The Best And Worst Design Details Of Nintendo’s Wii U

It’s the worst kept secret in tech: 2013 will be the year of the console refresh. Microsoft will announce the Xbox 720 (which may have augmented reality glasses), and Sony will inevitably debut the PS4.

With the Wii U, Nintendo got a head start on the next gen. And after playing with a review unit for more hours than I’d like to admit, here are my thoughts on the system.

THE GOOD

Wii U’s Interface Juggles Old And New Paradigms Well … Mostly
You can’t underplay this accomplishment, even though most have: The Wii U has a new touchscreen controller with a bajillion buttons on it. Yet its main menus are just as navigable with the classic Wiimotes. Thanks to a clever button layout (similar to the Wii’s), it’s just as intuitive to tap the screen as it is to aim and click.

Unfortunately, you can’t use the Wiimote in apps like Netflix or YouTube. In fact, the Wiimote won’t even turn on in these modes. Will future updates bring more Wiimote control options? I’m guessing no but hoping yes. The Wiimote still works.

It’s The Simplest Universal Remote Ever
When you set up the Wii U, you’re asked what your cable provider is and if you have a dedicated box. You’re whisked through a few questions about the make and model of your TV and suddenly, you’re controlling your TV inputs and cable box with the Wii U GamePad. You can even pull up this TV remote at any time with a dedicated hard button on the GamePad.

CONTROLS ARE LIKE ONE OF THOSE BIG-BUTTONED REMOTES FOR SENIORS, IN A GOOD WAY.

The controls are absurdly basic. (Onscreen controls are like one of those big-buttoned remotes for seniors in a good way, allowing you to change the channel and volume and view your program guide, but not much more.) All the same, I can’t stress how liberating it is to use a D-pad or analog stick to look through shows, swapping between playing games and watching TV without ever putting down the controller.

Drawing On TV Feels Right
MiiVerse is like a mega messageboard on the Wii U, where bored players can chat about games or whatever else is on their mind. It’s like any other message board, with one fantastic trick: You can use the Wii U pad (which comes with a stylus) to draw messages instead of just typing them. These drawings permeate your welcome screen, too, where avatars from other players fill a public space (and frankly, the drawings are so good that one can’t help but wonder if Nintendo is curating a bit behind the scenes). Even still, I can’t help but wonder, in five years, if we’ll think it was absurd that we couldn’t always draw on our computer screens and TVs so simply.

THE MIXED

Gaming
What’s it like to play on the Wii U GamePad? It really depends on the game. Super Mario Bros. U actually asks up to four players to use Wiimotes, with a fifth person optionally holding the Wii U GamePad only to add blocks for others to jump on or stun enemies. The touchscreen controls feel tacked on and, frankly, pretty boring compared to really playing as a character. You can also play Mario single player, using the Wii U GamePad with full character controls. The screen mirrors the game so you can even play with the TV off, but you lose all the touchscreen components you get in multiplayer.

THE WII U GAMEPAD IS A DIGITAL SIMULATION OF DIGGING THROUGH YOUR BACKPACK.

ZombiU, on the other hand, uses the new remote at its core. This personal screen serves as a map and your inventory. It’s actually often quite frustrating to juggle two screens, never sure if a zombie is sneaking up on you—and that’s part of the fun. In a gaming world full of convenient HUDs, the remote is a digital simulation of digging through your backpack with your eyes down and a zombie at your back. In multiplayer, the Wii U gamer gets to place zombies tactically on a map to attack friends, which is an equally fun, innovative use of this second screen.

Controller Juggling
Above I mentioned that the Wii remote doesn’t work in some menus. It’s annoying. But the Wii U Pro controller, which is Nintendo’s take on the Xbox/PS3 controllers, isn’t supported in many games for reasons that simply don’t make sense. Super Mario Bros. U won’t support it, for instance. Why not? It has a D-pad and A/B buttons. What’s missing? Nothing. Just support.

WHEN NINTENDO ENABLES INPUTS, THE WII U’S DISSONANT CONTROL SCHEMES MAKE JAZZ.

Make no mistake about it, the Wii U is absurdly designed. It’s built with physical buttons, a touchscreen, occasional motion controls and even a stylus. But there are occasional payoffs to this everything-for-everyone approach: You can often control the system on your terms, unrestricted to a single UI. Heck, you can play Mario from the bathroom. When Nintendo enables every sort of input you can imagine, the Wii U’s dissonant control schemes make jazz. When Nintendo (or its developers) restrict its controls for no good reason, any semblance of reason or flexibility is lost.

