    
|
|
|
First-year Cybersecurity MPS student Andrew Shiffer placed third in Microsoft's "Cybersecurity 2020" student essay contest. The contest allows Microsoft to solicit original research about cybersecurity policy challenges from university students at any stage in their educational careers. Andrew's paper is entitled "A Cybersecurity Triumvirate: Policies, Outcomes, and Emerging Trends."
Andrew will receive $2,000 prize (which he is applying toward his studies at UMBC) and the opportunity for his work to be published by Microsoft at a later date. According to a follow-up note from Microsoft, it appears that Andrew is the only American finalist — the first and second place students both came from Canadian universities.
Well done, Andrew!
]]>
This is Gallery image
|
|
|
|
 |
In the 1950s, when consumer electronics such as vacuum cleaners and washing machines emerged, there was a belief that household chores would be done in a fraction of the time.
We know now it didn’t work out that way. Our definition of clean changed. Instead of wearing underwear for multiple days, we started using a fresh pair every day, and so the amount of washing required increased. In short, technology enabled us to do more, not less.
Our work environments have followed a similar path. Tools such as email enable us to communicate more, rather than make life easier. In fact, many people are now overwhelmed by the amount of email they receive.
Email has changed our expectations of communication; most of us feel like we need to be constantly available. We are tied to our email-enabled devices, and, like Pavlov’s dog, we have to check email every time the bell rings.
We are constantly available, constantly interrupted and continually overwhelmed.
Going offline isn’t the answer. As Web designers, we do not just build websites; we provide services to our clients. Therefore, we need to keep our clients happy, and that can only be done by regular communication. Clients need constant reassurance that their project is in hand, and they need continual chivying to provide the feedback and contributions we require to do our job.
Like it or not, email is a necessary evil. But that doesn’t mean it needs to rule us. We can tame the beast, and it all starts by doing less.
Like any beast, the more you feed email, the bigger it becomes. It’s time to put email on a diet. We can achieve this in a simple way: by using email less.
Believe it or not, doing considerably less with email while still effectively communicating with our clients and colleagues is perfectly possible.
You probably don’t need to send out nearly as many emails as you do. You could almost certainly reduce the number of people you copy in your emails. Remember that the more email you send out, the more email you will get back. It’s that simple.
Email is not always the best form of communication. A face-to-face meeting or a phone call is usually much more effective. After all, what we actually say is the minority of communication. Tone of voice and body language are critically important.
Instant messaging (IM) is another option to consider. While it is intrusive at times, it can be perfect for quick questions. Email encourages long-form communication, while IM tends to be shorter.
That being said, there is no reason why emails need to be long.
The less you write in emails, the less people will write in reply. People tend to mirror the behavior of others; so, if you want to receive more concise emails, start writing emails that are to the point yourself.
You might feel that short emails are less friendly and come across as cold, but these problems can be worked around.
Try linking to five.sentenc.es in your signature. That website will perfectly explain the brevity of your emails.
Linking to five.sentenc.es makes it clear to clients that you keep your emails short because you value their time. Larger view.
An even easier option is to adopt the “Sent from my phone” signature that many people use these days, a good excuse for getting to the point.
Please don’t misunderstand. Being friendly and personable with clients is important. But email is not the place to do that. If you want to chat, pick up the phone.
Email should feel more like Twitter than traditional mail. In fact, many people are abandoning email entirely and turning to Twitter as their primary communication tool.
If this step feels too big, try summarizing your email at the top. This will make it easier for the reader to get the gist of your message if they are busy. Also, you will find that people start doing the same in their emails, making reading much quicker.
In addition to sending less email and shortening your messages, reducing the amount you receive is possible.
The easiest way to cut down on replies is to tell people that they do not need to reply. Putting abbreviations such as NRN (no reply necessary) or FYI (for your information) in the subject line will help with this. But that won’t stop unsolicited email.
Most of us get a lot of unsolicited email, despite the excellent spam filters that most email services provide. These emails are often newsletters that we’ve never subscribed to or announcements from companies from which we once made a purchase. Regardless of whether we ever did agree to receive these emails, they are now cluttering our inbox.
You might be tempted to just delete these and keep wading through the rest of your email. But take the time to find the “Unsubscribe” link, because these companies will not contact you just once. They will email you again and again until you stop them.
