Interaction Design Tactics For Visual Designers By Jeff Gothelf
This post definitely made me think about what makes up a website and what makes it usable. Understanding the Before and After was something that I hadn’t really thought about before, and now I see what is so important about making sure you know where your consumer is going. When someone clicks a part of your website, or even just pushes back, that your website gives them feedback that helps them understand where they are why your website is doing what it is doing.
In Defense of Eye Candy by Stephen P. Anderson
I really liked how this reading made me think about the “personality” of web pages. After I thought about it, I totally agree with everything that this reading said. There have been many times that I decided I didn’t like an app or didn’t download an app just because of its appearance. My favorite example they talked about was the puppy robot and how they made it a puppy because when a puppy doesn’t do something you tell it to, you think it is cute. If they would have made it a butler and it didn’t do what you asked it to do, you would just think it was broken and annoying.
Inclusive Design By Faruk Ateş
I’ve never really thought about user interface before, but now I am seeing how important it is. I definitely agree that I don’t always know what I want, and if an app or web site could sense that for me that would be awesome. For instance, I think it would be really awesome if my iTunes could be better at predicting my songs that play on my shuffle. I have thousands of songs, but most days I am feeling one type of music. If I keep selecting more mellow songs, it would be great if my iTunes wouldn’t keep shuffling to rap songs, and instead just learned what I was into that day from my previous selections.
History of the Internet by Ethan Zuckerman
I never knew that when the internet started out that one of the main uses for communication, and I was shocked that it all started in 1969. After watching this video I really understand how the internet has been used as a communication device since it was invented, through chat rooms, gaming sites, email and social media.
This site made me realize how much has happened for the internet to be where it is today, in such a short amount of time. It really makes me wonder: What will the internet be like in 20 years? If it keeps growing like it has been, the possibilities are endless!
WOW! I can’t believe it used to take 12 minutes to download a song, and now it only takes 18 seconds. That is crazy! The strange part is that I was downloading songs then, and wasn’t even bothered by how long it took… I can’t imagine waiting that long today. I also remember when Yahoo! looked like it did in 2002. Oh the memories!
I can’t believe how far the web has come! I remember somethings similar to this setup when my family first got a computer.
I had learned about the spiders and how search engines work in my CS1301 class, but this graphic really made it make more sense.
WOW! This reading was really helpful. The tools they show you to use to help narrow your search make total sense (for example using “-SATs” to not include SATs in your search). Google Scholar will also be particularly helpful for my research methods class when I have to find previous research on my topic. I knew most of the keyboard shortcuts, but I didn’t know how to screenshot my computer… so that will be helpful. This will definitely be a website that I revisit!
After reading these articles, I got really inspired. I feel like I could possibly have a future in designing user interface and learning interaction design tactics. So that brings me to my Twitter account. I haven’t ever really used my Twitter before, but today I thought I would clean it up a little and follow more people. I didn’t know where to start, but I knew that I wanted to follow more news organizations and someone that posted about media design (because I am really loving all these articles). So I started following @GirlsinTech, @BBInteractive, @WebDesignShock, @NCWIT and @uxmag. I basically went through who @_caryanne was following and clicked on the ones that had the most web design articles that looked interesting to me. Hopefully following more interesting posters will make Twitter something I use more!
