It does have some very good points, but I won’t particularly recommend it unless you are into this kind of things, because the writing style is somewhat plain, and very repetitive.

Here is my attempt at a 30 seconds summary (most of the examples are straight from the book) -

What makes a good design?
Visibility – controls have to be visible. For example, give closets a handle bar.

Make it “natural” for the user to do the right thing – for example, on the side of the door where you want the user to push, give it a large panel. On the side you want the user to pull, give it a handle bar. No “push”/”pull” labeling needed.

Natural mapping – the arrangement of the controls, and what they do, should correspond to the “mental image” the user have of the system. That’s what makes some interfaces more intuitive than others. Avoid arbitrary mappings. For example, if you have 4 knobs that control 4 stoves, arrange them in the same pattern as the 4 stoves. This way the user can easily remember which knob controls which stove, and no labeling is needed. Arrange light switches to mimic how the lights are themselves physically arranged. On the other hand, if you have 4 switches in your house that controls 4 lights, and 1 that controls a current through your cute kitten, don’t use 5 identical switches arranged with equal spacing. People will group them together mentally, and when they see the first 4 all turn on a light, they will try the last one.

Assume the user will make mistakes – make most mistakes cheaply (in terms of effort/time) reversible, and irreversible ones very hard to make. Don’t allow flicking a switch to crash an airplane.

Provide immediate feedback – let the user know their action has taken effect. Silence is not golden. Don’t put the light switch of a room in another room. Don’t tell the user to press an arbitrary sequence of keys, and only give feedback at the end. Don’t put a “turn the light on after 5 minutes” button. If you do, at least add an LED that turns on immediately.

Exploit cultural constraints – Left knob controls hot water, right knob controls cold water. Don’t reverse them for no reason. And don’t arrange them up and down. This is knowledge in the culture, everyone already has it. Don’t make a knob look like a push button, vv.

That’s all I remember off the top of my head.

Now, let’s look at an example of a terrible design.

Apple’s spanking new Magic Mouse –

They took out all the buttons, and replaced it with a big multi-touch surface (and call it the best invention in 21st century, the thing that will change our lives forever, and give our lives new meanings, yada yada, etc).

How many good design principles did it violate? Let’s see.

1) No visibility. The user doesn’t know where to click. There are no clearly (or ANY) distinguished buttons, or scroll wheel. The whole surface is uniform. Best example of flushing usability down the drain for aesthetics. You can also not find the buttons by touch.

2) No feedback. When you click it, you won’t know you clicked it. There is no haptic (touch) feedback. You have to guess.

3) Arbitrary mapping. There is no way to tell which way points forward (this is from reviews). To do a middle button click (which is admittedly not so common in Mac, but very common in UNIX/Linux), you need to hold down the ctrl key (where did that come from?).

It’s also uncomfortable to hold, and scrolling occasionally triggers clicks (this is from reviews).

Yes, it’s truly a new invention. No one has done it before. Just like how no one has tried to build a house out of poop. It doesn’t work. People haven’t done many things not because they never thought of it, but because it doesn’t make sense.

What do you get from all this uncomfortable compromises? Exactly nothing. Horizontal scrolling? Many mice have that already. Nothing new.

People have used buttons on mice for decades, without much change. That says quite a lot about the design.

A button is cheap, findable by touch, gives ample feedback, and is durable. What more can you ask for?

They are just changing for the sake of changing. They couldn’t think of a way to improve it, so they go the other way. That’s a whole lot easier.

I imagine it will be a negative example in design textbooks for years to come.

By the way, the iPhone 4 antenna incident. Did you see how dirty it was at their press conference? They tried to shift attention to a totally unrelated issue (flesh blocking RF because of high water content – everyone knows that), when the REAL issue is how fingers can easily bridge the 2 antennas, as well as ruining the impedance matching. If the issue is really just flesh blocking RF, bumpers wouldn’t have helped at all. Then they went into this everyone-lies-about-signal-strength-and-now-we-are-correcting-it business, when THEY were the ones lying about signal strength. Seriously, there are more honourable ways of doing business.

