Thursday, October 1, 2009 at 11:46PM The Ableton Novation Launchpad is a hardware control interface to the Ableton Live performance software. It's taken a lot longer than I expected for this form factor to hit mainstream—but now that it has, expect to see this appearing in music videos in 3 months and in every garage band within 12. Via the excellent CreateDigitalMusic
Thursday, October 1, 2009 at 3:59PM I'm no hardcore gamer. I own a Wii and PS3, but they mostly gather dust. I've enjoyed some time playing Spider and Field Runners on the iPhone, but that's the limit of my attention. And occasionally I dust off Age of Empires on the Mac. Oh, and I strangely enjoyed playing Ramp Champ on the iPhone. What an odd game, there couldn't be anything simpler* to play the game at some level, just flick your finger up the screen. To play well, of course, is another matter.
So I'm as casual gamer as anybody. But I am desperately interested in gaming, and game development—game development is about building fun, engaging experiences, using motion, art, sound and flow. That's what we application creators want to do too, right?
Mac developers have always prided themselves on great looking graphics. And now we enter an age where that UI includes the subtle and practical use of animation and real-time graphical effects. Game devs have been working on making artistic, believable, fast and fluid OpenGL-optimized stuff for years, yet I've personally seen very little cultural crossover to date. I would love to see more cross-polinization from the game development community and Mac App development.
Tools-wise, I've been looking into Unity, a game-creation engine and development environment that seems to have become the winner in the space for creating physics-driven games. It seems like it could be a useful tool for mocking up and testing interfaces.
Now, of course, the 'game' experience and the App experience can be totally different things. Gaming can be all-encompassing, Apps simply a piece in a puzzle. Learning the interface of a game can be a fun experience, having to work out the interface of an App, an infuriating one. The same bright, loud and novel interface in a game might be completely tiring in an App, which instead aims to focus your attention on your content. Although, there are many hours spent in WoW (etc.) where I suspect any novel/distracting interface elements create the same annoyances as in an App.
I welcome the game developers** who are sniffing around after the iPhone App Store explosion. Come, share your wisdom.
*Ok, there is an interaction which could be simpler: a single button. And I'm proud to say I know a guy who's build an awesome game (Fishie Fishie) using just that.
** Oh and I should add that there's some great Mac Game dev houses, bust 'serious' gaming is still very much on the PC, afaictFriday, September 25, 2009 at 3:04PM Based on your feedback, here is an iteration on my previous design post to better show what applications can accept certain files dragged to them in the Mac OS X Dock.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 6:20PM Here's a mockup I made for a slight improvement on the way Apps in the Mac OS X Dock indicate that they can accept files dragged to them. Do you think it would be helpful?
Monday, September 14, 2009 at 5:00PM I recently appeared on Chuck Joiner's MacJury podcast discussing iTunes 9 and other Apple-event related stuff.
MacJury, apple, iTunes, podcast in Announcements Monday, September 14, 2009 at 9:49AM 
I think Clippy, the Microsoft helpful annoying animated Office assistant paperclip was about age 6.
This is an interesting TED talk from MIT's Rebecca Saxe. Researcher Rebecca Saxe describes our brains dedicated region for understanding what other people are thinking, and explains "It's not until age 7 that we get what looks more like an adult response." [Interesting note: her research is using high strength magnetic fields to slightly alter our perception of others]
Understanding what other people want is hard work—it takes us humans 7 years of life to get to the point that we understand the intentions and beliefs of others at an 'adult level'. Will we see another Clippy in the next decade?
cognitive science, psychology, smart computers in Video Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 10:16AM 
The Graphical User Interface Gallery contains a tasty article on the development of the Apple Lisa OS. One amazing aspect to me is the iterations they went through before finalising on a simple iconic desktop. The image above is of a non-heirarchial faceted search, presented in what looks like a modern multi-coloumn view. Note though, that the modern multi-coloumn vie we have in Mac OS X for example is simply showing hierarchy, not a faceted search like the above image.
Via the Lukas Mathis' excellent Ignore the Code.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 at 9:20AM Design, Paper, Prototyping, interface, music in innovation Sunday, September 6, 2009 at 5:44PM 
This is a question that has intrigued me for some time: why do car radios sometimes have identical dials for 'volume' and for 'tuning'. I find this a little frustrating. I've seen this more than once, so I'm guessing it's a design decision for some reason like the following:
a) It's pretty to have knobs the same
b) It's cheaper to manufacture identical parts
c) It encourages drivers to use the steering wheel controls
d) Who cares—it's not that hard to learn
What do you think?