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Spreading some creamy, UI goodness

From the “So ERGOnomical, it hurts” dept

“UI Goodness” is an affectionate term for good User Interface Design that my former co-worker, Mike, would often say. I admire Mike; he’s an artist and a geek. Unfortunately, I can only emulate the latter.

On the topic of UI goodness, I saw a few things on the “INTERWEB” that might be of interest to those, “in-the-know”.

I know that this has been posted everywhere, but I finally took the time to read DesignInteract.com’s developmental case study of the Herman Miller RED e-campaign. It’s a good look at how a website should be designed, while showing the benefits that an interaction architect/designer/specialist can give.

The funniest thing about that article is that Herman Miller has an online magazine called “brightRED” — a place for owners of HM RED to ruminate and predicate on how nice there furniture is, I guess. The colour of the e-zine, you ask? Green. Now, the only reason that I can think of this is that Green is the complementary colour for RED.

I just think it is an interesting juxtaposition.

Unlike Jen, I am not fortunate enough to have an office furnished in Herman Miller RED, but I can always dream. However, in one work-term I did have a BED where I used to take naps—so I’m not complaining. Right now my room is furnished with a lot of IKEA furniture (bed, table, a chair, and shelving), and one lone Walmart dresser. Actually, that’s about all the furniture that I own. My room is pretty spartan.

From the “Jargon = Exclusion = Poor Usability” Dept.

BoxesandArrows.com is site dedicated to ““bringing architecture and design to the digital landscape”.

It’s a brand new site with lots of great IA-related content. The one article that I found interesting is
<href=”http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/002565.php” target=”_blank”>Speaking in Tongues</> by C. Wodtke. It is a rather high-level overview about jargon and some of its consequences. By jargon, I mean “when we replace perfectly accessible English with slang, [euphamisms,] acronyms and other mangled phraseology.”

Now as a Usability Specialist, I use jargon all the time. Words like: meta-data, meta-navigation, salience, “UI goodness”, were used all the time at Critical Path. It must be baffling to some people.

BoxesandArrows is a nice site. One of its objectives is to eliminate jargon where ever possible. It also has a clean design. If you look carefully, you’ll find that the site’s colour scheme uses blue with orange high-lights. Blue and orange? Those are complimentary colours!

Coincidence? I think not.

Cheers,

Tai

Friday Night at Roxy Blu – Garage416

From the “high school flashback” Dept.

Went clubbing last night at Roxy Blu. Had a good time.

A lot of Waterloo people there. A lot of old high school chums.

Seeing all those people brought back a lot of memories from university and high school.

Back in high school, I was what some people, most notably Byron and Ha, would call a P U N K.

I’d like to point out, that I’ve always denied that particular accusation.

Anyway, it was a good time. I saw a lot of people I haven’t seen in a while. Just plain ol’ fun.

Ahh, the memories.

Cheers,

Tai

Three Wonderful Years.

From the “I Love Jennifer So” Dept.

I just want to say that the past three years with Jen have been great. I am only so lucky to have found a girlfriend that understands me as well as she; how I love her so. To meet a person that I can love, and for someone who reciprocates with equal fervour—it’s just an amazing thing, and I hope that all of my friends and family are as lucky.

With three years under our belts, Jen and I hope to see many more anniversaries together.

From the “The most expensive Take-Out food I’ve ever had” Dept.

I’ll explain the above statement later.

For our anniversary, I made reservations at Terra Restaurant. This is an upscale restaurant in Thornhill, and is considered one of the best restaurants outside of the GTA. It was founded by Mark McEwan (head of North 44¼º) and Stephen Perrin, a former apprentice of McEwan’s who serves as head chef of Terra.

Now, I’ve seen the Iron Chef use Foie Gras before, but this is the first time I’ve ever tasted it! It melts in your mouth. I’m salivating right now when I think about it.

As for the Dining experience, I’ll try to describe it.

Terra is the only restaurant that I have ever been where the waiters announce the food that is given to you, and that cutlery is changed with each course. Jen and I both opted for the “Chef’s Tasting Menu”, an 8-course meal which started out with:

  1. Raspberry Point, P.E.I. Oysters on the half shell – garnished with lemon, and fresh horse-radish
  2. Butter poached Nova Scotian lobster with sautŽed peas, shallots and honey mushrooms
  3. Pan-seared Quebec foie gras with calvados glaze, roasted apple, served on top of toasted brioche w/ baby greens dressed with a cider vinaigrette
  4. Lime sorbet (to cleanse the pallet)
  5. Grilled provimi veal tenderloin with wild mushroom risotto and roasted asparagus
  6. A selection of three cheeses with grapes, royal gala apple slices, walnuts, and a rasin and walnut brioche (bread)
  7. A plate of petit fours (some pastries, biscuists and confectionaries)
  8. Apple & almond linzer tart with caramel saucet

Now, I made TWO mistakes at Terra that I and my wallet sorely regret. The first mistake was that I neglected to fully read the contents of the Chef’s Tasting Menu. The main course was Veal Tenderloin. I DO NOT EAT VEAL — it’s a political statement. The second mistake was that I volunteered to have a Sapphire gin and tonic (David Vu’s drink-of-choice – “It takes off the edge.”) with Jen’s Cranberry Cosmopolitan. I figured that in the 3-years that I’ve dated Jen, it was fine-time for me to drink spirits with her.

