Spray on liquid glass is flexible and will revolutionize the touch screen

I hope some of you are as excited as I am about this recent discovery.

This is spray on liquid glass on a microfibre. They caused this fissure to demonstrate the properties.

One of the biggest drawbacks to a public mounted touch screen is the transfer of germs from bystander to bystander. This is not as much as real as it is a psychological boundary we have encountered. In exit interviews from User Experience tests we consistently get feedback about the cleanliness of the surface and the other participants hands. We had to put antiseptic baby wipes near the Surface units to help alleviate this problem.

Cleaning touch screens is an odd process. Depending on the material used, be it a rough or smooth material, it usually had special instructions about cleaning. The typical monitor has a special non-glare coating and recommends using soap and a damp cloth. Using non-glare finishes on touch screens have similar recommendations. Do not use cleaners or antiseptic solutions because they will damage the finish and possibly remove the protective coating.

What this amazing discovery gives us is something that will innovate the market in the eyes of the public.

Here is the main article about the glass.

Spray-on liquid glass is transparent, non-toxic, and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat, and bacterial infections. The coating is also flexible and breathable, which makes it suitable for use on an enormous array of products. (via physorg)

This is amazing. This gives us the ability to spray a coating on a touch screen and then the ability to clean it with antiseptic germ killing chemicals without the harmful side effects of destroying the surface or the experience. It is also so thin it allows the transference of touch to the unit.

Long live physics!

Gesturcons: an icon language to describe natural user interface gestures

One of the prevailing themes of my writing is the ability for everyone to gain common grounds when discussing interactions. I believe one of the keys to this is a common metaphor, OCGM (Objects, Containers, Gestures, and Manipulations) as well as a set of icons for use in design. When sketching out the user experience it’s important to note the interactions. This is especially true in state diagrams, specs, and other interaction design documents. In my first installment of Gesturcons, I present to you the Gesturcons : Touch Pack 1.0. These are being released under the Creative Commons License and I hope that you all find some good use for them in your designs and experiences.

This is the first batch, for touch. I also have Spatial, Voice, and a few others in the works.

Updates

I’m using a simplistic graphic design language to represent the actions by a user. If we use OCGM to boil down each action, we get just a few basic actions that all can be constructed from. To combine these actions together I use only two different states. They either happen at the same time, or they happen consecutively.

After we have established exactly when the action takes place, we can then talk about the specific actions. I use only a few different types of basic actions as well. The only addition you see here is the Location Specific Icon. That means that the exact placing of that particular input is predetermined by the system for the manipulation or the gesture to be successful. As an example, the Red X at the top right of Windows is a location specific manipulation.

The path icon is pretty straightforward. It means that the path the user has to take to accomplish the goal is specific and is going to be bound by guidelines. Those rules are what you have devised, but the path is specific.

The rotation icons are dual purpose. They can mean an actual spin of the input or a spin of the action. This could be boiled down to a Path, because they have to follow a certain pathway to achieve success. I find it easy, but others find it difficult to also put a rotation as a simple path. So I added it here for ease of use. Notice the use of Twin when its dual simultaneous inputs.

To sum up the use of the Gesturcons, I present an example of how you could build your own gestures using this language. In this example I demonstrate the visual identifiers to show a gesture of the question mark.

I’ve also updated the Zip file with all these new gestures. Enjoy and happy designing.

Here is the ZIP, which contains all the PNGs, the Illustrator File and an EPS as well. These are being released under the Creative Commons, which means you can use them internally as much as you want but you cannot package them, redistribute them, or include them in any professional product.

License here

Gesturcons by Ron George is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at blog.rongeorge.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://blog.rongeorge.com/design/gesturcons/.

Dear Ron: Any Advice for someone to escape the ‘telecommute’ career path?

I get this question quite frequently, so I thought it best to address it in its own post. Here is the question.

Any advice for someone with tons of experience as a designer and developer, but stuck in upstate NY with a dearth of telecommute opportunities?

Answer

The first thing I would tell you to do is to watch and read everything from Daniel Pink you can get your hands on. If you are like me and you just want the lazy route, atleast watch this video of a talk he gave at TED (embedded below).

I’m a big fan of Daniel and the things he has to say. Basically, he sums up the threat of telecommuting and how innovation and decision making will solve many problems. Anything that can be done by telecommute, WILL be done by that method. If it does not require decision making, it will be done by telecommute. It’s cheaper, easier, and faster. Many of the offshore development houses have an unlimited amount of resources they can throw on the project, so scalability is never an issue.

The key to success in this day and age is in design and decision making. Put yourself in the position to make decisions that directly affect the product’s success. Being a designer that can actually shape the product is the key to accelerating your career path. Make an impact and ensure it’s success.

Development is a great skill, but you only need to know enough to make good design decisions. The ability to work out a specific worker algorithm to accomplish a task is beyond the scope of your needs. If you are talking about web design, then development plays a much higher need. The ability to understand and incorporate web development into your designs will save you, your team, and the development team tons of wasted cycles.

Summary

Know enough development to propel your designs to the front of the pack. Concentrate on a specific part of design or interaction and own it. Become it.

Does anyone have recommendations for a decent webhost?

I have been getting a few emails about the blog being down. It’s rather silly when my blog is being linked from international news sites and they get a memory error instead of content. I’m getting tired of the lack of performance. The dreaded “Out of Memory” error is because my current host cannot handle the load from the readers on Wordpress. I have moderate traffic and run a few websites. I’m currently paying $30 a month, which seems outlandish for what I’m getting.