Patrick Binkley beta

pjbinkley.iweb.bsu.edu/flash/fullblast.html

Rata-my-Beta - Seth

one

two

Justin Shimp ALPHA

Christian Long - Alpha

Andrew Lewis - Alpha Dog

Rate my alpha....

Barrios_Alpha

Tetta Oyama - alpha

Binkley - Alpha

Jacob Barnard - Alpha

Current working build is here:

http://jmbarnard.iweb.bsu.edu/BarnardDevTest/

I will be doing the "paint-job" for my site as I get the functionality near completion.  For some general design tutorials, here is a site I was introduced to the other day.  Just another tool to consider:

http://tutsplus.com/

Cami Podell - Alpha

If you would like to have a closer look, go here.

Taylor-Alpha

Taylor Alpha

Kujo - Alpha

Bryanna Homeier-Alpha Project

Evan Bell - Alpha

Ben Friedman-Alpha

Richardson_Alpha

Scott_Loy Alpha

Justin Geisler - Alpha

Frye_alpha

Seth Winn - Alpha

one

two

step

Tetta Oyama - Proposal

Patrick Binkley - Proposal

Jordan Taylor- Proposal

Aaron Vaughn - Proposal

Kirk Barrios Proposal

Bryanna Homeier - Proposal

Kirk Barrios Proposal

Christian Long - Proposal

Frye Proposal

Chris Richardson Proposal

Seth_Proposal

Jacob Barnard - Proposal

(Site Preview Through Its Development)

http://jmbarnard.iweb.bsu.edu/BarnardDevTest/

(Pre-Alpha Design Specs)
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcv8sm7j_49gbqmjjhb&hl=en

Andrew Lewis Proposal

Comment on my idea.....  

Kujo Proposal

Good Idea? Bad Idea?

Scott Loy- Proposal

Ben Friedman Proposal

Evan Bell - Proposal

Justin Geisler - Proposal

Vaughn_7_I

On the thought of multitasking, because I'm so boring and can't find anything else particularly interesting about the chapter, it's interesting how people today seem to be so overwhelmed that multitasking has become a learned defense as a way to absorb all the information which is constantly being fed to us. It's not a negative or positive reaction, it's just the way it is and the way our society is changing. An interesting product of multitasking, though, is how customization has become a beneficiary of it, in that we are very selective about the information we reach out to understand. The selection of product and information that people choose to expose themselves to is more interesting to me than the fact that we are so constantly trying to do everything at once.

Frye_7_I

I liked the section in chapter seven about designing for adaptation. This is a huge part of interaction for me. When someone goes on to msn, yahoo, or gmail, they're able to give their homepage a custom fit. Even inside Blackboard your able to adapt the site to what you feel is most important. I think it would be cool to give every webpage this sort of interaction. For instance, you could change the color scheme to something more pleasing to you.

Andrew_7_I

Like many of the other comments I also found the section of the chapter on multi-tasking to be very interesting. It seems like we have kind of become numb to the amount of multi-tasking we do on an everyday basis to the point where I do not think we perceive it as multi-tasking. As Christian stated how often do we see someone on chatting on Facebook, listening to their IPOD, writing a paper, and talking on their cell phone all at the same time. Our generation is maybe the first to adapt, and we had to adapt, to these new technologies. In the future we will be designing for our generation as well as the younger generation, who have grown up with multi-tasking and who are very efficient at it. Therefore it is important to take this into account whenever we are designing a new media element.

Justin_7_I

I thought the section on Multitasking has some interesting ideas. The author talked about how he frequently misspelled the word "ubiquitous" and how he thought that computers connected to the internet should be able to somehow take misspellings and share them with the world. So if one person anywhere around the world misspells a word, and corrects that misspelling, every other person connected to the internet who made the same mistake would be automatically corrected.

I thought that this concept would be very useful but could also be extremely dangerous. It seems to me that this type of "fix" may somehow open up new portals to hackers sending new viruses. I'm not a hacker and I may have no idea what I'm talking about, but the thought of having even more knowledge of what other people are doing on their own personal computers doesn't seem to be in the best interest of people.

