I noticed this sitting in a restroom. Which is it, hand soap or dishwashing liquid? It is dishwashing detergent, but you might not realize that with a quick glance at the label. So, what’s it doing in a restroom, you might ask? Sure enough, I learned that somebody had accidentally purchased it to put in the restroom as a backup for when the soap dispenser runs out.
Have you ever gone to lunch and then forgotten what exactly you were doing before you left?
When I connect my Canon camcorder to my computer to import video, the camera’s LCD displays the following message:
Do not disconnect the USB cable or the power source while the camcorder is connected to a computer. Cannot turn off the camcorder or change the operating mode.
While in this state, iMovie is able to control the camera just fine, but none of the camera’s controls function. “Ejecting” the camera from my desktop doesn’t return control to the camera. The only thing I can do is yank the cable, which it explicitly tells me not to do.
Somebody didn’t think this all the way through.
In the world of dragons and knights, you are the villain of the story. It is your duty as a dragon to feed your greed by destroying and raiding as many villages as possible to create a treasure cave King Arthur himself would envy. But be wary of the black and white knights, for they hinder your ability to collect and pillage.
Of the three games resulting from last semester, Pillage the Village was the most successful design. It should have been, as it was the largest team. As the other two teams, they did a great job theming the game through the artwork and game pieces. What set them apart was that their game was the only one of the three that provided enough complexity for emergent behaviors.
Each player takes the role of a dragon: gold, red, black, blue, green, or white. Each dragon starts at its own, color-coded cave in one of the corners of the board. On their turn, a player will roll the die and move that number of grid squares in any horizontal and vertical combination. The darker squares represent villages. Villages in the outer ring are smaller, and thus have less potential for wealth. The village in the center of the board always has the most treasure. To pillage a village, a dragon must traverse every square of the village. Markers are placed on each square that has already been devastated, but treasure only goes to the dragon that pillages the last square of the village. When that happens, the player draws a card to see their spoils.
The dragon must carry the treasure with them as they continue to move around the board, but they are at risk of being attacked. Their are several knights on the board as well, some white and some black. White knights only move diagonally and will take half of the gold a dragon is carrying if they land on the same space. Black knights move as dragons do. They will take all of the gold a dragon is carrying and send the dragon back to its cave with its tail between its legs. Every turn, after moving their dragon, a player also moves one of the knights. Any gold retrieved by a knight is placed in the village at the center of the board.
Dragons can also attack each other by landing on the same space. Both players roll, and the player with the higher number takes the other player’s treasure. A player’s goal, then is to get the treasure they have pillaged back to their cave, from which it may no longer be stolen. The player must find a balance between pillaging villages and making the trip home to secure their hoard.
Each dragon has a that it may use once a game. For example, Licinius, the gold dragon, is capable of stealing double gold due to his gluttony and overly large hands, while Terra, the green dragon, has the ability to restore a previously pillaged village due to its natural healing qualities.
The game ends when all villages have been pillaged. The player with the most treasure in their cave wins. As you can see, the players have many choices to make. Should I try to hit the smaller, outlying villages or go for the center? How long should I take my chances before returning my stolen gold to my cave? Black Knight or White Knight? Move knights away from me or attack someone else? Head for a village or take a chance attacking another player? When can I use my special power to greatest effect? Because their are so many decisions to be made, there is a lot of room for different strategies to emerge, and that is a strong signifier of a good game.
Dogwood
I’m currently adapting a user interface to be used on a ruggedized tablet running Windows 7. You have to understand, this is for a military customer, and they have their reasons, short-sighted though they may be. At any rate, the tablet edition of Windows 7 is not particularly well suited to touch. Here’s the process I have to go through every time the tablet goes to sleep and locks me out.
Just like on the desktop, I’m required to press Control + Alt + Delete to sign back in. I’ve never understood why that’s necessary to begin with, but this is on a tablet—there’s no keyboard. The OS seems to realize that, because the message on the screen says, ”Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete or use the Windows security button to log on.” I didn’t know what that meant the first time, but eventually found a tiny little button labeled with an iconic key on the side of the tablet. Pressing that brought up a screen with the password field and the onscreen keyboard.
Using the keyboard is very frustrating. It gives absolutely no feedback when you tap a key. The key doesn’t depress or highlight or make a sound. The only way you can tell whether or not your tap registered is to look up at the password field to see if a bullet appeared. Of course, there is no way to tell whether or not you hit the correct key. Being used to the behavior of the soft keyboard on my iPhone, it’s rather off-putting. I’ve started using the stylus, because I’ve found I make less mistakes.
The tablet does support multi-touch interaction, but it isn’t very good. A webpage may be scrolled vertically with one finger or two fingers, but only a two-finger swipe will scroll horizontally. With a one-finger scroll, you get momentum-scrolling, but not so with two-finger scrolling—the page stops moving as soon as your fingers break contact with the screen.
