When the iPhone opened the app store to third party developers and basically anyone who could afford the $99 SDK we we’re all amazed at the enormous success. Thousands upon thousands of great apps have been launched transforming the mobile marketplace forever as it can now compete with laptops on the go.

So, I ask, why the hell can’t I run my apps on my mac?!
I know that the iPhone OS, while based on OS X technology, isn’t the same operating system. But as a consumer I don’t care. Sure, most apps are just boiled down versions of larger applications for Mac or the web. But some of them are not, games especially are available only on the iPhone in that form.

Well I want to use some of them on my Mac!
And it shouldn’t be that hard, the SDK for developing apps can already emulate apps directly in OS X.
But I want to run them from iTunes or, better yet, directly from my dock. I already own them and they’re already stored on my Mac from constant syncing.

Please Apple, let me run my Apps on my Mac as well.

If you agree with this, retweet as far as you can!

One of the largest problems facing the games industry today is used games. Publishers can’t compete with the low prices and have launched campaigns trying to persuade customers that buying used games hurt developers. This is almost certainly true but the problem is, as so often with situations like this, not used games but how games as a medium are developed and sold. Let me describe why this phenomenon exists and what developers can do to change it today.

Books and movies are more rarely sold used then games

There is a market for used books and movies, and it’s pretty large, but nowhere near as large as for games. This is because the products leave a lingering thought with the consumer that they “might want to see / read it again”. In this post I’ll call this emotional impact.

I’m not saying that games don’t have emotional impact, in fact they might have more emotional impact then traditional media, but in games it works a bit differently.

Traditional media is completely based on narrative

Narrative has always been a way for humans to interpret the things happening around us, in other words; we look for patterns that might not be there. Putting stories on events to make them understandable.

Traditional media is a way to channel this interest by offering interesting stories, that have been thought out before hand and then feeding them to the audience. We’ve been doing it since long before Shakespeare

When a movie, book or any work of fiction presents us with a narrative that we particularly like we achieve a sense of satisfaction. Known in story telling as catharsis.

Games don’t work like this

Games have two sets of narrative going on at once; the story narrative that is usually fed to the player (s) in more or less sophisticated ways. The game mechanical narrative, the story that the player build by doing things in the game: “I ran around the wall and shot that guy from behind, I’m such a ninja!“.

The first narrative is directly comparable to traditional media and is the dominant narrative in games such as the Final Fantasy series or the Metal Gear series. The emotional impact of these games are usually quite high and sure enough, you’ll find a lot less of them on the used shelves at your local Gamestop.

The second narrative however, is unique to games as a medium. It is the dominant form of narrative in games such as Battlefield or Gran Turismo. These games can be resold without much emotional impact because the main experience is already experienced. Playing the game again won’t be as interesting.

Let’s compare this to a vacation trip. The pictures from said vacation are valuable, because they let the consumer remember the experience. But going back will be different, we all know this, that’s why we don’t always travel to the same spots.

Experiencing the game mechanic again can often be more interesting by playing the sequel or a similar game. A consumer will rarely play the same game again if there aren’t new goals to reach or if similar games and sequels are noticeably different. (If your game is a shooter you’ll probably not ever get consumers to do more then one play through. If that.)

So how are we going to solve this?

From this point of view, I’ve identified three key ways of making more emotional impact and staying of the used games shelf:

1. Create games that capture the emotional impact of narrative. Create games with more traditional story that can keep the players coming back.
2. Create games with game mechanic lock-ins. So that they are forced to keep playing your game to get the same pleasurable mechanic. Look at fighting games for example. Fighting games seem to be generally online or party experiences, with unique fighting styles they deliver experiences that you can’t interchange easily.
3. Games that are more focused on mechanic narrative, don’t release them as boxed products. Seriously. They are easily interchangeable and after one play through they are simply not very interesting. Sell them as episodic content through direct downloads or as subscription services.

This might sound a bit crude, but the games industry is not as successful per unit as other media industries and mostly I believe this is because the industry isn’t selling games as consumers want them. The games industry is just copying other mediums and then complaining about all the problems that they run into.

If you’ve read this far I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject, comment away, I answer all comments.

Rumors about the possibly impending launch of a tablet computer/thing from Apple have been raging since the release of the iPhone. But all this buildup will hurt the product.

Apple is always secretive about new launches and improvements of their products. This strategy, coupled with benchmark-creating levels of quality, makes Apple appear to deliver almost perfect quality beyond anything their competitors can achieve. (This is why most nay-sayers focus on technological specs and the like when comparing Apple’s products to others. )
But this same stamp of quality also creates enormous pressure on new product launches. And the iSlate/iTablet /Apple Tablet will quite probably be highest pressure launch yet.