If they don’t include an “Unsubscribe” link, create an email rule that automatically deletes them. Those couple of minutes now will save you time and distraction in the long run. If you really are too busy to find those “Unsubscribe” links, then try out Unroll.me, which makes unsubscribing even easier.
Unroll.me makes unsubscribing to emails easier than ever. Larger view.
However you do it, unsubscribing from mass emails will dramatically reduce your load. But don’t stop there; consider unsubscribing from newsletters that you did sign up for.
Part of our problem is that we have turned email into something it naturally is not. For example, many people use their inbox as a place to read news. Email was never really meant for that. Ample apps (such as the wonderful Feedly) provide this functionality.
Use an app like Feedly to read news, rather than your email client. Larger view.
Others use their email client as a repository for files that they want to keep. This makes little sense because a much more powerful filing system is built into their operating system.
And yet others use their inbox as a task manager, marking emails as starred or unread to remind themselves to take some action. However, dedicated tasks managers will help you work much more efficiently.
Your email client is not nearly as good a task manager as applications such as OmniFocus. Always use the best tool for the job. Larger view.
Turning email into something else merely clutters our inbox, making the job of reading and writing actual email less efficient.
To tame the beast, use email as a communication tool, not as a way to manage files, read news or schedule tasks.
While the techniques above will reduce the amount of email coming in, they address only the symptoms and not the root cause of our problem — which is our addiction to email.
The reference earlier to our Pavlovian response to the audio notification of incoming email was slightly tongue in cheek, but accurate nonetheless.
Upon hearing that beep, we find it hard not to look. But checking email every five minutes adds up to over 32,000 interruptions a year! That is a phenomenal number.
Do we really need to check email that much? Almost certainly not. The majority of email that comes in either is unsolicited or can wait a few hours. The number of emails that genuinely require urgent action is relatively low.
The problem is that we perceive certain emails as being urgent when they are not. It’s just a matter of training our clients not to expect an immediate response. Of course, that is not always possible.
What we need is a way to be notified of only the important emails. Fortunately, achieving this is relatively easy. Start by turning off notifications in your email client. They are just too indiscriminate, notifying you of every single message that comes in.
Instead, sign up for a service, such as AwayFind, that will notify you by text or app notification when an email comes in that meets certain requirements. For example, you could choose to receive notifications only of emails from a particular client or about that day’s meeting.
AwayFind notifies you about only the most important emails, freeing you from the shackles of constant alerts. Larger view.
If you don’t want to pay for this service, you could try IFTTT.
The point is to free yourself from constant interruption. Knowing that important messages will reach you instantly, you can comfortably check email only a couple of times a day. I check email first thing in the morning, at lunchtime and at the end of the business day. That way, I can respond reasonably promptly without having my workflow interrupted.
And when you do check your email, be organized in the way you deal with it.
A lot of people make email more complicated than it needs to be because they are not organized. The biggest offenders are those who never move email out of their inbox.
Having an inbox filled with hundreds or thousands of emails increases the time it takes to process new messages. With so much clutter, figuring out what needs to be dealt with and what has been read becomes confusing. No matter how in control you may feel, things are bound to fall between the cracks.
Your inbox is where email arrives, but it shouldn’t stay there. Instead, clear your inbox every time you open your email client. You don’t necessarily have to act on every email right away — just read it and decide what to do with it.
You have five options upon reading an email:
The lesson in all of this is that your inbox is just a holding place for unprocessed email. Once you have read it and decided what to do with it, move it out of your inbox to make room for future emails.
You might be intimidated by the prospect of having to process all of those emails staring back at you in your inbox. This might all sound like too much work. I promise you it will be worth it.
If the inbox is too overwhelming, just declare bankruptcy. Archive everything except this week’s email. If any emails from more than a week ago haven’t been addressed yet, replying to them now would probably be too late anyway.
Archiving all of that email will leave you with a manageable load. Work through each email and decide what to do with it. If you get a lot of email, this could take some time, but it will be worth it. Remember that you don’t have to act on everything immediately. Defer actions until later by bouncing them to your task list. The trick is to process everything out of your inbox. Do that and I promise you will never look at email with the same horror again.
So, those are my tips on managing email. What are yours? What do you think of email clients such as Mailbox? Or have you a completely different approach? Let us know in the comments. We’d love to hear your perspective.
(al)
© Paul Boag for Smashing Magazine, 2013.
