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.
posted on Aug 27, 2008 - View this thread

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 on Jun 26, 2008 - View this thread

Using Color In Information Display Graphics - a resource from NASA, "intended to help designers who are not color experts find usable color designs" [via]
posted on Oct 4, 2007 - View this thread

User interface design so epically bad you need a strategy guide to defeat it. Presenting The Legend of FacilityFocus.
posted on Aug 16, 2007 - View this thread

Atlas Gloves: A DIY hand gesture interface for Google Earth.
posted on Apr 21, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Apr 11, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Feb 21, 2006 - View this thread

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 on Jul 28, 2005 - View this thread

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 on Jul 8, 2005 - View this thread

This is Broken A compendium of bad designs. By Mark Hurst
more inside..
posted on Nov 6, 2003 - View this thread

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 on Jan 7, 2003 - View this thread

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 on Jul 17, 2002 - View this thread

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 on Apr 13, 2002 - View this thread

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 on Nov 20, 2001 - View this thread

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 on Apr 9, 2001 - View this thread

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 on Feb 14, 2001 - View this thread

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 on Nov 9, 2000 - View this thread

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 on Apr 8, 2000 - View this thread

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 on Jan 17, 2000 - View this thread