Icons that fuck up your day

Great collection of icons that once seen will often ruin your day.



A Facebook Prototype

Australian-based-but-Swedish Interactive Art Director Fred Nerby has created this short but rather interesting video that proposes a new conceptual approach to Facebook's page layout. In terms of look and feel it does borrow quite heavily from the tiled interaction of the Nokia Lumia, and the branding does overlap a little. However, I really like the magnifying glass and overlay panel approach when viewing comments so that the user remains on the main page, and the split screen double scrolling panels is an interesting touch, but is it scalable? Also, the large profile images that look like they were taken on a modelling shoot might not be for everyone (it would be interesting to see what happens if users were encouraged to replace small avatar images with large glossy ones).

What this video really needs though is to placed in a contextual screen so that the viewer can see how this layout scales across platform (from desktop to tablet to mobile). It will be interesting to see if a Facebook spokesperson comments on this video as this new page layout and the sliding panel interaction all looks very similar to the new MySpace which was relaunched in December 2012.

Facebook Prototype - Conceptional Approach from Fred Nerby on Vimeo.

Connecting

Excellent documentary on how the relationship with digital devices and human interaction is merging to the point that our devices fade into the background and enable the user rather than interrupt them. Interaction design is now about providing a platform for the user to mould and shape into something they find useful.

The 18 minute "Connecting" documentary is an exploration of the future of Interaction Design and User Experience from some of the industry's thought leaders. As the role of software is catapulting forward, Interaction Design is seen to be not only increasing in importance dramatically, but also expected to play a leading role in shaping the coming "Internet of things." Ultimately, when the digital and physical worlds become one, humans along with technology are potentially on the path to becoming a "super organism" capable of influencing and enabling a broad spectrum of new behaviors in the world.

Connecting (Full Film) from Bassett & Partners on Vimeo.