Recently I’ve been enchanted by the simple beauty of this image from TUAW. Obviously the icons are very beautiful to start with, but this use of blur to imply different focal points really catches my attention. I’d love to find more variations on this design approach.

Another example of attractive blur: Wacoms Bamboo Dock online interface displays a motion-blurred application page image as it slides. I think the result is subtlety beautiful. Motion blur emulates how the human eye, or a camera lens captures an image of moving objects which is slightly blurred. Pixar films would probably be unwatchable without motion blur, as invented by Tom Porter and modern computer games make good use of motion blur too.

Motion blur synthesizes the kind of blurred image a camera or retina receives when watching moving object. Without it, each image, lasting for 1/30th of a second, is absolutely still and sharp. the resulting animation is jerky and unnatural. See examples below. Increasing framerates for games, digital video and GPUs may reduce the problem, but I suspect there is something stylistically/aesthetically attractive about motion blur.

For example: This is a render of an icon spinning at 30 frames per second. Notice how the motion looks jerky and quite unattractive.

Here’s the same animated icon rendered with motion blur. The result is much more natural, aesthetically pleasing. I also find it has some kind of indescribable ‘cool’ to it. What do you think?

Whitney Hess, respected Ux pro has put together a huuuge list of wonderful resources for the starting User Experience designer. There’s plenty there for the experienced experience designer, too.

Good copy is a key part of good interaction design.

50 Free Resources That Will Improve Your Writing Skills.

Via @uxRob

I found this while searching for an example of the Spinning Beach ball. Truth is, I rarely see the spinning beach ball these days. And I think the same probably goes for the blue screen of death. I’m sure the frustrations still exist for many.

This one blew me away. See the image above? Unless you suffer from *color blindness, you should see a pink spirally box with a green spiral and a blue spiral vortex. Except they’re not blue and green. The large colored spirals are the same green. Really.

Here is the original posting of this illusion on BuzzHunt. And some followup analysis on Discover.

*If you have some element of color blindness, this illusion may not work, according to Vischeck. This image to the left shows what some will see.

But! Even if you suffer color blindness (statistically more likely to be caucasian male), you will be able to appreciate the image to the right. In this amazing visual illusion by Edward H. Adelson, square A and square B are the exact same color. What’s even more brilliant in this one is that our visual system is making cognitively complex adjustments to perceived color based on the concept of a shadow. So much of what we think is the raw data from the real world is having massive adjustments done to it before it’s passed on to our consciousness. These ‘illusions’ remind me that interaction design is building around perceptions, not building around reality.