Jan 17th, 2009 | Web Design | 916 Comments
You're like me: you use your iPhone as an alarm clock. You even cued up Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe" to play just like in Groundhog Day (to remind yourself every morning that the only way to beat the futility of day-to-day life is to strive for what you really want).
Yeah, you're like me. So I'm going to assume these things are true too:
- When you wake up, the lights are off and your eyes have been closed for 4-12 hours
- You've kind of enjoyed being asleep, and are kinda cranky at whatever's making that racket
- When I say cranky, I mean your judgment may be a little impaired too
What am I getting at here? The iPhone alarm clock is really usable -- it's easy to set, fairly customizable, can schedule alarms really well, and is reliable as it gets. The only time that the usability sucks is when you're just waking up. Here's what it looks like when the alarm goes off:
Here are the problems with this in my opinion:
- It uses your default wallpaper, which could be blindingly bright with undilated pupils and other changes to the eye that occur in low-light conditions
- The text is small, condensed, and white, making it hard to read because optical resolution is lower at low-light conditions, and the brightness of the letters makes halos around each one
- The snooze button is small, and fumbling around for it can be very frustrating
- On an older-fashioned alarm clock, you don't actually read the word "Snooze" when you hit the button -- it's just the big button on top. Reading the word makes you mentally connect-the-dots. Call me weird, but sometimes when I wake up and read the word Snooze on the phone I think I'm in some Dr. Seuss-esque dream
So I propose an interface more like this:
An Apple designer could make it prettier, but the basic ideas are there. The background is black, all elements are - at brightest - 74% gray, the Snooze button is about twice as large, and it says Sleep instead of Snooze. Also, it doesn't really break from the core iPhone UI; the same slider bar, clock, top bar, and dialog colors are all present (though I used black text in the button for contrast's sake).
If you'd like to know more about human vision in low-light conditions, check out these Wikipedia articles for starters: Rod cell, Scotopic vision, Adaptation (eye). Also, for some User Interface advice, knowing about Fitts' law could be really handy.
It would also be great if there were an easy indicator to know when it's in Snooze mode. I often set a second alarm because I'm not sure, so then there are two alarms going concurrently. Then, as I finish checking my email and Facebook, a little dialog shows up and I hear that damned song again. How about putting the number of Snooze minutes left inside of the alarm indicator in the top bar? Thanks.
Mar 9th, 2008 | General, Web Design | 753 Comments
My resume is finally ready for the web. However, I'm interested in your opinion and criticism, so please contact me with your thoughts.
Also, for your time-wasting pleasure, I give you: Faker Baker BS3 . Anyone's who's ever used B&T knows this screen all too well. Now, all you have to do is point your browser to brad.hawidu.com/bt and you'll instantly look busy! For you pros out there, the color is #47768e.
Feb 15th, 2008 | Web Design | 544 Comments
www.isitoppositeday.com
My parody of the famous http://www.isitchristmas.com/ website.
IS it Opposite Day? Think about it.
Dec 24th, 2007 | Web Design | 1,157 Comments
Hey everybody. I hope that my relentless testing this afternoon didn't bog down your aggregator. Anyways, I made a little gadget that communicates to independently-hosted blogs via xml-rpc. You can read all about it here, and also add it. Hope SOMEBODY besides me finds it useful. Oh, and all the source is available at that link too. Enjoy!
Jul 5th, 2007 | Facebook, Web Design | 1,048 Comments
Okay, so it's been about four days since the application launched (btw, I swear there will be non-application blog posts someday!), and things are going overwhelmingly well. I've gotten a lot of feedback, mostly positive. My upgrade schedule is pretty-well set, but I'm looking to see if people would do things in a different order:
- Get the digg-like interface for resources up and running. This will allow anyone to contribute to the resources, vote on them, and add comments. The top five will be displayed on the "canvas page," with a link to the full listing. The universal resources will still be at the top (probably), but any catalog, database, etc. can be added.
- The profile badge will have the newest and/or recently popular resources instead of the (hilarious) video from Weird Al's movie, UHF.
- An additional section will be added that will link to an Information Literacy wiki (If a good one aimed at non-librarians already exists, please link to it in the comments) in colloquial language to help patrons help themselves.
- Some sort of usage of the invite notification system provided by Facebook. This will be aimed at getting users. As expected, the initial users of the application have (mostly) been librarians. This is positive for a few reasons, and useful because the infrastructure is there for patrons with Facebook-based questions.
- Tweak my database of librarians with additional email addresses, homepage URLs, and other useful data – currently-registered librarians can easily update, while new librarians will automatically have the option.
- More stuff is on the way, especially since the feedback and suggestions have been wonderful!
Note: I get off work today at 9:00PM, and will be burning some hardcore midnight oil to get these launched as quickly as possible. Please be patient as things come into operation over the weekend. Thanks!
You can see what I'm up to by adding the alpha app – http://apps.facebook.com/fblibrariantest/
Also, look out for the open Application Data, and eventually the open source.
(Lastly, on a personal note – My packrat mentality makes it insanely difficult to weed "my" collection. Just wanted to get that off my chest.)