Normally we review books full of design pattern or interaction logic, but this time we’re going more abstract: problem solving. As designers we face complex challenges and have to make loads of decisions, will Problem Solving 101 make this easier? Hopefully. … »

Game company Ubisoft is coming with a new strategic game – RUSE: Truth is the first casualty of war. Although I’ve mainly seen screenshots, I think this will become an interesting game. But it’s not the game I want to talk about. No sir… it’s the trailer of the game that teased my inspiration. … »

Recently I did an interview with Bill DeRouchey about his view on the field of interaction design, the challenges we as designers face and about authentic experiences. Check out what he has to say in the interview. And if you like what he says, come with us and listen to him live at From Business to Buttons in Sweden (June 11-12). … »

Design patterns are among the most underrated tools in the world of interaction designers. And that’s not because they are difficult to apply, but mainly due to the fact that designer are stubborn. We want to come up with all the solutions ourselves. But why? If you use patterns you save time and money, and you are more sure that your product will be understood by it’s users. Fortunately there are still believers, and they even wrote a book for us. … »

Prototyping in the early phase of a project is the ideal way to see if (and how) a concept will work. But often enough it’s not being done because design teams fear it will cost them all of their available hours. I think this is a big misconception, since there are many different ways you can prototype… And even the fastest way, sketching, is more valuable then doing no prototype at all. … »

Personally I’m a big fan of graffiti (when done properly)… but I can understand that a lot of people experience it as urban decay. Fortunately today I came across a great looking experiment where you can digi-spray paint on a screen. For a first demo it looks pretty nice. … »

Lately I keep posting articles about augmented reality. And although I really like it, I have to admit that it still feels a bit quirky. Printing out a strange symbol and holding it in front of the camera is not the submersion people are looking for. Fortunately I came across a video that showed me that a true experience can be reached. … »

Handheld projectors are the next big thing in mobile devices. They make it possible to project a screen on almost any surfuce, anywhere. This technology opens up a whole new world of interactive possibilities. A group of researchers came up with the idea to explore multi user interaction for these handheld projectors. … »

In the wake of the ever increasing popularity of gestural interfaces, Dan Saffer wrote his newest book: Designing Gestural Interfaces. In this publication by O’Reilly he tries to give us some valuable insights. But did he succeed? … »

For the last months we’ve seen dozens of augmented reality applications. The technology has become so low-level that more and more companies and individuals are playing around with it. This results in a lot of funny and (sometimes) interesting applications. But the low-levelness also caused a good side effect: virality. … »