Everybody knows it is important - but nobody is actually doing it. Or did you back-up your personal data, your pictures, music, and movies lately? Johannes Neusel created a concept for a slate PC, M!nd, which makes back-up fun and a littlemore likely by explicitly integrating external data back-up into the docking station.
Read More... but beware the deadline: 1. May 2010. This year, I am -- together with Mark Blythe -- short-paper chair for Designing Interactive Systems 2010 (DIS). It isa wonderful bi-annual conference, which "brings together professional designers, ethnographers, systems engineers, usability engineers, psychologists, design managers, product managers, academics and anyone involved in the design of interactive systems." This year it will take place in Arhus, Denmark, from the 16. to the 20. of August, 2010.
Read MoreA three year old - especially if she is your own daughter - is definitely sweet. What else could a parent say? However, if it comes to particular activities, the explosive mixture of will, stubbornness and underdeveloped motor skills can be a true nightmare. Take baking, and especially cracking the eggs, as an example. Every kid wants to do it, none is good at it, and you end up with a lot of eggshell in the batter. What is needed is a way for three year olds to crack eggs in an experiential way. In a student project on experience design, Luisa Dursun and Annabell Meierkordt, devised a tool – Eggsplat – which is supposed to make cracking eggs fun.
Read MoreOver the last decade, ‘user experience’ (UX) became a buzzword in the field of human – computer interaction (HCI) and interaction design. As technology matured, interactive products became not only more useful and usable, but also fashionable, fascinating things to desire.Driven by the impression that a narrow focus on interactive products as tools does not capture the variety and emerging aspects of technology use, practitioners and researchers alike, seem to readily embrace the notion of UX as a viable alternative to traditional HCI.
Read MoreThe intellectual roots of HCI are work science, work psychology, and ergonomics. All those disciplines were basically triggered by a more or less economically-driven demand for an improved workplace (Karwowski,W., 2006). One strategy was to select and train people to increase work performance, the other to adapt workplace design, machines and so forth to the skills and capabilities of workers. In this context, efficiency and effectiveness was clearly an institutional and not a personal goal. Better performance equaled more money. The human was viewed as a necessary, but yet improvable part of the system.
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