patterns

An old lab video of a decerebrate cat walking on a treadmill and shifting between gait patterns as the speed changes. It is used to illustrate that much locomotion control comes from the spinal cord and body mechanics rather than the brain.

Matthaeus Krenn presents a concept for car touchscreen UI where the screen controls only one thing at a time, designed to suit driving. A tablet prototype accompanies the short demo.

Kristy Viers demonstrates the iPhone Magnifier combined with VoiceOver to describe the user's surroundings. She shows how the built-in feature reports scenes, faces and lighting.

Tom Scott stands by a construction site and explains why reversing vehicles now use a white-noise hiss instead of beeping. The sound is easier to locate directionally and less annoying to neighbours.

A Microsoft Research demo from TechFest 2012 of a lab touch system that lets viewers feel the effect of different input latencies, down to about 1 ms. It shows how much more responsive dragging feels compared with typical 100 ms touch delay.

A short concept video of Microsoft's unreleased Courier, a dual-screen tablet designed as a digital notebook with clippings and annotation. It was first leaked by Gizmodo in 2009.

Dylan Beattie's parody of 'You Give Love a Bad Name' about hypermedia APIs and REST, performed with his band at developer conferences.

Tom Scott visits Penistone to explain the Scunthorpe problem, showing why naive web and profanity filters block innocent words.

Street interviews of over 50 passersby in Times Square, asked what a browser is. Many answers show people confuse browsers with search engines or the internet.

A one-minute archive video of the 2Advanced Studios v2 website from 2001, a showcase of the elaborate futuristic Flash interfaces the agency was known for.

A concept video from 2003 showing an early vision of Windows Longhorn's interface, before it shipped as Vista.

A short video arguing that the iPhone keyboard has gotten worse, showing slow-motion footage of taps registering the wrong letters. It claims the problem is iOS itself rather than user error.

A short demo shows how to use the Tesla Model 3's mechanical emergency door release on the front doors as a backup to the electronic release. It notes an on-screen warning that frequent use could damage the door seals.

A short Boeing piece on the retirement of the voice behind the F/A-18 Super Hornet cockpit warning system, nicknamed Bitchin' Betty. It touches on why the stern voice alerts are used.

GE Lighting's official how-to for factory resetting C by GE smart bulbs, using a long sequence of precisely timed on and off cycles.

A 2018 vlog showing how to use the windshield wipers on a Tesla Model 3, including auto mode, manual settings and voice commands. It is labeled outdated.

The short printer-destruction-adjacent clip from Office Space built around the cryptic 'PC LOAD LETTER' error message. It pokes fun at unhelpful printer errors.

A very short clip of Carl Sagan saying that to make an apple pie from scratch you must first invent the universe. It illustrates how everything depends on a chain of prior things.

A short clip parodying Windows Vista's cancel-or-allow security prompts, in the style of Apple's Mac vs PC ads.

A short archival capture of the 2001 Flash website of 2Advanced Studios, an agency known for high-end Flash design. It is part of the Web Design Museum's collection of early web design.

A short WIRED demo from CES 2013 of Tactus Technology's haptic touchscreen, whose panel raises physical bumps to form a keyboard.

A short clip from the film Idiocracy showing a hospital reception computer where staff pick a condition from a board of simple pictorial buttons.

A short compilation of the gesture and multitouch interface scenes from the film Minority Report.

Google's 2014 reel introducing Material Design, a visual language based on a paper-and-ink material metaphor and a system of motion. It is a short promotional video.

A short demo of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon's adaptive keyboard row, which changes its keys based on the user's activity.

A one-minute video of a baby treating a print magazine like a broken iPad, presented as a tribute to Steve Jobs. It makes a point about how touch screens shape the expectations of digital natives.

A short KRAZAM comedy sketch in which engineers explain an absurdly tangled microservices architecture to a manager. It parodies how backend complexity gets justified with jargon.

A Sesame Street animation from 1979 with music composed by Philip Glass, showing geometric circle patterns.

Tom Scott investigates moire-effect beacons, called Inogon leading marks, a Swedish invention from the 1980s that shows different patterns depending on the viewer's position. He visits one used to mark an undersea cable and tracks down its history.

A comedy song by the Irish duo Foil Arms and Hog about the experience of flying Ryanair, with its many upsells and indignities.