Bryanna_7_I

The book mentioned one of the drawbacks of customization being that users have to enter in information they may not want everyone to know.  Privacy concerns are growing larger, especially with recent events like Facebook trying to say they'll own all data you enter into their site, even if you delete your profile later.  I think when you create a device that allows information based customization, you need to make sure the users' privacy rights are protected

Scott_9_I

The book was talking about how "the internet will move from behind computer monitors and into the objects and buidlings all around us". This also concerns me because of the direction that country is going because the government is putting their hand into more and more things. One thing that is does not have its hand in, is the internet. When it was talking about RFID chips, I have a concern because you can use those to track items, and/or people. It is a possibility that those devices might have to registered with the government and that is not appealing to me one bit. I don't like the idea of people knowing everything about me and knowing where I am, and what I buy. I especially do not want the government knowing these things about me.

Scott_7_I

When the book mentioned that traffic maps could sense the traffic conditions based on the information coming from cars, that made me worry a bit. There would have to be some sort of device that tells the program of where and how fast you are traveling. I do not think this would be a good idea. I would not want to tracked of where I am going and how fast I am driving. It reminds me of Big Brother. I don't want people to be able to track where I am going and how fast I am driving. That is a concern to me because people can use that information for other things that I do not even know about.

Tetta__7__I

In this chapter, the author of the book talks about multitasking. I understand what multitasking means, but I never really thought something like Amazon showing the “People who bought this also bought…” could be considered multitasking, but it actually is multitasking when I think about it. I really want to make my project for this course interactive and multitasking, but I am not quite sure if I can achieve them in a flash video or swf.

Chris_7_I

I thought the sections on flow and adaptation were useful. Saffer mentioned that it is important to keep in mind that there is a back and forth between the user and the product. He used an example of how a user learns a drawing application. At first, the design is simple. As the user becomes more familiar, the product seems to be able to do all kinds of advanced things. Saffer explains that the two entities react and respond with each other. An application that is too challenging produces anxiety, an application that is not creates boredom.

Evan_7_I

I think if people are able to customize their interface, it generates more interest for them in the product. Even if the look of the interface isn't the primary function of the product, I think if something is personalized, people will want to come back. As far as multitasking goes, I disagree with Saffer about the automatic spell check. I'm not so sure that would work correctly in certain situations. For example, sometimes when I'm trying to format something in Word on my own, Word decides it knows what I'm trying to do and formats it for me. Unfortunately, most of the time it is wrong. Of course, that could just be a Microsoft problmem. Until I'm convinced it could be done correctly, I'd rather just run a manual spell check.

Christian_7_I

The section I found to be very interesting from these two chapters was the part on Designing for Multitasking. From the title, I figured it would be discussing how these days everyone seems to be doing so many things at the same time. Like when you walk on campus, very rarely do you ever see someone either A) not on their phone, B) not with an ipod, or C) a combination of the two. This section actually talked about how all web pages and computerized devices should (and for the most part could) be personalized based on user preferences. I especially found it interesting when it talked about web page layouts being tailored to individual users and changing over time. Think of how much time and effort this would save if web pages changed their own design and layout based on how the user interacted with the site. This would optimize the usability of the site. I would like to see our future head in this direction of more personalized media.

Jacob_9_I

The part about this chapter that really interested me was the discussion of spimes.

According to Bruce Sterling, quoted by Saffer:

A SPIME is an entity that is aware of

SP: space

+

IME: time,

...and it documents everything about itself and those things affecting it from the beginning of its life until the end of its life.

...sounds kind of like a human?

The plural of SPIME is SPIMES, which in reverse is SEMIPS.

Interesting to notice here is the acronym MIPS, which is already known as "millions of instructions per second," the predicate behind a some modern CPU logic.  And, imposing my own thinking here, we could let the first two letters SE be "social entity"... well, maybe we should make it "social entities" to keep the plurality.