THE BAD

It’s Also The Most Confounding Universal Remote Ever
Wait, I just said it was the best remote above! Well, that’s the stock remote. There’s also a newly released alternative called TVii, which we previewed before. TVii is like a funnel for your media content, allowing you to set your favorite shows and explore them with a thumbnail view. It will dig for your shows through your cable subscription or services like Amazon (Netflix is coming soon, too). You can even set a reminder to watch something, and the Wii U GamePad will change the channel for you at that time. Then, while you watch the show, you can surf IMDB to learn more about the actors. There are a lot of great ideas here.

TVII HAS 36 BUTTONS, IT SPINS, AND IT’S TOO LARGE TO REACH WITH MY THUMB.

The problems are twofold. TVii is perpetually, stutteringly slow, and no UI can feel like a joy unless it’s fast. (I’d sacrifice the pretty thumbnails for clean, quick text any day.) The other problem is its crazy, radial virtual remote for when you just want to change the channel. It has 36 buttons, it spins, it’s too large to reach with my thumb and I still can’t use it to dig through my DVR library or swap my inputs for some reason. TVii also disables the D-Pad and analog remote controls, which are so satisfying for gamers to use. Ultimately, the TVii remote is a magnitude more complex than that basic, senior-friendly remote we mentioned above, but it actually has less functionality. It’s unusable.

The Battery Life Actually Limits Use Cases
This is a design publication, so it’s rare we’d even mention battery life. But in this case, the 4-hour (or less) run time of the rechargeable Wii U GamePad severely limits functionality. It can’t be your go-to media device for TV and games when it can’t make it through a single evening binge ofBreaking Bad. My iPad is great because it feels like it always has power—I think of my iPad whenever I think of relaxing on the couch. With the Wii U, I’m always tense that the controller isn’t charged enough for me to play.

The good news for Nintendo is that most of these complaints are firmware-fixable (though sluggish speed and lousy battery life are likely here to stay). At the end of the day, the company has, yet again, built a seemingly absurd controller that has a surprising amount of ergonomic flexibility. And while Microsoft, Sony, and Apple are all trying to sell us on closed-system media content, it’s revelatory to have Nintendo do something as simple and thoughtful as enable us to swap an input to just watch TV. That is, assuming anyone out there other than me is still watching TV.

The Wii U is out now starting at $299.

The new logo is both bold and cost effective, using design-world standards to maximum effect.

The Guggenheim Bilbao, San Francisco’s DeYoung, New York’s Whitney — all are museums that have identities inextricably linked to their buildings and the architects who gave them shape (Frank Gehry, Herzog & deMeuron, and Marcel Breuer, respectively). You may know squat about art, but odds are you can pick Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic Guggenheim out of a lineup. Can you say the same of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston? Unless you live in Houston, probably not. That isn’t stopping the CAMH from trying to remix the building, as the basis for its rebranding campaign.

Although it never made it into the architectural cannon, the stainless-steel-clad structure, designed by Latvian-born Gunnar Birkerts in 1972, is a standout work, especially for Houston. (Birkerts, the father of the literary critic Sven Birkerts, is better known for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, 1973, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, in Kansas City, 1994.) Various views of the building yield four distinctive geometric shapes, which the New York-based firm AHL&CO layered on top of each other like a CMYK collage. (The previous logo was a flat, literal representation of the museum.) The mark can be used separately or in combination with the acronym in Helvetica Bold and all caps.

Detractors immediately seized on the logo when it began making the rounds on the Interweb, slamming it for the color palette (unimaginative!) and the typeface (Helvetica? Snore.). The designers answer their critics thusly: “In terms of the Helvetica and CMYK — it was a simple matter of economy,” Peter Ahlberg writes in an email. “That meant there was no budget for new/customized type, spot color, etc. We felt that Helvetica Bold was malleable enough to accommodate any art (style, medium, etc.) paired with it.”

We’ll leave it to the graphic designers to debate the finer points. Regardless of the logo’s merits, we applaud the museum’s appreciation of its home, even if it hasn’t achieved landmark status. And the mark just may encourage people to investigate their built environment from all angles, and there’s no downside to that.

[Hat tip to Brand New]

copied from: fastcodesign

I’ve been Brand museum at the hidden place in London 2 weeks ago.

When I arrived there, well unfortunately I just only had less than 30 mins to look around because I was too late, I felt I was at an amazing amusement park! It was absolutely  fantastic.

I do like modern and simple design stuff but can’t stop loving vintage design. It is impossible. Especially after moving to London, more and more I love vintage design.

