In 2020, Microsoft Excel introduced a new function: LAMBDA. Software updates are frequent, and often go unnoticed. But sometimes, a software update brings something somewhat surprising: a shift in the identity of the user. The Lambda update shifts the identities of spreadsheet users and communities, and reinvigorates longstanding debates about whether spreadsheet use ought to … Continue reading Could a software update change your identity?→| Advait Sarkar
Can you imagine using a computer without a mouse, keyboard, or touchscreen? Why would we even need to do that? In this article, we will learn how virtual on-screen ‘lenses’ can be controlled using eye-tracking technology, to magnify and show additional details on charts. Using your eyes to control a computer has some unexpected challenges, … Continue reading Look, no hands! Exploring data with your eyes→| Advait Sarkar
The idea of writing a computer program by writing English (or another natural human language) is attractive because it might make coding easier and faster. This article tells the story of my encounter with natural language programming as a graduate student, and the small working system I built. I discuss the idea of context limiting: … Continue reading Coding in natural language: let’s start small→| Advait Sarkar
The “metaverse” is the collective marketing term for a set of virtual reality media experiences. It is accessed using headsets such as the Oculus Quest, Valve Index, and HTC vive. It is often prese…| Advait Sarkar
Enterprise dashboards are built to inform decisions, align teams, and drive performance. But too often, they end up doing the opposite—overwhelming users, hiding insight, and eroding trust in the data. We’ve worked with teams across industries—from financial services to logistics to healthcare—and while every dashboard has its nuances, the same UX issues appear again and… The post The Most Common UX Errors in Enterprise Dashboards (And How to Fix Them) appeared first on VERSIONS®.| VERSIONS®
Whenever humans have complicated, repetitive jobs to do, designers set to work making computer systems that do those jobs automatically. Autopilot systems in airplanes are a good example. Flying a commercial airliner is incredibly complex, so a computer system helps the pilots by doing a lot of the boring, repetitive stuff automatically. But in any … Continue reading Let the brain take the strain→| cs4fn
Buzz Aldrin standing on the moon. Image by Neil Armstrong, NASA via Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain You have no doubt heard of Neil Armstrong, first human on the moon. But have you heard of…| cs4fn
Image by Felix Heidelberger from Pixabay (cropped) The 2025 tennis championships are the first time Wimbledon has completely replaced their human line judges with an AI vision and decision system, …| cs4fn
Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay In the 2025 RHS Chelsea Flower Show there was one garden that was about technology as well as plants: The Avanade Intelligent Garden exploring how AI might be…| cs4fn
October 3 2024 – Niels Floor | Interaction design is a discipline that is foundational to learning experience design. However, it is often overlooked. And that’s a shame, because I see IxD skills as essential for designing great learning experiences. In fact, both fields have a lot in common. “Interaction design (IxD) is the practice of designing interactive digital products, ... Het bericht Learning Experience Design vs Interaction Design verscheen eerst op Learning Experience Design.| Learning Experience Design
February 12 2024 – Niels Floor | How do you ensure learners reach their goals? And how do you know if these goals are relevant for the learner? To answer these questions, it’s smart to take a good look at goal-oriented design. “Learning experience design (LXD) is the process of creating learning experiences that enable the learner to achieve the ... Het bericht Goal-oriented design for learning experience design. verscheen eerst op Learning Experience Design.| Learning Experience Design
The best error message is the one that never shows up. It is always better to prevent errors from happening in the first place by guiding users in the right direction ahead of time. But, when errors do arise, well-designed error handling helps teach users how to use the app as you intended. In this article, Nick Babich will examine how the design of apps can be optimized to prevent user errors and how to create effective error messages in cases when errors occur independently of user input.| Smashing Magazine
How to add a Welsh language toggle to your prototypes so you can better test with Welsh users.| designnotes.blog.gov.uk
Microsoft’s Comic Chat was an automatic conversation visualizer that used the format of comic books to lay-out text for a chat into a visual story. Taking lessons from Scott McCloud’s seminal book, Understanding Comics, Comic Chat’s designers and engineers, David Kurlander, Tim Skelly, and David H. Salesin, created a deceptively simple system that automatically generated comic-style visual panes in a text-based chat system. As users typed (or, today, perhaps talk), the system would iden...| Nathan.com
