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The worn interface

There’s a human-made path next to the paved one. Even though dogs seem to like it, it might be made by runners in hard shoes.

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Visiting someone here? According to the wear on the doorbell, there’s a good chance you’re here to see Øresundshuset.

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Not sure which ice cream to choose? Take the most empty one for a popular choice

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In the physical world, we’re able read hints of usage by how worn out things look. On the internet, everything is new all the time.

Here’s what a worn interface could look like. Notice the heavily used support area. Hm.

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or, simply reversed, people’s clicks (or fingers for touch interfaces) that actually clean up the most commonly used areas of the site.

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  1. Adam Says:

    heatlink (free js script) shows this well

  2. Morten Says:

    can you elaborate?

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  4. Lars Says:

    I like your real world photo references :-)

    Try a search for “Heatmap” and you will find javascript samples like
    http://blog.corunet.com/english/the-definitive-heatmap

  5. Morten Says:

    @Lars – Nice – it seems a bit more doable. I guess what I need now is to find out how to make a Firefox extension that runs this Javascript and somehow saves its values on a server. Any hints?

  6. Charles Says:

    Very interesting blogpost and nice pictures.

    You call it worn interfaces – but is it not some sort of social navigation?
    (as defined in Munro, A. J., Höök, K., & Benyon, D. (1999). Social navigation of information space. London ; New York: Springer.)
    Actually I really like the term worn interfaces ;-)

  7. René Says:

    Halå Morten,

    Interesting. Back in 2001 I tried to incorporate patina in the digital material:

    http://www.cs.chalmers.se/idc/ituniv/student/2002/reevolution/projectbottledsouls/forside.html

    It’s a very abstract project though compared to the wornweb but the the idea is similar; to patinate the digital material – which in itself isn’t ageing due to the core material qualities (0101010101).

    See conceptual designs: http://www.cs.chalmers.se/idc/ituniv/student/2002/reevolution/projectbottledsouls/forside.html

    René

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