Already analysts are talking about the iSlate/iTablet as a Kindle killer, presuming millions of units sold in the first 6 months and a market created or recreated solely by this machine.

While I don’t doubt that Apple will release a Tablet, and that it’s quality will be outstanding, I do doubt that it can live up to all this hype.

A color e-ink tablet with touch display and the perfect UI using all the products from Apple’s App store and launched with an SDK to make developers sit up and howl could just barely live up to the hype.

And Apple can hardly deliver this, since color e-ink touch is just a tad expensive these days.

Don’t get me wrong, he Apple iSlate will be awesome. It has to live up to the highest quality standards in tech today just for Apple to launch it, my faith in Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive is solid as rock. But the hype might be killing a perfect product. What if they release the iSlate and it doesn’t live up to half the expectations? Will sales half just because of the anticlimax?

Well, this being Apple, probably not. But still, it would be a shame if an innovative product unlike anything but the invention of the iPhone and the Personal Computer would be accepted as anything but great innovation.

Every Day the same Dream is a short flash game that I think you should play.

It’s story of a faceless man who tries to break out of his routine of getting up, dressing, saying good bye to his emotionally detached wife and driving to a miserable job. It’s not exactly cheerful. It might even provoke dark thoughts. It’s conveys a sense of how valuable life is in a strange way. This game is provoking. It doesn’t provoke your ideals. It provokes how you live.

A fantastic interactive experiment that I can really recommend:

Every Day the Same Dream

Sweden has had a strong game development industry even since before the launch of the classic shooterBattlefield 1942. In the last year though, the economic downturn has cause some large studios to file for bankruptcy or sale. But the worst economic down turns usually make the most fertile grounds for new industry. Something the Swedes are proving true.

Baraboom is a small group of friends trying to make it on the iPhone. Not an original concept but not a bad one either. They’ve chosen to be inspired my Remedy’s classic car shooter Death Rally and with a unique style and control scheme their first title Auto Crisis looks awesome. Check it out when it launches in the app store around christmas. [vimeo=http://vimeo.com/7942457]

Ludosity is another small independent studio launching their first own IP very soon. This small startup is comprised of students straight out of school into an incubator. Most impressive and looking at their really unique title Bob came in pieces you can really tell where the innovation in the industry is going on.

So don’t hesitate to innovate and stop worrying about the economy. If small companies such as these two can create high quality products like this on small funds and high spirit, we’ll pull through.

Also please note that while none of these companies have dedicated resources or large budgets to create their web presence, they both have more professional sites than most larger companies…

All fields of technology and design needs terms to define complex meaning regarding their subject. This is my attempt to create a few such terms for user experience design. Please help out through the comments or DM me on twitter!

Resistance refers to the resistance of experiencing the design. This can encompass the macro experience of, for example, music:

• Find a song you like (resistance)
• Purchase the song (resistance)
• Listen to the song

But resistance can also mean the micro experience of the music:

• BPM might not match the listeners mood (resistance)
• Singers voice might hit strange notes (ever listened to death metal or opera and hated it despite a catchy tune? resistance)

So resistance can build both from the users cognitive or psychological experience of the product as well as the practical obstacles the user has in order to experience the intended design.

Since all negative values are experienced as twice as important compared to a positive value, resistance is important to reduce.

Reducing resistance as much as possible is in fact the process of making something accessible but the term is a lot more exact. Defining what we’re really intending to do.

Reduce resistance of user experience, make the user experience flow in using your experience!

The most basic law of design, for the 20th century at least, has been form follows function. The idea that objects should be created based on the action they are used for. With the digital world today, the law is a bit broken. But I claim that the law still works, with just a slight tweak.

I just saw Objectified, the fantastic documentary about industrial design. One of the designers calims that the original law of design form follows function doesn’t apply anymore because design today has become more and more digital, more abstract. With objects like the iPhone, with all its functions, form cannot represent what it does. It is too complex.

But the law is still sound. If we abstract the purpose of the law a bit, it means that any product should really become its function, a pair of scissors is really nothing but the function for cutting. For two reasons this is a good thing: An object that objectifies its function is effective. An object that objectifies its function is simple to understand for the user. Scissors are rarely used inefficiently or misunderstood but it’s users.

When we go digital, we remove the analogue function of the object. It can no longer have a shape based on that function because the function does not exist in the real world. Now, a certain element of the object will always be part of the real world, the interaction with the object.

