Problems are the interesting bits. Where the plans collide with reality. Solving problems is what we do. Solving problems is the only fun part about our jobs! Issues don’t solve themselves because we reframe them. But they might if we talk about them.

Fuck all the people who tell you there are no problems.

If the connotations of the word makes them wet their bed, they have bigger problems than language in the workplace.

I’m not saying that the connotations of words have no power. Words have great power and choosing the right ones is very important. But if your organisation is stumped by the connotations of one word accurately describing reality, than there is a severe lack of direction.

If you trade a swearword for "sugar", you’ve only moved the angry connotation about. You haven’t stopped swearing. You’ll find yourself sounding crazy instead of mad.

We need to stop recoiling from the realities of the world, and of our work. Words have power. But so do actions. Deal with it. Learn to work with problems.

Create something.

My latest project is Event Monitor. A dashboard for events and happenings showing beautiful statistics all rendered in SVG (so it works great on any platform).

Please check it out and let me know what you think!

Creating value is tossed around these days as the way for startups and freelancers to contribute to the marketplace. So why is no one talking about what that really means, or how to do it? The short answer is because they don’t know. The long answer is that the ones that do know think it’s so obvious they don’t the need to explain it.

What is value, and how do we get it

I’ll just touch upon the economics of Value first, but don’t worry, it’ll be short and painless:
All value is derived from trade. That’s what value IS.

The idea works like this; if I have a ton of gold, but no one wants it, it is worth nothing. Literally nothing. Because I can’t get anything for it. If someone would give me a loaf of bread for it, it’d be worth a loaf of bread.

Thank god we have money (an abstract form of value, think of it as shares in the work you’ve done) so we don’t need to slog around with all that stuff all the time.

The interesting thing about this idea is that it implies that everyone gets richer all the time. You wouldn’t trade for something you didn’t want would you? We all trade what we think is worthy, which makes us better off. So in every trade there are two winners. Not one. Everyone is better off. If they aren’t, the trade has been forced or is certainly the last trade between them.

How do startups and freelancers get value? They trade with their customers (and everyone you trade with is a customer). If the customers are better off after the trade they are likely to keep being customers.

Seems abstract? Let’s get all practical with examples.

How to Create Value

The question of how to create value is now a lot easier to answer; we need to create stuff to trade. By stuff I mean anything that people are willing to trade for. It can be a product, or a service, but whatever we create we must have a clear definition of what it is before we trade. Otherwise customers might get impossible expectations or simple refuse the trade.

But the main point here is create. We must be constantly creating to add value, and to show our customers what we can create.

Defining a product

A product is anything that can stand alone is a product. A book, a play, and a website are all products.

Defining a service

A service is anything that can not stand alone, anything that only exists while you do it. Cleaning, making a website, and acting in a play are all services. Seem of them create products, others just create value either by saving the customer time or lending them expertise.

The good sale and the bad sale.

Good salesmen focus on adding value to their customers, which is why they often have good relationships with their customers.

Poor salesmen are just trying to sell whatever is the flavor of the week, which is why poor salesmen often have high spikes in sales but rarely recurring customers.

Summary

The only way to create value is to trade something. Making your product or your service easier to understand by defining, simply, what the customer gets is a great way to increase your trade.

Creating stuff is the only to add value. So never stop creating.

Every single piece I’ve read, seem to either misunderstand, or not care about what makes Graph Search different. So here I go, trying to explain what Graph Search really is.

What it isn’t

The first thing Graph Search is not, is finished. The beta available to people know is basically a really smart search for content you can already find on Facebook. Not very different from the old search, though it looks a lot nicer and is easier to use. No need to update your settings or anything. People might find older pictures of you more easily, but it’s already very easy.

In the future though, Graph Search will expand to with more information. Every Like outside from sites other than Facebook as well as the pictures and comments from Instagram. This is the real treasure of Graph Search, and we’ve yet to see it.

The second, perhaps more important thing, that Graph Search is not, is web search. This has confused a lot of people. Possibly because of the name, Graph Search. Sounds a lot like Google Search. So what is the difference?

Let’s say I make a search for “cats that look like hitler“, as one does. On Google, which is a keyword search designed to give you an answer, I’ll get tons and tons of hits. Cat’s with moustaches everywhere. But on Facebook Graph Search, I’ll find nothing. Nothing.

