Usability Heuristics by Jakob Nielsen

A quick insight on Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics for Interface Design.

This is how Nokia Lumia 800 was born!

NokiaConversations has released the ‘behind the scenes at Nokia’s London design studio’ video documentary, starring Stefan Pannenbecker, VP of Industrial Design at Nokia, Chris Linnett, Head of Lumia UX design and Kate Freebairn, Creative Director for Lumia UX design.

The video portrays the story behind the creation of Nokia’s first Windows Phone and their tight collaboration with various teams at Microsoft.

Vik Muniz makes art with cotton, wire, sugar, dust and what not !

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via TED Talks

The fascinating Art of Substance and Absence

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by Alwar Balasubramaniam via TED Talks

Amazing High-tech Art by Aparna Rao

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via TED Talks

What may happen in next 100 yrs

While going thru some old stuff from college, I met with an old article, rather a scripture which was written & published in 1900 by John Elfren Watkins Jr. on how our world would look in 100 yrs from then.

Surprisingly, much of it has actually happened.

On a second thought, who is a greater visionary ???

The Role Of Design In The Kingdom Of Content

While reading an interesting article written by Jason Gross on ‘The Role Of Design In The Kingdom Of Content‘, I was intrigued by the kind of examples he mentions about the importance of design when world is still craving for content.

Excerpt from article : “The role of a UX designer is not always to make everyone feel all warm and fuzzy inside. A rich Web experience could include the emotion of happiness, humor, discontent, sadness, anger or enlightenment. A well-designed website enables us to attribute our emotion to its source and connect us to that environment through a range of senses. A UX designer should understand why and how to utilize the principles and techniques they have learned to support the website’s precious content.”

Read full article here.

Kinect + Augmented Projectors + Microsoft Research = A roomfull of awesomeness !

Microsoft’s research division has created augmented projectors, a new technology which use data from up to four Kinects to let you interact with a 3D model of any room you’re in. At its simplest, the projector shines an image which you can interact with by casting shadows, but the other applications are both more complex and more interesting.

The Kinect sensors within the room can define the space digitally, and then use the projector like a magic flashlight to expose and interact with the digital facsimile of the real room. Objects can be placed on walls, hanged in empty space, and electronic versions of real objects can be cloned and moved within the virtual reality.

Compare this to the bulky and expensive original Microsoft Surface and the augmented projectors could bring similar types of interaction to any room in your house in a fraction of the size. While the resolution isn’t very high and holding a projector seems jittery, it’s still one step towards Microsoft’s vision of the future.

Toyota’s “Window to the World” Augmented Reality Concept

The new system from the Japanese automobile manufacturer’s European Research division was developed with the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design and turns windows into interactive screens designed for education and play.

As shown in the video, with “Window to the World,” backseat passengers will be able to draw objects that will then integrate with the outside world, estimate distance to outside objects, zoom in on objects, translate written language on signs, and learn more about outside objects by selecting them.

Toyota also says the technology can be applied to sunroofs and, at night, constellations and their information can be studied with the night sky as the backdrop.

When kids are bored on the drive, parents can once again tell children “Look out from the window for a while.”

Kinect makes presentations more presentable & self-organized

Haruki Maeda from Meiji University shows his presentation software that can sense where you stand and orders the text into the visible space around you. Transitions are handled with gestures and you can even pinch-to-zoom live on stage. The modest Mr. Maeda says all it took was some C#, the Kinect SDK and an Excel spreadsheet to get this beauty working.