If you love the PS4 and can’t stand Xbox stuff, enjoy your romance. While I will make some references to both machines, it is not meant to be derogatory but informative.
BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) – The Xbox One is a great machine with a ton of potential. It will eventually realize said potential but for now it’s good and borderline annoying at times. That time will shrink considerably depending on the release dates of the games you want to play.
Our team has come up with ten usability guidelines for web developers and business owners. Following are the last five tips, continuing last week’s first five. For a free analysis of your website, request a free usability report from our experts.
Our team has come up with ten usability guidelines for web developers and business owners. Below are the first five, and Part 2 will follow. For a free analysis of your website, request a free usability report from our experts.
“The world around you is not what it seems,” says Ingress, the virtual game that uses the real world as its gamespace. And, perhaps, when Google’s semi-independent division Niantic Labs is finished with its mission, we humans won’t be, either.
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and usable. Note carefully that Google says nothing about the Internet in that statement.
Nearly a year ago, Corning (maker of Gorilla Glass), released a video encapsulating it’s vision of the future. It’s since gotten 17 million views on YouTube, and started numerous discussions and responses.
In the video, Corning predicted large scale desktop touchscreen displays, bigger video screens, and dynamic billboards. And while much of the video is still in the future, the OLED TV’s shown by LG at this year’s CES do seem to bring the video to life.
Summary: Many guidelines are similar for mobile and desktop design, but their mobile interpretation is much more unforgiving.
My recent column Mobile Content: If in Doubt, Leave It Out advised site owners to eliminate secondary material when writing for mobile users. Many tweets, blog postings, and other comments on the article all expanded on this theme: Yes, do cut the fluff from mobile content, but also cut secondary content when writing for desktop websites.
In one way, I can only agree. Since 1997, conciseness has been a key guideline when writing for the web. People don’t read a lot on the web and leave in a few seconds if a site doesn’t communicate its value clearly. These findings lead to more detailed guidelines, such as emphasizing the first 2 words of nanocontent (e.g., headlines and search engine links).
So yes, cut the blah-blah from your desktop site.
In the spring of 2011, Latitude Research launched a study to understand the recent explosion in gaming, driven in part by the popularity of mobile phones and tablets. Specifically, the study sought to uncover how the profile of the stereotypical gamer has changed, various motivations for gaming, and the evolving role of games in moving traditionally online experiences into the “offline” world—suggesting new opportunities for game and technology developers, educators, and social innovators.
Image: The interactive experience at UNSW’s iCinema Centre. Source: The Australian
Lost in cyberspace
You only have to be the parent of a child over the age of seven to know what I’m talking about: the vacant eyes so preoccupied by what’s on screen that they can’t focus on your face for more than a few seconds before being drawn back into the cyberworld.
As you talk, your little darling types or toggles. “Are you listening to me?” you ask, only to be told in a precocious tone: “Yeahhhh. I’m multitasking, Mum.”
New Nintendo Wii, Star Wars Game Using Microsoft’s Kinect, and PlayStation Vita Portable
Coverage update from the world’s leading video game conference: the E3 Expo in Los Angeles
Situated Research is bringing you the hot news from the world’s largest annual video game conference, the E3 Expo, which began this week in Los Angeles. So far, Nintendo has announced it’s next-generation console, called the Wii U, and Sony has launched a new handheld called the PlayStation Vita. Microsoft has announced some interesting new games for the Kinect, including Star Wars, Disneyland Adventures, and Halo 4.
Every time I give a talk, someone always asks, ”That’s all good and nice that helping users learn is the key to creating passionate users… but who’s going to do all that extra work? Who’s going to make the extra tutorials and better docs?” Answer: your user community.