CyberPort v2.0 19" (c) 1992 Jim Leftwich/Orbit Interaction
All Rights Reserved. For personal use only. May not be printed or reproduced without permission of author.
May not be posted electronically elsewhere without this "About" file.
Well Cybernauts, here's the original, the 19" (1024 x 768) screen version of the CyberPort Desktop. It's been configured for use with 19" color screens. This original 19" version was printed along with other examples of my work in the Jan. 13, 1992 issue of MacWEEK and generated a lot of calls for copies. This image of a CyberPort has been specifically designed for use as the desktop background for your Macintosh. Using a desktop PICT-displaying utility, you can designate this PICT image as your desktop (with certain desktop PICT utilities you'll need to save the image as a PICT Resource and possibly rename it, but this would be explained in the utilitie's ReadMe or Instructions). I use the port window part of the illustration as the area where my internal disk icon opens up into. Hey, when you've got a monster screen, you can afford the real estate.
Until that day when we'll don our interaction-derms, jack into our decks, and fly out to the Great Virtual Datastructures, use this image of a CyberPort as a launching pad for your daydreams. This rad techno-illustration has been configured to conform to System 7's layout grid for disk/diskettes and trashcan icons for a 19" Monitor (1024 x 768) and will turn your Mac into a Bladerunnerish view into cyberspace. Also included on this CD-ROM are the derived 13" (640 x 480) and 16" (832 x 624) versions, so you may wish to check them out if they fit your particular monitor.
I love hearing from CyberPort users and have received email from all over the planet. If you like CyberPort, drop me a message.
Jim Leftwich is the founder and Principal of Orbit Interaction, an interaction design consultancy in Palo Alto, California. Previously as an industrial and product designer in Dallas, Texas, he co-consulted with Norm Cox (1988-89), who was the original icon designer for the Xerox PARC Star project in the late 1970's, and with industrial design consultants Tom Noonan (also a part of the Xerox Star team, designing the first commercially available mouse) and Doug Laube (1986-88). Prior to consulting, he worked in Dallas as a model-maker/prototyper (1985-86) and as a typographer and computer graphics designer for Amgraf/DSC in Kansas City, Missouri (1984-85).
Orbit Interaction specializes in the analysis, design, specification, and documentation of the interactive aspects of products, software and systems. This wide range of interactive elements, interrelationships and issues are usually referred to collectively as the "user interface." Rather than treating the user interface as a separate or merely aesthetic part of a product to be added on at the end of the design and development process, Orbit Interaction works with clients to conceive, design and implement solutions that are integrated into and balanced with the technological, functional, and contextual aspects of a product. This in-depth approach towards interface design results in more effeciency, intuitiveness and friendliness in a way that superficial "decorating" rarely can. Broader issues such as multi-product family look and feel, marketing and demographic considerations and product/technology evolutionary strategies are also addressed as a part of Orbit Interaction's design approach.
Clients to which Orbit consults in interaction and user-interface design have included Unify Coporation (multi-platform application-building software), Acuson (medical sonography equipment), AXCIS Pocket Information Network, Inc. (palmtop information access/manipulation), Sun Microsystems/SunPro, Syntex Laboratories, Xerox PARC, Texas Instruments, and EDA, including work with Norm Cox on the design and documentation of Open Look(R), the UNIX-based user interface for Sun Microsystems/AT&T. He has also worked with Lunar Design of Palo Alto, California to develop new approaches to human/computer/machine interaction through the symbiosis of visual and physical user interfaces.
Leftwich's conceptual design project, InfoSpace: A Conceptual Method of Interacting with Information in a Three-Dimensional Virtual Environment, was the leadoff presentation at the Third International Conference on Cyberspace, held at the University of Texas - Austin in May 1993. His work has been published in MacWEEK and Ventana Press's book, America Online Membership Kit and Tour Guide (Ten Best - Chapter Frontispiece), and his color icon resources are featured in BMUG's CD-ROM, Zen and the Art of ResEdit. He is also the co-author of an article, Applying the Interaction Design Approach to Medical Devices, published in the April 1991 issue of Medical Design and Materials. Leftwich was also a major contributor to the 5.5Mb HyperCard stack, Beyond Cyberpunk!, designing much of the visual interface, graphics, and print advertisements.
