Flash Catalyst
Adobe Creative Suite the creative professionals bread and butter tool set, has yet another product added to the tool belt - Adobe Flash Catalyst. I have been keeping an eye on this product for a while (I played with the beta version of it) so I'm quite excited to see how the full release version works. The tool is meant to act as a bridge for Flash with Adobe's visual programs Illustrator, Photoshop or Fireworks without the need of programming. Instead of being bogged down in the development of Flash coding the tool is meant to bring interactivity to visuals produced in Illustrator, Flash or Photoshop in a quicker fashion without the need for coding knowledge. This would enable a designer to quickly prototype rich interactions without having to divorce the actual interaction from the visuals and branding. For anyone whose ever tried to prototype rich interaction in a static format (like wireframes) they can relate on the fact that it's difficult task indeed; and a bit of a oxymoron. Hopefully I will be able to get a copy here at work to test out.
How to prototype a Mockingbird
A colleague of mine linked me to a nice web based prototyping tool called Mockingbird. It is currently in beta, and clearly has a ways to go, but it seems promising. This would be a great tool for a beginner interaction designer to play around with as many of the common shapes and tools are prebuilt. I would also recommend to use it on a simple site that isn't too content heavy. The tool definitely needs a notation tool however. Check it out.
Lightroom 3 beta release…and a nod of the hat
Exciting news for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (hereby referred to just as Lightroom) users today: the beta of version 3.0 has been released! Don't know what Lightroom is? Well that's where my hat comes in...sort of.
I have to start off with my nod and I've been meaning to post about this for a while. I've been using Lightroom since its first iteration and I absolutely adore it. It's by far my favourite Adobe product to date - and I've used many of them. Lightroom is obviously targeted to professional photographers and I'm no pro; but this doesn't stop Lightroom from providing me with a wide variety of useful features for managing my photography. Everything from organizing, tagging, sorting, rating, editing, publishing and printing is done within Lightroom's logical and usable interface.
Like many software programs, I essentially jumped into the deep end with Lightroom. But it was the first Adobe program that I quickly and intuitively started paddling around in - there wasn't AS many embarrassing moments of floundering while I poked around. Other Adobe programs do have their own level of ease of use but that's because you become familiar with the interface features that are consistent between them. Lightroom was an entirely different interface and yet I still managed to pick it up rather quickly. Being the interaction nerd that I am I believe therein lies the reason why I believe I like this product so much.
Once I was sufficiently enthralled with the product I did some research on how it was developed. Go figure, development diaries and documentation on the program indicated that it involved huge amounts of interviews and testing with its primary user group: photographers (usability testing wins again!). I knew there was some intelligent process at work here;the difficulties of working with thousands of photos were dealt with so naturally in Lightroom's interface.
Now, when it comes to photography I consider myself an enthusiast but I am indeed a technically savvy individual so this program may not be for everyone. The best thing to do is read up on it a little yourself and try it out. Just remember, Lightroom is not without its problems.
And that brings us to Lightroom 3 beta. It was released today and it seems to hold a lot of great improvements. My favourite is publishing to the web. Check it out.
Obscura Digital
Once again my RSS feeds have tipped me off to yet another thought provoking company: Obscura Digital.
Founded in 2000, Obscura Digital specializes in large scale interactive installations that range from ones the size of a pool table (as seen below) to interactivelight shows that cover entire auditorium ceilings . Think that's impressive? It appears the scalability of their work comes from a proprietary software package that they created themselves. Talk about starting from the ground up.
Perusing through their 'about' section it appears as though this company is doing quite well for themselves. They remain a privately held company of 33 employees with offices in San Francisco New York and Tokyo with more coming throughout Europe and the Middle East.
The pool table piece is impressive enough on its own. But if I've wet your appetite for them any more I recommend checking out their other projects.
