Upward Spiral: Amazing Mathematical Human Spirograph Art

Most of us played with Spirographs at some point in childhood. The simple set of plastic shapes that made awesome geometric designs on paper never failed to amuse us – at least for a few minutes at a time. Dancer and artist Tony Orrico has never lost his love of Spirograph – in fact, he enjoys the mathematical shapes and unique works of art so much that he has turned himself into a human Spirograph.

(image via: Cube Me)

Grasping writing implements in his hands and sporting a determined look on his face, Orrico puts himself into position and begins the painstaking process of creating precise geometric patterns using nothing but his own muscles. Both arms work in unison, marking carefully considered geometric shapes over and over while his body moves across the writing field.

(image via: BOOOOOOOM!)

He pivots around on his stomach, spins in circles on his knees, or simply stands still and stretches his arms above and beside him, all the while dragging his pencils and creating crisp shapes on the paper.

(image via: BOOOOOOOM!)

It is part performance art and part visual art, with the making of the pieces being just as interesting as the finished products themselves. Orrico often produces his amazing works in front of a live audience. Those present during the creation of his art pieces seem totally rapt as they watch the dancer use his powerful body as a tool for creating his own unique brand of creative expression.

(image via: BOOOOOOOM!)

Orrico’s training as a dancer must come in handy when creating his impressive Spirograph art. He can spend up to four hours on each piece, employing his muscles to help him create precise shapes and to keep him constantly moving.

"

(More) Useful Web Usability Testing Tools

Usability and User Experience (UX) are two extremely important factors for developing a site or app that really stands out from the competition. With the increasing competition in sites and apps, there are also an ever increasing number of tools to help you make your site or app more usable, and to help you ensure you provide a great experience for your users.

Of course, with this influx of usability and UX tools, it’s hard to sift through all of the rubble to find tools that meet your needs, or even to find any tool at all. We’ve covered a number of great web usability tools in the past, and today we are happy to provide you with more to help you make the web a more usable place, one site (or app) at a time.

Read on for a handy list of a whole bunch of tools, and be sure to let us know in the comments if there are any great tool we’ve missed.

(Full disclosure: I work on IntuitionHQ.com, one of the website usability testing tools featured in this list.)

GoToMeeting

Along the same lines as Skype, this makes it really easy to communicate and observe your users. A good alternative if you need one. ($49/month)

Ethnio

Intercept users (live!) on your site and ask them questions or even call them. It’s a great way to recruit people for testing, and it looks pretty too. (free – $199/month)

WhatUsersDo

This tool provides testers, and then records videos of them using your site, as well as their comments on their experience. From this you can work out what is working well or not so well, and make changes from there. (£30+/user)

IntuitionHQ

(I work on this tool) You create tasks, add screenshots, send them out any way you like to anyone you like, and see how they interact with your designs and UIs via a heatmap. It doesn’t provide a ton of information, but it’s quick, cheap and actionable, which most of the time is just what I need. ($9)

FiveSecondTest

Neat concept. Show a user your screenshot for five seconds, and see what sticks in their mind. Simple and easy. (free – $200/month)

Feedback Army

Submit questions about your site and pay to get 10 responses from their reviewers, all within a short period of time. Good option for quick and dirty testing. ($15/test)

Loop 11

Create tests and tasks, send them out to users then view a report of the results. An annual license is also available. ($350/test)

Usabilla

Set your tasks, send out the tests, and get feedback; users can also leave notes on each of your screenshots. You provide your own participants, topping out at 200 on the $139 plan.(free – $139/month)

Navflow

You upload a sequence of screenshots with a set task/success method and send them on to your users to run through. It then provides results based on the success criteria you set earlier. (free – $200/month)

Video Testing

Clicktale

Records everything your visitors do on your website, including keystrokes ad mouse moves so you can see exactly what they do and how they do it. You can monitor results in real time as well. ($99 – $990/month)

TryMyUI

Similar to WhatUsersDo, they provide a video of a tester using your website, and narrating their thoughts as they go. They also provide a written response to a questionnaire. ($25/test)

Userfly

Records videos of your users on a site, including all mouse movements and clicks, for you to review and gather data from. (free – $200/month)

Userlytics

Userlytics provides particpants, and records videos of both users and their interactions with your site. You also get to ask a survery post your 10 minute test. ($299/test)

UserTesting

Very similar to Userlytics, but you only need to pay for one tester at a time. Gives you a video of users talking about your site as they use it, and a written summary of problems they encountered. ($39/tester)

OpenHallway

Another site that records users as they use your site; but they host your video online for you, and you provide your own testers. ($19 – $199/month)

