Christopher Alexander had created many different patterns. Those claim an idea of how to structure a community, and different patterns can work in different types of situations. And those are still a really important resource for designing software or apps. For example structure of the pattern #41 “Work Community” can still find in today’s app….
How far We’ve Gotten with GUI’s and Modern Interaction Designs
Looking at the graphical user interface for the Xerox Star (1982) and the Macintosh (1984) and comparing it to modern day computers and devices, we can see what aspects changed and which stayed pretty much the same. First, we need to understand that the Xerox Star was designed for office professionals which handled storage, transfer…
Life is tough but so are you!
Oregon Trail is a very educational game. It takes you on a Westward journey, follows the footsteps of many Americans in the 1840s. Life was tough back then and so does this game. The user interface is really simple but the game demands a great amount of attention and skills. The characters keep hurting themselves,…
High Stakes in Oregon Trail
I think Oregon Trail was so popular because of its innate ability to bring players into a world that has stakes, and out of the reality they live in. Being an adventure game, players want to do well. There is an instant connection they have to their player and in turn they will make decisions…
Surviving Elements of the Original Computer Interfaces
Many of the familiar commands and interface elements we encounter everyday in modern technology are not too far from what was introduced in the first graphical user interfaces. Even the terms like window and desktop have survived from the early interfaces and are used commonly in conversations today. Back in the 1980’s when Xerox Star…
How Oregon Trail Became a Favorite
Wow, this brings back some memories. I remember playing this for the first time in elementary school as personal desktops made its way into classrooms and this is probably one of the reasons why it became popular; being able to play a video game at school, where we spend most of our day at as…
Make Game to Stick – the Oregon Trail
After successfully playing the Oregon Trail for one round (Yep, I died 1/3 of the way in the first run playing a poor villager), I started to extract elements that make this game so addicting. One thing about this earliest version of the RPG game is that it has alluring storytelling with an authentic setting….
Visual and Musical
After playing Oregon Trail, this game delivers people to imagine what the 19th century was. The country background music of strings and flute makes gamers get immersed in the gameplay. Graphic elements are another key factor for the immersive experience. Icons are easy to link up with the labeled text. The overview of the status…
Ctrl+C, V to Behaviour
In the 1980s, the personal computer emerged with a preliminary desktop interface. The graphic metaphors for the computers, such as icons of a folder and disk, floppy disk to the hard drive, exist these days. There is a menu bar at the top in a demo of the Macintosh desktop interface, which still is found…
What Interface was, is, and will be?
As we can see, the graphic metaphors being used in those systems are still being used today. These include icons of document, folder, disk, and drawer. However, as the video introduces, there is no real “hierarchy” in which all the documents get organized in those earlier versions. Everything lays out flat on the desktop. I…
Interaction Pattern Language
After reading Alexander’s pattern language, I wondered what the pattern was. Patterns are standard solutions to the problems that appear in the context as part of an effort to systematically reveal the ‘how’ or ‘process’ of architectural design – and the pattern of constant interaction with other elements in space follows the order of “situation”…
Space
Compare Work Community to Slack The idea of Work Community is to create positive experiences during work. Since people spend more time in the office than at home, It is very necessary to have workplace function as communities: where it provides opportunities so people are able to exercise, socialize,or relax during breaks. The messaging app…
The Demo to Today’s Technology
The demo from the Visible Language Workshop presents interconnections between visual elements that share a similarity with Christoper Alexander’s Patterns. As Christopher Alexander mentioned in Patterns from a Pattern Language, “work communities will help form boundaries, and then form activity nodes”. In the demo video, it shows virtual building blocks which navigate the viewers in…
Dana Chisnell-Pioneer in Civic Design
When it comes to human politics and design, we have to mention Dana Chisnell. She is a pioneer and thought leader in civic design, bringing deep experience to that space. Dana was named one of the world’s most influential people in digital government by Apolitical in 2019. Shed teaches a field course on design in…
Architectural space rules in digital social platforms
It’s interesting and surprising to connect patterns and spaces in architecture with digital interaction. These two can be cleverly matched in terms of design, as they both serve for human groups, only the space forms are different. Architect Christopher Alexander’s Patterns from A Pattern Language provides lots of design inspiration and rules for interaction designers….
Space and information transmission
Muriel Cooper showed us part of the beginning of interaction design through Visible Language Workshop. It creates a virtual space, which provides for people to transmit and organize information. Christopher Alexander also uses the concept of space to optimize the living environment of human beings. I have to say that there are similarities between the…
Visible Language Workshop – New Way of Communicating Complex Information
Muriel Cooper opened many doors for future interactive media design by pioneering the Visible Language Workshop. It created new methods of organizing, navigating, and communicating information. Christopher Alexander’s patterns and the Visible Language Workshop share some similar elements and concepts. In Alexander’s patterns, he uses categorization to optimize spaces and environment, whereas, in the information…
Xia Peisu
Xia Peisu was a computer scientist born in Chongqing, China. A year after attaining her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1945, she met her husband Yang Liming. She then pursued postgraduate studies at the Telecommunications Research Institute of National Chiao Tung University. In 1947, she began her PhD in electrical engineering at the University…
Father of An Wuxia Fantasy RPG series – Yao Zhuangxian
Yao Zhuangxian is the father of one of the most famous Chinese game series, 仙剑奇侠传 Xianjian Qixia Zhuan / Legend of Sword and Fairy (also known as Chinese Paladin). In a sense, he created the trend of Chinese games in the 1990s. Legend of Sword and Fairy became both a commercial and critical success, and…
Annie Easley: Rocket Scientist
When Easley was little, her mother had encouraged her to study hard, telling her that she could be anything she wanted but she would have to work for it. Easley majored in Pharmacy when she attended Xavier University in New Orleans in 1951 and then left the school for marriage in 1954. Even though Easley didn’t…