I would like to visit there again def. I would like to know more vintage design and brand and share with you. If you know or find more, please share here with me :)

I found this design through this site article: http://abduzeedo.com/vintage-label-designs

For more from Wallace Design House visit their website wallacedesignhouse.com

Trackback URL: http://disqus.com/forums/abduzeedo/vintage_label_designs/trackback/

Is it ok to ask your users to learn your interface? As UI design is maturing and the web is becoming a more advanced land of complex interfaces is it now unreasonable for every feature to be instantly usable? Touch devices have also entered the mainstream and added a multitude of interactions that UI designers can lean on.

So, how do you know when it is ok to hide features and ask your audience to learn your application? Is ‘learnability’ now more important than usability?

People like to feel that they are making progress. They like to feel that they are learning and mastering new knowledge and skills.

whatmakesthemclick.net

I recently wrote a short post listing my initial thoughts of ‘Reeder’ the RSS app for Mac.

I had heard so many superlatives about it from others that I was compelled to give it a try. However, on first showing I was massively disappointed, during my first attempt at using it, I was constantly guessing and was unsure about where to find the features I wanted.

Despite these initial UX grumbles, I know there is a huge audience out there who love using ‘Reeder’ and find using it a breeze. If you get over the initial confusion and spend time learning the interface, it becomes second nature and needs no thought to operate.

So, what factors allow you the chance to experiment with your user interface?

Importance

If the interface you are designing is critical to your users then it’s far more likely they are going to spend time learning how to use it. The more important the application is the more time they will spend trying to get used to it.

For example, if the application is a critical part of the user’s workflow and they would be far less productive without it, they are going to be far more willing to overcome initial confusion if the long term goal is worth it.

Frequency

I use a handful of applications and websites everyday. Using them so regularly has meant their interface is now very familiar to me and I know exactly where everything is. I tend to perform the same tasks during every visit and because I perform them so frequently I can complete them without having to think about them.

The ‘Reeder’ app is a good example of an interface that people would use a lot. I keep up to date with my RSS feed at regular intervals during the day so any users of ‘Reeder’ are likely to get used to it very quickly.

Cost

This might sound counter-intuitive but the more someone pays for an application the more time they are going to invest in learning it. I’m not saying you should charge exorbitant amounts for your app so that you can neglect the user experience. However, people are far less likely to stop using something they have paid for.

Take iPhone apps for example, if I download a free app and I don’t instantly like it I will delete it without so much as a second thought. Alternatively, if I have decided to pay for an app, I’m going to make sure I invest a little bit of my time before deciding to keep or bin it.

One reason for this is the ‘Value Attribution’ theory that states we value things more when they cost more. If something is expensive then we assume it is worth the investment and our expectations rise. These expectations are likely to cause you to persevere past any initial problems.

It could also have something to do with the ‘Commitment & Consistency’ theory. People want to be seen acting consistently and if they have made a commitment to purchase something they are going to try harder to prove to themselves that it was a worthwhile purchase.

Alternative

Another important factor determining how long people will spend trying to learn your interface is the amount and quality of the alternatives on offer. If there are lots of companies providing the same service then it’s likely you will try to find a better solution elsewhere.

However, if your app is unique in some way and it’s much harder to find a suitable substitute then your users are going to be forced to push through any difficulties until the app feels familiar.

Be careful though, you are unlikely to stay unique for long, so be sure to fix any usability issues before a better alternative comes along and makes it easy for your audience to leave you.

Simplicity

How many features does your application have? The more features you have within your interface the more complicated it will look. If your interface looks complicated your users are going to perceive it as difficult to use and expect it to take a long time to learn.

If it looks like it’s going to take a substantial investment in time to learn, people are going to be more apprehensive about starting the learning process.

Testing for Learnability

One dilemma faced when designing an interface that needs to be learned is that it can be hard to test before putting it live.

On most projects I am involved with we build a prototype and then conduct some user tests, asking participants to complete some pre-defined tasks. We can then use the feedback gained from these to iterate the prototype. When we are happy with our solution we can then build it and put it live knowing our creation has been validated by our potential audience.

However, this type of testing doesn’t really lend itself to an interface that isn’t looking to be instantly understandable. It’s very likely that this type of interface would perform poorly during initial testing. It would be better to test in a timeframe in which you hope your audience would start to feel comfortable using your product.

With this in mind it would be recommended that this type of solution should be put live and iterated from there. This way you can learn from user statistics and test actual users who have chosen to try your site. After a given period of live time it might be a good idea to question your audience and ask them how much they understand about your interface.

A Steep learning curve is beter in the long run?

There has been some research into this field that would seem to suggest a steep learning curve will eventually lead users who persist with the application to use it more efficiently.(Haldar, 2011)

In the article Haldar cites some research conducted by Dr. Christof van Nimwegen (2005) where he outlines 3 recommendations for interface design:

Designers could consider making interactions “less assisted” to persuade users into specific behavior. This issue is beyond plain usability issues and focuses on more meta cognitive aspects of interface-induced behavior such as planfulness and user engagement.

