Decided to release them all, unedited and raw… (thus, there is “slight” possibility for typos and the likes)

Anyways, Symbolistic is a simple shape matching game, where you have to match the shape with two separate symbols, that when joined, create the shape in question.  There is a catch though, as the clock is running down and only way to turn it back for few seconds is to match another set of shapes, which in turn brings more symbols to the table. So be quick, survive and proceed to brag your scores to your friends! Tech-wise, Symbolistic does not use any external libraries, goes well under 10k even when unpacked and is even fully offline capable.

The game can be found from http://mintusability.com/symbolistic

More pictures after the break.

Well, what would every self-respecting geek do when they miss a bunch of dailies and have to click them all through? Build their own reader, of course! Thus, I present: Sinstream!

Sinstream is a reader webapp for Sinstream, which bundles all the daily comics as one handy stream. No more clicking though to the next day, rather than just scrolling down. <3

You can find Sinsteam from here: http://mintusability.com/sinstream

Why touch-technology has lost already

The statement that simple touch technology is going to be replacing the mouse is just simply dimwitted. Why? Simply because they are used in two completely different context: Whereas touch-screen rock the handheld world, computer mouse reigns as the sole emperor of the desktop computing. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love touchscreens and even multi-touch, however, neither of them have the power or the ergonomics of even the simplest 5€ mouse, when it comes to desktop computing. Just think of the time you use your computer daily; 2 hours? 4 hours? For me it would be something like 8-10 hours. Now, keep your hand pointed to the screen, as you would be clicking a button on it, and see how long you can go. Now, do the same test with the mouse. See the difference? On continuous use, mouse wins hands down. Sure, touchscreens are intuitive but when it comes to desktop use, they just suck. Unless. And this is big if, unless the whole paradigm of desktop computing changes to something drastically different.

Then what?

If not touchscreens, then what?

Well, here’s my take: Eyetracking. Eyetracking, in most basic form means that there is basically a camera tracking your eyes, software figuring out where at the screen you are actually looking at and a cursor moving on the screen, following your gaze. Nowadays this technology is becoming more mundane and easy to obtain, meaning that it’s becoming cheaper as the software advances every day. There are even couple of projects dedicated for complete “OS” for disabled people that can be used with just eyetracking (gaze: move the cursor, stare: click). Once you have it you’ll notice the problem for everyday use: With mouse, just when you are about to click something, your eyes already dart to other direction, looking for the next target. With eyetracking only you have to stop on the button and stare to produce a click, and meanwhile your brain is going “next target! next target!”. Of course, this behaviour will be eliminated over time when you get used to using the new UI, but this is also the reason why such UI won’t be capable of taking over the computer mouse; the learning curve is too steep. (not to mention, it’s slower than the things we are used to) But there is something we can do.

The eyetracking is natural pointing device for us, just because the way eyes work: the peripheral vision is good at spotting targets (it’s good at recognizing movement, sees at lower light etc) whereas actual focusing is needed to see the details of the target. Thus, we use peripheral vision when scanning our environments quickly but once we find something interesting we focus on it. However, the fact that we focus on something is only a sign that we might find the thing interesting/dangerous, not that we want to interact with it anyways. So, we need a way to sign the computer when we actually are interested of interacting with the target. This is the area where physical, real life, buttons are on top of the food-chain; their tactile feedback is just unbeatable (we feel the button go down, feel the actual click of the switch and hear the audible ‘click’ sound), not to mention you can rest your finger on it and it won’t activate it (like touch-driven devices). Here’s my solution in full: Use eyetracking for cursor control* and add physical button(s) for the clicking (and throw in physical scroll wheel, just for good measure). Now, the learning curve somewhat disappears, you could just work like you have always done and happily keep clicking away, with the obvious exception that you don’t actually have to follow your gaze with your mouse.

* With cursor I’m talking about the actual code realization of the gaze coordinates, not necessarily visible cursor on the screen. You could even toggle the cursor visiblity whether or not you are touching the button(s).

Three years ago I happened to stumble upon interesting project called ReactOS; a “free version” of Microsoft Windows – open source (blackboxing Windows components) and able to run Windows applications out of the box. Sounds sweet BUT… There’s always a catch. The thing that struck my eyes was the user interface, not because it just was so sweet, far from it. It struck my eyes because it was far from attractive, which in my eyes, was doing good job of destroying the appeal of the whole software. Hence, I decided I wanted to pitch in.

Now, years later I stumbled upon the same project and I even found mockups I made for the project from my harddrive. This provoked some thougths.

