User Interfaces

Goodbye QR Menu, Your Shift is Over

The QR code menu is being kicked to the curb in many restaurants throughout the U.S., leaving it in the past where it belongs.

Apple Reportedly Delays AR Glasses and Puts All Hopes on Mixed Reality Headsets

The company’s mixed reality headset is still billed for some time the next two years, but it could still cost several thousand dollars.

Degrees of the Future 2022: UX Design

These are the universities with the best UX design programs.

Kuo: Apple’s AR Headset Will Be Its ‘Most Complicated Product’ Ever—And It’s Coming Soon

The AR/VR space will rapidly expand once Apple enters, a reliable analyst predicts.

You Can Now Visit Websites Using Only Emojis 🙄

Opera's web browser now supports emoji-only URLs, which doesn't sound that useful.

No One Needs Amazon’s Wall-Mounted Echo Show

This big-ass smart display is gorgeous to look at, but the software and camera need serious work.

Create Your Own Keyboard Shortcuts to Do Anything on Windows and macOS

If the built-in keyboard shortcuts aren't enough for you, you can make some of your own.

The Best iPhone Home Screen Widgets We’ve Found So Far

The launch of iOS 14 brought iPhone owners the ability to start experimenting with home screen widgets.

Favicons Could Be the Supercookie That Tracks You Everywhere

As Apple prepares to launch its anti-tracking update for iOS, Facebook and other companies that have built their business on invading users’ privacy are nervous about the future. But there’s always a new vulnerability waiting to be discovered. For instance, researchers now claim that a website’s favicon can be used to stealthily track users in…

This Website’s Deliberately Frustrating Interface Will Make You Appreciate Good Web Design

You don’t know what you have until it’s gone is a well-worn cliche, but also an apt description of a web game called User Inyerface, created by design firm Bagaar. It takes all the normal conventions of a website’s user interface and throws them out the window, leaving one of the most user-unfriendly experiences you’ll…

Let’s Take a Second to Admire Sci-Fi User Interfaces

Computer interfaces in the real world are, generally, frustrating, boring, and at best functional. No one has great joy in using Google Chrome, and everyone is always mad at whatever update Twitter is rolling out. But in sci-fi? In science fiction, user interfaces aren’t just useful. They’re the coolest shit imaginable. It’s a slow day…

Huawei Mate S Hands-On: Force Touch is Great, But With One Big Problem

You’ve got to hand it to Huawei. Just a week out from Apple’s iPhone 6S launch, it’s revealed the Mate S, which has almost certainly stolen a bit of the Apple phone’s thunder by including its iOS rival’s expected lead feature. The Force Touch control exclusive to the top-of-the-line 128GB Mate S is of course…

So, why couldn’t R2D2 speak English, anyway?

R2D2 was a droid with incredible resources for data storage, navigation, and even defense, but no one ever bothered to install translation capabilities. After looking at some of the amazing footage of the user interfaces designed for the starships in Star Wars, a question came up: Why not? https://gizmodo.com/amazing-footage-the-spaceship-user-interfaces-of-star-1508275780 Dr_Gerbz If it’s so easy to…

Amazing Footage: The Spaceship User Interfaces of Star Wars

Noel Rubin designed the user interfaces for Star Wars Episodes 1 and 3, and now he’s put together a sizzle reel, showing just how awesome the computer screens on those ships really looked. “This reel features my own personal favorite shot takes and not George’s,” Rubin tells io9. “It’s extremely rare to see. Plus, there…

Blue Screen of Insomnia. Designers Chris Noessel and Nathan Shedroff analyzed screen colors in tons of science fiction movies, and concluded that future computer screens would be tinted blue. Which is bad news, since our eyes are hypersensitive to blue light, and it keeps us from sleeping.

The Real Problem With Logan’s Run‘s Infamous “Sex Teleport” Scene

The weirdest moment in Logan’s Run is probably that bit where we see Logan selecting a sex partner via a remote control, and the chosen partner teleports into his home. But the trouble with that scene isn’t just the weird “dialing for casual sex” vibe — it’s the terrible user interface, argues expert Chris Noessel.…

Look at the Insane Number Button Layouts Our Telephones Could Have Had

The year was 1960, and phones were changing. It was the beginning of the end for rotary dialing, and buttons were the future. But engineers faced an important, looming question: what order do you put those buttons in? Turns out there were a lot of options. Note: A ton of these are super wrong. What…

Elon Musk Wants to Build the Iron Man Hologram UI For Real

The hologram interfaces Tony Stark uses in Iron Man are awesome, no doubt. But they also aren’t real. Yet. Elon Musk has been cooking up something very Stark-y, and he’s planning to show it off soon. https://gizmodo.com/the-making-of-tony-starks-incredible-interfaces-5578966 Musk isn’t sharing any of the nitty-gritty details yet, but he mentioned his grand scheme on Twitter. This…

How Messy Is Your Computer’s Desktop?

We all aspire to a certain amount of digital desktop cleanliness, but I think rather few of us actually keep up on it. As the days go by, the clutter builds bit by bit, and it’s just irritating enough to be unpleasant, but not a big enough deal to actually clean up. So where are…

A Brief History of the Google Maps Pegman

You might not think of him very often, but you know the Google Maps pegman quite well. Every time you zoom down into a new, strange locale, he’s there, pointing the way. But where did he come from? Buzzfeed FWD dug into the history, and it turns out there’s a lot more of it than…