There’s a lot of talk recently in the design community about the utility and value of clickable mockups & prototypes. I agree that they can be very effective tools for a number of reasons—primarily the ability to clearly communicate user flow and proposed functionality to stakeholders on the business, design, and engineering teams. Prototyping is especially valuable when designing mobile experiences, allowing users to experience the prototype on a tablet or smartphone. They’re extremely useful for early & ongoing usability testing of design concepts prior to moving into code (in most cases, things get more expensive to change once programming comes into play).
Here’s a (mostly) quick & dirty way to transform your ideas into clickable prototype goodness without any code.
I wasn’t the only one who knew that I had to get my hands on the Wacom Inkling after seeing this well produced product demo video:
Fortunately for me, after a longer wait than expected (the Inkling was originally going to be released in mid-October; it arrived the first week of December) I got my hands on the new gadget. Here are my very preliminary thoughts after using it for less than 24 hours:
I’m flattered to appear on this list (currently coming in at #63 #57), powered by PeerIndex—a social influence mapping application—and curated by UK experience design consultancy Foolproof.
In the marketing/advertising agency environment, the Creative Director has historically been the top dog—understanding what motivates the target audience; providing visionary creative leadership; defining tonality and consistency of message and design. Wikipedia states the following:
The job entails overseeing all aspects of product design… A creative director is ultimately responsible for the quality of the final creative work.
Media and agencies have transformed over the decades—especially the past 15 years with the advent of the Internet as a marketing outlet—but the role of the Creative Director has remained fairly unchanged. It’s time for a new breed of leadership that compliments the ongoing media and marketing evolution. Continue Reading
Building websites typically involves several participants, each specializing in specific tasks like project management, strategy, information architecture, programming, and of course design. But I’ve been thinking – aren’t almost all of the members of the project team responsible for designing the website? Why does someone have to be a Photoshop jockey to be considered a designer?
This is cool. Oblong Industries has developed an operating system, or “spatial operating environment,” called g-speak. If you’ve seen the Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg film, Minority Report, g-speak will look familiar. Check out this impressive demonstration:
Pretty amazing, huh? The visual impact of this human computer interaction is brilliant on film—visually stunning and dramatic. But, is this style of interface and interaction really the future of user interface design? I doubt it. Remember movies like Hackers, The Net or countless others where directors have attempted to dramatize mouse clicks and typing? Computer interaction usually falls short on screen. In Minority Report, typing and mouse gestures were replaced by pantomime and flying screens. Tom Cruise looked more like the conductor of a symphony orchestra than a geek parked in front of a PC. On film it works. In real life… save the drama for your mama.
Practically speaking, the Minority Report-style OS falls short. Can you imagine gloved cube dwellers pointing and waving their arms around at data for six to ten hours a day? Not to mention, the sheer size of the screens.
I anticipate that the mouse will likely be obsolete in the near future; highly interactive touch screens are already ubiquitous. I also predict that speech-recognition, eye-movement-detection and even the ability to control machines through thought will be the true interactions of the future. Sure, watching someone talk to, stare and blink at a computer won’t look great on film, but it will make our lives more efficient. And the technology that can make our lives/jobs more efficient through great interaction design will truly be the UI of the future.
