WYSIWYG 1970

WYSIWYG is the abbreviation for What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get. It is a concept developed at Xerox PARC; it means that the display on screen corresponds to the printed sheet of paper – a quite radical idea in the early days of desktop computing.  According to Wikipedia the expression was “coined by John Seybold and popularized at Xerox PARC during the late 1970s.” – According to Alan Kay it was Charles Simony, who introduced the term.

Therefore it is quite stunning to hear the words in a totally different context. Tim Rice used the very same phrase for a chorus in Jesus Christ Superstar (music Andrew Lloyd Webber, 1970) in the piece The Temple.

what you see is what you get

Score of Jesus Christ Superstar, The Temple

Quite possible that John Seybold knew the song.

[Update 26-Apr-2017] I do not what to push this over the edge, but the following lines are kind of intriguing as well, once you switch the context back to computing:

No-one’s been disappointed yet – success rate, ease of use
Don’t be scared give me a try –  familiarity, robustness, undo, user experience
There is no-thing you can’t buy – Business goals; revenue comes from happy customers

[Update 29-Dec-2018] Alan Kay: What exactly is WYSIWYG?

protonet design hacks

If your only tool is a CSS hammer, the entire world wide web looks like a nail.

This time I’ve implemented a couple of CSS design improvements for protonet’s user interface. The average user experience of the sample user group went up from sort-of-ok to relieved and delighted.

The motivation of all the changes is pure usability design: better layout, contrast, color scheme, legibility, control element recognition, focus on notifications, less noise, less scrolling, semantic colours for the calendar, and much more. The page protonet design hacks summarises and explains the changes. I’ve also played a bit with JuxtaposeJS to provide before&after comparison.

before and after comparison at protonet design hacks

There is more in the pipeline regarding protonet – other enhancements of my design lab apply to the twitter stream and google’s search experience. Let me know if you are interested in the comments below.

hee saith shipp


Yeah – ship – what else should a seaman say? This is a wordle cloud based on the complete 70th volume of the High Court Admirality between the years 1654 and 1656. 1511 pages have been scanned, transcribed by Colin Greenstreet at al., published on a wiki, [here starts my involvement] downloaded as RDF, republished on one page with XSLT, pasted into wordle, and adjusted the parameters to generate the image above.

>> more info here

 

Reeperbahn Festival Conference Highlights

The Reeperbahn Festival Conference 2016 offers (at least) 3 intriguing sessions. They cover the design space between the virtual and the real world. So, if you attend the festival, don’t miss_

Fascination – The State of VR
Prof. Dr. Frank Steinicke, Uni Hamburg ~ /a well-knows speaker at RSE15

Space Oddity – VR & Arts
w/ Toby Coffey of the National Theatre in London

Smart Cities: How Tech Connects Citizens To Solutions

BTW Some photos from RBFC/NEXT15

UX vs UX Design

Don Norma[n/l] – who introduced the term user experience into our digital design world – says what UX actually used to mean – and what the term UX still should be used for_

From my point of view, in order to keep things straight, UX is psychology. It is the perception, the cognition, the emotions, the reactions and actions of a human being before, while and after she is using a product, service or system.

On the other hand, Usability is a property of a product in a specific context for specific users. It consists of the independent dimensions effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. These factors can be measured and improved.

UX Design is a holistic design approach to improve the people’s UX while interacting with products, services and systems – before the purchase or sign up, during the use, and after the usage to consider if they want to sign up for an extended subscription or buy another product of the brand. People’s UX can be improved by means of improving the usability of the product, and by improving the way people interact with the service or system. This should be the job of UX designers or interaction designers or service designers. Congratulations if you have someone like that in your team.

I doubt that we will ever have robust computer-2-brain systems. Until then, UX stays subjective. Therefore, I am glad that I’ve found this picture to illustrate exactly this_

gopro_happyhorror_800 UX is subjective. (frame from a GoPro commercial)

Do you realize the difference? UX designers do not design the user experience. They design products, systems and services in order to create a better UX on the user’s end.

à propos