It's been awhile since I had time to post anything on the site, being swamped with projects and trying to keep up with new technology. A friend sent these intriguing photos of a new computer being developed in Japan.

In the race for a more compact computers, scientists have made great strides with Bluetooth technology and miniaturization. Looks like you could carry this computer in your pocket, except I seem to always lose pens.

This "pen-like" device produces both the monitor as well as the keyboard on any flat surfaces where you can work you would normally do on your desktop computer.

I saw some of this technology awhile a go in a presentation from Microsoft Research. Amazing how far it's progressed. Probably won't see it at Best Buy tomorrow, but we seem to be heading in a very interesting direction.

Looks like it plays well with other devices too.

Between designing and facilitating usability tests, bugging people about late content and creating wireframes, here it is July already and I haven't had much time to post. Not that there haven't been incredible developments out there in Digitaland. The iPhone alone is using lots of bandwidth on several discussion boards.

As Bill Buxton points out in his new book, "Sketching the User Experience", so much of this technology that's only now coming to market has been in development for many years.

Had some folks from the Microsoft Research Group give a presentation a couple of years ago on what is now a real product – Microsoft Surface.

Being kind of a late-adopter and sometime Luddite, I'm not standing in line for the iPhone, although I've been a faithful Mac user since the IIe. Recently bought a Lenovo laptop to work in the Windows environment with Visio and have been pleasantly surprised with both the hardware and software. Still on XP though.

This YouTube Video caught my eye mostly for the GPS integration. I've been using GPS for at-sea navigation for years and it's interesting to see it migrating to the mobile space and seemingly everywhere these days.

Thanks to the folks at the University of Kansas (where they also offer an Interaction Design degree program)

Came across a thought-provoking paper titled "Magic Ink", on the IxDA discussion board the by Bret Victor, a California based programmer, designer and visionary.

Although not a graphic designer by training, he makes an interesting case for interaction being more of a graphic design problem than merely a path for the user toward a specified goal.

I've always felt we humans were capable of absorbing and deciphering much more information than was previously thought. Brain research seems to be confirming this. Victor gives some good examples of this in some of his redesigns that use information graphics ala Tufte, rather than interaction to communicate.

That pixels are "magic ink" really struck a chord with me. A good read!

Another informative presentation last night by Dr. Mary Czerwinski of Microsoft Research, sponsored by our local Puget Sound SIGCHI.

Personally, multitasking is a subject I find compelling, especially as it relates to running a small business. Somehow, I'm able to keep a lot of small details relating to projects I'm working on in my head and prioritize them. It often seems that other people on the team have a much harder time doing that. It's as if they can only keep one thing in their register stack at a time. Seems personality type has a lot to do with it, according to the Myers-Briggs intelligence types.

The question then becomes one of learning style, hard wiring in the brain, adaptability or some other yet-to-be discovered factor. How to design an interface that works for everyone?

Dr. Czerwinski presented some interesting videos of how her group's interface design templates worked for controlling the way multiple windows are displayed and manipulated.

But her answer to a question I posed about whether certain people are better at multitasking than others opened a whole new set of questions about how all this is changing the way we function in the world. She mentioned that that younger people in her study were comfortable writing code while listening to music and text message at the same time - with a possible slight drop in IQ.

My kids do the same. Well, maybe not the code writing. I'm amazed to walk into my son's room to find him reading a textbook, chatting online with classmates, checking his mySpace page, emailing, listening to music, watching TV and scratching the dog behind the ear - and still get good grades.

Is all this multitasking the cause of so much ADD/ADHD or a symptom? Then there's the research on how playing certain video games make for better laproscopic surgeons, as heard the other day on NPR.

The message is about how we can help people be in control - of their tasks, time, access and lives.

I've been impressed with the quality and scope of research going on at Microsoft, and appreciate the effort of folks like Dr. Czerwinski to create user interface systems that make life a little less frustrating for all of us information workers.

Looks like this may be a long ways from being released, but could be a real breakthrough for us "visual learners" Thanks to Alok Jain for posting this video on the IxDA discussion group.

Prototyping websites has been a hot topic on the Interaction Design (IxDA) discussion board recently, along with a huge thread about the new iPhone and Bill Buxton's hand sketching for early prototypes.

I stumbled upon Canvas as a prototyping tool a while ago. It's relatively easy to learn and allows you to target links, uses layers and exports as a "clickable" PDF or as HTML easily.

Being a Mac user, I really like OmniGraffle for ease of use, but hadn't though of it as a prototyping tool, until Michael Angeles generously offered to share his knowledge and custom stencils with the rest of us. Haven't had the chance to start using his method, but plan to migrate over to that platform for an upcoming prototype.

Like so much else these days, there are many strong opinions about what's the best tool for prototyping – from Axure, iRise, Viso, to a combination of Adobe's Illustrator and InDesign. Andy Clarke has an interesting take on the subject in his new book, "Transcending CSS".

Although I'm stumbling around trying to actually write CSS, his book is beginning to make sense, although a lot of it is way over my head right now. Clarke maintains that producing well marked up CSS interactive prototypes may be a more effective workflow. Hope I can get my old brain around this new workflow.

This Spring, at the University of Washington's Technical Communications Lecture Series, a Microsoft researcher showed us some interesting experiments they were conducting with interfaces projected on walls, touch screens projected on tables and using hands and lasers instead of mice to point and click.

I just came across this video link on the IxDA discussion board that that takes this technology out of the lab and promises a new way of interacting with computers and software.

Naturally, this has been in development for awhile. Alex Wexelblat pointed out that the military was experimenting with touch screens and found them "highly error prone and fatiguing"
Error sources include:
- size of the pointing device (fingertip vs cursor)
- selection with the finger obscures the thing you're trying to select
- uncertainty on feedback. The combination of physical feedback (does
the screen flex in response to pressure? If so how much and how does
the user correlate that feedback with visual changes?) proved
difficult for some users.
- dirt and oils from human hands tended to introduce errors and
- obscure displays after extended use

I've also read several other accounts of touch screens not performing well in industrial settings and in police vehicles. In these case it was as much a usability issue with the software as the touch screen hardware. In both cases no field studies were done to see how these systems would function in real-world situations.

What you'll see on the video is miles ahead of what we're used to seeing in today's touch screens.

It would be interesting to see just how "intuitive" user's would find this no-interface-interface.