TouchOSC also includes a companion layout editor. This free desktop application allows you to define custom screen layouts of UI elements and then upload them to your iPhone. Unfortunately there are only a limited number of UI widgets, and because the software was designed to control realtime sound apps, they naturally tend toward realtime control- knobs, faders and toggles as opposed to forms, dropdowns and checkboxes of more rich interfaces. Still, if all you need is a few buttons and a slider to control an interactive system and you aren’t able to develop a native iPhone app, TouchOSC offers some enticing potential. See below the jump for some examples of unexpected uses.

This guy uses TouchOSC to control a robot!

You can even access the iPhone’s accelerometer and send that data over OSC (warning:video has loud sound).

osc, processing and an iphone accelerometer from codingnature on Vimeo.

If you’re using Flash, I recommend flosc for parsing and sending/receiving messages. There are many resources out the for using OSC with Python, Processing and a variety of software packages. So build you UI, teach your software prototype to speak OSC and you’re set!

TouchOSC homepage
TouchOSC @ iTunes Store

Much has been written about Sketchpad, Sutherland and all of the developments in HCI, computer science and engineering that continue to flow from his work. In the context of this site however, it’s important to note that Sutherland’s innovative engineering solutions were all driven by the desire provide people the ability to express themselves more intuitively with technology. The application precedes the solution.

“A display connected to a digital computer gives us a chance to gain familiarity with concepts not realizable in the physical world. It is a looking glass into a mathematical wonderland.” –Ivan Sutherland.

As an exhibit designer, I personally found Prezi’s strong emphasis on scaling inspiring. Since exhibition designers use scale as one of their primary mechanisms of information organization, I can even see Prezi as a potential tool for prototyping exhibit content, where the ratio in size between header graphics, sub-headers, body text and captions can be as high as 100:1.

Like most sketching tools written about on this site, Prezi’s success relies as much on its limitations as it does in its features. While the possibilities for creating zooming presentations seems endless, Prezi keeps its users on track by providing only a few design templates, not allowing users to edit transition times between ’slides’ and otherwise keeping the system as simple as possible. A professional motion graphics designer might find this constraining, but a casual user (like me) can create very professional looking results in less than a half hour. See below for an example I created (oh yeah, the final product is easy to share, download and embed in a website.)

Click Read More for more analysis.

The main editor menu in Prezi offers some innovative interactions. Organized in a visual hierarchy where the current tool selection is displayed as a top-level menu with available sub-commands below it, the process of building a Prezi slideshow relies heavily on mastering this unconventional interface. New users may be confused that the tools for creating and those for editing the size/placement of elements such as text exist on separate levels of the menu hierarchy, but with a variety of different media types to wrangle, and a variety of different parameters to edit within each slideshow, I found the separation of creation and layout interesting. Also, quickselect keyboard commands offer the potential of making the process of creation even faster.

The Prezi ‘dartboard’ (my name not theirs) is another innovative UI element that users will quickly become acquainted with (my labels added to the screenshot at left). When an element is selected for editing, the dartboard is overlaid on top of it. The various sections of this widget allow users to place, scale and rotate an element or group of elements. Again, the separation of creation and layout, while seemingly limiting, actually makes laying out presentations easier. It also must be noted that Prezi projects are created entirely within a browser and the Prezi team must be applauded for implementing such intuitive editing tools within the somewhat-limiting constraints of a web browser.

After wrestling a bit with OS- and browser incompatibilities and getting acquainted with the unconventional UI, I found Prezi extremely fun to use, and even after a half hour of noodling found myself wanting to play more.

As visual designers and not scientists, we won’t pretend we have any clue how EnzymeX works or how it is used, but given its glowing reviews from MacUpdate to the New York Times, and with features such as the ability to “Directly search and download sequences from the NCBI Entrez nucleotide database.” and “Simply and reliably determine which buffer is most suitable for a double digestion.”, we have no doubt that EnzymeX is allowing an enterprising scientist or two the ability to test theories, perform faster or at the very least settle a few barstool bets as to the effectiveness of various protein sequencing motifs.