]]>
The introduction of Windows 8 saw a massive overhaul of the Windows user interface in line with the Windows Phone interface in order to be more intuitive for people using touch screens, and Apple have subtly been adapting OSX over time, streamlining features that are becoming increasingly shared across their mobile and desktop operating systems. Whilst we have yet to see a touchscreen Mac, it’s obvious that the touch screen revolution is looming upon us with users spending more and more time on their mobile devices than home PCs.
With this in mind and an ever increasing proportion of browsing taking place on smartphones and tablets, websites must decide how they will adapt to people accessing their content without a mouse and keyboard. Whilst the default response to this has often been ‘just make a separate mobile interface!’, a solution that has worked well in the past on smaller mobile devices such as phones, there is very little scope for the middle group occupied by larger phone and tablet displays.
This article will take a look at a number of sites that have gone down both unconventional and standard site designs to become more touch-friendly.
Many websites have created subsidiary sites or apps specifically for touch screen users, to allow them to focus on one type of user at a time. One problem is that since the websites are separate they rely on URL redirection which can often lead to problems such as the user being sent to the wrong site from links, or poor redirection as a result of needing redirection to formatted pages for mobile users.
The biggest problem with separate websites for mobile users however, is that often the mobile version lacks features or information that a desktop user receives; features and interfaces often simplified, buttons enlarged and options reduced. This can be solved through using a ‘responsive’ design. A responsive website is designed to be easily viewed on both platforms without losing quality on either one. This also has the benefit that only one website needs to be designed, rather than two, however this often results in compromises for both platforms.
There are obvious differences between a touch screen and a desktop that you need to think about when creating your website. On a touch screen you swipe up the page in order to scroll down it, however on a desktop you move your scroll wheel down. Apple have attempted to correct this by consolidating their touch interface technologies into trackpads on both their laptop and desktop Macs, however PC users or even Mac users using conventional scroll wheels or sliders to scroll through web pages are at a disadvantage.
Buttons must be much bigger on mobile devices, as tapping is nowhere near as accurate as clicking with a mouse, there’s nothing more infuriating than trying to click on a link for the next page and accidentally being sent back a page or onto an advert instead. The lack of a cursor also means you cannot have hover states to explain where a link goes, what a word means or even what is clickable.
There is also a difference between accuracy on mobile inputs since touchscreens can have either resistive or capacitive inputs which have varying sensitivities and subsequently accuracy can be lost on resistive touchscreens. Beyond this, designs must incorporate two hugely differing resolutions for mobile devices that have two orientations.
With multiple resolutions beyond regular monitor sizes means you can no longer think just in terms of standardized screen resolutions and vertical movement. The rapid changes in the technology market have produced screen sizes that differ from model and manufacturer and with all the rumors about so called smart watches we may start to see screens that are no longer restricted to four borders. Mobile screens add further complexity due to the fact that they can be viewed in both a portrait and landscape mode through rotation.
The answer are liquid layouts which self adjust for any resolution and can adapt for both portrait and landscape viewing. Some websites use a liquid layout that drastically changes the look of the website in order to optimise ease of control and use the full potential of the screen based on it’s orientation.
Whilst mice were specifically designed with scroll wheels for easy vertical scrolling many users are migrating to touchpads and touchscreens, and since Apple have embraced the more innovative form of touch-scrolling which is akin to dragging a page rather than scrolling, the more creative idea of horizontal scrolling may not be out of the question. Most apps use horizontal scrolling as a tool and by far the greatest success in horizontal scrolling is the kindle, so why not implement it into your web UI? Many single page sites have a solely horizontal axis, however they often have to use buttons in order to instigate the scrolling as users may not understand the non-standard format.
Horizontal scrolling may be similar to vertical scrolling in design terms, however the usage of both may open up the possibility of dual-axis scrolling, which may not work in-browser. Many users like to be anchored to an axis, obviously this is usually the x-axis, which is static, so if users get lost on the page they can just scroll up, and be back at the main navigation. On dual-axis sites this may not be as simple, and so navigation may need to be sticky, using a HUD style bar.
Obviously not every UI is suitable for every type of website, so ask yourself some basic questions: Who is your target audience? What are you trying to ‘sell’? What impression do you want to give? Younger people are more likely to use touch screens than an older demographic who will likely use a desktop, but still may need bigger buttons and a clearer UI. There’s no point in creating the most innovative UI imaginable if no one can understand how to use it, so always remember to create a UI that a user can look at and instantly know how to use.
