Tag: Interface

http://interface.fm/22

It’s a weird year to joke about elections, but the current inconsistencies and design of many voting systems is a bit of a joke. Some votes are cast on paper, others on an electronic machine, and the layouts of the ballots can vary widely from precinct to precinct.

This week, we discuss some critical flaws in various ballot designs, and how the entire process could be simplified to offer a more frictionless and transparent experience.

• Brexit’s simple ballot
• Australia’s straight party ballot
• Are you religious? Check yes or no
• Testing ballots for usability
• Election Design Field Guide
• The poorly designed “Hanging Chad” ballots
• The current state of electronic voting machines
• Arguments in favor of electronic voting
• Arguments against electronic voting
• 99% Invisible, The Butterfly Effect”

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http://interface.fm/21

So you bought a 4K TV. And the new Xbox One S. And you’re paying the extra $2 to Netflix for “Ultra HD.” You fire everything up, and suddenly you realize – there’s not much worthwhile content to take advantage of all those bonus pixels. Finally, you settle on “Smurfs 2” (available in 4K), only to be greeted by buffering every few minutes.

There are many hurdles to 4K right now, but is it a consumer gimmick?

• What exactly is 4K (according to Wikipedia)
• 2020 Olympics to be availabe in 8K
• 4K.com Content Guide
• AltVR experience
• An Interview in VR
• Myke Hurley and CGP Grey explain VR, Cortex #32
• sony ps4 tutorial: https://remoteplay.site/

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http://interface.fm/20

After a long weekend, Andrew heads in to work, only to realize that his wireless keyboard and mouse are on his desk at home. After checking around the office, he decides his best option is to just suffer through using the touchscreen of his Surface 4 to work on editing a few pictures in Photoshop.

After an hour of effort, and almost no progress on the task, he downloads Pixelmator for his iPhone, and is able to edit the images in a matter of minutes, leaving him to wonder what good a touchscreen is if you’re stuck using mouse-based apps.

• Microsoft Surface Book
• Microsoft Surface Pro 4
• Microsoft’s Pitch for the Surface
• Touching Photoshop for Windows
• Pixelmator for iOS
• Hoverbar Mount for iPad
• Continuity & Handoff for Mac and iOS
• Continuum for Windows
• Superbook
• A Canvas made of Pixels

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http://interface.fm/19

Chase is a dad of 2, and Ian is about to be a dad, and Andrew was away on business, so this week, we take a quick dive into smart devices for kids (babies).

We also discuss how fitness wearables for adults offer motivation, and the desire for social elements in a fitness tracker.

• Owlet Baby Monitor
• Snuza Baby Monitor
• Kinsa Thermometer
• Flo Thermometer
• ResearchKit’s Impact on Medical Studies
• Empatica Embrace
• Microsoft Band
• Pebble
• Misfit Shine
• Fitbit
• Apple Watch
• watchOS 3 Activity Sharing
• Pebble Core

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http://interface.fm/18

When we were young, we would do and say what we wanted. For many of us, what seemed acceptable in the moment, later seemed like an embarrassing, stupid, or hurtful thing, but rarely had lasting evidence. Now, in an era of “everything online, all the time,” what can be done about the trail of dumb we leave behind?

• Right to be forgotten
• Facebook Activity Log
• Google account history
• Facebook News Feed Privacy
• Export all Facebook data
• Snapchat Memories
• Google Photos
• ISHU reflective scarf

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http://interface.fm/17

I’m not writing anything snarky or goofy about online toxicity. It’s bad, and whether or not you agree with the viewpoints of people who are expressing their opinions, no one deserves to receive constant abuse, death threats, and rape threats. Today, we talk about what can be done and what’s being done to combat online toxicity.

–John Gabriel’s Greater Internet _______ Theory (we’re a clean show I guess?)
–YikYak is garbage
–@nero banned from Twitter forever
–xkcd on free speech as a defense (read the alt text)
–Periscope’s solution to online harrassment
–Racism in Hearthstone
–The Elo rating system
–Brawlhalla
–Dota2 player realizes he’s being a dick (report at eleven!)
–Overwatch more popular than League of Legends in Korea
–League of Legends is enormous
–Jeff Lin of Riot discusses how they tested eliminating toxicity
–Another Jeff Lin talk
–Yet another Jeff Lin talk
–More on Jeff’s experiments at Riot
–A good overview on Riot’s attempts to curb harrassment
–Ruining it for the rest of us
–Dark patterns as a good thing
–Riot using online metrics to deal with toxic, in-house employees
–Overwatch is becoming famous for its low levels of toxicity
–Online altruism
–Overwatch gets one method of avoiding online abusers removed because it was being abused
–Overwatch play-by-sound
–Radiolab’s Trust Engineers
–Everything is a Remix
–Remakes that are better than the original

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http://interface.fm/16

Ian is being crushed by a deluge of newsletter spam. They want conversions, he wants inbox zero! Later, he turns the tables and makes a million dollars tricking people into paying him three dollars every month for a service they don’t even know they are paying for.

Your writer was up late last night, so sorry about the show notes.

• In Defense of The Floppy
• The difference between Spam and Bacn
• Unroll Me
• Dark Patterns
• Deception in Design
• Idle Words: Haunted by Words
• Terms of Services, Didn’t Read
• Twitter Dark Pattern

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http://interface.fm/15

After a terrible, tragicly unfortunate event, Ian’s original recording of this episode was lost, leaving us no option but to re-record, as to not miss our Monday deadline. Fortunately, we pinned our show notes to a virtual bulletin board and were able to cover a super popular game! But is it even a game, or is it something else?

The much hyped PokémonGo, augmented reality (AR), and how the new wave of AR apps could leverage social elements.

Go play Pokémon Go!

• PokémonGo for iOS
• PokémonGo for Android

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http://interface.fm/14

“Off-camera, a hand. On-camera, a wife. A husband. A baby shower. Thumbs bubble up from the corner, punctuated by the occasional heart. Messages trickle in from family members distributed around the country. Then a presence, one you haven’t felt since high school disturbs your bliss. Your Facebook Live privacy settings were wrong — if only we still used Google Plus!”

Some real-life feedback on the use of live video streaming for personal events, as well as in educational and office situations.

• Glide
• Revolve Robotics
• Double Robotics
• My Life as a Robot
• Snowbot
• Long distance VR relationships
• First webcam
• World of Warcraft Weddings)

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http://interface.fm/13

Colin Ray joins us to discuss the evolution and potential future of computer input methods, and strange twists and turns through the landscape of game controllers – most notably the Steam controller.

In the words of Andrew: ENGELBART IS LOVE, ENGELBART IS LIFE. ENGELBART IS GENIUS. ENGELBART IS REMEMBERED FOR AN INPUT DEVICE HE DIDN’T EVEN INVENT. COLIN MADE HIS OWN STREET FIGHTER CONTROLLER DECAL. HOVER GESTURES. TOUCH GESTURES. LINE WOBBLER. ENGELBART. ENGELBART. ENGELBART.

–The Mother of all Demos (1968)
–A brief history of video game controllers
–Sketchpad (1963)
–Bret Victor of Worrydream
–The insane GameCube keyboard controller
–The Xbox Chatpad (which is stupid)
–Enhance! Let’s find some snakes.
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