I love how half of my posts deteriorate into Apple-rant. I shall stop now. They are not worth my time.

I think that is a step forward.

The idea of arbitrarily restricting marriage to be between a man and a woman sounds incredibly barbarian and ignorant to me.

Homosexual people aren’t forcing us to be homosexual. Why are we forcing them to be straight?

From Wikipedia:

Proponents of the constitutional amendment [(meaning people saying gay marriage is wrong)] argued that exclusively heterosexual marriage was “an essential institution of society,” that leaving the constitution unchanged would “result in public schools teaching our kids that gay marriage is okay,” and that “gays … do not have the right to redefine marriage for everyone else.”

Is it just me or does that sound VERY wrong? Reading those arguments make me angry. And I am not even gay.

“an essential institution of society,”

So is slavery. How can we possibly live in a world without slaves?! Heck, we may even have to wash the dishes ourselves!

leaving the constitution unchanged would “result in public schools teaching our kids that gay marriage is okay,”

And it’s wrong because? you are not gay? Allowing black people to vote would result in public schools teaching our kids that black people are people, too. Why isn’t that banned already?

Imagine a world where homosexuality is the majority and heterosexuality is the minority. Imagine you are a straight person naturally attracted to girls (or guys if you are a girl). And some gay people jump in and say you can’t have that! even though it doesn’t affect him at all, because his random interpretation of some random God, or HIS idea of what the society SHOULD be like, that you couldn’t care less about, says heterosexuality is a SIN! and so they try to outlaw it. That would suck wouldn’t it.

I think the more fundamental issue is, marriage (or civil unions) should not be in the legal system at all. It’s a system based on people’s beliefs, and in this case, religion. And religion has no place in the legal system. Of course, culture will inevitably be part of the legal system, but we should aim to minimize that, to be a free country.

All major constitutions list “sexual orientation” as a protected property (along with gender, race, nationality, poo-ing interval, etc). This is a direct violation. Hypocrisy.

You can have your Ford Model T in any colour as long as it’s black?

Our legal system clearly favours heterosexual couples with couples benefits and things, over single people, then over homosexual people. This is discrimination. I guess all politicians are heterosexual and married?

I guess people only care when it concerns them?

I have to admit, I don’t particularly care about this issue since it doesn’t really concern me, and haven’t been really reading about it until now, but still, it disturbs me.

Every year in the past I made a post recounting my summer vacation right before it ends.

I miss being able to do that . No more summer for 3 more years!

Now my only entertainment comes from Starcraft (only single player, no time for online). The campaign was a bit cheesy, but still very well done in my not so humble opinion. I “overheard” an artsy friend of mine pointing out that the way Jim Raynor walks is very feminine. I think it’s true, lol, if you watch it closely. Who needs girls when you have Starcraft?! (right? whitney? right? right? =P)

And Zeratul is so cool. Woo.

And I’m struggling to find time to finish my quadrocopter project.

That aside, plans for next year -
Life is canceled until further notice.

23 credits in one term!

I’m taking 2 more courses than I should – EECE 353 and CPSC 211, which, theoretically means my forth year will be easier… somehow I doubt that will happen =P. There are just so many interesting courses I want to take.

One interesting sidenote – the prof for the CPSC 211 course has an almost perfect score on ratemyprof. 4.9 average! Even Master Yoda doesn’t have a midichlorian count that high! And I’m sure it’s not (just) because “[she] is very cute!” lol.

When it comes to rating profs, everyone is a critic, especially those that failed the course. I wonder how good she has to be to get that 4.9. I’m actually excited . Even Mighty Jesus only got 4.3.

The course itself should be pretty easy. Sounds like just the Java version of CPSC 260. Sad that we have to take it again for many 300 level CPSC courses.

I also plan to be more involved in Thunderbots, starting in September. SO going to Istanbul next summer!!

Didn’t do much last year because I didn’t know much. Got to know people, ate lots of pizza, that’s about it. I think I know a little more now .

