Discussion Archive: May 2008

Floating panels vs. resizable splitter

In Adobe apps, you often find all auxiliary windows appearing as floating
windows - palettes, properties, layers etc.

In Microsoft apps, you often find the auxiliary windows docked to the sides
of the main window with movable splitters between them.

Which approach you like better and why? Do you think one can combine the
both approaches? I am curious how it is usually implemented in Mac apps (I
haven't got one yet)?

Painful Registration Flow

I am doing a project for a company whose site registration form is
only slighter shorter than the SATs.

I am preparing a document that tries to sell the idea of a very short
and easy registration that allows the user to get into the site first,
and add more info about themselves and their preferences for things
such as email newsletters organically, over time, when it is important
to the user.

This is a hard sell, as all the company metrics are based on things
such as newsletter signup at reg.time, ignoring things such as
abandonment rate or false data in the reg.

interactions magazine, May+June 2008

Just published:
interactions magazine, May+June 2008
http://interactions.acm.org/

Interactions: A New Renaissance of Worlds Colliding
Richard Anderson, Jon Kolko

Section: Looking at Things Differently

Designing from the Inside/Out
Laura Seargeant Richardson

The Experience Cycle
Hugh Dubberly, Shelley Evenson

Take a Chance on Me: Using Randomness for the Design of Digital Devices
Tuck Leong, Steve Howard, Frank Vetere

What Do We Mean by "Program?" The Convergence of Architecture and
Interface Design
Benjamin H.

Mobile Social Networking....the experience is not really complete

Mobile social networking is on the rise, but somehow the experience
feels incomplete. I have gone through a couple of mobile social
networks out there and they are nowhere near my expectations.