Colour selection with Scheme Generator 2

In Archive by Fredy Ore

ColourSchemeTool
Web Style have created a useful colour tool that helps in the selection of colour combinations. The tool creates suitable colour combinations within various palettes that are comfortable and pleasant on the eye.

It generates color schemes of several types, consiting of 1 base colour, supplemented by additional colours using an algorithm that outputs colour within the full visible spectrum and within colour blind vision such as Deuteranopia (red/green color deficiency), Protanopia (another form of red/green color deficiency) and Tritanopia (a blue/yellow deficiency).

Experienced designers choose colors intuitively, many people can smell which colors go together well and which don’t. However, finding the good combination of colors may be sometimes long and gruelling work … This tool will find set of colors you can start with, and it may facilitate your looking for the optimal color palette.

Tools by Pat Ensor for academic library searching

In Archive by Fredy Ore

Pat Ensor maintains and develops a list of search resources intended for the expert searcher.

Her Tool Kit for the Expert Web Searcher, includes search tips and resources for Subject Guides, Search Engines,News Searching, Metasearch Engines, Collections and Multimedia Searching and are her daily search tools within an academic library.

Update: A redesign of the ALA has broken some links:
http://www.ala.org/membership/toolkits-tools-portal

User Interface Patterns and Techniques

In Archive by Fredy Ore

Jeniffer Tidwell has written a useful list of common patterns that helps provide literary solutions within Interface Design.

Her list isn’t intended as a step-by-step guide on creating an interface, but as general techniques intended to help you solve design problems.

…patterns are structural and behavioral features that improve the “habitability” of something — a user interface, a Web site, an object-oriented program, or even a building. They make things more usable, easier to understand, or more beautiful; they make tools more ready-to-hand.

Read More

Typography Outline and Shape affects word recognition

In Archive by Fredy Ore

This Microsoft paper within their Typography and Cleartype section titled, The science of word recognition, comments on evidence within cognitive psychology that indicates we use the letters within words to recognize a word. Outline, shape and recognition playing an important role related to the semiotic aspect on the recognition and use of language.
Interestingly the paper comments on the the term bouma; a synonym for word shape, which first appeared in Paul Saenger’s 1997 book Space Between Words. It is an interesting read.

Movement & Meaning presentation and Lavanotation introduction

In Archive by Fredy Ore

My visit to Sussex University included attending the presentation of PhD student from UTS Lian Loke, titled, Movement & Meaning: A Study of iToy. The presentation was extremely interesting and introduced me to the area of lavanotation for the first time, an area of research by Lian and the Interaction Design and Work Practice laboratory at UTS.

Labanotation is a standardised system for analysing and recording human motion. I went looking for more information about labanotation on the Web and found an introduction on the standard.

The presentation by Lian also made me think for the first time, of the semantic aspects within interaction design.

Update: Wikipedia also has a page on Lavanotation and Symbols
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labanotation

Dynamo Project from the Interact Lab at Sussex university

In Archive by Fredy Ore

I had the opportunity to visit the Interact Lab, a research centre at the University of Sussex in the UK.

The Interact Lab in the university, aims to develop innovative interactions between technology and people within a variety of environments. Some of their extremely interesting projects include Dynamo and Equator. Many thanks to Lian Loke, Paul Marshall, Ted and Hillary for the invitation and lunch. :)

Four kinds of privacy

In Archive by Fredy Ore

Christopher Allen has posted on his interpretation of the four types of privacy and trust. His blog post is quite interesting and separates the definitions into defensive privacy, human-rights privacy, personal privacy, and contextual privacy.

The Use of Faceted Classification

In Archive by Fredy Ore

Heidi Adkisson has posted on the Use of Faceted Classification in Web Design Practices which examines how e-commerce sites use faceted classification to help people find products.

A series of papers are available in Kathryn La Barre’s project website: Facets on the Web from the School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University.

A definition of Faceted Classification can be found in the IAWiki page: FacetedClassification

Update: (05 Jul 2006)
Another useful page I’ve come across on faceted classification.