And, of course, there’s the issue of the cursor. It’s invisible, but it is there, and moves to your finger’s contact point. This means that tooltips and hover effects will be enacted after you have touched an object.
It’s frustrating to work with, but it renews my appreciation for Apple’s accomplishments with the original iPhone.
FontExplorer X Pro 4.0 is available, or so I was told. I do use FontExplorer to manage my font library, so of course I’m going to upgrade. Apparently, however, they don’t actually want me to upgrade, as the only options are to ignore the new version or to have them remind me later. Where’s the “Give us your money right now!” button?
When I scrolled all the way to the end of the announcement in the dialog, i did find a link to their website where I could download the new version. The resultant webpage had a beautiful, large photo that took up half the height of the browser window, per the current fashion. Below that was a big, honkin’, green button labeled ”Download Free Trial”, so I clicked it. This displayed a popup with which to collect my name and email address so that they will be able to hound me later about paying for it, but most of the form displayed below the fold. I had to scroll to see what should have been shown to me when I clicked the button.
Eventually, after installing the new version of the application and launching it, I was able to click a link that took me back to the website to pay for a license. I filled out all of the information, and I double-checked my credit card information. When I pressed the submit button, I was told that my order was declined.
Of course, they gave no indication as to why, so I have no idea what I need to do for them to accept it. I guess they didn’t really want me to upgrade after all.
I hesitate to make too many judgments about iOS 7 before I see it displayed on my own phone and have a chance to touch it. However, my first impression is that it is awfully bright. I notice that all of the images on their website are shown on a white iPhone. They’ll probably seem garish on a black one. From the default background image they’ve chosen to the icons on the home screen and the text within apps, they’re using bright, vibrant colors. The translucency introduced to panels like Control Center allow those bright colors to shine through and interfere with readability. Everything seems to be shouting for my attention.
It feels to me like the anti-skeuomorphs won. They made such a stink about stitched leather and wooden bookcases that the designers at Apple went to the extreme, creating an OS that isn’t just flat, but ascetic.
I’ll reserve final judgment until I can experience it first hand, but first impressions account for a lot. My first impression is that the UI is too loud.
If Everyone is busy making everything, how can anyone perfect anything? We start to confuse convenience with joy, abundance with choice. Designing something requires focus. The first thing we ask is, “What do we want people to feel?” Delight, surprise, love, connection. Then we begin to craft around our intention. It takes time… There are a thousand no’s for every yes. We simplify, we perfect, we start over, until everything we touch enhances each life it touches. Only then do we sign our work. Designed by Apple in California.
This is from the video that kicked off Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference today. I highly recommend watching the video of the event—there is a lot of good stuff demonstrated—but at the very least, watch the introduction. It is a beautiful piece of kinetic typography, and it set the tone of the event perfectly. From their new OS X naming convention based on locations in California to the manufacturing of the new Mac Pro here in the U.S., there was a focus on Apple’s pride in their creativity, inventiveness, and craft. It’s reassurance that Steve Jobs baked design into Apple. That’s one tasty pie.
I feel like an idiot. I thought I just found a new, killer feature in Photoshop, only to learn that it has been there for years. All this time, I’ve been using the Timeline palette, which is intended for creating animations, to save states within my UI design files. It remembers which layers are turned on or off, and it remembers positions of layers. I found this very useful in mocking up hover states, changes based on object selection, even the display of different tabs within a screen. However, I couldn’t label the frames, and there was no way for me to export all of the frames as individual files in one shot. If only they had a feature that was intended to be used that way. Boy, am I dumb.
That’s exactly what the Layer Comps palette is for. Each comp can be set to save visibility, position, and/or layer styles. You can give each comp a name, and you can even enter a comment about it. A single click will return your document to the saved state, assuming you haven’t deleted or merged layers. Go to the Scripts menu, and you’ll find Layer Comps to Files and Layer Comps to PDF.
When I think of all the time I spent using my Timeline hack, I could almost cry. Hmm, now I’m wondering what else I’m missing.
Usually, if I see a bump in traffic to DesignAday, it’s because somebody with a lot of followers has in some way referenced one of my posts. I can easily find out who it is by checking references in Google Analytics. Right at the beginning of May I got a significant bump, as you can see here.
You’ll notice, however, that this is a graph of Organic Search Traffic, rather than references. This had me puzzled for several days. I had never seen any kind of variation in my search traffic before. It finally became clear to me sometime later when I checked my keyword ranking. Usually, every keyword listed is different, and variations on DesignAday are at the top. This list tells a different story.
17 of the top 20 keywords are looking for information about Acorn, Pixelmator, or a comparison between the two. I wrote a post several years back titled Designer’s Toolbelt: Acorn & Pixelmator vs. Photoshop. And what happened right at the end of April? Adobe announced their switch to the subscription-based Creative Cloud.
I’m not a gambling man, but I bet there are a lot of people exploring alternatives to Photoshop right now. You can find Flying Meat’s Acorn here. It may be a coincidence, but as I write this, Pixelmator’s server isn’t responding.