…after the interruption, internalization-subjects kept improving, while externalization fell back… internalization-subjects continue to work on base of the plan-based strategy as they did before, while externalization on the other hand performs worse after interruption. They fell back depending on the interface, having a less elaborated plan.

…internalization- subjects had to build a stronger, more elaborated plan and could rely less on interface information, and indeed working with the internalized version resulted in having significantly better knowledge of the problems rules and problem space…

blog.vivekhaldar.com

Examples

Google maps

Google are brilliant at designing for learnability. A lot of their apps are really simple upon first inspection and it’s very easy to use their core functions. However, if you delve a little deeper there is always very advanced functionality hidden away that once you find you can use again and again.

At first glance this looks like a nice and basic view

Take Google maps as an example, finding a location on a map or planning a route is very easy. However, there are lots of other features that can be turned on if you know where to look. If you wanted to see photos of the locations then it’s possible by opening up a hidden menu behind the traffic option.

There are some hidden features behind that traffic tab

Another Google product that uses advanced functionality is their newly design iOS app. The first time the app loads, the user is presented with a tutorial screen that highlights all of the functionality available. After this screen they have focused the display on the core functionality of the search bar. If a user needs to limit their search they can swipe the screen to the right to see the filter options.

There are even hidden features behind that

Google iOS app

Another Google product with hidden functionality is the newly launched iOS app. This new update has a new UI, which could be confusing to use on first viewing. However, the designers have provided a tutorial screen that loads the first time the app is opened, which softens the learning curve by quickly pointing out all the features available.

Clicking on the question marks provides a short introduction to the feature giving the user just enough information to know if it will be useful to them.

When you first load the app, there are some helpful pointers to quickly tell users how things work

The basic screen of the app is a simple Google search bar, which most people will be familiar with using and will feel comfortable entering their search term into. However, for people who want to filter their search, to provide images only for example, can swipe the screen to the right to reveal extra filter options.

This isn’t something all users would want, so Google have cleverly decided to hide this extra functionality.

If you swipe the screen to the right some hidden filters are revealed

Summery

The next time you are about to start an interface design, you should stop and think about the learning curve you are going to leave your users with. Creating an interface where every feature is easily accessible is not always the best option. It’s not always a bad thing to ask your users to experiment with your interface to find what they are looking for.

If the interface is an important tool then users will persist with it. If it’s an application that is used frequently then it’s less likely your audience will have to re-learn difficult actions.

Of course, I’m not trying to say your interfaces should be difficult to use, but I do want to make you think about possibly hiding some advanced features from users or trying to experiment with how you ask your audience to interact with your application. The ‘easiest’ solution is not necessarily the best solution for the end user in the long run.

About the Author

AtiKuSDesign is the creator and editor of the web and graphic design inspiration blog D-Lists.He lives and breathes design, spending 90% of his life online looking at a screen, finding inspiration everywhere. To add to his passion for design he is an experienced front-end and wordpress developer.He’s recently taken to the world of UI design with a keen interest in User Experience.Follow him on twitter or follow his complete set of online ramblings via his flavors page

Copied from: http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/when-is-learnability-more-important-than-usability/

Gear  |  Design Word Puzzle universal wrapping paper by design and art direction: Fabio Milito and Francesca Guidotti. Simply locate the holiday you need, circle it, and you’re good to go.
“You can choose your celebration between 20 different occasions:
/ MERRY CHRISTMAS / HAPPY BIRTHDAY / HAPPY VALENTINES DAY / HAPPY EASTER / HAPPY THANKSGIVING / I LOVE YOU
/ I MISS YOU / HAPPY NAMEDAY / CONGRATULATIONS / HAPPY RETIREMENT / RECOVER SOON / GREETINGS WITH LOVE
/ YOU ARE THE BEST / FOR DAD / FOR MOM / ENJOY / ALL THE BEST / IT IS NOT A TIE / IT IS NOT A PERFUME. “

Via inspire

Copied from: http://www.likecool.com/Word_Puzzle_universal_wrapping_paper—Design—Gear.html Word Puzzle universal wrapping paper

Copied from: http://minstreldead.deviantart.com/#/d3cq6wx

Oliver Barrett | Charting The Beatles

Loving these four amazing Beatles illus­tra­tions by Oliver Barrett. He has created portraits of each member from his favorite era of their career. Oliver depicted each Beatles member’s array (or lack of in Ringo’s case) of instruments through vector silhouettes.