In fact, Graph Search will realize that this is not a search it was designed for and bring up Bing instead. Which returns whatever Microsoft thinks is right. Which has nothing to do with Graph Search. So why did Graph Search disregard my question about Cats?

Ballmer doesn’t know the cake is a lie…

What it is

Facebook Graph Search is designed to return related things. Think of it like a Thesaurus to Google Dictionary. You can search for what your friends have done, thought, took pictures of etc. But it has to be in relation to something else to matter:

Friends near Berlin with cats that look like hitler

Might actually return a few pictures. Facebook is building a search for really massive amounts of data. So massive, that we only remember them as sort of related stuff: ”Remember that place we where at about a year ago? With the monkey? What song was playing?”

Facebook will return an answer to that while Google is still figuring out whether you meant an Orangutan or a Gorilla. So why are so many people confused?

What’s missing?

When you do a Graph Search today most of the information it can bring up is photos and if people are friends or have worked together. In a word, it’s limited. Which has made a lot of reporters and bloggers believe that it is just another keyword search.

The reason it’s so limited is that Facebook is still adding the Open Graph and Instagram to its search. Instagram you know, is a photo sharing service, no different from Facebook photos except that most photos have location data. Open Graph is more exciting, Open Graph is all those Like buttons you’ve clicked on sites other than Facebook. When the information is in, you’ll probably be able to make searches like:

Article I got from Sara that I liked

And actually get the answer you’re looking for. This is very different from what Google is doing. In fact, it’s very different from anything else on the market.

When is it coming and Who’s this for?

I have no idea when these features will be added in. It seems like Facebook is a long way out before Graph Search finally done. Maybe it will never be done, like Google products, it might stay in beta for years while Facebook engineers keep tuning it. It doesn’t really matter though, as Facebook evolves, so will Graph Search.

An interesting point to make is that this beta really is for everyone. It’s not a technical beta. It’s more of a social one. If Facebook had released all this information through search the tech journalists would have all went crazy for privacy. Even in its limited form today, most articles I’ve seen are about how scary Facebook search is. No mention of the fact that nothing has changed, it’s just the pictures you’re already sharing showing up.

I believe this beta is here to make people comfortable with the idea of having a powerful search tool on Facebook before they open the floodgates of the Open Graph. Because that is where the new information is. Information that people might have forgotten about or buried in a slew of updates over the years.

Friends that liked articles about George W Bush winning the election? …oops…

What Facebook Graph Search really is, is the Siri for information on Facebook. It won’t compete with Google directly. But it will serve you information about people that you can’t find anywhere else. If anyone is still confused, think about is like this:
Graph Search is a Thesaurus, Google is a Dictionary.

In-app purchases are really nothing new. It’s just the name for how to buy extras in apps. We’ve been buying extras for decades already: “cheaper rims with the car”, “buy two jumbo sized bags of spam for the price of one!” and the list goes on.

What is different this time around is that these extras are virtual. You’re more or less buying the use of a few more lines of code. This makes the value proposition for the customer very different from the real world extras we’re used to. Which makes relevance and access more important than they would be for fuzzy dice.

Relevance

Relevance is the most important aspect for an in-app purchase. If the extra on sale isn’t relevant, why would you care? But if the fuzzy dice at the car dealership are exactly what your wardrobe needs, perfect!

Take Punch Quest for example. Punch quest is one of the most popular games to hit the AppStore in late 2012. But despite having millions of downloads and tons of active players, Punch Quest didn’t make much money. It’s was a free app, and great game, but the in-app purchases lacked relevance.

The extras you could buy for Punch Quest were… Odd. They either didn’t have impact on gameplay, being visual gimmicks, or they did but had strange, nondescript, names. I even bought some to support the developer, and I still have no idea how what I bought impacts the game. Without relevance, your in-app purchase is doomed to fail.

Compare that to Analytiks, my favorite iOS web statistics app. While popular, it’s nowhere near as popular as Punch Quest. Yet it’s much more successful. The in-app purchases in Analytiks are very relevant. Analytiks shows you a screen for every site in your google analytics account. Just swipe for the next site. But it’s limited to 8 sites. After 8 sites instead you find a screen offering another access to neither 8 sites for a small sum. Brilliant. Instant purchase when needed. If you don’t want to pay extra, you still have full control of which 8 sites are shown.

