Jan 25, 2010 by Miranda Capra in Consumer Products, Usability, User Experience, Web & Software
Games are an interesting design challenge because if they’re too easy they’re no fun, and if they’re too hard they’re no fun, and “easy” and “hard” may be different for different people. Party games, or video games that you’d break out with a group of friends, are a special challenge because they need to be fun for the group, which may contain people with mixed skill levels or experience. Wii Sports is a great video game because the direct interaction style is fun. Want to swing the tennis racket? Just swing the controller! But it quickly became a party game, even for people that didn’t play video games. Why? Because it was intuitive, easy to learn. No need to memorize complex combinations of button presses used in many video games. Instead, people could pick up a controller and start playing immediately.
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Dec 16, 2009 by Andrew Wirtanen in Trends, User Experience, User Research, Web & Software
I dread going to the mall during the holiday season (Black Friday to Christmas Eve). But, this past Sunday night I was able to find a parking spot very easily. I went into a store to make an exchange and found that there was no wait. Then, I did a little browsing and went on my way. Surprisingly, my experience actually wasn’t that bad.
But, I think I know why it was so easy…
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Nov 03, 2009 by Sheila Crosby in Consumer Products, Usability, User Experience
I’m starting to pay more attention to how sound is used in product design. When it’s good, I don’t notice it. When it’s bad, it’s all I focus on. This brings me to my coffee maker.
Coffee is a big deal at my house. When it was time to buy a new coffee maker, I was concerned with two main things: how it looked (as it’s the only appliance, other than my mixer, that sits out on the counter) and an auto-start feature. I loved the idea of prepping the coffee maker the night before and having fresh coffee made and ready when I woke in the morning. Sounds good in theory, right?
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Oct 22, 2009 by Jon Howarth in Community Involvement, Gestural Interfaces, Human Factors, User Experience, User Research
Dr. Dan Mauney and Dr. Miranda Capra gave a presentation at a “works-in-progress” forum on Tuesday, October 20 at 1:30pm at this year’s Annual Conference of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society in San Antonio, TX. Dan and Miranda’s talk was titled “Cultural Influence on Gestural Interface Design”. They described a recent study conducted in association with the International Usability Partners in which they collected user-generated gestures from 40 people in 9 countries for 28 common software commands (e.g. zoom, scroll, cut, copy, rotate).
Dan is releasing regular blog posts about the study at http://www.humancentric.com/GestureResearch.
Oct 16, 2009 by Miranda Capra in Community Involvement, Consumer Products, Green Technology, Local, User Experience
HumanCentric is creating designs for better recycling containers and recycling systems as part of a design challenge sponsored by TriUPA for World Usability Day. We are collecting information about how you recycle, what you know about recycling, and what you would change, and would love for you to take 5 minutes and fill out our survey. Thanks!
Oct 05, 2009 by Corinna Proctor in Mobile, User Experience
Yesterday I came home to find an enormous piece of junk mail from AT&T jammed into my mailbox. It was so big that it was a literal struggle to get it out, and in doing so, I almost took the mailbox right off of the post! One second in the door and I’m already annoyed…
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