So with a cure for the common hangover as yet unfound, I say young scientists of the world, sequence away!

Read More for excerpts

See Also :
Microsoft SketchFlow
Visio Sketchy Wireframe Tempates
Web-based iPhone collaborative mockup maker

(Via Boxes and Arrows)

Having used computer-based sketchy wireframes on a number of projects, I’ve found many ways that they can decrease confusion with teams and stakeholders:

* Clients and Executives – People in this group typically want to push projects forward as quickly as possible. Consequently, the more “finished” the wireframes look, the faster they will expect to see the finished product. You can do yourself a disservice by making your wireframes look more complete than they are. To quote Kathy Sierra, “How ‘done’ something looks should match how ‘done’ something is.”

* Programmers – Programmers who see traditional wireframes too early in the process may misinterpret their functionality as “signed-off.” Don’t be shocked if you hear frantic questions like “Did we agree to this?” Programming requires meticulous attention to detail, so programmers read wireframes with an eagle eye. Consequently, they may expect a level of specification from wireframes that isn’t appropriate in the early stages.

* Designers – Designers make their living with their visual creativity, and they resist anything that could constrain it. Consequently, in situations where designers must work with wireframes created by someone else, designers can perceive them as a creative straightjacket, or worse, as a threat. A sketchy representation can help reduce friction by removing unnecessary details and adding a certain amount of “fuzziness” to the wireframes, thereby giving designers more leeway in interpreting the look and feel of the interface.

* Users – In my research, I’ve found that users who are asked to comment on traditional wireframes can be intimidated by an overly finished look and feel. This is mirrored by a general consensus in the usability industry that the “less done” a demo looks, the more comfortable users feel with giving feedback. Where traditional wireframes can elicit comments like “I don’t like the font on those words,” sketchy wireframes are more likely to elicit comments like “I don’t know what those words mean.”

Sketching in Hardware 3

Through discussion, experience and sketching we will examine the boundaries in developing physical computing: boundaries between components, between standards, between making objects and creating experiences, between cost and sustainability, between the expected and the unorthodox, and between creator and toolkit.

Sketching in Hardware is sponsored by ThingM and Tellart

The community aspect of Scratch is cool as well – because the environment is java-based, kids can upload their creations to the scratch website and comment on each other’s creations. I’m interested in seeing if the sharing aspect of scratch can elevate to the next level, where kids can complete a series of tutorials in order to learn more advanced capabilities of the system. If the satisfaction of completing a programming challenge was as satisfying as completing a level in a video game, kids’ investment in Scratch might continue beyond the academic user-testing-group and community-outreach testing environment that it no doubt was born in.

Scratch can also be controlled by a custom hardware controller, allowing kids to create projects that are controlled by a slider, button, light sensor or microphone.

Scratch Website
SEE ALSO : Lego Mindstorms NXT

Some recent developments in the system are particularly exciting to me: I was exctied to see new support for Arduino, Phidgets and Wiring. The system was also on display at the 2006 Maker Faire in San Francisco, and a new hardware design (left) has been developed, which means that it lives on.

d.tools was developed at the Stanford HCI Group.

…combines control of six distinct, complex user movements (X, Y, Z rotations and X, Y, Z translations) into a single liquid-proof joystick, while providing the functionality of a standard 2D mouse for interaction with GUI functions.

This is obviously a groundbreaking advance in medical technology. With surgeons and medical professionals increasingly having access to a wide array of 3D patient data, the ability to easily accessing and interpret that data during surgery is truly a step forward.

With that said, it should only be a matter of a few years until we see devices with these capabilities crop up on our own desktop for use in non life-or-death situations. The ability to intuitively manipulate and control 3D data along that number of axes with only one hand will make the experience of 3D modelling a step closer to creating objects by hand.