Windows Phone 7 Pie Menu Design StudyAugust 31st, 2010 by David Patrizi
In one of our previous blog articles we talked about the use of pie menus in touch screen interfaces and discussed pros and cons of this kind of interaction. In this article, we are going to show a concrete example of how a pie menu can be used. 
Micro-Interactions vs. Macro-InteractionsJuly 27th, 2010 by Markus Weber
In order to successfully conduct user-centered-design projects, it is important for the team to have a shared vocabulary and understanding of key concepts. Grave misunderstandings can occur, when the parties involved use identical terminology, but the concepts that they refer to diverge. This starts with terms like “usability” or “user experience”, for which – in the worst case – you can find as many different explanations as there are members on the project team. Confusion can also arise regarding the concept of “interaction design”. 
The Comeback Of The Pie MenuJune 16th, 2010 by Justine Kiermasch
In recent years, so called “natural user interfaces” (NUI) have grown in popularity. More and more often, interaction via touch and gestures is employed instead of using mouse and keyboard. The iPhone was greeted with great enthusiasm and played a major part in spreading touch screen system in the consumer market while also introduced gesture-based interaction in a playful way. There should be hardly any touch screen user who is not familiar with the pinch gesture that is used to resize or zoom images on the iPhone. 
Resurrecting UI Prototypes (Without Creating Zombies) – Part 2: Prototyping with Expression BlendMay 26th, 2010 by Thomas Immich
Keeping the background information of the previous article in mind, assume you want to make use of Blend to design a NUI based on Silverlight or WPF that lets you easily manipulate items on the screen. In the beginning, you won’t even touch the tool at all – you “invent” whatever gesture you think is intuitive to perform this operation. Most likely you do this in your head or on the whiteboard. You discuss and refine the design with your team mates or with potential users. At this stage everything is still low-fidelity and throwing away things isn’t costly yet. As soon as you have a good-enough feeling about the rough design, you start prototyping with higher fidelity. This is to be really sure your idea works. To provoke the intended interaction experience, caring about every single detail is exceptionally important in later prototyping stages.
Resurrecting User Interface Prototypes (Without Creating Zombies) – Part 1: Prototyping Natural User InterfacesMay 20th, 2010 by Thomas Immich
Every user interface designer is familiar with the procedure to some extent: To find out what a user interface needs to look and behave like it’s certainly a good idea to create a prototype and evaluate it with potential users. Users will tell you what’s still nagging them and therefore should be improved before coding starts. So, in the beginning of any UI design process everything is about change – you create a prototype and already expect it to require modifications in order to work alright. As you – and most likely your client, too – want changes to be as cost-efficient as possible, you are better off taking a change-friendly prototyping method or tool. This is especially true in early stages of the project your ideas of potential solutions are rather vague. In this early phase, most often you don’t even know the exact problem for which you are in hunt of a solution. You are still analyzing more than you are designing. 
Writing and Styling Android™ Applications – Coming from SwingApril 28th, 2010 by Patrick Decker
A Java™ developer who is used to developing GUIs with Swing and who is now trying to get into Android might be surprised: Java is not the same on Android. The fact that Java is different on Android has been discussed in some blogs on the net already, so I just sum it up to this: Android applications can be written by any developer who knows the Java programming language. But the number of available runtime classes on Android is different: there are fewer classes in Android regarding package This article demonstrates some aspects of how a simple Java Swing application with a nice Look and Feel was transferred to Android. The main focus is set on how to write the application with the Android SDK and the styling and theming abilities of Android. 
Frosted Glass on the Java™ DesktopMarch 16th, 2010 by Simon Albers
More and more operating systems use a border resembling frosted glass for their windows, like, e.g., the Aero Glass® decoration known from Windows Vista® and Windows 7®. Providing this ’special effect’ on the Java™ platform is still not easy to realize. Most Look and Feels use opaque borders, which do not visually match the surrounding designs of these operating systems. 
Benefits and Drawbacks of Animations Concerning User ExperienceFebruary 26th, 2010 by Markus Weber, Anna Günther
As described in January’s post, animations can fulfill essential purposes in user interface design. This article provides some insight into a study that has been conducted with the goal of exploring the effects of animations regarding user experience.
Free Medical Stock Icons: The Centigrade MedicalSeriesFebruary 15th, 2010 by Thomas Immich
There are a lot of free icon libraries out there, however, only few of them focus mainly on medical icons and we wanted this gap to be closed: we introduce Centigrade’s stock icon library MedicalSeries, containing 60 icons that you can download free of charge.
