journal

Alright, my pop is gonna freak out when he sees this…

Check out this cool example of Papervision 3d with APE. Just click on the example to try it out, pretty slick.  He also uploaded the source.  Pretty sweet.

Check it out!!

Its always good fun to poke fun at Microsoft. And thanks to Apple we have a nice high bar for them to reach. Well I came across this article about their packaging. Microsoft should note that user experience does include packaging. ;P

Here is a great list of Flash debugger and logging APIs care of Draw Logic

Some of these new tags are really interesting.

Another great tutorial about creating interactive prototypes with Powerpoint can be found here. But also note that you can take these same examples and apply them to Keynote. Hyperlinks can be applied to text and buttons in the inspector panel which link to external resources but can also link to slides in the keynote preso. You can also create master slides and apply unique page content to each master. Note though that I personally don’t prefer Powerpoint and Keynote presentations for web based interaction design due to their lack of scrollable page flow.

So paper prototyping is a big thing in UX design, but did you know you can create a better paper prototype in pdf? One that you can email to your clients and can see the interactive elements, multimedia and dynamic content? Well you can and this author explains how and why pdf prototyping should be an important part of your prototyping process.

Read more here

Jesse James Garrett on User Experience and how eBay and Amazon have gone astray. I think this part of the interview is great…

Do you agree with the top international sites respondents chose for their usability – including Amazon, Google and eBay?

It’s interesting to see Amazon and eBay so high on the list, because I think Amazon was delivering a really terrific experience a few years ago, but have found themselves in a land of diminishing returns in the design choices they are making.

If you compare the sheer number of navigational elements on a present day Amazon page with the way it was just a few years ago, they are just starting to load these pages up with features. I think the reason they are doing that is that they are trying to squeeze every drop of revenue they can out of these pages, but I think the overall usability is starting to suffer. It’s becoming so baroque - all of the different features and components they have loaded onto these pages.

eBay has almost the opposite problem, in that because they have this enormous community of people, the sellers, that depend on eBay for their livelihood, there are a lot of people that have really invested in how the site functions. eBay has been slow to change, because they haven’t been able to make changes that would appease this audience of millions of people that don’t want to see the site change.

Amazon and eBay are two interesting case studies in how a usable site can go astray.

Read the full article here

CNN:

Even carrots, milk and apple juice tasted better to the kids when they were wrapped in the familiar packaging of the Golden Arches.

The study had youngsters sample identical McDonald’s foods in name-brand and unmarked wrappers. The unmarked foods always lost the taste test.

“You see a McDonald’s label and kids start salivating,” said Diane Levin, a childhood development specialist who campaigns against advertising to kids. She had no role in the research.

Full article here