Recent Discussions

PPT as art

A little break ... http://wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,61485,00.html

David Byrne of the Talking Heads is making PowerPoint Art. I found this
interesting, especially in light of the talk about tools being used outside
their intent.

enjoy!
-- dave

RE: Beauty and Transparency

For those who may not be familiar with it, there is an interesting body
of research at Caroline Hummels' site at Delft.
http://studiolab.io.tudelft.nl/hummels/research
Her work centers around the question of interactive aesthetics, which
butts up quite rapidly against questions of interaction and beauty in
general.

For example, the 2000 text "Actions speak louder than words: shifting
from buttons and icons to aesthetics of interaction" (scroll down her
publications list a little) offers five criteria for evaluating

2020 show and kinex

I saw it and thought they totally missed the point.
Kinex is a really great set of toys for people who
enjoy building things. The purpose of the toy is its
"complicated" assembly of the pieces and not the final
thing that it can do. Kinex is really something that
is a "hobbyist" toy and the user experience is the
building of it not the final product.

Beauty and Transparency

I put together some bits and pieces related to our discussion of beauty and transparency.

Transparency
When we say transparent, do we mean invisible, as in Donald Norman's example
below?

"You use computers when you use many modern automobiles, microwave ovens, games, CD players and calculators. You don't notice the computer because you think of yourself as doing the task, not as using the computer." ["The Design of Everyday Things", New York, Doubleday, 1989, p. 185].

Beauty
Here are a few definitions of beauty I found:

1.