More Tools

xSort

xSort is a free card sorting app for Mac OS X. If you are a card sorting fan (which is a useful way to work out navigation structures and such) then this is a handy tool to download. (free)

Websort

Websort is online card sorting app with a range of different functionality baked in, such as ways to connect with survey sites, open and closed tests, and a number of ways to access and view your results. ($149 – $2,499)

Gazehawk

Gazehawk is an eye tracking tool that recruits participants and provides results for you. They do this through heatmaps and replays and of how people have interacted with your site. ($495 – $995+)

Last but not least:

Eyes and Ears.
As obvious as this may seem, the first thing you need to do while testing usability is to use your eyes and ears. Watch what people do. See how they interact with a certain interface. Listen to their comments, and observe their behaviour. You’d be amazed what you can learn.

(Image source: Shutterstock)

Pencil and Paper.
Following closely on the heals of eyes and ears, pencil and paper are two tools that you almost always have on hand. They don’t require any technical expertise, and you can quickly and easily produce prototypes of any design or interface that you can imagine. If nothing else, at least try sketching out your ideas.

(Image source: Shutterstock)

Redesigned Diamond Cigarette Packaging Could Simply Make It Too Inconvenient To Smoke

Redesigned Diamond Cigarette Packaging Could Simply Make It Too Inconvenient To Smoke: "

By Andrew Liszewski

Governing bodies have tried many different ways to discourage smoking including dramatically increasing the price of cigarettes through taxes, by forcing tobacco companies to include graphic and disturbing imagery and warnings on the packaging to even requiring them to be hidden away behind closed doors at stores. And while this brilliant redesign of cigarette packaging isn’t the end all solution to the problem, it’s another step that will hopefully discourage more people from smoking.

The flip-top cigarette box is actually incredibly well designed when it comes to portability, accessibility and even marketing. So Eric Askin figured that by breaking the rules of design it could actually discourage people from using a harmful product, and that’s what led to the creation of his diamond-shaped packaging concept. It fits terribly in a pocket, the cigarettes are harder to access or share, less of them can be stacked on a shelf and when they are, the branding is obscured, they’re more difficult to ship and they’re more expensive for tobacco companies to make and manufacture. Of course the new packaging would have to be mandated the same way the current warning labels are, but I think it’s a brilliantly simple way to make the terrible habit even more of an inconvenience.

Monkey Saves Dog; Breaks Hearts

Monkey Saves Dog; Breaks Hearts: "

A terrible pipeline explosion tore through Nanjing, China, killing 13 people and injuring 300. Horrendous news like that has become so commonplace that it’s almost hard to connect and understand their trauma, especially when the Chinese press is limited from reporting the facts.

Until a photo of a monkey saving a puppy dog from the explosion hits the internet, when all the f**ked up pieces of the world fall into place.

Twitter user sinyi88 tweeted this photo of a monkey, in some sort of leash contraption, grabbing a puppy and running away from the explosion with a look of terror on his little monkey face.

(via nowpublic)

While we don’t have video of the occurrence, we do have an animated GIF ahead that has perhaps never been more appropriate in the history of the world. It’s our favorite GIF ever.

"

Hyper-Realistic Wall Paintings by David Jon Kassan

If you were to round a corner in a building you thought empty and come face-to-face with one of these figures, you might experience a moment of heart-thumping fear before realizing that there’s nobody there. Painter David Jon Kassan has not only mastered an incredible 3D effect in his wall paintings, but manages to capture the true essence of his subjects rather than a flat but finely rendered likeness.



Based in Brooklyn, Kassan leapt into full-time painting after being laid off in the aftermath of 9/11. Determined to find a way to do what made him happy, he put himself through art school and emerged with an even bigger thirst to learn and improve. His signature style of realism is multi-layered, with a darkness influenced greatly by his urban environment.

The grit of the wall itself – grit of the city – is subtly incorporated into the image in a way that gives it more than just a bit of extra physical substance. It speaks to the subject’s environment and how they interact with it. Kassan combines the imperfections of the wall surface with a keen eye for nuances in each model’s facial expressions and posture for highly emotionally charged results.

“My work is a way of meditation, a way of slowing down time though the careful observation of overlooked slices of my environment,” Kassan says in his artist statement. “It is the subtlety of emotion in my acquaintances that inhabit the aforementioned environment which intrigues me. My paintings strive for reality, a chance to mimic life in both scale and complexity. The viewer is given an eye level perspective of the subject. A view that is unbiased and in its most raw condition.”

“It is my intent to control the medium of oil paint so that it is not part of the viewer to subject equation. The image stands alone without evidence of the artist. I displace textures from their natural environment by moving them out of the context they exist in. Taking the abstract form from the streets where they get lost and moving them into the gallery space where they can be contemplated as accidental abstractions.”

