UI

Predominant.ly Searching for Music.

I used to spend hours in record store sifting through stacks of new and used vinyl searching for something new and unique. Just like book stores, record stores were a place to discover old favorites and new gems. A place to find music that you could share with your friends and so much more. there was something about the experience that will never be captured by an online experience, no matter what your source is, be it iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, eMusic, etc.

Predominant.ly designed and built by Open Work wants to change that. They want to bring to the online world the spontaneity of stumbling across a new find or an old favorite while searching for music. The concept is really pretty clever. Based on color choices Predominant.ly serves up groups of albums where the covers match your color choices. The data is pulled from iTunes which makes the entire catalog available. The experience definitely lends itself to the concept of exploration in the digital space.

I’m Addicted to “Dots”.

Dots is a nice little gaming app that was developed by New York based, Betaworks One. The game is very simple; try and connect as many same-colored dots as you can using only vertical and horizontal lines in 60 seconds, in 30 moves, or you can play it in endless mode.

Dots interface is extremely clean and simple and has a social media connection allowing you to connect to your friends via Twitter or Facebook to see your friends high scores. Weekly score boards reset every Sunday, giving you a chance to make it to the top of the list and enhance the competition across your network.

Since it’s release Dots has jumped to the number one mobile game in twenty countries, with good reason. The simple clean interface and engaging user experience makes Dots highly addictive.

Wireframe, Prototype, Simulation Tools. The Giant Infographic.

If you do any kind of interactive design work you know the importance of visualization and prototyping tools. This set of tools covers everything from wireframes to visualization, and there are a ton of choices. Lucky for us, some people over at usertesting.com designed a huge infographic that lays out all the tools of the trade, the platforms they work on, and the platforms they develop for. They also include price comparisons which is important for everyone because ROI impacts everyone in the business of making money from design.

Razorfish is Planning to Enhance Your Consumer Experience.

While parts of this video might seem like an impractical way to experience a shopping experience, I guarantee you this is in your near future. As smart phones, tablets, interactive signage, and devices like Microsoft’s Surface and Kinect become more ubiquitous, this kind of experience will be more common. The example below centers around shopping for clothes, and actually eliminates trying things on. I doubt that step will ever go away, but this kind of digital interaction combined with real world experiences is coming.