is Useful

Category: Interaction Design

  • Face the Search

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    by

    Matt
    in

    Google have started integrating a behind the scenes feature that allows you to do an image search for faces. It’s pretty darn cool – first check out a normal search for the wonderful ‘Douglas Adams‘, now check out the same search for his face. Of course this is now raising a lot of discussion about…

  • The Basics of Usability: Have a Site that Works!

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    by

    Matt
    in

    With all these amazing AJAX-ified websites these days that are so simple to use it’s amazing when you come across a site that is from a major company that just doesn’t work. In this case it’s MSN’s AdCenter. For work reasons all I needed to do was sign up and activate an MSN AdCenter account,…

  • Feeling Gassy: Keyspan Energy Website Pain

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    by

    Matt
    in

    Like most people, I’m a big fan of being able to quickly and easily manage my utility bills online and the good news is that now pretty much every major utility lets you do this. Where things get a little bit less happy is in the design and execution of these websites. Generally they seem…

  • Social Flow

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    by

    Matt
    in ,

    I’ve been re-reading the excellent Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience again and I highly recommend you all do too. In it, author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes his research into how people get into ‘flow’ states, that is states of enjoyable activity where you immerse yourself completely in what you are doing and stay deeply focussed.…

  • When is a page link not a page link?

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    by

    Matt
    in

    Picture the scene: you’re happily browsing through a site, built with fast loading HTML, good CSS techniques and maybe a small amount of well placed Flash. The information you want is coming up quickly, your browser – optimized for such things – is behaving itself. Sounds idyllic doesn’t it? But all too quickly this everyday…