Since SRI and Xerox invented the GUI and the mouse in the late 1970s, technology has leaped forward, but the way we interact with our computers has stood still. "10/GUI aims to bridge this gap by rethinking the desktop to leverage technology in an intuitive and powerful way."
posted by Plutor on Oct 13, 2009 - 66 comments

Adobe UI Gripes
posted by nthdegx on Sep 30, 2009 - 82 comments

Sptnk.org : The Observatory for the Study of Contemporary Culture. Sputnik is an NY organization that seeks to document, promote, and foster discussion around current trends in culture (I think Sptnk is more a "loose confederation" than an organization, but I can't seem to find much more about them. Here's one of the founder's tongue-in-cheek Linked In page). They just launched a new website which ties together sets of interviews from thinkers and doers in lots of fields. They are organized nicely into "paths", "conversations", and transmissions (presentations). Jonathan Harris (he blogs at number27.org) did the design of the site, which is top notch. The production values are not up to ted.com levels, but the weaving of stories and conversations that is emerging may prove useful. Happy culture hunting!
posted by zpousman on Jul 2, 2009 - 18 comments

Print your own DIY papercraft drum machine. Webcam + paper template + free software = drum machine with tangible interface. [via] [more inside]
posted by mhjb on Jun 30, 2009 - 3 comments

Ubiquity is a Mozilla Labs experiment into connecting the Web with language in an attempt to find new user interfaces that could make it possible for everyone to do common Web tasks more quickly and easily. Check out a video demonstration of Ubiquity. And here's a tutorial. [more inside]
posted by sveskemus on Aug 27, 2008 - 70 comments

Bill Gates files a bug report: "There's not a day that I don't send a piece of e-mail ... like that piece of e-mail. That's my job."
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Jun 26, 2008 - 66 comments

Using Color In Information Display Graphics - a resource from NASA, "intended to help designers who are not color experts find usable color designs" [via] [more inside]
posted by Gyan on Oct 4, 2007 - 11 comments

User interface design so epically bad you need a strategy guide to defeat it. Presenting The Legend of FacilityFocus.
posted by designbot on Aug 16, 2007 - 20 comments

Atlas Gloves: A DIY hand gesture interface for Google Earth.
posted by brundlefly on Apr 21, 2007 - 18 comments

Gary Stasiuk's beautiful Digital Creatures pulls the curtains on the kinematics of geometric objects, after which he plays with the mathematics and user interactivity of generative art and shows how to build the appearance of AI behaviors into Flash objects.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Apr 11, 2007 - 14 comments

If indeed information technology is seeping out of cyberspace at a rate that will soon immerse us in a world of smart furniture and spime wranglers, I think we have bigger things to worry about than disambiguating the terminology (user experience and opting out come to mind). MeFi's own Adam Greenfield weighs in with his first book, Everyware.
posted by mikepop on Feb 21, 2006 - 2 comments

Inventor of CTRL-ALT-DEL ridicules Bill Gates. "'I may have invented CTRL-ALT-DEL, but Bill Gates made it famous". Video clip of the episode, via TUAW, who say "The funniest part is the expression, or lack thereof, on the face of Bill."
posted by nthdegx on Jul 28, 2005 - 50 comments

dontclick.it : what would you do if somebody stole your mouse button? Yes, it’s flash, and it’s annoying, but that’s the point.
posted by signal on Jul 8, 2005 - 32 comments

This is Broken A compendium of bad designs. By Mark Hurst
more inside..
posted by anastasiav on Nov 6, 2003 - 9 comments

Metrocard Vending Machine UI critique. If you've been to New York City in the last few years, then you might be familiar with the MTA's big silver vending machines in the subways. For those living here it's almost second nature by now. The Windows NT based touch screen UI is really not too bad. Most tourists may opt for a One-day Fun Pass ($4), while the locals already know what to pick. MTA also places posters all over indicating changes to the vending machines, and initially even had posters explaining the various options.
posted by riffola on Jan 7, 2003 - 32 comments

Amazon Light is project powered by amazon's SOAP API, with a design and interaction reminiscent of Google's clean no-frills approach. Pretty cool and clean way to use the site (without annoying popups or gold box offers).
posted by mathowie on Jul 17, 2002 - 38 comments

This orthopaedic surgery site seems more like a design exercise than an actual attempt at an informative site. Imagine that someone told you to make the site using poor technology choices, couple it with non-professional content not conducive to trusting the doctors, and add a map to the office that does more to enable chuckles than get people to into the business. It's so bad, it's good, and most definitely do not skip intro on this one.
posted by mathowie on Apr 13, 2002 - 32 comments

While the father of Visual Basic tells Microsoft to: "abandon the browser", a multitude of researchers are looking into next-generation interfaces (links via Joel on Software and Wired respectively). Is the software industry even close to moving on to a new paradigm?
posted by costas on Nov 20, 2001 - 26 comments

A Flash usability white paper that says Flash can improve the usability of a web site.

"When executed correctly, with attention paid to the needs and wants of users, Macromedia Flash content can actually improve the user experience on any Web site."

Can Flash be saved if developers start thinking about usability? Is this going to impact Jakob Nielsen's 99% figure?
posted by Dugout on Apr 9, 2001 - 8 comments

Jef Raskin, creator of the Macintosh project at Apple, says the windows-based interface is passé. "In my current interface designs, everything you need is laid out for you. You just zoom in, and as soon as you can read the text or see the graphic details, you can work on them. Then there's no need for windows, which you are forever opening, closing, moving or fooling with."
posted by tranquileye on Feb 14, 2001 - 33 comments

Poor user interface elects George W. The second hole on the right does not correspond to the second candidate on the left (Gore), but rather to the first candidate on the right (Buchanan). While many people will notice this, many others, especially those with poor vision, will not. About 20% of Buchanan's votes in FL came from the county that used this ballot.
posted by tranquileye on Nov 9, 2000 - 32 comments

Why tab based interfaces suck This site finally fell into interface hell. Originally they used tabs as navigation and still are now... BUT it doesn't work... Watch... every ecommerce company that copied its interface will also fall into the same interface hell... The others include ebags.com, urbanfetch and more....
posted by efader on Apr 8, 2000 - 8 comments

Apple historically been at the forefront of UI and HCI research and technology, documenting it in their Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines. In the past couple of years however, they've been slipping. They designed the useless round mouse (that requires a 3rd-party product to become useful), the nightmare quicktime 4 interface, and now aqua for OS X. When I saw it at Macworld, there were lots of little things I didn't think were right about it, and Bruce Tognazzini (or Tog for short) has written a great summary of the UI including problems. So what I'm wondering is, why is Apple abandoning their own guidelines?
posted by mathowie on Jan 17, 2000 - 0 comments