... so, we have "Social Entities [that can process] Millions of Instructions Per Second."

...sounds about right... and scary.

Patrick_7_I

I liked the section of chapter 7 that talked about designing for multitasking.  Saffer mentioned how Amazon made completing tasks in the future easier and more interesting for users.  When you check out and make a purchase, your information would be saved, making the next purchase very fast and easy to do.  I'm not sure how much multitasking would benefit my website for this class, but it's a good idea to keep in mind for the future.  Anytime something can me made easier for the user, you should take advantage of that to keep the users coming back.

Jacob_7_I

I think one thing we need to notice from this chapter is how Saffer defines smart applications and clever devices.  These devices talk with one another (i.e. the laptop feature that talks with a traffic server about your car's speed, etc.) and are able to relate to each other.

This goes back to a concept mentioned at the beginning of class.  That is: the devices and systems we design are really in the end meant to facilitate communication among humans.  It is interesting to see that when we apply this same concept to inter-machine/software communications, we call those machines and software clever or smart.

Heh... I guess this would be a inner-relation (I hesitate to say metarelation): e.g. machines and software designed to relate to each other in order to ultimately facilitate human relation.  I wouldn't say that it is a metarelation because it is not a relation of a relation.

i.e.   H - D - D - H is what I am talking about...

where H = human

and D = some designed entity (software, hardware, etc.)

and the dashes are a line of connection

... essentially, this observation is my big 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.

Vaughn_6_I

Reading this chapter brought back memories form the web design class I'd taken last year, and amongst other things, the idea of text and its usefulness or creative flexibility recurred to me. On that note, I'll just post a link to a site that I've contributed to, but regard highly in its layout. Thunderbolt is a very text-based website, which alludes to a more journalistic and sophisticated take on the world of video game sites, and has a great sense of usability and guidance for the end use. It's just a site I think about whenever web design becomes the topic of discussion.

Kirk_6_I

When I was reading this chapter, I was thinking about how web design has evolved and become more sophisticated in such a short period of time, in comparison with other forms of media. What I mean is that newspapers and television (especially news) has been presented in basically the same way since their inception. However, the internet is constantly changing. Remember when websites with frames were all the rage? Now if you come across a page that uses frames you just assume it hasn't been updated since 1998. Also the internet is incorporating more and more multimedia as people get faster connections. I like to browse through waybackmachine (http://www.archive.org/web/web.php) to see how websites used to be. For example, ESPN.com is barely recognizable in 2000 compared to today. But, the Sportscenter broadcasts are basically the same, except for a ticker on the side that lets you know what's coming. And BSU's webpage in 2000 looks like it was designed to be viewed on a PDA. So I guess my point is, it's becoming standard to assume that our users are going to be using decent sized monitors with fast connections, and as interaction designers, we facilitate the growth of technology by basically forcing users to either upgrade their systems or not use our design.

Justin_6_I

This chapter was full of alot of good information for creating projects.  One thing that the author mentioned that I've heard too many times to count is about typography.  Although everyone by now should know about the good and bad font types to use, we still see websites that are hard to read.  Making sure to have the right type of font, size of font, alignment, etc is a big part of creating a successful project and is just one of many aspects to think about when creating projects.

Frye_6_I

I really liked how this chapter mentioned the over-use/under-use of sound on the web. I think that sound can really help develop a particular applications interactivity. The book mentions how some websites can suddenly start blasting music at you while others use sound to subtly enhance an interface. And referring back to the previous chapter when it spoke about designing through emotion, I think sound is a must. It can definitely take a feeling that a developer it trying to create to the next level.

Patrick_6_I

When reading chapter 6 of the book, I found the section about visual flow to be helpful and interesting.  Saffer mentioned that in the western world, the eye generally travels from left to right, top to bottom.  The diagram in the book with the squares seems pleasing and easy to follow because of the visual flow that the designer kept in mind.  Using subtleties like this can easily help the usability of your design.