ChangeOrder

I'm a Mac. No, Really.

Whomever left a stack of "I'm a PC" stickers on my desk has no idea who they're dealing with.

Thanks to Brian M. for being such a great sport and being such a fabulous model.

And, of course, the obligatory "this is how the campaign was meant to be seen" photo.

The Boundaries of Natural User Interfaces

A few weeks ago, I went to a talk hosted by the IxDA Seattle chapter called "Brave NUI World," hosted by the Artefact Group. At the event, some of the Microsoft Surface team showed off their technology in action and had a panel discussion about how their product's Natural User Interface (NUI) was developed within Microsoft, as well as the user experience and usability learnings they'd gleaned from the 5-year development process.

One of the things that really struck me from this entire panel was how much energy they'd invested into paring away anything that did not look and behave like a real physical object, as opposed to trying to integrate interface elements such as a scroll bar or a text input screen into the device. Everything in their NUI required physics or real-world behavior, which creates some interesting opportunities for interaction, but is also a major limiting factor for accessing any large quantity of information.

Want to see what considerations go into designing a NUI? Artefact has done a good job of videotaping the panel, which you can watch at your leisure here or view them at the original post at 720 px wide:

Another company I saw a presentation from almost two years ago was the Netherlands-based design firm Lust. They crafted a NUI for their design firm retrospective "Generation Random", which is also quite instructive to watch in action. Click in the (not very usable) nav on their site the first text link, to see a video of their first exhibit in action.

While You're At It, Microsoft, Buy Quark

There's been two metric tons of press regarding the proposed Microsoft-Yahoo merger -- henceforth referred to as Microhoo -- so I won't mention it here again... much. But while Microsoft's throwing about vast piles of cash for non-complementary technology that bolsters its market share by reducing choice, why don't they integrate their Expression Suite with the once-mighty QuarkXPress?

As long as Google owns search, they own the Internet. So why not focus on the low-hanging fruit in other markets?

Since the Great Quark Migration of 2003, the customer base and global support for the Quark organization and its suite of page-layout products have been bleeding away like water out of a punctured balloon. In America, especially, the major reductions in customer support and the decline of a rabid, thoughtful user base have completely cannibalized their market capitalization.

Ten years ago, when InDesign was a twinkle in Adobe's eye, this wasn't an issue. If you told me that a program was going to come along and take me out of Quark 3.1, I was going to say, "No, never! This program is amazing!" Of course, today I say the same thing about Adobe CS3. The tables turned so swiftly due to Quark's extraordinarily slow development cycle and lack of clean integration with Adobe's core product set. Add a very high cost of upgrading -- both in terms of time and money -- and people leapt for a program that was bundled with the indispensable Photoshop and Illustrator.

The only hurdle standing in Microsoft's way? That Quark's file foundation is in the Postscript language, licensed from Adobe, Microsoft's arch-nemesis. To that I say: So what? Strip out Quark's web development tools, whose functionality are a mere shadow of what is necessary to pull off an enterprise-level site. Fork over the necessary moolah to Adobe to keep the program running. Discover ways to extend Quark's core functionality into integrating and translating Postscript to XAML and back.

Until Microhoo squares off against the Googlenet, this seems like a surefire way to keep the troops busy and integrate a pretty good product into their design software portfolio. We shall keep our eyes peeled if it comes to pass.

And remember, Microsoft: you always have the option of buying Corel, too...