Animations in User Interface Design: Essential Nutrient Instead of Eye CandyJanuary 31st, 2010 by Markus Weber
A prototypical sequence in user interface design proceeds from wireframes to interaction design and finally to visual design. The user interface is successively refined, starting with abstract statics, then specifying the basic dynamic aspects until finally visual specifics are added. This is compatible with the view that visual aspects of a user interface are more or less the icing on the cake – details that should only be taken care of after the foundations for a user-friendly have been laid. But this view may be flawed.
Regarding Color Vision Deficiency in the Icon Design ProcessDecember 7th, 2009 by David Patrizi
Red is not always red, green is not always green. For quite a large amount of people it is not easy to distinguish between red and green hues. About 6% of all males have the same difficulties to tell orange from olive-green as unaffected people have to distinguish between burgundy and ruby-red – oftentimes, it is impossible. This most common kind of color vision deficiency is called Deuteranomaly, also known as “green weakness”. The following article will deal with the question of how this wide-spread impairment impacts the production process of high quality icons. 
Java in the Mobile Market: Google Android vs. JavaFX – Part 2: A Detailed ComparisonNovember 6th, 2009 by Florian Moritz
After dealing with general market trends in part 1 of this blog series this second and final part provides a more detailed comparison of Google Android and JavaFX.
User Interface Prototypes in Usability EngineeringAugust 25th, 2009 by Markus Weber
User interface prototyping is an essential activity in the field of user interface design that provides a basis for continuous evaluation and improvement of a to-be-designed user interface. In usability engineering, the focus of using prototypes lies on evaluating the usability of intended approaches and on generating concrete recommendations for advancing an interface design. While doing so, there are several aspects to keep in mind in order to maximize the efficiency of prototype use for usability engineering. Three issues are described in this post.
Java in the Mobile Market: Google Android vs. JavaFX – Part 1: General Market TrendsJuly 27th, 2009 by Florian Moritz
Centigrade specializes in creating GUIs, in many projects with a particular focus on the implementation of Java Swing based GUIs for desktop applications. With the advancement of the mobile market, it is an obvious step for Centigrade to also have a look at Java based mobile GUIs. This article gives an overview on the mobile market today and includes a comparison of the two major Java players in that sector, Google Android and JavaFX.
Modern User Interface Design Tools – Part 3: Expression Blend vs. Flex BuilderJune 26th, 2009 by David Patrizi
In the previous part I took a closer look at how and to what extent Microsoft Expression Blend and Adobe Flex Builder offer pixel-graphics and vector-graphics tools to enable GUI designers to create modern user interfaces. In addition I outlined the concept of 9-Slice-Scaling, a method to make pixel graphics scalable without any quality loss. In this last part of the series I’m going to give a short example of how the concept is implemented in both tools and finally provide an overall comparison of the two tools to point out their strengths and weaknesses.
Resolution Independent Icon Design – Part 4: Modern Tool SupportMay 21st, 2009 by Thomas Immich
The previous part of this series outlined why it is not possible to just create one single vector-based instance of an icon to scale it to any desired size. This part raises the question, on the one hand, what tool support would need to exist in the future in order to serve an icon designer’s everyday work adequately and, on the other hand, what tool support already exists to make his life at least a bit easier in the present times.
Modern User Interface Design Tools – Part 2: Graphical Approach of GUI Design ToolsMay 5th, 2009 by David Patrizi
In the first part of this series I described how user interface design tools bring together developers and designers in a seamless workflow and gave an overview of the technical environments of Adobe’s and Microsoft’s tools in that area. In this article, I am going to focus on the use of pixel and vector graphics in design, deal with some of the pros and cons of the two graphic types and finally give an introduction on the scaling of bitmap GUI components.
Modern User Interface Design Tools – Part 1: Design Marries DevelopmentApril 16th, 2009 by David Patrizi
This series of blog articles deals with the use of GUI development tools by designers and developers, with a particular focus on Microsoft Expression Blend and Adobe Flex Builder. In the first part, I will have a look at the cooperation between designers and developers during GUI creation, describe some issues that can affect their collaboration and point out how GUI design tools can improve the overall design and development workflow.
Resolution Independent Icon Design – Part 3: The Centigrade WayMarch 1st, 2009 by Thomas Immich
The previous part explained why both a pure pixel-based or pure vector-based approach to icon design implies drawbacks. As Centigrade provides professional icon design services, we continuously investigate how to make our icon design process more efficient and overcome technical shortcomings.
Stretching Imagination: Wireframes and Visual DesignFebruary 4th, 2009 by Markus Weber
Wireframes are an essential tool in the usability engineer’s toolbox. They can be created easily and support communication regarding fundamental layout and interaction design. Usually, little to no resources are spent on visually “styling” the wireframe in order to efficiently focus on the fundamentals without investing too much effort in visual details that are likely to undergo significant visual changes later. If members of the design team / stakeholders lack experience with using wireframes, certain problems can occur that may impair a user interface design project, two of which shall briefly be described. |
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