Traditionally, computers are viewed as a tool to get things done. So pleasure hasn’t been a big goal in User Interface Design. Mobile Devices and Pleasure I recently jumped ship from iPhone to an Android. My iPhone constantly dropped calls (thanks, AT&T) and some iOS update made my phone very slow. I bought a Samsung Charge that runs Android. At first, I liked it. It was more powerful than my…
Read More7 +/- 2 in User Interface Design
George A Miller wrote a seminal paper back in 1956 called, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information”, which has often been used as the basis for many user interface design decisions including the practice of “information chunking.” Working Memory and User Interface Design Many tasks require us to hold a certain amount of information in our head. This is called “working…
Read MoreUser Interface Design and Agile Development Processes
What is Agile Software Development? The Agile Manifesto helps explain: We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items…
Read MoreLocalization
There are many challenges to localizing software. Localization challenges for a user interface include: Number of characters Word length Number of words Text size Scripts that are written from right to left instead of left to right Scripts written top to bottom Long Words for Localization Many people think of German as the gold standard in difficult languages due to word length. In reality, German word length is only about…
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