Membranophonist's Ramblings

Interaction and interface design, technology, politics, music, and random thoughts…

November 4, 2011
by Daniel J. Wilson
0 comments

Overall

I think the most important overarching user feature in 10.7 is state retention. I wrote about it a few years ago in State of the User.
I’m generally fine with the scrollbars not appearing until scrolling.

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March 19, 2011
by Daniel J. Wilson
0 comments

While technically impressive and detailed in implementation, what I saw during the unveiling and read (mostly this Macworld review) of GarageBand’s virtual instruments for iPad makes me kind of sad; the visceral, tactile pleasure of playing an instrument is …

April 26, 2010
by Daniel J. Wilson
1 Comment

It’s Made of People!

I frequently remember documents by the people that have also touched them in some way.

Contact details and related files

The files shown below the contact details are those sent to or received from, or authored by the contact. The …

September 13, 2009
by Daniel J. Wilson
0 comments

Choose Your Weapon

I get knife block slits mixed up sometimes. Function-related icons (mine are quite rough) by the slit and on the knife handle would probably eliminate such mixups.

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July 26, 2009
by Daniel J. Wilson
2 Comments

0p3n_s3sam3

I use the Password Assistant in Keychain Access (/Applications/Utilities) to generate passwords for new accounts. The Assistant is pretty handy, but currently not integrated with any browsers, meaning I have to open Keychain Access, create a new Password Item (File …

May 23, 2009
by Daniel J. Wilson
0 comments

Redemption from Error

I finally redeemed two iTunes gift cards last night, finding the process generally straightforward. That said, many Macs now have iSight cameras built-in. As proven by Delicious Library, an iSight can also function as a barcode scanner, moving the …

May 10, 2009
by Daniel J. Wilson
1 Comment

Math Field

Being annoyed with having to constantly open and close Fireworks’ modal Numeric Transform dialog, I thought it would be particularly useful in design applications to scale and reposition objects based on relative calculations like “this box should be 25 percent …

May 3, 2009
by Daniel J. Wilson
0 comments

Eventlates

I find myself wasting a lot of time creating calendar events that share a lot of properties, but differ in time of occurrence and duration. Auto-complete still requires per-field interaction.

For example, a band may rehearse regularly, but not on …

April 2, 2009
by Daniel J. Wilson
1 Comment

More Intelligent Design for Evolution

Evolution is generally a good app, so the e-mail account configuration assistant sticks out. Unfortunately, it is the first thing users encounter after first launching Evolution.

1. First, a pointless welcome message that refers to the Assistant by a name different

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January 19, 2009
by Daniel J. Wilson
1 Comment

Tomorrow is the Question

Rescheduling an event to another day using the mobile Calendar app on the iPhone requires at least six taps across four screens. The method depicted below reduces the minimum taps to two with the number of screens depending on how …