I only got to through the first 4 courses.

Now, my friends know that I am a shit-drunk. I often lie to strangers and say that I am allergic to alchohol. However, the events of lastnight make me wonder if there is truth to that falsehood.

I had one piece of my veal tenderloin (I have to admit it—it was very good) and a fork-full of the mushroom risotto (which was overdone by my standards) before I could no longer eat. The alcohol was just putting my body through Hell-and-back. I walked to the washroom to throw up, but to no avail. I did not eat anything after that.

In fact, and I have no doubt about this, I went into shock — a massive drop in blood pressure, drop peripheral blood flow, nerve tenitis w/elevated pulse and respiratory rate (no occlusion though). I almost fainted. I wasn’t even listening to Jen as she spoke. All I could do was focus and keep everything together. I had to get our waitress to pack up my remaining main course and remaining courses (except the cheese plate — damnit, I didn’t even eat any of the cheese!

I paid the bill (in truth, Jen and I ended up splitting it), I stumbled to the coat check, and we left the restaurant.

I was under 2 duvets, noxious and shivering for about an hour after we got back to Jen’s house (she lives about a 5 minute drive from the restaurant).

The kicker: I had less than a 1/3 of my drink.

At least they didn’t charge me for the gin and tonic.

All in all, the total bill was $280.55 CDN.

That was the most expensive take-out I’ve ever had.

In the end, I left the veal tenderloin at Jen’s house, and I never ever touched my plate of cheese except for the grapes.

Minus the alcohol-shock, Terra is tops in my books for its cuisine and service.

I can’t wait for the next time I go there…this time sans alcohol.

Cheers,

Tai

Grandmother

I saw my grandmother yesterday.

For those of you who don’t know my grandmother, she is 87 years-old and underwent total-hip replacement surgery on Jan 11th to repair (well, replace actually) her left hip which suffered a spiral fracture after a fall in December.

I took her to the hospital for her post-operation checkup (she’s blind), and looks like that will be her last visit. The hip is almost completely healed (although I doubt that she’ll be able to walk again without assistance), but most importantly, she’s in no more pain.

Just wanted to share one of the pleasant surprises that I have had this week.

BTW, did I mention that Jen and I are having our 3-year anniversary this Saturday?

Cheers,

Tai

Stuff.

Hey all,

I upgraded to the newest version of MovableType, the PERL-based engine that renders my weblog. Some headaches with the upgrade, although I think things work.

I’ll eventually wipe the site and rebuild.

I finally seemed to have broken the inertia that has kept me from finishing this site, so you should be seeing a few pages beginning to trickle in.

Some things:

  • Listening to an old song by a British band called Ash — girl from Mars
  • Some weird dreams: Baseball. Thunderstorm. Several tornadoes landing in my backyard, threatening my family but resulting in the decimation of all the fences dividing my neighbhors and us; green grass after the storm—I guess that’s positive, right?
  • Jen and I are celebrating our 3-year anniversary tomorrow.

Well, I have to go cut the shag that is my hair.

Cheers,

Tai.

Long time, No Blog

From the “I’m too bored to blog” Dept.

Hey All

Anyways, I’ve done a lot in the past few days. Saw Monsoon Wedding (the first “Bollywood” movie I’ve seen in the theatres), and damn, I need to get some more “brown“ friends, because if that movie is any indication, Hindu (or is it Hindi..please correct me and I’ll change that) weddings are a blast.

Jen was talking to one of her co-workers who is getting a traditional Indian wedding. Her cake alone is 12 tiers, but get this: it has a FOUNTAIN!

One of her co-workers was at a “brown” wedding and they had a professional camera man on a crane suspended up in the air video taping the event.

Crazy.

Oh yeah, and the groom is suppose to come in on horseback. Now tell me, how cool is that?

Perhaps when I get married, I’ll do an Indian Motif.

I just want to dance behind a tree.

From the “Dave, you sneaky bastard” Dept.

Apparently David Vu has an AlterEgo; he’s been moonlighting as a Super-villain while working for GE Biomedical. Now, I’m a pretty open minded guy, and what Dave does at night isn’t my business, but it’s obvious to me now, that when his plans for world domination by-way-of-GE were foiled, he turned to this alter-ego as plan B.

Women love men in tights, right?

I got a new game. It’s called Freedom Force and it’s about comic book superheroes—a favourite subject of mine.

