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Link: Paper Versus Pixel (nautil.us)

Link: The World Without Mobile (youtube.com)

“We’ve found it! Even better, it says “Limit ad tracking off”. So ad tracking is off already. I’m not being tracked, thank goodness. But wait a minute. It doesn’t say “Ad tracking – off” it says “Limit ad tracking – off”. So it’s a double negative. It’s not being limited, so when this switch is off, ad tracking is actually on. Off means on! This is actually a great example of what I define as a Dark Pattern. It’s a user interface that uses manipulative techniques to get users to do things they would not otherwise have done.”

Link: The slippery slope (90percentofeverything.com)

What if our body surfaces could be used as computer control inputs?

“In addition to offering nearly fail-proof feedback, using body parts as input devices also has another distinct advantage: the device is literally always with you – because your body is you. Yes, people often carry their mobile phones, but they’ll never be without their hands or their ears. Thus they’ll never be without system functions that have been assigned to their hands or ears…Although these technical obstacles remain to be solved, it’s reasonable to expect that user interfaces might be at least partly body-based in 20 or 30 years.”

Link: The Human Body as Touchscreen Replacement (nngroup.com)

“There’s some kind of smart-TV idea trying to be born at Microsoft, an interesting technology which seems just out of reach. There’s something to its Minority-Report-esque idea of swiping, swishing and talking to your television. There’s some notion in the middle of that with tablets and interactions and second screens. But to get there needs a deep reinvention, and the road toward it does not lead through changing everyone’s minds about the meaning of “console.” Instead it needs to be a new product, even a whole new category, and its adoption has to go slow.”

Link: What Games Are: Reinventing The Games Console Half Way Won’t Work (techcrunch.com)

“…One of my favorite Gmail Labs features showed a static shot of your inbox with all your mail while the page loads, so you can start mentally processing emails right away. And some content-heavy apps like Flipboard and Pulse often load titles and leading paragraphs to enable fast scrolling, then load images and full text once the user pauses or chooses an article. The lesson here is to present useful content, even though it might not be fully interactive, so that the user can get a jump start and not feel like time is unnecessarily wasted.”

Link: Waiting stinks: How to redesign your product’s dead time (gigaom.com)

“The personal computer is dying. Its place in our lives as the primary means of computing will soon end. Mobile computing-the cell phone in your pocket or the tablet in your purse-has been a great bridging technology, connecting the familiar past to a formative future. But mobile is not the destination…I’m talking about a diffuse and invisible network embedded in our surroundings. Chips and sensors are finding their way into clothing, personal accessories, and more. These devices are capturing information whose impact is not yet meaningful to most people. But it will be soon enough. The question we need to answer is: how will these intertwined systems of hardware and software be designed to meaningfully add to our lives and to society?”

Link: Why Today’s Mobile Devices Are Doomed Like the Dying PC (technologyreview.com)

Link: A Conversation with Gina Trapani: On Designing Meaningful Notifications (adaptivepath.com)

Link: Android Design in Action: Navigation Drawers (youtube.com)