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open a new account to change my password?!

i’ve also whined about password restrictions before. But a larger, design question is why we still use account and password combinations for the internet. The security of that solution is long in the tooth. And because so many sites have accounts, it’s only natural that people share the same password across multiple sites.

Longer term, I’m not sure what the whole answer is. But a short term solution would be to build password management tools — with strong encryption — right into the browsers or better into the operating system. Help me, the customer, generate strong and random passwords for each site, and then protect them for me.

Then a next step would be to standardize the html for authentication and accounts, instead of leaving that somewhat random for different sites based on how they want to render a sign in form. This is something so many sites do and need, and they could still maintain a form but perhaps add an API or even just tags that then help browsers identify the credentials for signing in.

modern video games are arguably already immersive, in that some of these genre already become major past times for people who identify strongly with their in game persona. but i can only imagine that will increase as the realism of the experience increases.

and now there’s chatroulette…

i’m loving the youtube clips of people using chatroulette to create unique experiences. like this one with the now famous Merton thanks to his recordings:

“

Very interesting result and innovative, plus more fun. I wonder if the style feels more brain balanced as well as being more childlike. The current neatly-organized rows and columns of most web forms feels more stereotypically left brained. Whereas mad libs might feel more right brained and emotional, hence the sense of fun. But then if the form in question is not intended to be fun, it would be better in organized columns.

One design approach I use for a complex UI is progressive disclosure: move the most typical features up front or to the initial view, and move the less important ones further away or slightly obscured.

This remote has done a little of that, in that the picture-in-picture controls are smaller buttons at the bottom. I didn’t notice they were even there until just now, or that I even had picture-in-picture.

So applying progressive disclosure would be to design a TV remote that was more like a flip phone. Have the most commonly used buttons on the outside of the device, like volume up and down and channel up and down, but then when you flip open the device it would have a mobile phone like multi-touch screen. Display the TV’s guide there and manage recording options and other TV functionality on that multi-touch screen in a phone like interface.

This would remove the need for so many buttons, plus have the added benefit of giving users a multi-touch experience for browsing and interacting with the TV guide.

Then you could also browse alternative programming or recorded programs or review recording settings without interrupting what’s playing. You would have access to a full virtual keyboard for searching for programs or browsing richer content by pointing, which is impractical today. Remotes now only offer up/down/right/left/select interactions. There would be no need for a 1..9 keypad, the page up / down, menu and guide buttons. They’d all be done in a mobile style interface by flipping the device open. The buttons on the device would reduce to: power, play, pause, forward, reverse, stop, record, info, mute, and channel/volume up and down. Maybe a couple more (e.g. recall/last)

One downside of this design though is that people with poor vision currently can see the guide on the TV with a full sized screen. It’s a big viewing area. On a small handheld device one might need reading glasses to browse the program listings and manage their recording schedule. Also, currently your focus is on the TV. Having more interactions on the TV might feel more natural than on a separate device. However, the next generations are likely more comfortable with mobile style devices and interacting with them with multi-touch. So this design might be more familiar with younger demographics.

So as multi-touch screens become cheaper and cheaper, and people become more attuned to multi-touch, I wonder if a design like this will make more and more sense. I’m not likely to ever make a device like this myself, so I’m posting these notes here with the hopes that someone else creates something along those lines.

The Eyewriter from Evan Roth.

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2009/12/technology_vs_c.html

as interesting though, if you scroll down the page, you find don norman responding amongst the other comments.

don’s main point in his comment: that real game changing innovation is driven foremost by new capabilities and not by needs assessment and design research. in other words, we rarely research an area first and then create a whole new technology. we tend instead to create new kinds of things and then later decide if it serves a need. whereas refinement of a category is well served by research. and he’s asking for counter examples.

the problem i have about this discussion is in the word “innovative” and how we define it. if we define it as “unusual” then sure, design research may not product as much unusualness compared to new, underlying technologies including new materials and capabilities. but aren’t we then more saying that unusualness more often comes from new technology than from ethnography? well, that’s not saying much. i just don’t think we should really equate unusualness with innovation. to me innovation really is more about moving the ball forward in an impactful way. not creating new categories of things that no one wants, like the segway.

Author Daionisio is working on her masters in anthropology at University of Toronto, according to the video details.

And she’s posted the lyrics, so you can sing along say to some of the chorus:

The World seems to increasingly need, Anthropology
Now we’re exploring, asking Who Why and How we be People
The difference between us, is not so much
Tell me your story, your piece of what is Humanity.