October 2007 Archives

I've been asked to remove the recipes I previously had on my site, and I'm happy to comply. The recipes have not lost their quality, just this temporary home. You can access the few recipes I had, and lots more on the Cook's Illustrated website (subscription required). Thanks to all of you who visited the site while I had those few recipes up. I appreciate the many kind notes of thanks I received during that time. I still contend that C.I. could provide a better format for the recipes, especially for searching and printing. They may have a great printed magazine, but the internet and the print world aren't the same. Too bad my requests to them for such a thing were ignored. Obviously many others appreciated those same conveniences. Oh well. Thanks again to most of you. Happy cooking/eating. :)

Becky is always full of smiles (except in this picture). Cecilia really enjoys those smiles, and does what she can to earn more from Becky. Cecilia's most frequent comment about Becky is, “She likes me.” It's obviously very important to Cecilia that Becky likes her, otherwise I don't think she'd say it as much as she does.

While playing a video game recently, it struck me that when presented with a new way to interact with a device how we can be surprised and impacted. It's been interesting to play games on Nintendo's two newest systems – the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii. Both systems introduce new form(s) of input available from users. I'm not an expert on the systems or the subject of human & system interactions—just a normal person like most others. It's just been interesting to me.

Between the two systems here are some actions I've made that I don't recall having done previously while playing a game (at least something that was designed to impact gameplay): swung my arm, twisted my wrist, pointed at an enemy, tapped an enemy, drew a line (a circle, a line for direction, to swing a sword), talked to a character, blew out a candle, punched, shook my hand (not in anger ;)… and I'm sure there are others, but these I could think of off the top of my head. How many different opportunities does that open to somebody as a user? How many new ways can that be implemented (within reason) in the design of the games?

Although I've listed a number of new ways to interact with a game, the designers and programmers at Nintendo deserve quite a bit of kudos, since it's all come in stride. It's not like they throw it all at you at once and let you flop around. It's given to you one bit at a time, with room for discovery and experimentation. Both systems have been truly a pleasure to experience and play with.

What impact does this have to you? Possibly not much, but for those of you who impact/influence interaction design, there are two good learning points from these simple video games:

• Don't overwhelm your users with too much new all at once. Nintendo eased all Wii owners by giving them their killer app - Wii Sports. Little did we all realize they were just getting us used to all the new ways to interact with the system.
• Don't spell out every little detail to your users. Leave a bit for them to discover on their own. In The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for Nintendo DS the game designers introduce new tools for Link to utilize throughout the game. One of the most impressive tools can be used in at least 5 different ways.

Again, I'm not an expert on any of this, but keeping these things in mind as I move forward will be essential to improving the human experience on tools I develop.

The G2 collection has rolled onward. This time in honor of my anniversary with Maria. Although I started making this particular edition in attempt to meet up with Maria's birthday, I didn't make anywhere nearly in time. This one had a very specific set of music from which to pick and choose. In honor of Maria being a child of the 70's, and me being generally a fan of the 70's, I decided to make this collection entirely out of 70's music – specifically songs from the Billboard Top 100 charts. I made another CD in the G2 series. As usual, I provide the song list more for information rather than input. I'm not opposed to input, but it's not going to change anything (since I've already given it to her). I'll throw out the disclosure on this one that there are more songs on these 2 discs that I would never give to her in all seriousness. If you're saying to yourself, “Whoa… he confessed to giving her that song?” – that's almost 100% guaranteed on there in reference to an inside joke or something along those lines. I'll talk more about the artwork below the song lists.