This is a bit of a flashback post; I’m working on a new project, and the challenges we’re facing made me recall Cookthink.com, a site I remember looking at when it launched a few years ago. Today it’s a much more coherent, structure site, but when I first stumbled across it, Cookthink’s site was dominated by a single concept: the very Web 2.0 recipe search engine.
And as far as I’m concerned, this is still one of the better interactions I’ve seen (in concept, at least — the recipe results still don’t exactly deliver the sort of precision the tool implies). But by breaking up the randomly-generated terms into four very different tabs, Cookthink’s encapsulated a very familiar everyday event: standing in front of the fridge, mulling over what you’ve got and what you crave. Also, “peasant food”!
Now if only they could nail down the search accuracy and get a massive recipe list, I’d be using this every day — for now, I only use it if I’ve got the time and feel whimsical.
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- November 4, 2009 – 11:11 am
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- By Jillian
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This is one of the niftiest things I’ve seen in a while.
We’ve all studied atoms in school, maybe you’ve even built one out of balloons or made a mobile for science class. But atoms are so tiny, they almost leave the physical world and end up in a theoretic space in our minds. I can draw an atom, I can describe an atom, but were to to ask me “how big is an atom”? I’d have to shrug and say “tiny”. This is a place where language can’t fill the gap.
Luckily, design can. And using objects and structures familiar to anyone who’s been through a couple of high school science classes, this interaction (and its ingenious zoom feature) scales the atom for us in a really vivid, lasting way. Nice work, U of Utah!
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- October 30, 2009 – 8:18 pm
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- By Jillian
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Guess what I have?
Courtesy of a friend in the know, I got an invite to Google Wave. I’m going to have to wait for the rest of you to get onboard for a rigorous test-run (most of the more complicated features are heavy on interaction, so multiple users are needed), but so far it’s pretty cool. This video will give you an idea of what’s in store. The way Google’s rolling the system out ensures that most people will start using Waves in a social capacity, rather than as a business tool; so far my Waves have been light conversations, but I can already see the appeal.
The blend of IM and email is very user-friendly, and the “playback” feature’s a lifesaver when things get crowded. New users can start using Wave with very little training, especially if they’re already Gmail users — even if you skip all of the videos and just go with intuition, you’re likely to stumble across the right answer. And I like the idea that email addresses have basically been replaced by iconography, though that brings up an entirely new issue regarding icons themselves — will business users have to start using their actual headshots instead of Mad Men icons? Read More »
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- October 10, 2009 – 4:56 pm
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- By Jillian
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I like young adult books. They’re usually headlong, breathless, no-holds-barred adventures, and you rarely read about a character worrying about a mortgage or taxes. And after a long spell of Harry Potter, where a boarding school setting provided a considerable amount of psychological protection to the reader, we’re getting back into the gritty stuff. And it’s GREAT. Read More »
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- September 19, 2009 – 3:58 pm
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- By Jillian
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Klondike bars are delicious. This interaction is the opposite:
Khaki Pants Pete
This comes across as one of those horrible ideas that germinated in a dark corner of the internet marketing department, then accidentally escaped and became reality. The style and tone remind me of the old game “Leisure Suit Larry”, but given that this is supposed to be a marketing gimmick for Klondike bars instead of a crap 80s video game, I expected more than the single Klondike shout-out (at the end, if you can stand to make it that far). Read More »
- Published:
- September 13, 2009 – 12:36 pm
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- By Jillian
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