Last year I began exploring the idea of the uncanny valley as it applies to creating prototypes, using a panel from Understanding Comics as an illustration. Lukas Mathis at UX Magazine has had a similar idea, but explored it in much more depth and with greater clarity.
The uncanny valley is a term from the world of robotics, which states that when something appears almost perfect, it can cause a negative reaction*. Or, to be more precise: “The uncanny valley hypothesis holds that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.”
The last month has seen me completely immersed in User Experience theory and Information Architecture for my new role, and it’s been a very hectic time. While that hasn’t stopped me from keeping an eye on developments on the web, it’s given me less time to write about them.
Here’s a quick round-up of a few […]
I work as an Information Architect / Developer, and I’m a big fan of comics. For my IA work I refer frequently to the work of Jesse James Garrett, especially his Elements of User Experience book, and as a fan of comics I recently read (again) Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics.
I’m not saying that to boast of my geek credentials, but to introduce something I never imagined I’d find: a connection between the two.
I’m writing about the CSS3 Multi-column layout module and I notice that WebKit supports a series of proprietary properties: –webkit-column-break-after, –webkit-column-break-before, and –webkit-column-break-inside. However, despite the documentation saying that they’re implemented in Safari 3+, I can’t seem to get any of them to work.
Has anyone reading this ever seen an example of these in action? I’ve searched for demos but have found nothing. If you know anything about this, please leave me a comment; your help would be gratefully appreciated.
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