I just realized, I’ve always been subconsciously imitating people’s voices/accents when I talk to them.

So if you have a deep scary voice, I’ll talk to you in deep scary voice. If you have squeaky girly voice, I’ll talk to you in squeaky girly voice (except in the case of hardware limitation).

Try it some time! Talk to me in Yoda-speak or something =D. Or grizzly bear voice. Or something.

That’s why I always find it weird to talk to someone in a new language if I’m used to talking to them in another. Because I don’t have a “voice profile” of them in that language.

Do you do that too? Or is it just me?

PS. On a totally unrelated sidenote, I’ve started documenting my quadrocopter project here –
http://cyberfish.wecheer.com/quadrocopter

Decided to not do it on my blog since most people would find it very boring.

Feel free to drop by!

Just finished watching the whole Star Wars series (1-6). Took a whole week! Last time I watched it was when I was 5 or something, so this is effectively the first time, though I still remember some of the story.

And I still don’t know who Anakin’s father is.

Many people feel sorry for Anakin, but I think he is just a big baby. Sure, some bad things happened to him. Well, that tends to happen when you just go around killing people you don’t like.

On the other hand, I really like Padme. And not just because she is pretty!

We have seen way too many brainless females in films. Good to see her for a change.

She does have very questionable taste, though. I mean, Anakin? Really? She could do so much better! Get Jabba the Hutt or something.

On a slightly more serious note, it’s interesting to see how Star Wars has all the mighty females. Padme and Leia. Maybe they wanted to use that to balance the attention given to the Jedis? Girls do all the diplomatics, guys kill all the way. Sounds like a plan.

And the droids… I like R2D2. Silence is golden. Even better if you can shoot fire.

Trivias -
Padme has a REALLY large wardrobe! If you’ve only seen her scenes you’ll probably mistake it for Sex and the City. Apparently many of her costumes are based on traditional outfits of royalties around the world. Very cool!

The only place I’ve seen stormtroopers hit something that moves was at the beginning of ep4, when they boarded Princess Leia’s ship. They never hit anything ever since.

The only 2 characters that made it through the whole 6 episodes are Palpatine (senator, chancellor, then emperor) and Yoda. And R2D2 (although it was never confirmed whether it was the same R2D2). C3PO doesn’t count because he was killed and revived many times.

After some sweaty late night tennis, hop on the car, start the engine, knowing where I am and where I want to go (home), but nothing in-between.

There’s a compass.

I am terrible at directions.

So I just drive in the general direction of where I think home is (I can do that thanks to the compass), and hope I’ll eventually end up on one of the few roads I know, and I can get home from there.

I’ve done it a few times and I think I’ve taken a different route every single time. Oftentimes I don’t even know what direction I am driving without looking at the compass. When I reach intersections… well there’s a 2/3 chance of getting it right (assuming the target is in one of the 2 quadrants in front).

From South Arm to my house at Blundell @ Gilbert, I think I’ve even gone to Granville and back once (those are roads in Richmond btw).

The stars are beautiful, and there are very few cars on the roads. The silence is relaxing. I don’t mind driving a little longer.

Try it some time! (I can help you get lost if you want. I’m GOOD at it)

I’ve always wanted to build something that flies. That’s my childhood dream.

I think it’s about time.

Did quite a bit of reading over the weekend, end up deciding on a quadrocopter.

There are basically 3 types of flying machines -
1) Lighter-than-air (LTA) vehicles – things that use hot air or helium (or *gasp* explosive hydrogen) to float in air, and motors just for maneuvering. Like an airship.
2) Fixed wing aircrafts – airplanes. Aerodynamically stable (if engines fail, you can still glide it back home).
3) Rotary wing aircrafts – helicopters, tri-copters, quadrocopters. Aerodynamically unstable, and requires precise electronic control to maintain stability (if engines fail, it will enter free fall immediately… bloody!).

Airplanes would be too hard on the mechanical side, since I know nothing about aerodynamics.

