Wake n’ Bacon

Version 1 by Matty Sallin, Daniel Bartolini, Hsiao-huh Hsu
Version 2 by Matty Sallin with engineering by Josh Myer

WHAT: An alarm clock that wakes you up with the smell of cooking bacon instead of a buzzer.  The aroma wakes you up, then you can open the oven component and eat the bacon itself.

Kinfo

Kinfo is a familial social network designed to allow users to discover and document their ancestral roots, explore their living family network, and share media together.

the ATM: an interface redesign (sketch)

Even though ATMs are devices most of us use multiple times a week, if you watch people using them you can see that with each screen refresh the user is putting effort towards parsing the information before them and hesitating before they make their choices.  I believe this is not just because the stakes are high (it is money, after all) but because the nature of ATM interactions are at odds with the typical ATM interfaces:  ATMs require the user to make a quick succession of choices (“Cash? Transfer? Deposit?” followed by “Savings? Checking?”, etc.) and at each juncture, the screen is redrawn, forcing the user to re-orient themselves and study the choices onscreen.  

Apple OS X Spotlight: an interface redesign

* Note: This article was written in June 2006 and reflects the Spotlight interface at the time.

Apple’s Spotlight technology is great for two primary reasons: first, it is so tightly integrated with the OS that it’s index is always up to date, and when it performs searches, it considers not just content, but also metadata. While the degree of search is unparalleled for desktop search, there are improvements to be made with regards to the user experience.

PulseLamp

PulseLamp

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by Matty Sallin and Greg Trefry

WHAT: A biofeedback lamp that detects and “echos” your own heartbeat in realtime. Just place your hands on either side of the lamp base and wait for it to detect your pulse, then watch as it throbs to match your heartbeat. The light is hypnotic, and you can actually watch your pulse slow down by focusing on the light and relaxing.

LandLord (sketch)

LandLord is an interface study for a web app that offers a comparative view of apartment rentals in San Francisco. Searching for an apartment is essentially a comparative process. While most people have a ballpark range of what they’d like to spend and a range of what areas of the city are desirable to them, there is currently no way to constrain one axis and browse through another. LandLord lets you select a price, say $2000 for a 2 bedroom apartment, and by moving up and down you can see what’s offered at that price from Bernal Heights in the South to Russian Hill in the North. Similarly, you can choose a neighborhood like the Castro, and by moving from left to right you can explore all the listings within a price range. Pretty soon after trying it, a user is able to swiftly browse through both adjacent neighborhoods and adjacent prices with remarkable fluidity.

Chit Chat

by Matty Sallin with David Herman

WHAT: ChitChat is an installation that projects a speech bubble above your head as you talk. The bubble swells with the text “blah bu blah blah” as you continue to talk. The output text reflects your volume by changing size. Textual attributes such as bold text and italic text also shift to reflect voice pitch. If you or friend remains silent, they will eventually get a corresponding thought bubble.