is Useful

Some iPod Suggestions

A couple of pet peeves from my iPod, which I freely admit is not the latest whizz bang video version but a plain ol’ 4G; Firstly, when I’m in in shuffle mode sometimes a song will come up that makes me feel like listening to something else, either on the same album or by the same artist. To get to this song you have to go all the way out, into the music menu, select the correct artist or album and find the song. It would be a lot simpler to have menu options off each song to say ’see rest on this: album/artist/genre’. Secondly there are times when a song is not ripped properly and you want to know to remove it when you’ve back at a computer, or you just hate the song, so it would be nice to mark songs for deletion that iTunes automatically acted upon. You can fake that by settings the star rating to one and filtering for that but it’s not a smooth interaction.

Improving perfection

In Japanese society it is considered disrepectful to God to claim something is perfect, as only God can create perfection. This means that in all designs there is an introduced flaw, a sacrifice almost, that ensures the design is not perfect and God is satisfied.

I like to use the same excuse at times when I forget something {;)

Snap Decisions

The BBC had an article today about how we make decisions on whether or not to trust a website within a twentieth of a second. Studies seem to indicate that, whatever the real content and value of the site, most people trust their first instinct and go on to re-enforce that belief with a halo effect that makes the content on the site seem more valuable to us.

From an interaction design perspective this would seem to be simultaneously interesting and concerning. Designing a highly functional and usable site apparently means little unless people react well to it in an emotional manner when they first arrive. I feel this research is only true of sites where you have not already formed an emotional relationship through some manner, be it other channels that present the brand or information you have received, such as blog recommendations. Also the question is raised of what your target audience would react positively to.

The unseen video automatically identifies where you are in the world, checks out your local weather and then customizes the video to that. What a cute idea. It needs a bit more work, as it seemed to think our amazingly sunny and spring like winter weather here in New York was actually grey and rainy - still looked awesome though.

via we make money not art