Alexa from adaptive path has made her own magnetic prototyping kit for mocking up an Aurora-like mobile device interface. She picked up a pack of Inkjet Magnet Sheets and printed her very own custom-made magnetic interface widgets - "no ActionScript needed!"

Links:

• Create Your Own Magnetic Prototype 

Henrik Olsen - November 17, 2008

See also: Prototyping and wireframing (71) 

The cartoonist Scott McCloud has made a comic for Google explaining the story behind their browser, Chrome. It's a pretty nerdy look behind the scenes, but a quite engaging way to communicate tech stuff.

It was originally designed as a printed comic to create hype about the new browser among journalists and bloggers.

If you don't know Scott McCloud, I can highly recommend his book Understanding Comics.

Links:

• The Google Chrome comic book 
• Scott McCloud's book Understanding Comics at amazon.com 
• Scott McCloud's book Understanding Comics at amazon.co.uk 

Henrik Olsen - November 17, 2008

See also: Books (46)  Envisionments (4) 

Bill Westerman from Create With Context has posted a slide deck covering their research on iPhone usability.

In their research, they found that "take-up of interactions - even when these were consistent across applications - was often quite slow. And even 'expert' users were not aware of the ins-and-outs of every interaction - for example, our 'expert' participants didn't know the two-finger single tap to zoom out on Google Maps."

In the slide deck, Bill Westerman walks through their findings and gives eight rules of thumb for designing better iPhone apps.

Links:

• The slide deck at Slideshare 
• PDF version of the presentation 

Henrik Olsen - November 12, 2008

See also: Usability testing (62)  Research (119)  Tips and guidelines (92)