Kujo - Alpha

Kujo Proposal

Good Idea? Bad Idea?

Kujo_9_Q/I

Reading chapter 9 an idea occurred to me. Why don't we see more products that can interact with each other? Right now there are many products that do interact with each other on a sub level to a whole level. Ex: An iPod will sub interact with a xbox 360 to play music but you can't load music on to an iPod like you can do on a whole level with a computer. That's software, hardware still lags a little behind. Though USB's are the most universal .

So it occurred to me, why haven't we seen hardware or future designs that are ready equipped and wired for a multitude of electronic products? I think it would be sweet to see an entertainment center that is all ready wired for gaming systems, displays and just many connections for what ever could be plugged into it. Then products could be bought without a million cords because the cords and connections would already have come with the entertainment center. Maybe even if the products that connected to the center started to make universal docking stations... thinking about docking an iPod but instead of just an iPod, a TV, a gaming system, any MP3 player, computers, cell phones... the list goes on. Then with some products that are being developed to charge products and wireless signals are getting faster and stronger the possibility of such an item bringing everything together seems much more plausible.

Kujo_5I

The wireframe part of the chapter is good. I think that a wireframe is one of the best examples of a final product till something tangible can be produced. It is something that can be quickly changed and shown to a client rather quickly. I tend to keep a stack of papers and notebooks with a bunch of my own idea's around and constantly refear to them and add to them. One notebook I draw and write out how everything is going to look and work. If you think about it many people use wireframes, Da Vinci had tons of note books with his thoughts and drawings. Many other people did too! Even though we're growing with technology I still think that it's important to write and draw idea's.

Kujo_4_Q

Doing research for me on idea's that I have for the web and design usually has me with my browser open and several tabs. Google will always be one of them and then I just search for what I am looking for. Such as web design idea's, I will pour over many sites to get idea's of what is working for people and what isn't and to see if it gives me any ideas. I will even look to see if an idea that I have has been done; maybe it didn't work or if it did there is a better way of doing it than me. After looking at all those examples I might be able to come up with a few idea's.

My question is, how do you research for something "interactive"?

Kujo_3_I

I could not agree more with the author and his section on responsive time. Over the summer I sat in on a meeting where I had my internship at, almost the whole meeting was about how fast they could get this program to work. It was loan checking software that had to contact a bank to find a loan and also the government watch list then bring it all back with personal information and loans available along with interest... there are about twenty steps to this whole process but the user only see's three or so. When they started to talk about time it was a millisecond here and a fourth of a second there... they were trying to keep it all under three seconds if I remember right. It just goes to show you that people really are thinking about time and how much it will take a user to proform actions and have the code and server proccess them.

Kujo_2_Q

I like the idea of Genius Design, it seems to be the place were the most initiative product's come from. The iPod was the example in the book, and then I thought about the Guitar Hero guitar. Who would have thought that five buttons and a flip switch would make such a great game! There are a few different versions of it to but really I only think that the orgional wired controls are any good and that the wireless one's are just something to say that you can play wirelessly. Though I have heard that people have many problems with them.

After a Google search I couldn't find much more on Genius Desin. My question is, can anyone else think of any?

Kujo_1_I

If you look back at the interfaces of PC's they have gotten easier and easier to use. I would also argue that developers are working to make computers more dumb-proof because there are so many people everywhere using it. Computers are no longer the product of the few but the many. That goes for so much more too; cars, MP3 players, ATM's, self checkout lines and food ordering devices (such as those in AJ). All these interfaces have to be designed by someone thinking about the masses. As we further push interfaces to be more user friendly I bet that we will see a large change in everything including how we develope products.