What touchscreens lack is something called affordance. It’s a lofty term for an object’s built-in ability to tell you how it works. A doorknob affords turning. The button on a car stereo affords pushing. A touchscreen affords nothing. It relies on software for any affordance, which in turn relies on total immersion for the user.... The days of analog affordance are gone. What we want, apparently, is to surround ourselves with touchscreens of varying size—tiny ones in our pockets, medium-size models for our laps and dashboards, and massive versions for our walls. We want tomorrow’s vintage shops to be lined with identical, blank, anonymous slabs. We want things to be vessels for software, and nothing more. -
A Slate piece asks if touchscreens are becoming too ubiquitous
posted by beisny
on Nov 4, 2011 -
97 comments
This is a short history and background of the Macintosh research project on the eve of its becoming a product.
posted by Joe Beese
on Feb 14, 2011 -
12 comments
Poolga:
iPhone and iPod Touch wallpapers from a selection of designers and illustrators from around the world.
posted by defenestration
on Jul 6, 2008 -
26 comments
"The difference between BJ and AJ, Before and After Jobs, is not the process," [Don Norman] continues. "It is the person. Never before did Apple have such focus and dedication. Apple used to wobble, moving this way and that.
No more."
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on May 8, 2007 -
26 comments
Clean and of things to come. My stationery fetish reaches new heights. Cute pads 2cm by 5cm I must have.
1B pencils and thickly nibbed felts in a black rubber coated organiser shaped like a pyramid. This dispenser will go to the left.
posted by holloway
on Apr 4, 2001 -
2 comments
Grrrlz R the future of computerz! A suprisingly warm-hearted and atypically unguyish analysis of the “ridiculous” new iMac colours and what they represent for future computer use. If Apple blew it by not letting teenage boys play games, are they smart to make iMacs attractive to sensitive, design-focused people (including grrrlz) as so-called digital hubs? Or will the boyz shoot ’em up on Wintel while the grrrlz rip boy-band MP3s on groovy iMacs? (My claim: Bondi blue remains the bestest iMac shade ever. Discuss.)
posted by joeclark
on Feb 27, 2001 -
17 comments
Roger Black on Design. MacAddict put up an interview with Roger Black from their August 2000 issue. There are a couple of interesting points as in his take on transitioning from print to web:
"I think that the main thing is pretty much to work as you would in print design. A good designer always focuses on the reader or the customer, the viewer, whatever the end-user is. You just have to do that on the Net the same way you do in print.... I do not believe that the technological hurdles are that big. It doesn't seem to me that big of a deal.... Most of the stuff we do on the Web is not particularly difficult. Almost anybody, particularly anybody under thirty growing up in our society has enough technological culture to work with it. Don't get scared. It’s not that big of a deal."
posted by leo
on Jul 20, 2000 -
7 comments
