UI and us

Universal Terms of Purchase - A Consumer Version of TOS

Keith Lang — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:51:57 +0000

Disclaimer 1) I'm no expert on licensing, open sources licences etc.
Disclaimer 2) I'm not a lawyer and have never been the stunt double for one on TV
Disclaimer 3) This post is on the boundary of User Experience, right at the edge of the experience 'do I buy/use it or not'. So.

Leverage the concept of BSD-style (etc) licensing

All of us who use software, online services, and many other non-technological services are familiar Terms of Service, or similar. A huge length of text, which is generally optimized highly optimized for the company providing the service.

What if we could take the concept of the GNU/BSD etc. style licensing and offer that to consumers? A 'Universal Terms of Service' or UTOP, written for the benefit of consumers/customers, which a service or product provider could adhere to.

Types of things the UTOP would cover:

That ingredients and full source of ingredients would be listed
Definitions for all "features" numerically. For example "Free Range" = Max of 10,000 chickens per hectare
That personal data would not be traded with other companies
That the company complies with some defined employee work conditions
etc.

"Complies with Universal Terms of Purchase 1.5"

How I imagine this would work: on the box/website/posted at place of business is this term. Breeching of this contract would enable a single person, with this clear legal document in place to seek compensation or other mechansim. The incentive for companies would be to online marketing driving savvy customers to products that adhere to the UTOP, and a general preference to purchase stuff under this license.

Downsides:

To my understanding, MIT/BSD etc licenses were driven by the creator/consumer community. There may be less incentive from the pure 'consumer' end.
A pessimistic view would see industry impersonate and confuse consumers with similar labels; Imagine the box saying "Complies with UNOPE 2.0 (Much better than UTOP 1.0!)"
It's easy for big industry to sue a single consumer (think piracy cases). The other direction takes organization, and expensive cross-country legal muscle

Making a better touchscreen experience by lowering latency

Keith Lang — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 13:36:56 +0000

via twolivesleft

Kinect Hacking a New Musical Interface

Keith Lang — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 06:14:41 +0000

DJ fresh - Louder JAMkinect from Jonathan Hammond on Vimeo.

Found via the great kineme Quartz Composer forum

The Rise and Rise of the Indie Mac/iOS Developer Conference

Keith Lang — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 00:37:19 +0000

A good friend of mine is on the team of an upcoming indie-run iOS developer conference called Swipe.

It looks great. And it seems like a worldwide trend:

Melbourne, Australia: Swipe Conference - Sep 5th

Brighton, UK: Update Conference - Sep 5th

Denver, USA: 360iDev - Sep 11th

Edinburg, Scotland: NSScotland - Oct 1

Massachusetts, USA: Voices That Matter - Nov 12

Introducing Prototypes for Mac

Keith Lang — Wed, 25 May 2011 20:23:36 +0000

If you design, code or have ideas for iPhone or iPod touch, you may be interested to hear about a brand new Mac application I worked on: Prototypes. Sexy icon by Wolfgang Bartelme btw :)

Prototypes is a Mac desktop app that Duncan Wilcox built (with some help from me) to allow you to quickly take your existing mockup images (made with Photoshop, Illustrator, a crayon etc!), and link them together to create a navigable mini-site that runs on iPhone.

Some nice writeups already:

No Code, No Problem. Prototypes Turns Ideas Into Working Apps. (gigaom.com)

Prototypes (Lukas Mathis at ignorethecode.net)

Point your phone to ptyp.es and use the PIN 1234 5678 to see an example of what it can do.

Please do let me know what you think — it's definitely a 1.0 with lots of room for improvements and new features. Some of those planned are…

Support for landscape
iPad resolution support

Oh, and you can buy it from the Mac App Store:

http://itunes.com/mac/prototypes

Only Show Dock Badge on mouseOver

Keith Lang — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 02:26:31 +0000

I try to have Dock notification badges for Twitter/email etc. off to avoid distraction. But then when I do want to check quickly, I need to open the entire app window. What if we could choose to only see the notification badges in the Dock when mousing over them?

Got a Project?

Keith Lang — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 06:13:28 +0000

Hello! It's been a little while…

I've just tidied up UIandus.com a little with some new design. Hope you like it.

Also, I'd like to let you know I'm looking around for some projects to work on — could be Interaction design, graphic design, iOS, Mac, Quartz Compositions.

Find out how I can help your project.

And Yes — more blog posts coming soon!

PlayStation Move demo

Keith Lang — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 05:17:32 +0000

via Ars Technica

Minority Report Coming Soon

Keith Lang — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 00:56:19 +0000

There's a bunch of companies working with 3D cameras and gesture/anatomy analysis, including of course Microsoft's Natal. Control of TVs with this technology seems the first best fit.

Jigsaw Junior — an iPad App for Kids

Keith Lang — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:31:02 +0000

I wanted to share with you a little side project I've recently completed with a good friend. Jigsaw Junior for iPad (iTunes link) is a kid's jigsaw puzzle app we've just released — read more at the official Jigsaw Junior site here.

Definitely got a 'laundry list' of things to improve, so I'd love to hear your feedback to fill in the gaps.