Famed web form guru Luke Wroblewski posted on his blog about an alternative from They Make Apps. All you do is slide to submit a form. I can’t believe this would actually work. It’s pretty simple, but Luke notes that we still need an accessible alternative for those that can’t use a mouse. Anyway, this technique already has a theme song:

Do you wake up on your own/and wonder where you are? You live with all your faults/../So why don’t you slide? (Goo Goo Dolls – “Slide”)

This blog post by a game designer was intended to poke fun at contemporary trends in games. But, I think it also applies to a trend in usability. In usability, it’s cliché now to joke about putting something in the manual. Everyone in the field pretends that manuals don’t exist when they’re designing products (unless, of course, said product is the manual). But, I’ve never heard anyone discuss providing too much help or guidance. Sometimes when you don’t provide any guidance, the end user has the most fun and they learn more quickly how do things (like in Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros.).

My suggestion: Provide visual cues when appropriate. Allow for some exploration if it’s not a one-time-only or walk-up-and-use interface (like an ATM or grocery self-checkout). Users are smart and will figure some things out on their own. Don’t interrupt them frequently with tips–put all the help you want in a sub-menu.

By the way. Slideshare doesn’t give you valid XHTML for embedding, but I found this tutorial that shows you how to embed valid slidecasts.

Technology used to be the driver of new products; it determined the industrial design and components. Now, the size of devices is no longer determined by the size of the computer chip. For example, the iPod Classic sports the same basic design from 2004. The iPod does its job well and the only thing that could (and probably should) be changed include improvements in software and components.

We are living in a period of re-emergence of design. We are realizing that we need to start developing products that are not going to end up in a landfill after 2 years. We also need to design products that will encourage sustainability. Here’s a great example from Volkswagen that makes a game out of recycling:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Volkswagen also created two other videos (Piano Staircase and The World’s Deepest Bin). They created them as demonstration videos for The Fun Theory contest. The contest encourages designs that change people’s behavior for the better. Pretty cool.

But what if your product has multiple use cases without having to change a thing? Case in point: the “shredsors” and the herb scissors. Both of these pairs of scissors can do either task, but they’re both marketed to do different things.

This is a very interesting problem. How do you sell the scissors? Can you sell them as one device or do you have to market them separately? Do they go in the kitchen aisle or in the home security aisle? Can you unify the packaging to convey both uses? Or, is that even necessary (i.e. would users appreciate both features?). With the Internet, you could tag the product to be in two categories, but in physical stores you have to divide the inventory.

[Shredsors via Neatorama / RSVP Herb Scissors via Outblush]

In other words, there aren’t a lot of people using Twitter to discover new things. Even if they were, it is hard to do because there are a lot of useless tweets and spam. Use Twitter to ask and answer questions to your customers. You will get more qualitative data than a poll on your website can provide, and you won’t get complicated answers since they have to be under 140 characters. By talking with your customers, you will establish trust, and then your customers will talk about you more to their friends and co-workers. It’s simple, but not many people understand.

Click here to view the embedded video.

[Bonobos Blog]

The action starts at 1:00 and continues till about 4:00.

Click here to view the embedded video.

One thing that surprised me about this project is that it is not funded by a travel commission. Videos like these can help promote travel by easing the worries of travelers.

As designers, we need to recognize that different gestures and actions mean different things across cultures. For example, the video shows that in Bulgaria, shaking your head left-to-right actually means “yes”, while nodding your head up-and-down means “no”. By the way, if you’re ever in a library or a book store, look for a little book called Field Guide to Gestures. You’ll get some good laughs in.

Research-Inspired Design is the HumanCentric blog, where the whole company (usability specialists, industrial designers, graphic designers, software engineers, and interaction designers) share our thoughts on user experience. Check it out, and put it in your RSS reader!

http://blog.humancentric.com/

Personally, I’m a huge fan of Amazon.com and I place orders nearly every month. I’ve loved the tab-free design ever since I first encountered it in 2007.

One of the most recent oddities on Amazon.com is the Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt, which inspired this Pocahontas parody video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

A couple of my former peers at Bentley (@jledwell and @kaniasty) created a great presentation on Twitter called “Tips from Two Tweeps: How User Experience Pros Find Value on Twitter.” Apparently, the presentation drew a full room and sparked great conversation. The presentation mentions @uxforward, a user experience link sharing service, which I started back in December ’08. @jledwell now does a lot of the posting for @uxforward.

[@jledwell's blog: Compete on Usability]