Pixel Thread

We’ve been working with Think Again and London International Music Show to produce an interactive element to the event. The big and bold site is designed to be projected onto a screen during the show, and continuously updated with new video and audio content captured by a team of reporters.

www.showblog.co.uk

Firefox Mobile Concept Video from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

“User experience is the most important aspect of having a compelling mobile product.”

Full details on Aza Raskin’s blog here

…just like town planning and architecture isn’t just for architects and art lovers, the internet isn’t just for computer users and developers

In this article on Boxes and Arrows - UX Design-Planning Not One-man Show - there’s an interesting diagram showing how user experience design fits into the overall design process.

Sometimes it’s hard to draw lines between the different elements of design, particularly if you are used to working in small teams.

Johnny Lee demos his amazing Wii Remote hacks, which hack the $40 game piece into a digital whiteboard, a touchscreen, and a head-mounted 3-D viewer.

So I finally succumbed and bought a Wii. You have to understand it’s not for me, it’s for the family! Well that’s how I justified it anyway.

My five year old boy is a big fan of miniclip (a big flash games site) and rather than him spending time there on his own, mouse clicking away, I thought it would be good to have a more social way of playing games.

I love the fact that playing a game on the Wii tends to mean you’re moving about, stretching, reaching and swinging arms. This is good for a boy I think.

The Wii fit closed the deal. Now the Wii wouldn’t just be for the kids, myself and Mrs could hop on board! And then I discovered that there’s a Wii specific version of iPlayer, so we could have iPlayer in our living room. Want became need.

Ease of use

So far so good. We’re still discovering it really, but one thing that’s particularly struck me is the ease of use and the overall experience of using the console. I’ve never owned a games console before, so it was great using an operating system that wasn’t designed by Microsoft!

Screens are simple and intuitive. Buttons are big and there are few of them. Choices are usually kept down to two or three. This simplicity is the key to the Wii’s success. My boy has quickly got to grips with it.

Hand Controller

The hand controller which works as a pointer on the screen give a satisfying judder when you ‘mouseover’ a button or clickable item. It even has a small speaker which contributes to making the experience as immersive as possible.

Sounds

Much thought has gone into the sounds which are a key component of the Wii experience. For example the Wii fit board gives a little mouse-type squeak when you step on it - cue much five year old hilarity! When browsing the web, zooming in on a page gives a satisfying swoosh, zooming out reverses the sound. Cue much zooming!

iPlayer

Using the Wii for iPlayer is easy once you know how. You have to install a version of Opera browser and navigate to the iPlayer site on the BBC. You can then zoom in to view full screen and hide the browser furniture. Quality isn’t fantastic as it’s using version 7 of Flash for various reasons, but it’s perfectly watchable.

Usability

Despite the amount of thought that’s clearly gone into the Wii, there are a couple of very obvious usability issues which I’d have though user testing would have caught immediately:

• When you’re playing a game and you want to return to the game homepage, the options presented are ‘Continue Playing’ or ‘Reset’. To me, reset means clear all data and start again rather than return to game home.

• In the web browser there’s no obvious way of saving to favourites. We discovered that you have to press the favourites button twice. And there are a few other small issues.

Just like coka-cola

But overall after a weekend of testing with our inlaws and their boy, Wii’re loving it!

An article I’ve written on designing websites to work effectively at 1024×768 screen resolution is published in this month’s .Net magazine and on bbctraining.com (which also includes sample template files to download): Designing sites for 1024×768

Progressive enhancement is a way of building websites that emphasises accessibility, semantic markup, with external stylesheet and javascript.

I dropped the phrase into a conversation with Adam (top notch interface developer) recently. He hadn’t heard the term, so I explained and he said:

“Ah - you mean a well built website!”

Of course, he’s right. When the term ‘Progressive Enhancement’ first showed up, it wasn’t necessarily accepted that this was the best way to build sites. But over the past few years the internet has grown up and sites that are built to these standards have become a lot more commonplace.

The very term ’standards’ implies a lack of creativity, but this isn’t the case. There’s a very good book called Web Standards Creativity all about getting creative with code while still adhering to standards and guidelines.

Sometimes the most creative work is done working within constraints - the constraints force the creator to innovate.

Ben Newman’s a talented illustrator with a unique and distinct style. I came across his work in a small gallery in Clifton, then got in touch. I suggested he design a header for Ian Parkinson - parkinsonmedia and he’s going to design a logo for this blog soon : )

Illustration can be a really valuable element of web design. More organic, less digital.

I’ve been thinking for a while that it would be great to set up a design / interactive conference in Bristol. It’s a perfect location, with a small centre, lively web community, lots of great venues around the docks.

But to do it well needs some heavyweights behind it… Bristol Media people have been out to SXSW this year and have been talking about some possibilities on their tumblr (tumblr - wtf? The new twitter that’s the new blogger etc etc??)

Maybe with the likes of Mike Bennett of Bristol Media, Benjamin Hostler of Beef, Hazel Grian of Licorice Media, Andy Parkhouse of Team Rubber and Clare Reddington of iShed, it could happen. It would be great to tempt people away from London for a few days. And great for Bristol’s profile as digital city.

I’ve just signed up for FOWD in London April 17-18. I’m sure I’m not quite cool enough for it, but the speaker list reads like a who’s who of high profile webbers, so it should be an interesting couple of days. I’d love to go out to South by Southwest in Texas next year, so far I haven’t been able to justify the cost (and probably won’t be able to next year either!).

I don’t think we’ll actually be discussing the future of web design, probably more about current web design. Nic says the web’s going to be your desktop within a few years - he’s probably right, it’s already happening. Google Docs has become my most used software after Photoshop and Firefox, and despite a few flaws, Basecamp’s become essential for bigger projects.

Anyway I’m looking forward to “interacting with innovators and thought leaders from across the design community” as FOWD put it on their pitch! See you there?