While I wasn’t looking, the discipline of user-interface design was rechristened UX – short, I am led to believe, for “user experience.” That seems a rather breathless, wide-eyed way of referring to the shopworn set of UI widgets that let users interact with applications, but so be it. The user-interface world has always suffered from stylish overstatement.

UX is like the weather. You know – everybody talks about it, but no one does anything about it. Every programmer I meet is a self-appointed expert in how user interfaces ought to work. Everyone seems to know what makes an application “user-friendly” or “compelling” or whatever the current buzzword is.

At the same time, our industry perpetuates the myth that it supports a specialized cadre of user-interface designers, UX engineers with deep insights into user expectations and how to meet or exceed them. But tell me: Have you ever met a UX engineer? I haven’t. I think there may be some at Microsoft, behind the scenes of the Windows 8 team. Everywhere else, UX is understood to be part of the software developer’s expertise.

There seems to be a conflict between best practices in user-interface design and the incremental development processes we call Agile. UI designers count pixels and specify detailed behavior of program elements before they are coded. The entire discipline of UX depends upon a waterfallish development model in which the UI takes emerges as vapor from the analysis phase and solidifies into the spec during design. Remember analysis and design?

Bloggers across the Internet have attempted to downplay the incompatibility between traditional UI design and modern development models. You can read some of these articles here: InfoDesign, Interfaith Marriage: Experience Design Meets Agile Development (by my old friend Larry Constantine), The Integration of User Experience into Software Development, Great User Experiences Require Great Front-End Development, Twelve Emerging Best Practices for Adding UX Work to Agile Development, Agile + UX: Six Strategies for More Agile User Experience, Adapting Usability Investigations for Agile User-Centered Design, Bringing User-Centered Design to the Agile Environment, Design Chunking with Scrum…well, you get the idea. There’s a lot out there.

What strikes me about all these articles is that the programmers and writers and designers who created them are so earnest and eager to stand on one foot, and squint, and somehow make a discrete UI-design phase seem like a natural part of the Agile development model, not something that is awkwardly grafted on.

UI design has always been a black art. If you’re old enough, you may remember the Babel of UIs every user had to deal with before Microsoft and Apple imposed UI standards on developers. If you think things are bad now, you’ve got a short memory. UIs were really dreadful, then. And while there is always room for improvement, standard UI widgets and guidelines have done a lot to make the user experience – er, the UX, I guess – significantly better.

Web recommendation: Intel introduced the 2012 version of its SDK for OpenCL a few days ago. If you’re looking to write parallel code that takes advantage of the GPU for compute-intensive tasks, this is a significant release. You can learn more about the SDK – and download a copy free – here. J.D. says check it out.

J.D. Hildebrand has written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications and online communities dedicated to software development. His lovely wife is uncharacteristically impatient for him to finish work today.

It's a funny thing. Android is the undisputed best-selling mobile operating system, but Android developers seem to suffer from an inferiority complex. Especially when their apps are compared to software that runs on that other platform. You know the one I mean. The highly polished, tightly controlled, immaculately curated, stylistically homogenous, Steve Jobs-inspired iOS platform. Who can compete with that, right? I mean...Jobs was a legend.

Google is addressing the Android development community's stylistic shortcomings with a new Web site. Android Design is an illustrated set of principles for Android 4 developers. Some of site's advice is a little cheesy – it suggests you you consider these goals when designing your app: “Enchant me,” “Simplify my life,” and “Make me amazing.” But as you delve deeper into the site you'll find real, tangible information that will be of great helpfulness in making your apps run and look better on Android.

In particular, the site does a good job of identifying new features of Android 4.x – Ice Cream Sandwich – and explaining how they should be used in apps. Some of Google's advice sheds light on innovative new interface widgets and how they can make apps better, and some is just good sense. But in both cases, the style guidelines serve as important reminders of how consistent style can improve the user experience of platforms and apps.

Bottom line: Android Design is more than just a good idea. It promises to be an essential resource for Android developers.

Web recommendation: IBM researchers have succeeded in storing a bit of information in just 12 atoms. It's unclear how long it will take this innovation to reach the field, if ever, but it's an astonishing achievement. You can read all about it here. J.D. says check it out.

J.D. Hildebrand has written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications and online communities dedicated to software development. He wore no shoes during the composition of this post.

Jacob “Jack” Goldman, who left Ford Motor Co. to launch Xerox Corp.'s Palo Alto Research Center, died on December 20, 2011 at age 90.

A physicist by training, Goldman taught at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) and MIT before leaving academia for industry. As director of Ford's Scientific Research Laboratory, he succeeded by recruiting top talent and giving them free rein to innovate. He maintained that tradition at Xerox, where he served as chief scientist, chief technical officer, and senior vice president for research and development. Goldman established two of the company's R&D centers: the Xerox Research Center of Canada and Xerox PARC.

