links for 2010-05-14

““One free inter­ac­tion” is a prospec­tive design pat­tern that gives soft­ware and hard­ware a more humane feel. It exists out­side of task flows and the con­cept of users as task-doers. Instead it sits in the “in between” spaces, suit­ing users as fid­geters, com­mu­ni­ca­tors, and peo­ple who play with things.” Nice to see cham­pi­ons of util­i­tar­i­an design embrace play­ful­ness in inter­faces. I’d go fur­ther than encour­age just one inter­ac­tion that is slapped on and sug­gest it should be one of the aspects that is baked into the design. A first principle.

Alper’s notes on This hap­pened — Utrecht #6 in sound­bite form. Real­ly cap­tures the spir­it of the thing. (Too bad Haas got left out.)

Anoth­er report on our last edi­tion of This hap­pened – Utrecht, this one focus­ing most­ly on Keez Duyves’s talk.

“We can imag­ine lead­ing school bus­es of chil­dren to observe a road cut, reveal­ing the stra­ta of var­i­ous epochs: Eocene, Oligocene, late Miocene, Pliocene, Pleis­tocene, Holocene, and, now with­in the Holocene, the mil­i­tary lam­i­na.” I don’t know what to make of this (is this sup­posed to be from the future?) but I loved read­ing it.