Anyways, while flipping through the Characters’ page of the game and I found out the above picture…

From the “Kevin Ng’s HTML Kung Fu” Dept.

Keep an eye on Kev’s page. He should be updating it soon. Although I doubt that this message will reach many people outside of Kev’s normal viewing traffic…you never know.

Cheers,

Tai

Fitts Law Revealed

For those of you who don’t know what Fitts’ Law is, all I can say is that Fitts’ Law maintains that “movement time” can be mathematically expressed as a function of the distance travelled and the size of the target. More specifically,

MT = K log2(A / W + 1),

where K is a constant of error, A is the “amplitude” or distance travelled between the two centers, and W is the width of the target.

Now the above equation isn’t Fitts’ original 1954 equation, but a modified equation by MacKenzie (1992)—which seems to be slightly more accurate.

So what’s this thing about MaxMenus, and what does it have to do with Fitts’ Law? Well, Fitts’ law has a huge impact on Human Computer Interaction, as UI designers use it to model mouse movement across the screen. MaxMenus pin the menus in the corners because they are infinitely deep, or rather, they have an infinite width.

In plain words, you can throw your mouse pointer in the direction of the corner, and eventually it will wind up on the menu. That is very clever.

Corporate Anthems, Security, and a new Fitts’ UI tool.

From the “Let’s all sing a long” Dept.

I was trolling through the web—NO, I was NOT surfing for porn!—and I found this site that catalogues the 20 Best Corporate Anthems. Too Funny! Actually, I have to wonder: “What were these people thinking?”

My personal theory is that there was a bit of “Keeping up with the Jones’s” happening here.

For Example:

Company A: “Let’s make a theme song.”

Company A creates a simple theme song.

Company B: “I hear that Company A made a theme song. We can do better right?”

So, much like the cold war that ensued at Club379 (and still continues today between Kevin and I), companies began making the crap that you’ll listen too if thou are brave of heart.

From the “noitpyrcnE dna ytiruceS” Dept.

That’s “Security and Encryption” backwards if you haven’t gotten it yet.

Salon.com has a great article on message encpryption and OpenSource developers. It highlights the GnuPG movement, an OpenSource project with design goals similar to the now defunct PrettyGoodPrivacy.

I find it interesting, because Phil Zimmermann [inventor of PGP] gave some interesting commentary for the low uptake and use of encryption: “Ease of use is critical. E-mail encryption is used by only a small segment of the population of e-mail users largely because of ease-of-use issues.

While GnuGP works, it requires command-line use; not difficult for me, but time consuming for those not comfortable on the command-line.

Eric S. Raymond, president and co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, says in the article, “Much of the open-source community is still weak at end-user UI. Most hackers have not yet assimilated the knowledge or the attitude necessary to serve [normal] end-users like these.

Got to love developers. I suppose that’s why I work in the field that I do.

From the “I Love Fitts’ Law” Dept.

I downloaded this great little UI Enhancement program for my Mac. It’s called MaxMenus, and it’s created by a company called Proteron.

What MaxMenus does is that it glues contextual menus (like the ones you see when you “right-click” your mouse) to the four corners of the screen. This is one of the only times I’ve seen Fitts’ Law applied properly in Human Computer Interface Design.

I won’t ruminate on the advantages of this, but for those who know about Fitts’ Law, they’ll understand why I’m so excited.

Garth Fagan Dance

From the “Taking an interest into what Jen, my GF likes” Dept.

For Jen’s Birthday, I bought her tickets to Garth Fagan Dance at the Harbourfront Centre yesterday. He is a Tony Award winning choreographer (his most recent success being the Lion King) from NY State University.

When Jen and I went to see Les Ballet Jazz de Montreal, she expressed interest in the Garth Fagan troupe, so I bought tickets. That made Jen happy.

Unfortunately, the entertainment didn’t live up to my expectations (which were rather positive after having seen the Jazz Ballet). Among the 5 ensemble acts, the beginning and ending of the show, was great. The third episode was good, not because of the dancing, but rather because of the music (composed by Wynton Marsalis) had some interesting moments—in particularly a nice, syncopated base-line that would change scales on the OFF-beat rather than the ON-beat. Act 4 was utterly b o r i n g. So boring, that I nearly fell asleep.

The final act had a lot of African undertones. It was a great crowd pleaser (especially the woman behind us yelling, “I can feel it, Baby!” over and over again—she sure could feel something at least…), but I was too tired by that time to get my energy back up to fully enjoy it.

Again, the dancers were amazing athletes, but on the whole, it was too abstract and didn’t suck me in like the Jazz Ballet did.

It was nice to see some different sized dancers too. When people think of dancers, they think of tall, slim-built women, and very fit men. Some of these dancers were short and stocky; one even had a pot belly. Nice to see that some people can be successful and amazing while not having to “fit-the-build”.

Tai

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A blog by Tai Toh