By @edent · hci IoT ui · 2 comments · 350 words · read ~137 times.
The best gadget I got in lockdown was a set of motion activated lights. They have no user interface. I walk by them in the dark and they turn on. Midnight piss? No fumbling for a light switch, no shouting to a digital assistant, no logging in to an app. Simple. I love it. It […]
Continue reading →By @edent · api developers hci programming ui · 20 comments · 1,200 words · read ~23,346 times.
I've been thinking a lot about APIs and their design recently. I stumbled on this fantastic quote from Greg Parker: A programming language is a user interface for developers. Language authors should learn from HCI principles. — Greg Parker (@gparker) February 22, 2012 When I first started learning C++ (back in the bad old days) […]
Continue reading →By @edent · hci necropost ui usenet · 400 words · read ~127 times.
This is a necropost - resurrected from one of my ancient USENET posts. Some web-browsers use "Stop Loading" icons that were represented with USA stop signs. To anyone else in the world, that's just a red octagon. Similarly the spell-check button in MS products is a tick over an "ABC". I don't know what the […]
Continue reading →By @edent · Computer Science hci IoT necropost uea usability · 1 comment · 10,350 words · read ~217 times.
In 2002, I wrote this dissertation as part of my B.Sc. at UEA. I've kept this edition as close to the original as possible. I've added in links (where they still survive) and inserted a few comments where I was ludicrously wrong or unexpectedly right. This paper is not especially well-written and, if memory serves, […]
Continue reading →By @edent · hci necropost usability usenet · 1 comment · 550 words · read ~121 times.
This is a necropost - resurrected from one of my ancient USENET posts. One of the problems I've encountered is that most people (users and, to an extend, designers) are socially conditioned to believe that tasks should be difficult. They expect a learning curve that isn't always logical. It stems from childhood when we don't […]
Continue reading →