I’m sure you’ve all seen this, but just in case:
http://www.dontclick.it/

Something inside me revolts against not clicking– and it’s causal expectation: I must do something active in order to do something. But honestly, I ‘get’ it. Having to click everything all the time creates a command/dominance facade, as if the user really had control of their computer; hence all the HCI(Human-computer-interaction) frustrations/rage. We’d all like to think that we’re in control of our computers, when in reality, even the development team who built the software are under the rule of the almighty strict language syntax & debugger.

Dontclick.it is a great testbed for low-command HCI, and I wish it could take it a few steps further:

What about ‘mouse-attraction’.. giving gravity values to elements. I don’t mean 10,000 units that would disallow ANY mouse movement, but a 0-to-1 point scale that would still allow for pixel-width mouse intervals.

Lack of borders/boundaries is also tough.  Many times on the site you’re thrown into another undesired world based simply on a lack of clear borders: the padding around the text is unknown to the user, the multitude of gradients (why not use ‘em as a visual timer– the stronger the gradient, the less time you have before action?)..

As well, for some users like myself who REALLY like to use the mouse to track their reading, this design implementation on the front page drives us up a wall. But that is rule-changable, and honestly, just a front-page issue - the rest of the site is well done.

Finally, X windows generically supports this kind of HCI, and since seeing this site, I’ve been using mouse-over window focusing for a few months. It drives my girlfriend batty to use it, but with repeated use, (and a HORRID Macbook mouse-button), it’s worth keeping.

My specific XFCE implementation allows for, what is in no uncertain terms: GRACE! If I mouse-over something else, that something else will alight in focus for a second before fully coming into focus cuing me to say, “Do you want to focus on this window?” And if I don’t, in the brief second, I can move back and never lose window focus.