Access

The other important aspect for in-app purchases is access, which loosely translates to “ease of use”. Ever found a business that seemed to not want to take your money? They had poor access.

Punch Quest has in-app purchases, but they are not a part of the actual game. You can play for hours without having any idea there is anything to buy in the app. Worse, when you navigate through the menu structure it’s still hard to find.

The customer first needs to want upgrades for the game, most of which are quite hard to understand if you haven’t played extensively. Then the customer has to run out of coins collected in the game with which to buy upgrades. Then, finally, they need to find a small call to action hidden in the navigation bar. Not very accessible even for advanced users. Terrible for casual players looking for an advantage in the game.

Analytiks does it right. In the main app, after your sites, you are presented with the upgrade where the content ends. The screen is uncluttered and has only one message and call to action, the cta is clearly labeled with the price. Making it a simple few clicks to make the purchase, there is no lack of information, not ambiguity, about the product that makes the customer want to think it over.

Summary

If people are already using your product or service. Chances are they might be open to extras or upgrades.But by making them relevant to the use case, and making them accessible for the user, they become useful extensions to the app. Which are much more likely to sell.

• Relevant:
• expands the product
• solves specific problems
• not removing artificial limitations in the product

• Access:
• clear and understandable purchase information
• presented well for the use case
• not a “bolted on” design or user flow

Rules always create side effects

All rules are limitations on an individuals actions (a rule says you can’t design text a certain way). But since people are surprisingly intelligent, they always find ways around rules (the rule creates a counter culture and suddenly hipster typographical posters abound!). We smile at this behaviour in kids, always looking for ways to get around bedtimes, but we fail to see that every human does this. It’s so ingrained in the human condition it even has a name in both game design and economics: emergent behaviour.

Emergent behaviour means the behaviour that arrives as an unforeseen consequence to a situation. Cheating at games is an emergent behaviour. Rebellion is an extreme emergent behaviour.

Rules always – without exception – create these unforeseen behaviours because rules are *fractal*. Meaning that rules can never cover every single situation or twist in the language. There will always be new situations the rule should apply to.

- Did you brush your teeth?
- Yes.
- Did you brush them with the toothbrush?
- Yes.
- Did you put toothpaste on the toothbrush?
- Yes.
- Before you brushed your teeth?
- No…

When I create rules I try to take emergent behaviour into account, where and how is it likely to happen?, How will the rule affect situations that are slightly different from the normal situation?
How often does your management or project manager take emergent behaviour into account when creating rules? If the answer is never, the rules are probably not working.

You MUST “love each other”… A truly ominous rule.

The softest touch works, while hard rules fail

Surprisingly, the rules that do work aren’t the simple and direct ones. In fact the simpler and more direct the rule is, the more emergent behaviour it creates.

Let me explain how by giving an example. If you set a rule for yourself that you must turn left at every intersection you’ll soon find yourself in conflict with the rule. You might quite quickly arrive at the workaround that the rule doesn’t say how many times to turn left, and from then on you’ll be turning left several times to turn right. I bet you’re thinking of other rules you’re breaking in this way?

But if the rule says you can only turn left at intersections it is much more open to interpretation, and oddly individuals are more inclined to follow it. Maybe I’ll turn right somewhere that’s not an intersection? Or maybe taking a route around the block will be interesting? The more open version of the rule makes the rule more interesting and less annoying.

What’s happening is that activating individuals minds, asking people to judge for themselves, is making them more inclined to work with the system instead of around it. Asking individuals to just follow a rule is more likely to make them bored, frustrated,  and opposed to the rule. No matter how normal and simple the rule might seem.

This is why companies like to talk about corporate culture. A culture is simple a set of rules that are not defined, instead the individuals in a culture make it up or pass it along as they go. Culture is a very soft set of social rules, and a great way to lead a group of people in the same direction. It is also very hard to create, because it is soft and made up by the individuals in the culture. And as soon as someone puts pen to paper, the culture is dead. The air of cooperation will be replaced by bored people following the rules.

