Archive for ‘UX/UI Design’ category

Cursor: text

1 February, 2010 | admin | Comments

I’ve come across this a lot of time myself and it made me realise that there is a need to ‘think’ on this issue. To get to the point, just look at the image below and see what has been typed in the text-box.

I’m guessing, your answer probably might be ”yes.. il” or “yes.. ll” or ”yes..tl” or ”yes..H”  and it keeps on going!

What I’m trying to point out is that, the text pointer there shades the text typed which created an usability issue. Usually, since the text-box may not be active at the time the user wants to type something, the user brings the pointer right where he wants to type and then click inside the text-box area. This usually leaves the ‘text pointer’ few chars away from the starting point and as the user types on, the characters itself got covered up as can be seen on the image above.
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Nokia Morph Concept Phone

17 November, 2009 | admin | Comments

Although it’s been around an year since the concept phone emerges out of the human head, it seems it will take a bit of time to find it on our hands!! Self cleaning, energy harvesting, flexibility, wearability etc. are some of the attractions we have with Morph.

As yet, some of you might have been aware of the Nokia Concept phone but if you’ve not, I’m glad to share it here. The concept has been developed in collaboration with Nokia Research Center and Cambridge Nanoscience Center.

Morph is a concept demonstrating some of the possibilities nanotechnologies might enable in future communication devices. Morph can sense its environment, is energy harvesting and self cleaning!!

Sibi Media Player: an innovative media player 2

5 July, 2009 | admin | Comments

Well, the previous post let you know the main structure of the media player. If you’ve not gone through it, check the post at Sibi Media Player: an innovative media player 1 before continuing this post.

Now, let’s get closer to the Player Control Area.

Control Area

Control Area

Like I told you earlier, the image above speaks. ;)

Playlist

Playlist

The player will look as below.

The Player

The Player

So, that’s it for the present. The UX designs for the player is still under development. If you’ve your say, don’t forget to leave me a comment.

Sibi Media Player: an innovative media player 1

5 July, 2009 | admin | Comments

Sibi Media Player is an innovative media player designed keeping in mind, the word – Simple.

The player is mainly developed for the emerging mobile market although a PC (or Mac) version of the player sure do play a major role in its marketing strategies. And accordingly,  I can’t give you all the details about the player, but through this post you can get a glimpse of the UI for the PC version of the player.

The player consists of 3 main parts or modules, of which this particular post focus only on the main player module. The player is designed as an application to be made available online, that means, the media player is an ONLINE MEDIA PLAYER. So let’s get to the UI.

SIBI Media Player Modules

SIBI Media Player Modules

The above diagram talks!! I guess you have got the hunch why the Media Player is developed as an online application?? The player has the options to upload your music collection online, manage it, create playlist from your own collection and blah blah. The music has to be streamed online, such that you don’t have to carry a high capacity storage music player wherever you go. Personally, I don’t own a music player which have the storage capacity of ~40gb which is my collection in my PC.

If you are a music lover and a frequest travellor, as most of us are, you might have faced the problem of wondering which songs to put in your PMP? This is rather a hard task coz of the thousand songs, (remember, one’s music collection increases with each passing day), you won’t be  point out which songs you are going to hear during your tour; and it’s not that you can carry your system with you wherever you go!!

Ok, leave it…let me get to the UI.

The Main Player Module

The Main Player Module

The main player area is divided into 3 sub areas

  • Player Control
  • Playlist/Current Playing Info
  • Playlist Control

1) The Player Control Area consists of the buttons for Previous, Play, Stop, Next, Shuffle, Repeat, Volume, and equalizer slide in/out.

The Player Control

The Player Control

2) The Playlist/Current Playing Info are combined together in one place to reduce screen area. Unlike typical media players from Windows media player to itunes, the playlist and the current playing info display is separate eating up more screen property. SIBI playlist structure reduces the valuable screen property.

The Playlist

The Playlist

3) The Playlist Controls are pretty intuitive and simple. The almost all of the controls can be done through keyboard shortcuts. To inform the users about these shortcuts, the TIPS are displayed in a slide show format.

The Playlist Controls

The Playlist Controls

For more, check the next post Sibi Media Player: an innovative media player 2

Axure RP prototyping tool

5 July, 2009 | admin | Comments
Axure RP

Axure RP

Axure RP Pro is a dedicated tool for prototyping web sites, web applications, for a rapid creation of wireframes and specifications for applications and web sites. It’s based on concepts known from Visio and web design tools, and elegantly combines the best of the two worlds. It is a software tool that encompasses several information architecture deliverables in the one software package.

The main functional elements that Axure can do is create

  1. Annoated Wireframe
  2. HTML Prototypes
  3. Specification Documents

I’ve not gone much into using it but the software seems real interesting as I delve into it, the things it can do.

The other day, I was wondering about developing a wireframe for the DesignChef competition and I came to stumble on this wonderful software.

This is a basic tool for any interaction designer. I never knew such things existed before. I’d been using softwares like CorelDraw, Photoshop, or Illustrator or others of that kind to work on my prototypes. However, axure really makes it simple to create a full working HTML prototype real quickly.

Developing a prototype using such softwares are easy and if needs be, changes can be done in a flash. The widgets, with its drag and drop feature is quiet convenient and fast. The sitemap makes the controlling the navigation pattern simple and easy. The interaction pane helps you with page linking. Say if you’ve a button, and the page leads to a particular page when it is clicked – these structure is controlled using the Interaction Pane. With the Masters Pane, you can create master pages widget, which are essential for creating common headers , navigation or footers etc. These master widgets can be dragged and dropped to anywhere you want on the pages of the prototype and any changes on the master page will be reflected on each and every page. The page Notes and Interaction gives you options to put comments and descriptions making the page more meaningful!

Other prototyping tools include Balsamiq and iPlotz. I’ve not been able to get my hands on them, but sure I do believe they are great tools too. But sure enough, some UX designers think sketches still is a powerful tool for any UX designer or Information Architect. Sure enough, T Scott Stromberg has a point here in this article at 404 User Experience Design!!

Interesting enough, try a hand out yourself and share your experience of these softwares with me…