchitects.jp/whats-next-in-web-design/

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Last Night

The earth shook. I didn’t felt it, so I feel kinda sad, I have no cool stories to tell about that moment, like “EVERYTHING STARTED TO SHAKE AND IT WAS SO SCARY!”.

The only thing that I thought that was shaking was my head into the keyboard, and my eyes rolling out of the orbits, tired of work.

Good thing about “last nights” that are definitely better than stupid earthquakes: http://textsfromlastnight.com/

Have fun*

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Focus

Designers should focus more on creating a better cracker package opening system than designing new interfaces every 10 minutes.

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Using a wacom as a mouse replacement

I use a wacom instead of a mouse, well, at least while working at home. I’m a designer, and i SUCK at drawing, so no, that’s not my main objective. I use it as a mouse replacement, because the movements I make with my hand are more precise, more natural, and its healthier, and I avoid getting a surgery like this in the future: Read More »

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Previous and Next, where do they take you?

Something that bothers me from time to time while reading/navigating in a blog are the “Previous” and “Next” buttons. And why? Because I never know where this will take me.

So why the confusion? In this blog, http://immaletyoufinish.com/ (while you’re at it, see some of the kanye west memes, awesome stuff),  there are 2 options on the end of the page while navigating through them, “Next” and “Previous”. If you’re on page 2, it makes sense that “NEXT” is the next one is the page 3, right? Ok, so we’re cool with this.

But, if you’re thinking chronologically, and in most cases, we think like this, since our whole days and lives are thought based on time and dates, you think that the “Next” page, is the more recent one after the one you’re at, right? Ok, so now we’re confused.

This happens because, for example, when you’re reading a book, the page 1 is the first one, the first in order and the first that was written, and page 2 was written after, and you know that is more recent than this. This is well defined on your mind, and you might want to read a blog just in that order, you want to see it in order, even though the posts might not have connection between them. So, while organized from the most recent page to the older one, the order of the pages are First=N1=Most Recent and Last=N10=Oldest.

If this might be confusing, and I believe it is, what is the best solution for this possible problem?

Keep the organization, the order, everything, just change the words. Instead of “Next“, change it to “Older“, and instead of “Previous“, change it to “Newer“, just like Wordpress does (see my blog for instance) and here is a good example too.

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Why should you have to pay for design?

Mr. Liquisoft from deviantart.com explains it quite well in his post here.

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Music and massive amount of media

You listen to music, right? Well, who doesn’t? Everyday, I listen to music on my home computer, on my car-radio, on my iphone, and when I’m not listening to music, I’m either resting or listening and talking to people.

So, all this to say just one thing, how can one listen, even if daily, to everything and every band that exists? Read More »

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