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"…removing the screws made it clear that the magnetic zones serve a second function. When my screwdriver slipped, the screw didn’t fall into the depths of the case. Instead, it flew right over to the magnet, and I was spared the pain of extracting a three-millimeter needle from an expensive electronic haystack."
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James Box on interaction design as behavioural modifier. I really enjoyed this – mainly for its thoughts on architecture, branding, marketing, copywriting, rather than just on pure IXD. Some interesting products in there, too. Worth another look.
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"I think there's a lesson here: doing something in hardware isn't automatically cool, particularly for kids. It's harder to make things happen, so we veteran geeks get a thrill from it. We think that because it's physical, real, and a Robot, kids will automatically be excited. But for kids who are learning, and who don't appreciate the significance of the challenge, it's just hard and unrewarding."
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This is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about around a year ago – the value of bespoke, beautiful UI to interact with mundane code; people aren't just paying for software here, they're paying for interaction design.
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"…these various numbers are tossed around like so many doggie treats, so I thought I'd take Google Sketchup out for a test drive and try to get a sense of what exactly a trillion dollars looks like." A nice, simple piece of amateur informatics that is a good wake-up call.
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Margaret's slides from GDC2009. Even without the notes, there's clearly some great meat here, and "Stop Wasting My Time And Your Money" has some stonkingly good moments – notably, the discussion of the HL2 lambda, and a great, great Sam Beckett gag.