It is not hyperbole to say that researchers at PARC created the modern computing world. Among their inventions are the personal computer, the laser printer, the graphical user interface, Ethernet, bitmap graphics, the WYSIWYG text editor, the Smalltalk language and IDE, and the notion of ubiquitous computing.

People say that Xerox PARC did the research that made Apple and Microsoft successful, and in a sense that is true. Apple's pre-Macintosh GUI-based system, the Lisa, was heavily influenced by Xerox PARC work. In fact, Xerox earned the right to purchase 100,000 shares of pre-IPO Apple stock by giving Apple engineers three days' access to PARC. It was during those three days that the Lisa – and ultimately the Macintosh – were born. Microsoft's Bill Gates was also a visitor to PARC. Microsoft tech visionaries Larry Tessler, Charles Simonyi, and others were recruited from PARC.

PARC – it's a wholly owned subsidiary of Xerox now, and no longer called Xerox PARC – continues to do important research on cutting-edge topics in computer science.

Web recommendation: Irresistible. 'Nuff said. J.D. says check it out.

J.D. Hildebrand has written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications and online communities dedicated to software development. At the moment, he doesn't own a suit.

Here are updates on some of the issues I've been following for the past few weeks.

Infrastructure attack a false alarm – for now. In a series of posts, I have made clear my concern about the ongoing effort to computerize utilities and municipal-infrastructure control systems. While intelligent systems can help us conserve resources and use energy more efficiently, computerization also leaves critical systems vulnerable to hack attacks. A data-point supporting my argument was November 8's widely reported cyber attack against an Illinois water utility's SCADA system. The Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center reported that a hacker with a Russian IP address had caused a pump to burn out. The cyber war had begun! Or maybe not. It turns out the SCADA system was accessed by a utility contractor, Jim Mimlitz, who was on vacation in Russia. While everyone is breathing a little easier, the fact remains that these systems are still vulnerable. It's only a matter of time until they are really hit.

Microsoft bullish on Kinect 2: Microsoft has realized that its Kinect game controller for the Xbox platform is potentially a good solution for a huge range of problems. Beta 2 of the Kinect SDK is available now, and Microsoft promises that a commercialized SDK will be available in early 2012. In the meantime, the Kinect hacker community is running full-tilt at every offbeat and potentially useful application it can imagine. Meanwhile, the Kinect 2 will reported greatly extend the Kinect's abilities. The new device may be able to read lips and even to detect users' emotional states with its facial-recognition algorithms. (If hackers were to install a back door into Kinect-enabled systems, they would essentially have around-the-clock video access to user sites, and the Kinect's voice-recognition routines could monitor speech for key words. What if the government were to install such software?) Check out Kinect Hacks. And if you haven't seen it yet, you might as well look at Microsoft's Kinect Effect video.

Software detects lies with voice analysis. Researchers are using a variety of methods to analyze speech and detect whether speakers are telling the truth. The New York Times has an informative article here: Software that listens for lies. It must be a lot of fun working on applications like these.

Pentagon sponsors hacking contest. A determined team of programmers has won $50,000 in a contest sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. The eight-member team successfully retrieved the contents of seven pages of documents that had been shredded into more than 10,000 fragments. The Pentagon is quite open about its motivation for the contest: “The goal was to identify and assess potential capabilities that could be used by our warfighters operating in war zones, but might also create vulnerabilities to sensitive information that is protected through our own shredding practices throughout the U.S. national security community.” We already knew the government could intercept anything on the Internet. Now it turns out that they're looking to read our shredded documents. Congratulations, in any case, to the winners.

Web recommendation: Perhaps you have noticed that many programmers are also serious about cooking. You may be a good cook yourself, in which case you have no doubt already discovered the new Developer Cookbook section of sdtimes.com. Those recipes look good, but they're positively primitive compared to the cooking-as-rocket-science entries in Modernist Cuisine, a six-volume encyclopedia of cooking ingredients, methods, and technologies dreamed up by former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold. This lavishly illustrated tome has 2,438 pages and weighs more than 50 pounds. Your status as an amateur cook may not justify the book's $625 purchase price, but you should at least take a look via the authors' beautiful Web site. J.D. says check it out.

J.D. Hildebrand has written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications and online communities dedicated to software development. He likes raisins and walnuts in his oatmeal cookies.

Microsoft's innovative Kinect game controller was introduced about a year ago. The device, an add-on to the Xbox 360 game console, lets users play games with gestures and spoken commands. The Kinect sold eight million units in its first two months on the market, and no less an authority than the Guiness Book of World Records named it the world's “fastest selling consumer electronics device” (take that, iPad) and the world's “fastest selling gaming peripheral.”