Video Game Research – with a UX twist
photo: dave.camera at Flickr
Researchers Nate Bolt and Tony Tulathimutte from Bolt|Peters wrote an article that was featured in the January edition of the Boxes and Arrows. It summarized a year long usability study they conducted in conjunction with the development of the recently released video game Spore by Electronic Arts. In the article, they noted that a lot of current research practices for game development surrounds focus groups and surveys. Knowing several individuals involved in the game development (specificially from EA) I can concur that this seems to be the predominant approach.
As noted in the articled, the problem with this form of research, especially in something as personal as gaming, is it takes a user outside of their typical environment. It may not be immediately noticeable, but pushing users into a unfamiliar room in order to throw around some Q&A and paper work typically does not generate the most 'usable' research results. In this context, a user will immediately be placed into a sort of "defensive" mode - something similar to how you would react when you're a guest in someones home. Even if you try to make the approach as casual as possible, subconsciously the user knows where they are and what they're doing. The user won't provide insight that are nearly as "casual" or "natural" to how they might react in the comfort of their own home. I've read numerous times how this can be the case and how you can solve it, but it's refreshing to read an article that puts this into a real case study.
Due to legal implications the research participants could not just take the game to their home, so the people at Bolt|Peters instead worked within their constraints by recreating a separated room that was as reminiscent as possible of a "home environment"; they termed this a "simulated native environment".
The results? They definitely seemed to be quite "stream of consciousness," but you should really check it your self.
Via Boxes and Arrows
An increasingly touchy society
No, I'm not referring to the emotional side of being "touchy" but rather the increasingly touch-based nature of our media devices. I just took a look at the recently unveiled touch interface Asus developed for their extremely popular Eee PC series. As you would expect, they took some of the most commonly used features on a computer and adapted them for a touch based interface all via a proprietary software package. The standard Windows OS is still there - the interface just sits atop of it. Even the hardware got a bit of a facelift for this new software. The device was designed to fold over itself (ala table PC) to better accommodate the touch based UI. Asus isn't alone on this endeavour either. HP jumped on the touch band wagon not too long ago when they designed their TouchSmart PC series (seen below).
The funny thing is, this isn't the first time that we have seen devices like these pop up on the market. Touch based whiteboards, tablets, screens, PC's (to name just a few) have come and gone for years. It makes me wonder why are these devices succeeding now, when they failed in the past. Is the consumer market finally ready for this new touch based era? Has the manufacturing costs drop to a point where these devices can be made accessible to public at large? Or did the release of mass-market appeal devices like the iPhone finally spark the catalyst necessary to turn people's hands to the idea of touch based interfaces? Personally, I think of the bigger factors that turned the tide was when touch interfaces were used to compliment affordable devices users were already familiar with like MP3 players and cell phones. Prior to this they were built into wholly new and complex devices (like PDA's or whiteboards). Or in the case of laptops/tablets, devices that were already pricey and cumbersome for their time. Without accessibility to a mass market, there is little reason to keep manufacturing them.
Whatever the reason, it presents a whole new era for interface designers. I've had the opportunity to design some touch based interfaces in my time and it really pushes the mind to think "gesture" rather than "click". The human hand is much more flexible than it's static counter parts, the mouse and joystick, so there are thousands more possibilities nad considerations to take with these interface and I for one am excited about it.
Adobe Thermo – Prototyping just got a little easier
A colleague of mine sent out a link to a blog entry that provided some great sneak footage into the Adobe Thermo application. If you haven't heard of it already, Adobe Thermo is a prototyping tool that has been in development for quite some time over at Adove Labs. Not only does it enable designers to quickly build out prototypes, but it focuses on rich media applications.
Currently, the ability to visualize rich media applications like Flash is a long and labourous process. Static prototyping tools like Visio lack the interactive items necessary to put together these kinds of applications. In order to get the interactive qualities you would have to build out the code for it; but if you lack the coding know how, this is essentially impossible.
Adobe Thermo looks like a promosing tool. I'll keep an eye out on it's development.