A radial menu, also known as a pie menu, is a circular context menu that uses multi-directional context rather than height or width as the selection tool.
This is a great form of intuitive design that prevents users from getting lost in dozens of sub menus. Another advantage is that a touchscreen user has better control over normal drop down lists as directional control is more accurate than tapping. The use of radial menus in forms and websites could dramatically enhance a touch screen users experience on the website, and extends to thumbsticks such as those used on games consoles, somewhere radial menus are often used since it allows games to be easily ported to PC. As such desktop users don’t lose out either as it remains the case that radial menus can simplify long lists into simple categories increasing the ease of use or productivity on a website.
Radial menus are a great way of showing context sensitive information, one example of this is clicking on a picture of a dish on a food site and being given the option of retweeting, the recipe link, ingredients list or saving the picture. However you must be careful that your menu remains accessible and simple, otherwise you can easily overwhelm the user especially when combining symbols and words in the same radial menu. Radial menu’s are much easier to use when static rather than dynamic as this can lead to difficulty in object selection such as on sites like Phong, in this case especially when using a mouse as cursor tracking makes it especially unintuitive.
Skeuomorphic design imitates the look and functionality of an everyday object in order to create an intuitive UI, something which has recently gone out of vogue, especially since Scott Forstall resigned from Apple and Sir Jony Ive’s flat design took over iOS and likely OS X in the future. Skeuomorphism had been a large part of Apple’s push toward more intuitive design, recently with Contacts on Mac being designed as an actual address book, or Newsstand and iBooks on iOS being actual bookshelves. This design is one that more obviously benefits touch interface users, since we don’t interact with the world around us with a cursor.
Familiarity adds to intuitiveness when using any user interface, this being the point of skeuomorphism, to bring an extra dimension of familiarity by joining forces with real objects so the user instantly knows how to interact with it. A successful skeuomorphic design means that just by glancing at the web page you will know what the subject is/the page is used for, making mouseover tooltips and link highlights obsolete.
This is a combination of both the above where the whole user interface forms a simple dial; the design resembles a radial menu, but instead of hinging at the center, selecting from there, the dial rotates to a single point of selection. This is very effective in cases such as music where dials are often used to mix a track and control volume. In the case of the net label SHSK’H they use a modified type of dial UI to select which track you want to play.
Minimalism is where a website is stripped back to its bare essential elements. This is great for mobile users as it decreases load times and data usage as well as allowing the user to be able to access all the necessary information in a clear interface that is easier to use for smaller resolutions. Current minimalism has gone beyond stripping sites to the bare essentials, and has formed a new style known as flat design. This hinges on the belief that intuition is no longer necessary in design since interfaces and their usage have become such an important part of life that design can move beyond telling users what to do, a UI can finally be a tool, rather than also doubling as a mentor. Flat design has long been characterised by the use of bold block colors, but with the introduction of iOS7, gradients have taken their place in world of borderless flat design, extracting elegance from the garish.
Finally, I’ll end this article with a site that does things a little differently. Thibaud is a creative developer who has designed a portfolio website builder known as Pikibox. The website is extremely touch friendly but without hampering its accessibility to desktop users, on smaller touchscreen devices however the user is sent to a focused redirect with a mobile interface.
The simple design works wonderfully in showing off his entire portfolio in a professional manner whilst retaining a fun, new look that is extremely intuitive. Of course, a large part of the design is in the hands of the user, being able to alter the location of the navigation and adjust how it is used spatially, which some would say doesn’t exactly constitute a design choice. The desktop version comes in four styles, and I invite you to have a play around with them, and draw your own conclusions as to whether this is simply indecisive or hugely creative.
What compromises have you made as a result of touch screens? It the hover state a thing of the past? Let us know in the comments.
Featured image/thumbnail, touch image via Shutterstock.
| WordPress Form Builder Plugin – only $11! |  |
|
|
An early-stage company aims to commercialize new optical materials for denser data storage and better cancer treatments.
A startup focused on developing novel optical materials received $1 million in first-round funding last month from the venture capital firm Quantum Wave Fund to advance its early-stage technology. Nano-Meta Technologies, based in West Lafayette, Indiana, is developing prototype hard drive heads that could improve the storage density of magnetic disk drives, as well as nanoparticles that could be used in light-driven cancer therapies.
]]>
