Over the last few weeks, some of us at ExperienceLab have
been trying out the Moves fitness app. It’s actually causing
a bit of rivalry between us, we’ve been emailing screen shots to each other
showing how many steps we’ve taken! My colleague is definitely winning so far
with 32,589 steps in one day as he explored NYC!
In-between watching the closing events of the London 2012 Olympics, I took a couple of minutes to have a look on the App Store on my iPhone. I noticed a game called the The Heist which was free 'for a limited time period' and decided to give it a go.
The Heist is, at a basic level, a puzzle game with the goal being to solve the various puzzles to unlock a series of security mechanisms on a vault. However, the games uses a clever, and unique as far as I can tell, game mechanism to add narrative to the game.
Today mark's the 30th anniversary of the ZX Spectrum, an event being celebrated around the web - even Google are celebrating with a Google Doodle. Having celebrated my 30th anniversary a few years ago now, I have fond memories of the ZX Spectrum, so please bear with me while I take a stroll down Nostalgia Lane.
It was one of the first computers in the UK that people could afford and have at home. It gave me my very first experience of computer games, and programming. My earliest memories of the Spectrum were of my dad loading up some educational games to teach me my ABCs and 123s. I quickly progressed to more serious gaming with the likes of Horace Goes Skiing, and eventually the legend that was Elite (the creator of which has gone onto make his own homebrew computer system called the Raspberry Pi). Looking back at youtube videos now, you realise how very basic gaming was back then, but at the time it was cutting edge. Even that modem-like noise that the Spectrum made when it loads games takes me back.
But the Spectrum wasn't just about games. To run any program you had to enter a very basic piece of code: Load "". This magical piece of code allowed you to play games, but because you were typing code to play a game, it mean't you felt less reluctant to try coding yourself. It enticed you to try more. Spectrum magazines at the time would often publish code that you could enter yourself to program your own game. I tried a few times, but don't think I ever once managed to do it successfully - all it took was one misplaced comma and you would get a boatload of errors.
There's little doubt that this small, simple piece of kit contributed hugely in leading me to where I am now. It made me realise at a very early age the power of computers, while also making me very comfortable with technology. As I moved from the Spectrum to the Amiga, then onto PCs, games consoles and Macs - I started seeing how improvements in technology and UI helped to make the experience of computers better, and more human - ultimately making them more accessible. Nowadays we all have computers in our homes, and in our pockets in the form of mobile phones. Each leap and bound in progress has cast the net wider, allowing more people to benefit from computers and not be afraid of them. For me, the spectrum was a hugely important catalyst for this.
Over the weekend I drove out with my girlfriend to wilds of the North Downs near Dorking. I parked up in a car park at the foot of Box Hill, looking forward to the climb to the top. As I went to pay for the parking, I stopped short when I noticed that there was no payment machine. The only option was to pay by phone. This is something I've never done before, but was keen to try out to see how it compared to a regular coin payment machine - plus I didn't have much in the way of choice to pay any other way!
The stepping stones near the Car Park of Doom
The sign at the car park gave a phone number, and a location number - presumably so they knew what car park I'd parked in. I called the number, and was immediately connected to an automated voice recognition system. My heart sank as these are usually fine at recognising that there's a voice speaking to them, but not so great at figuring out what words the voice is saying...
Along with the new Newsstand feature in Apple's latest iOS 5, the Guardian has launched its iPad version of the paper. We've spent the last few weeks using it and thought it's about time we shared our opinion with the world.
Continue reading "Guardian iPad App: a sign of things to come?" »
Thursday 22 September saw the UK launch of revolutionary new gaming service: OnLive.
OnLive is essentially games in the cloud. The advantage being that you don't need an expensive games console to play the games - you can stream them via your computer, and you don't need the latest, more expensive 25-core processor to run the games: if you can watch fullscreen YouTube videos on your computer, then chances are that you can also use OnLive.
So, we decided to give it a go….
Usability is most associated with helping improve the user experience of a product - making users' lives easier. However, as with all things there is a light and a dark side. In the field of usability this comes in the form of 'dark patterns' - interface quirks that are designed to trick the user into doing something they don't want to do.
I came across a minor, but annoying dark pattern today while booking a business trip on the East Coast Trains site. One of the options during payment is the standard newsletter/promotion tie-in:
I'm a keen amateur photographer. As such, I of course own a digital SLR. I love using it and doing so has taught me a lot about the science and pragmatics of photography.
However, it's not the camera I use the most. So what is? My iPhone 4. And I'm not the only one - the iPhone 4 has now become the most popular camera on Flickr - shown by the yellow line in the chart below.
I recently discovered an annoying UI quirk in iCal on my Mac. I had been invited to an event via Exchange. Over email, the attendees had discussed moving the meeting, so decided to drag the event on iCal from one day to the new date.
As soon as I did it, I saw the following message pop up:
Now, I only wanted to move the date on *my* calendar - I didn't want any one else to see the changes, but there seems to be no option to allow me to do this. I only have 2 options to Send the message (presumably to the other attendees) and one to Edit - which gives me no option to avoid sending the message.
The message text itself is quite unclear, and I'm used to seeing a Cancel message on these modal dialog boxes. There's nothing else I can do in iCal until I've dealt with this message, so I ended up Force Quitting the application to avoid sending an update to all the other recipients.
Simply adding a Cancel button would have solved all my problems.
So I went on holiday to Rhodes with a group of friends in July this year. Late one evening we decided to head to a beach bar and do what any self-respecting group of single guys on holiday should do…we hit the Scrabble board.
But not just any Scrabble board. We played the iPad version. We formed two teams of two, and just to add that extra piece of mojo to attract the attention of any passing Greek goddesses (as if iPad scrabble wasn’t enough), we hooked up our iPhones to the iPad via Bluetooth to use as tile boards.
This blog post is a summary of the ensuing 2 hours of gritty Scrabble action.