I was debating between airship and rotary wings… airships are just not cool enough =P and they are heavily influenced by wind, which may suck.

And quadrocopter is apparently the easiest to build/control among all rotary wing crafts, so I’ll start with that.

In my dream, it has a range of about 1km, sends a live video feed, and allow remote control, as well as GPS based auto-pilot (auto return home and waypoints).

Major challenges -

Control

For the thing to be stable, the rotors have to make sure there is no tilt on all 3 axises of rotation (roll, pitch, yaw). And to do that, it must know its own orientation, which is a lot more difficult than it sounds, requiring an inertial measurement unit (IMU), usually consisting of a 3 axis gyroscope and a 3 axis accelerometer, along with a few other things (GPS, magnetometer) to correct long term drift. This alone will cost >$100. Also very complicated algorithms and crazy math.

Radio

High frequency = high bandwidth and low range. Vice versa.
To stream video, I’ll need at least a few hundred kbit/s, which means it will probably have to be 2.4GHz.
That will limit my range to about 1km with line of sight, but I’m hoping that won’t be a problem…
Lower frequency radio can do a few kilometers, but at tiny fraction of the bandwidth.

Power

I looked at some motors used by other people. They draw about 10A (yes! 10 AMPS!) each, for a total of ~40A.
That means I will probably have to ditch my favourite NiMH, and go lithium polymer. Both for the energy:weight ratio and output current.

Regulation

They (the government) don’t want whatever you build to crash into a 747. Which sounds reasonable.

Transport Canada doesn’t seem to have any regulations for “model aircrafts” except it must be <35kg. I have already emailed them for clarification.

I want this thing to be classified as a “model aircraft” because it’s the only class that doesn’t require any license/certification to fly.

In the US, they also have a restriction of a maximum altitude of 100m. That would be fine with me, too. I’m not going to launch my chopper into low earth orbit or something =P. For comparison, commercial airliners fly at about 10km – 100 times higher.

They also have a line of sight requirement, meaning you must be able to see the aircraft with naked eye at all times. And if it’s autonomous, you must be able to do manual override to get it out of trouble any time.

I’ll get to work =D.

This is my way.

3 big chunks of ice with a little bit of water added to increase surface area.

I think the effect is more placebo than real lol. But still!

Experimenting with freezing point depression now. Theoretically, 10% NaCl by weight will give me a freezing point of -5C. We’ll see…

In an ideal world, I can reuse the salt too!

The sound was nothing short of remarkable, depending on how you look at it – a perfect reproduction of constipation noise, interleaved with hyper-modern randomly-variable rate uncontrolled vibrato.

The victim. No photoshopping! It IS shiny .

I think I deserted it right after I did my last RCM exam (there was a time when I thought paying someone to tell me how good I am is a terribly awesome idea).

Sharing the love!

Warning: This post may contain spoilers for Toy Story 3. I’ll try my best not to tho. If you think you’ll ever want to watch it, proceed cautiously. If you haven’t and don’t think you will, think again =P.

hypocrite hypocrite hypocrite hypocrite hypocrite hypocrite hypocrite hypocrite hypocrite hypocrite

I’m the biggest hypocrite in the world.

After writing a whole blog post about how silly this 3D thing is, I just went to watch Toy Story 3, in 3D =P.

Some things are worth dying for.

Toy Story is worth living for.

I’m not sure if it’s the nostalgia or Rex (the dinosaur learning how to rawr), but I feel so kiddo again.

It’s one of those films that you don’t have to think about deeper meanings, or try to decipher some hidden message, or facts of life, or whatever.

It’s just toys. So little yet so much (no, this is not an attempt to sound profound). It’s all in the details. The character development is crazy for just chunks of plastic. And then their interactions and the lol moments take it to infinity and beyond.

The 3D is quite well done, too. There is no “dragons and demons ripping mortals apart”, but it makes the film so much more vivid. And it’s not grossly over-exaggerated like some other 3D films that just want to show off the technology.

Well worth the extra $4.

You’ll never be the same again! Well, not for a few hours at least.