Thursday, October 16, 2003

Rich Coulombre just sent me a link to a light article by the BBC, about Bruce Tognazzini, who anointed himself "the interface czar" back when we were at Apple.  He and J.D. Eisenberg did amazing feats of interface design back on the Apple II, Apple III, and early Mac.  It was always fun to go look at his latest invention, whirling around on his screen, while passers-by stopped to gawk over the cubicle wall.  In the BBC interview, Tog points out that interface designers are a little like magicians, pretending that something is happening, when actually nothing much is going on.  He mentions the trashcan icon on the Apple desktop: "At the time, we thought it was cool," he says. The BBC explains the facts behind the magic: "When you drag a document into the trashcan, you are not really deleting it. All you are doing is deleting a pointer to the document. It is still somewhere on the hard drive. " Tog is more amusing than the BBC, I think. See AskTog, his website: http://www.asktog.com/ Recent topic: It's Time We Got Respect, arguing that interface designers have only themselves to blame for their low place on the totem pole.  http://www.asktog.com/columns/057ItsTimeWeGotRespect.html Discussion at Interaction Architects: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/interactionarchitects/ If you haven't read Tog on Interface, get a copy today.  It's funny, useful, and intriguing, with a lot of case studies showing how easy it is to guess wrong, when you anticipate what users will think, feel, or do.  Included are outtakes from his email correspondence with developers.  Typical topics: §         The Holy Interface, or Command Keys Revisited §         Making an Interface Articulate §         Carl Jung and the Macintosh  Amazon link to Tog on Interface.   BBC article 11:36:47 AM    comment []

Just put up an article on Innovation Tools, on electronic outlining.  Chuck Frey organizes this site around mind mapping, and organizing information during brainstorming, and planning a document. Outlining is a lot more useful, now that we can do it electronically, erasing, deleting, promoting, rearranging...on the fly.  No more strait jacket, like in school.  Today, outlining, as a process, helps us keep adding information to our organization as we go, without stopping at some point, and trying to follow the structure laid out in the outline.  Outlining, I argue, is a process, not a product...and that helps us take advantage of the software, to make our structure better and better.   11:25:12 AM    comment []

Rich Coulombre just sent me a link to a light article by the BBC, about Bruce Tognazzini, who anointed himself "the interface czar" back when we were at Apple.  He and J.D. Eisenberg did amazing feats of interface design back on the Apple II, Apple III, and early Mac.  It was always fun to go look at his latest invention, whirling around on his screen, while passers-by stopped to gawk over the cubicle wall.  In the BBC interview, Tog points out that interface designers are a little like magicians, pretending that something is happening, when actually nothing much is going on.  He mentions the trashcan icon on the Apple desktop: "At the time, we thought it was cool," he says. The BBC explains the facts behind the magic: "When you drag a document into the trashcan, you are not really deleting it. All you are doing is deleting a pointer to the document. It is still somewhere on the hard drive. " Tog is more amusing than the BBC, I think. See AskTog, his website: http://www.asktog.com/ Recent topic: It's Time We Got Respect, arguing that interface designers have only themselves to blame for their low place on the totem pole.  http://www.asktog.com/columns/057ItsTimeWeGotRespect.html Discussion at Interaction Architects: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/interactionarchitects/ If you haven't read Tog on Interface, get a copy today.  It's funny, useful, and intriguing, with a lot of case studies showing how easy it is to guess wrong, when you anticipate what users will think, feel, or do.  Included are outtakes from his email correspondence with developers.  Typical topics: §         The Holy Interface, or Command Keys Revisited §         Making an Interface Articulate §         Carl Jung and the Macintosh  Amazon link to Tog on Interface.   BBC article   11:17:39 AM    comment []