And this is where the law comes into play again. If we think about the function of and object, not as a physical movement or action, but as an interface for a human being to perform a function, the interaction itself becomes the function of the object.

Some may argue that the abstract function of the object, e.g. gaming or texting on an iPhone, is the main function of an object. But that function also has an abstract layer of interface, the GUI, for that action. This is form and function for an abstract object or function.

So deconstructed, the law of design transformed for today world would read: Form follows interaction.

We all need some way to calculate just how good a person is. No matter what that person is doing for us. This is a basic, intuitive process, for humans.

Today most people seem to judge themselves and others based on intelligence. This illusive concept that means something like powers of the mind. But because we can be so different as individuals we’ve started to divide this concept of intelligence into slimmer and slimmer shards, or different kinds of intelligence. There’s social intelligence, emotional intelligence, mathematical intelligence and so on and so on…

This seems really strange to me. When intelligence becomes categorized by what we’re using it for… isn’t that competence? Sure it is.

So what we really need to be looking at is what kinds of competence a person has. But then, some of you might ask “what about what the individuals really know. Like facts and processes and such”. Well this is a fair and good question. But maybe just a few years old…

With Google and the always online society, why would we ever need to remember individual facts perfectly? We can just collect them when needed. One of my favorite authors calls this extelligence. Facts, information and knowledge stored in other people.

What we really need, in all situations, is not intelligence. It’s the right kind of competence and extelligence.

Från och med den första december 2009 är Sverige en övervakad nation – det är då som FRA får tillgång till en stor del av vår Internet- och mobiltrafik.

Detta kommer att få ett antal konsekvenser. De mest påtagliga är att flera grundläggande rättigheter i praktiken kommer att sättas ur spel. En självklarhet som brevhemligheten kommer efter den första december 2009 inte att existera på Internet. Även andra grundlagsskyddade rättigheter som källskyddet är starkt hotat. Många organisationer har skarpt protesterat mot FRA-lagen, däribland Journalistförbundet och Advokatsamfundet. En majoritet av det svenska folket är emot FRAs avlyssning.

Flera juridiska experter uttrycker dessutom stor tveksamhet till om FRA-lagen är förenlig med Europakonventionen, dvs. den europeiska konventionen angående skydd för de mänskliga rättigheterna. Sverige har förbundit sig att följa den konventionen och rimligtvis bör lagen alltså prövas i Europeiska domstolen för de mänskliga rättigheterna. Telia ansvarar idag för en majoritet av den trafik som FRA kommer att vilja avlyssna. Därför uppmanar vi Telia: ta FRA-lagen till domstol.

What is the next step for web? Where will we be in 3 to 5 years time? What will the new web look like? Let me share a theory with you.

The semantic web is often talked about as the next big shift online. Information marked in smarter ways so things will be infinitely easier to search for. Will the next step for web be the semantic web? Probably not since there is no real technical platform for this. Nothing that has been widely accepted by developers at least. And in web that is really what matters.

No instead we’re already seeing the next step in web but only through the corner of our eye.

The next step in web will be the Aggregated web. Yes, that simple. While we are seeing more and more sites that aggregate feeds about the site or news about the common topic on the site these are really only precursors for the aggregated web. As mobile devices improve and more and more services offer APIs we’ll see a shift from surfing the web to using services and information in real-time in the real world. A huge leap in integration between the real world and the web. In fact, we’re already seeing this trend with the iPhone and stream of Android phones on the market.

Information is simple to find through search today. As more and more services offer open APIs to support different interfaces and devices we’ll see a trend for information to become less tied to design also. Eventually most services and information on the web will be data streams with replaceable layers of interfaces.

So finding information about a topic on your cellphone, tv or laptop will be equally simple and fast. But the visual display of that information will probably differ, both in complexity and according to the users taste.

This will eventually spawn the trend for interesting interfaces aggregating the information you’re looking for, real-time or otherwise, wherever you are. This is why I think the next step for web is the Aggregated web. Services are already popping up in a wide variety of styles and devices, just look at Twitter. When enough interesting services, and enough interesting information, has migrated to this sort of technology the interfaces on the web today will just not matter.

To finish with a situated example; your pen might feed information regarding grammar as you write while your fridge might aggregate special offers from stores near you. Sound like a poor 1950’s vision of the future? Wait, I just got an offer from my local store via Twitter on my iPhone. All these devices really need is upgrade to Android and these examples can be used today.

Welcome to the aggregated web, you heard it here first.