The illustrations are for the Charting the Beatles project.

Via design work life

Copied from :http://bumbumbum.me/2011/03/17/oliver-barrett-charting-the-beatles/

1. #3F5D7D

2. #279B61

3. #008AB8

4. #993333

5. #A3E496

6. #95CAE4

7. #CC3333

8. #FFCC33

9. #FFFF7A

10. #CC6699

Added by ‘keerwashere’

Copied from: http://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/the-top-10-most-beautiful-colors-of-all-time

One Tree Coffee Co.

March 2, 2011

Designed by Boheem | Country: Australia

“One Tree Coffee Co is a boutique Espresso Bar in Newcastle NSW. They offer a small range of quality coffee blends, and wanted to offer their very own iced coffee – bottled in the store and sold within a day. The labels are designed so that they can be easily marked by hand with the details of the contents. The overall aesthetic for One Tree Coffee Co takes reference from the coastal city’s coal and steel industries as well as the old railways used for transport of these goods. The design of these labels uses elements found in vintage train tickets and railway signs.”

Copied from: http://lovelypackage.com/one-tree-coffee-co/

(Source: bluecocoa)

A case study in how an intractable problem — creating a human-powered airplane — was solved by reframing the problem.

1959 was a time of change. Disney released their seminal filmSleeping Beauty, Fidel Castro became the prime minister of Cuba, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower made Hawaii an official state. That same year, a British industry magnate by the name ofHenry Kremer wondered: Could an airplane fly powered only by the pilot’s body?

Like Da Vinci, Kremer believed it was possible and decided to try to turn his dream into reality. He offered the staggering sum of £50,000 for the first person to build a human-powered plane that could fly a figure eight around two markers set a half-mile apart. Also, he offered £100,000 for the first person to fly across the English Channel. In modern U.S. dollars, that’s the equivalent of $1.3 million and $2.5 million. The Kremer Prize was the X-Prize of its day.

[Paul MacCready holding a “Speed Ring,” a device he invented for competitive glider flying.]

The problem was the process itself.

A decade went by. Dozens of teams tried and failed to build an airplane that could meet the requirements. It looked impossible. Another decade threatened to go by before our hero, Paul MacCready, decided to get involved. He looked at the problem, how the existing solutions had failed, and how people were making their airplanes. He came to the startling realization that people were solving the wrong problem. “The problem is,” he said, “that we don’t understand the problem.”

MacCready’s insight was that everyone who was working on solving human-powered flight would spend upwards of a year building an airplane on conjecture and theory without a base of knowledge based on empirical tests. Triumphantly, they would complete their plane and wheel it out for a test flight. Minutes later, a year’s worth of work would smash into the ground.

Even in successful flights, the flight would end with the pilot physically exhausted just a couple hundred meters later. With that single new data point, the team would work for another year to rebuild, re-test, and re-learn. Progress was slow for obvious reasons, but that was to be expected in pursuit of such a difficult vision. That’s just how it was, went the common thinking.

The problem was the problem. MacCready realized that what needed to be solved was not, in fact, human-powered flight. That was a red herring. The problem was the process itself. And a negative side effect was the blind pursuit of a goal without a deeper understanding of how to tackle deeply difficult challenges. He came up with a new problem that he set out to solve: How can you build a plane that could be rebuilt in hours, not months? And he did. He built a plane with Mylar, aluminum tubing, and wire.

The first airplane didn’t work. It was too flimsy. But, because the problem he set out to solve was creating a plane he could fix in hours, he was able to quickly iterate. Sometimes he would fly three or four different planes in a single day. The rebuild, re-test, and re-learn cycle went from months and years to hours and days.

Find a faster way to fail, recover, and try again.

Eighteen years had passed since Henry Kremer opened his wallet for his challenge. Nobody could turn that vision into an airplane. Paul MacCready got involved and changed the understanding of the problem to be solved. Half a year later later, MacCready’s Gossamer Condor flew 2,172 meters to win the prize. A little more than a year after that, the Gossamer Albatross flew across the English Channel. So what’s the lesson? When you are solving a difficult problem, re-frame the problem so that your solution helps you learn faster. Find a faster way to fail, recover, and try again. If the problem you are trying to solve involves creating a magnum opus, you are solving the wrong problem.

[Thanks to Alan Kay for turning me on to this story.]

AZA RASKIN

 Aza is the founder of Massive Health, and was until recently Creative Lead for Firefox. Previously, he was Head of User Experience for Mozilla Labs. He’s been responsible for… Read more

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copy from: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663488/wanna-solve-impossible-problems-find-ways-to-fail-quicker

(Source: bluecocoa)