Josh On Design

Tomorrow we will hopefully awake with news of a magical Apple tablet, so tonight I thought I'd give you a few things to read as you drift off to tablet dreamland with touchable sugarplums.

A Taxonomy of Device Forms

I had the incredible fortune to meet Marc Weiser when I was an intern at Xerox PARC. We are now building the world he firmly believed would come to pass; a world full devices. A world where computing has disappeared into the fabric of our everyday lives. He divided the device landscape into several forms, as described in this article. (from Designing Devices)

Tangible Interaction = Form + Computing

Many first-generation tangibles have been whimsical and artistic explorations of what new technology can do. Some are simple; some, more complex. Some are elegant embeddings of display and projection. Some celebrate new materials. Some add sensing in clever ways. The field is still wide open, but one thing is clear: We’re likely to see more, not less, programming in things, and a lot more experimentation.

(from the

ACM

)

Realism in UI Design

When choosing icons and other symbols for your application it's important to remember when to use realism and when not to. A graphic which is too realistic can actually make it harder to recognize and use. (from ignore the code)

The Apple Tablet Interface Must Be Like This

Many years ago Jeff Raskin designed an ultimate device he called the information appliance. This article details his design and how it might match up to the iTablet. (from Gizmodo).

A Brief History of Eye-Tracking

Who knew eyetracking technology started in 1879! (from the UX Booth)

Ribbon Hero

Yes, Microsoft has designed a game into the latest edition of Office. The goal is to teach you how to effectively use the Ribbon bar. (from Lost Garden, an awesome site on game design)

Edison's Kindel

Edison's Nickel based 40,000 page book and other future technology visions that haven't quite come true. I love yesterday's tomorrows. (from Technologizer).

(Apple Tablet photo courtesy of Flickr user Rego)