This was more than the typical industrial film made by a corporation to communicate a vision of the future. It was a remarkably cogent vision that has largely held up over the last 37 years!| Nathan.com
The Microsoft ActiMates were the first stuffed animals (or plush toys) that interacted with children, both directly through physical contact as well as through the computer (when its CD-ROM was inserted), and the television. The result of these simple, yet prophetic features is that a magical character seems so responsive that it’s hard for children not to regard it as alive—at least in some way.| Nathan.com
While this isn’t classically interactive, it is an active experience in a really interesting way.| Nathan.com
We used to speak a lot about “metaphors” in interaction design but as we’ve settled on so many archetypes, now, this seldom enters the conversation. We simply assume the dominant paradigm and dress it up differently—if at all. But, the reality of mental models and metaphors is that there are always many more opportunities than the ones we’re “used” to. It’s been years since the famous Apple v Microsoft “look and feel” trial, in which courts just decided that everything was...| Nathan.com
What comes to your mind if we talk about maintenance? As Naomi Turner points out, the pandemic has in some ways made what was often “invisible” labour much more visible: people’s care for—and repair of—the systems around us (and each other) has been central to… Read more| architectures by Dan Lockton
Sleep Ecologies: Tools for Snoozy Autoethnography (DIS 2020) from imaginaries on Vimeo. Sleep Ecologies, supported by Philips, explored how designed tools for autoethnographic inquiry could help people understand their own sleep health, and the wider wellbeing and lifestyle ‘ecologies’ around it. Taking student sleep as… Read more| architectures by Dan Lockton
We’d like to invite you to Climate Pathways, an exhibition of projects from the Imaginaries Lab‘s fall 2019 studio elective at Carnegie Mellon, Research Through Design. Download the catalog of projects Friday November 22, 5.30pm–7.30pm: Exhibition opening and project demos Saturday November 23, 10.00am–5.00pm: Exhibition… Read more| architectures by Dan Lockton
It’s the end of December, which means it’s time for an update. Here at the Imaginaries Lab we’re just completing our second year, currently based within Carnegie Mellon School of Design. We’re a pretty part-time lab at present, but have aims to do much more… Read more| architectures by Dan Lockton
Can design help people think about and express their own mental health? Four ongoing projects from students in the Imaginaries Lab studio New Ways to Think, in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon, are exploring creative ways for us to describe, talk about, and… Read more| architectures by Dan Lockton
Shengzhi Wu, Gray Crawford, Devika Singh, and Dan Lockton, 2017–18 Funded by the CMU College of Fine Arts’ Fund for Research & Creativity, and using data provided by CMU Facilities Management Services. Read our CHI 2019 Late-Breaking Work paper Lockton, D., Crawford, G., Singh, D.,… Read more| architectures by Dan Lockton
by Dan Lockton, Delanie Ricketts, Shruti Aditya Chowdhury (Imaginaries Lab, Carnegie Mellon School of Design) and Chang Hee Lee (Royal College of Art) Much of how we construct meaning in the real world is qualitative rather than quantitative. We think and act in response to,… Read more| architectures by Dan Lockton
(image from Let’s talk about body language. A key property of body language is that it is almost always unconscious to both giver and receiver. Image from: This is not a problem in itself &#…| Earth...Brains...Technology...Design
As a design thinker of the Don Norman ilk, I place ample blame for human error on negligent or arrogant design from trend-setters who seem to be more intent on presenting slick, featureless interfa…| Earth...Brains...Technology...Design
Morphocode Explorer is an interactive web tool that combines various data sources and provides a single, powerful, easy to use interface for exploring the city.| MORPHOCODE
How the GOV.UK Design System team investigated ways to support government service users, balancing functionality with the user need for privacy and discretion.| designnotes.blog.gov.uk
Product design often encounters a tension between solving observable customer needs (reactive design), and inventing novel experiences without concrete basis in current customer behaviour, but whic…| Advait Sarkar
We typically think of charts as the end result of data analysis. To create a chart in Excel, you must first select some data. To produce a chart in Python or R using charting libraries, you must pr…| Advait Sarkar