Microsoft made a .NET-based software development kit for the Kinect available in June 2011, but the license agreement allows the development of only “noncommercial” apps. A fully commercial SDK has been provided to selected companies, and Microsoft has promised that it will be generally available in “early 2012.” Also slated for early 2012 release is new Kinect hardware, intended to connect with a PC instead of a game console.

Kinect has become a major part of Microsoft's self-image, and the company would like to see the device integrated into more and more PC-based applications.

To further that vision, Microsoft has announced Kinect Accelerator, an incubator program under which 10 individuals or companies will receive funding, office space, mentorship, and other support for turning their Kinect-based applications into reality. “Every company participating in the Kinect Accelerator will receive an investment of $20,000, an Xbox development kit, the Windows Kinect SDK, office space, all the resources of BizSpark, technical training and support, and mentorship from entrepreneurs, investors and Microsoft executives intensely focused on making their business a success,” Microsoft says. “At the end of the program, each company will have an opportunity to present at an Investor Demo Day to angel investors, venture capitalists, Microsoft executives, media, and industry influentials.”

The downside? Applicants must be prepared to relocate to Seattle for the duration of the program. And six percent of your project equity will belong to Kinect Accelerator, as a sort of tax.

It's easy to imagine how Kinect-style UIs could improve applications in health care, education, manufacturing, and general business. Interested? Sign up here.

Web recommendation: Stanford University is offering a free online course in cryptography to interested programmers. The course, taught by Stanford Applied Cryptography Group head Dan Boneh, starts in January. It's based on a series of videos (about two hours per week), assignments, and tests. Cryptography isn't just a fascinating discipline, it's also an increasingly important one – you can do your career a lot of good by specializing in security technologies. The course info page is here. J.D. says check it out.

J.D. Hildebrand has written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications and online communities dedicated to software development. The next book on his reading list is Dan Simmons's Drood.

In the 2002 film Minority Report, Tom Cruise controlled a computer by waving his hands around wearing special black gloves. In those pre-Wii days, that vision of the future looked pretty smart. But researchers at Microsoft and the University of Washington are taking user-interface technology one step further. In a recently published paper, engineers have demonstrated that it is possible to control electrical devices, including computers, with gestures alone – without the need for handheld hardware or special gloves.

The trick is this: Due to the wiring in the walls and the placement of electrical devices throughout a home, the environment is filled with a weak electromagnetic field – noise, in essence, harmless and meaningless. A human being moving through the field creates a detectable (and localizable, to coin a very ugly word) disturbance. The human body essentially acts as an antenna. The researchers have demonstrated that it is possible to use this phenomenon to control electronic devices.

The experiments run to date are limited to turning electrical lights on and off by tapping blank spots on the wall. The researchers are careful not to promise much more functionality. But it seems obvious, given the resolution and sensitivity the researchers measured in their early experiments, that control of communications, entertainment, and computing devices is not far off.

I am not an excitable fellow when it comes to technological breakthroughs – I've seen too many fizzle or get translated into mundane devices. But this research intrigues me. I feel as if I've caught a glimpse of a future in which the entire world is intelligent, and we interact with it as simply and naturally as moving. It could happen.

Web recommendation: Today I send you to the well-designed Web site of Novak Đoković. The Serbian star is capturing the attention of tennis fans around the world. Since I moved here I have found myself having endless conversations about him. (Well, they would be conversations if my correspondents spoke English or I spoke Serbian.) I'm not really a tennis fan, but he's the local hero and I've got to say it: J.D. says check it out.

J.D. Hildebrand has written hundreds of articles for dozens of publications and online communities dedicated to software development. He recently relocated to a small town outside Belgrade – stop by if your travels take you through Serbia.

 Anthony Franco, president and co-founder of consulting company Effective UI, is not as hung up on the rift between Apple and Adobe regarding the use of Flash technology on iPhones and iPads as many other developers seem to be. He said he takes Apple CEO Steve Jobs at face value when he says there are problems with Flash, and that it's a genuine belief at Apple, not merely some way to maintain a proprietary hold over the platform (which, in fact, Apple already has).

Franco said he is more frustrated with developers who are upset about the inability to use Flash on the iPhone and iPad. "Software development is complex," he said. "It's always changing and evolving. If you don't like it, you're in the wrong business. It's our job. You have to continually think differently."

He said there is "so much cool stuff happening now" in both the mobile application and UI creation spaces. "It's not a soap opera," he said. "Enough with the drama."

You can read more about his thoughts on UI development, and his belief that "write once deploy anywhere" doesn't take into account the user experience, in the July 15 issue of SD Times.