Skin That Apple: 15 Awesome iPhone Cases

For every Apple enthusiast who sees utter perfection in the sleek, modern lines of the iPhone, there’s someone who sees it as the ideal opportunity for customization and self-expression. Whether you’d like to cover up that smooth plastic exterior with some goofy hand-sewn felt, add a case with its own built-in flash or make it self-sufficient with an incorporated solar panel, these 15 fun iPhone skins and cases definitely add personality and function.

Chocolate Bar iPhone Case

(image via: varologic)

Just in case your appetite for chocolate isn’t already big enough, you can make it even harder to resist with the Chocolate Style Silicone case. With a texture that looks and feels like real chocolate, this iPhone case will get your stomach growling every time your phone rings.

Rotary iPhone

(image via: craziest gadgets)

Not everyone digs the sleek and shiny aesthetics of modern gadgets – even though they like the gadgets themselves. This handmade felt case, spotted on Etsy, gives fans of retro style a fun rotary exterior to look at while maintaining all of those essential modern functions.

Trompe l’Oeil Camera Skin

(image via: iphonestuff)

Many a photographer has begrudgingly admitted that the iPhone can actually take pretty cool pictures, but that doesn’t mean they’re ever going to abandon actual cameras. However, photography enthusiasts might get a kick out of this realistic-looking iPhone skin, which almost makes it look like the real thing.

Factron Changeable-Lens Camera iPhone Case

(image via: olivia munn)

If you’re a photographer who would prefer to go beyond mere decoration and actually improve your iPhone’s photo-taking abilities, perhaps this case is for you – if you can get beyond the bulk and the $200 price tag. Interchangeable fish eye, wide-angle and close-up lenses attach to a metal and leather exterior that gives the light plastic iPhone quite a bit of extra heft.

Modern Sheet Metal Case

(image via: yanko design)

Sexy or ugly? Opinions vary greatly, but either way, this sleek steel iPhone case certainly gets people talking. It has silicone interior pads to cushion the phone and leaves all important features accessible including buttons and air circulation.

Beamer Case Has Built-in Flash

(image via: pichaus)

Yet another case for iPhone owners who love to take photos is the Beamer, a 2-piece plastic case with a built-in flash that can also be used as a flashlight. Press the button once for 10 seconds of light, or press it two times in quick succession to keep the light on.

Gameboy iPhone Case

(image via: vinaminh)

When this covetously geeky iPhone case was spotted in Japan, it instantly became an internet sensation with Nintendo lovers scrambling to figure out how to buy one. It’s hard to tell exactly where this Gameboy case might be available for purchase, but if you’ve got some time and dedication you can replicate it yourself with a tutorial from Instructables.

Playstation iPhone Case

(image via: ps3maven)

Assuming you don’t mind the ‘adorable factor’ of handcrafted felt, this awesome case is a must-have for iPhone-owning gamers. For just $20 you can get the console-shaped case, and another $7 scores the cute controller accessory.

Etch-a-Sketch iPhone Case

(image via: gizmodo)

More on the fantastically cute hand-sewn felt front: this one, modeled after an Etch-a-Sketch. No word on whether you can get your sketch customized, but the same Etsy seller also offers a totally 80’s cassette design.

Solar iPhone Skin

(image via: treehugger)

Why not put your iPhone skin to work for you and let it power your phone? The Solar Surge skin features an integrated solar cell that can fully charge your gadget with the power of the sun, giving you about 30 minutes of talk time on a 2-hour charge.

Bookshelf iPhone Skin

(image via: geeky gadgets)

No matter what your taste in art may be, there’s likely an artistic iPhone skin out there that’s just right for you. This ‘bookshelf’ skin is just one of the many offered by Urban Outfitters.

Laser-Engraved Wood iPhone Case

(image via: unplggd)

A plastic iPhone is hardly ‘natural’, so what’s a techie treehugger to do but find an earthy case like this wooden one by Engrave Your Tech. In fact, you can get any image you like laser-cut into the wood.

Hybrid Case Grips and Slides

(image via: switcheasy)

You want your iPhone to slide easily into your pocket, but it’s awfully annoying when you can’t seem to keep a good grip on it. Rather than drop it all the time, check out this slick hybrid case called “Torrent”, which features easy-to-grab sides.

Printable iPhone Skin

(image via: ohgizmo)

Sometimes, you just can’t find anything that’s quite your style. If you’ve got visions of getting your company logo or a personal photo emblazoned across the surface of your iPhone, a printable, customizable skin is the only way to go. IaPeel lets you print it from your home inkjet printer and has pop-up guides to ensure an accurate fit.