It’s quite a shame how open source projects still regards user interface as boring chore that will be done (mayhaps?) when someone finds a way to summon the energy for it. Which in turn will make the UI.. well, crappy, since the fact is that good UI and usability needs work. Since open source lives and dies by the number of developers donating their free time for it, I recon it actually should be very important for open source project to have appealing sweetness-dripping user interface and in-action screenshots. I’d even go so far as claim that 90-95% of people who bump into new software project, as their first thing, glance through the screenshots, rather than thumb through the features list. Since you only get one chance for first impression, the user interface should be taken care of from the very beginning. The guy/girl who just saw your screenshots of software that actually looks professional, functional and promising, might not magically be mind controlled by the project, contributing 10 hours per day, but 9 times out of 10 he/she will mention/link your screenshots to his/her friends. This in turn generates buzz, which is something that keeps the gears turning in open source projects, as the chain eventually finds new people who want to contribute.

How is it free then, you might ask, as it still needs work? Yes, it does require work but it’s a work you would need to work at some point anyways. And the sweetness doesn’t end there, you start getting more user experiences your new user interface, so the user interface actually starts to take shape at the same time you code the things that make the whole thing work.

However, user suggestions is something that you really need to be careful of, as subjective perception is not a measurement of usability. You need to figure out why they feel like button A should be replaced with button B. Is it because it’s used by some random software uses the same convention or is it because they like B more than A or is it because they actually use action B more than A? And why is that?

This method of generating buzz isn’t of course the only one or might not even be the best one, who knows?  It is, however, a real way to create positive first impression and as such positive buzz to your project. Now, you just have to keep your end of the bargain and actually develop the project further as people, in the time of fast paced internet, will grow tired of waiting for things to happen. I’d recommend small, fast and steady stream of changes and improvements; be agile!

It should also be noted that the website of the project has it’s say on the first impressions. Simple and elegant is better than complicated and cluttered.

First impressions. User interface. Tell your friends.

More after the jump

Posture guided gaming, you ask. Well, let me explain. You know how “high-end” (as in reality) FPS games tend to have these lean -buttons (lean left, lean right)? If youre a gamer, you do. Anyways, they are used to change the characters posture so that he still remains standing at the same place, only his torso is twisted to either side, enabling him peek around corners. I personally tend to hate those buttons since they are tad hard to handle and are usually in the way of more important buttons, like reload. Next logical step was, of course, to think something to replace such buttons, and if possible, to think outside the box.

This is what I came up with.

Again, if you’re gamer you know how, when the going gets intensive, you tend to physically try to dodge the rocket that’s coming to your screen by jumping sideways on your chair? Or you’re creeping along the enemy base and coming closer to an edge under which supposedly are enemies. As you inch closer you instinctly physically rise from your chair, trying to look over the edge. This is natural behaviour, based on instincts, and as such should definately taken advantage of.

So, how in the hell could we achieve such things? First, I was thinking along the old IR-led trick where you shine couple of IR-leds to persons eyes and catch the reflections from retina with, say, web-camera without IR-filter. All nice and tired-and-true but not practical for the common gamer since it would need completely new set of devices and interfaces built, and as we all know, that takes time. So, have to think something different. Blank stare and few blinks later, facial recognition! Such sofware should easily (as easily as things get in face recognition world) detect the posture of the gamer; if he’s sitting straight, peeking over something or around something and change view according.

Here’s the basis how it would work

These movements would be translated to the player characters torso/head movements (camera nailed to his head, of course), so as the player would jump on his chair dodge the rocket, the character would dodge the rocket in the game world. Now, imagine playing FPS and standing behind a tree; you would lean right and your character in the game would do the same thing, revealing the view to the right of the tree, lean left and the character would react likewise, he could even change his weapon to reflect the stature so that he could shoot from the left side (him being right-handed originally). Next, imagine you’re laying prone on rooftops, sniping people (on the game, of course); as you would be on the neutral/normal stance you would look through the scope, then you could say, lean right and the character would lean right, ever so gently, looking past the scope (from the right side, scope and the gun filling the left side of the screen), letting you to point the gun at the rough direction of your target, then move to normal stance and do the rest through your scope. You could even peek over the scope, seeing the whole landscape at one glimpse, and of course revealing your precious skull to the counter sniper.

Now, imagine this on internet based game, let’s take Enemy Territory: Quake Wars for example and try to imagine the impact it would have for the immersion of the game. You would feel like you’re actually in the game, doing your thing as the view and perspective would reflect your movements. Now, imagine looking through this looking glass to Quake Wars scenery where people are peeking around the corners, over the edges and under the fallen trees. Natural posture changes are far more natural than computer generated/tweened animations, hence other player characters would act much more realistically, with practically limitess variations.

Now, if you could set the software to recognize your face, figure out your posture and to use simple web-camera for all of this, practically every gamer could just start using the posture input in their games. Providing the games would support such animation/input system.

So, what do you think?