(Creating cultures is also a part of designing games, and deconstructing culture is essential to economics, so I’ll probably revisit culture in a later post.)

Rules limit what people think

The absolutely worst part of a rule is when it’s followed. Beware of people following hard rules, it never amounts to any good.

If a hard rule is enforced, or socially frowned upon to break, it swiftly becomes a dogma. A rule that is set so hard in individuals minds that they can not break it. Not only are they unable to break the rule, they might even be unable to think about breaking the rule.

We see this happening at all times, all around us. Ever wonder why senior citizens are more often against change? It’s because they have lived with an unquestioned rule for so long, it has become impossible for them to see a world without the rule. The same thing happen with middle managers, unable to alter a rule themselves, and unable to see the effects of them, they stay with rules long after the intended purpose has become irrelevant.

The really worrying part comes from cognitive psychology. Studies seem to indicate that living with the same thoughts for to long actually create rigid structures in your physical brain. Yes, I’m serious. The brain is a huge network of neurons, always making new connections. But living with the same connections, thoughts, for long enough might physically inhibit new connections being made. That’s right, hard rules might actually be shutting down small parts of our brains!

No wonder change comes so slowly right?
(For more on the subject, google “Neuro plasticity”)

Most rules are indistinguishable from threats.

Creating rules that work

From my years in games and economics I’ve learned a lot of ways not to make rules. But at times we need them, no matter how hard they may be to create. If we’re aware of the pitfalls and careful, we can create rules that work.

Here’s a list of rules that I follow when creating rules (rule-ception?):

• Communicate the outcome of your rule, not the limitations (the rule itself).
• Think up situations that might warp the rules, and take it to extremes.
• Think about how the rule will affect things when it’s purpose is no longer relevant.
• Remember that rules are used by at least to types of people: individuals, and groups.
• Never punish rule breaking. If you must punish, punish for outcomes.
• Try to be vague. Trust people to interpret rules intelligently.

There is a difference between products that perform poorly and products that perform well that is hard to put your finger on. Designers have been struggling to tell you about it for years. But it turns out it’s not the answer that is the problem, it’s the question.
The question is: Is it enjoyable? It’s the difference between functional and great.

For a long time now the tech industry has been struggling with paradigms. Is your product technology driven or design driven? Are your most important people engineers or designers? The pendulum swings every five years or so.

Google is a company driven by engineers, they solve problems. Apple is a company driven by designers, they make experiences. Which company makes the better product? Android or iPhone? For years, journalists and salesmen have been asking the wrong questions, and coming to all the wrong conclusions.

Customers buy products for their features. But they keep them for the experience.

No one doubts that features are important. Every retail box is crammed with specs and every review seems to compare products on feature lists. But features are not what makes customers buy. When you buy a kitchen knife, you probably just grab a cheap one to get the job done, right? But the next time you buy one, you’ll be more likely to invest in quality because it feels better to use, the old one became dull quickly or chipped. Your enjoyment of the product starts to make an impact in your purchase.

What is that enjoyment worth? If your first knife cost $5, would you buy a better one for $50?

Android phones were crappy when Android was first released. Mostly because Android was crap. Google spent millions making sure Android had every feature that the iPhone had. Every function was matched. Every look that could be copied was copied. Samsung even went so far as to make extremely similar phones and UI-skins. But oddly, the consumers were not using Android phones like they did iPhones. App sales were low, internet usage was non-existant.

Only then did the engineers at Google realize that the secret sauce in the iPhone wasn’t so much features, but the experience. Still they couldn’t put their finger on what they lacked. They had to hire a new manager, a designer, to tell them what to do. Now Android is becoming enjoyable to use, app sales are skyrocketing and internet usage is on the rise. People are using their Android phones for the first times.

Enjoyment is hard to bottle. It can’t be checked off on a scrum board or a todo list. It’s the sum of all the parts. And even worse, it costs money. You can’t just finish a feature, you have to iterate on all the parts until they fit together. (To read more about enjoyment or fun, visit my blog on Gamification: Adding the Fun.)

The sooner we start asking the right question the better. What if startups focused on making their features enjoyable instead of just functional? It’d cost more, but their churn would be less and they would get more interest.

Right now the market is focusing on design. Designers are in high regard and design is the measuring stick of the tech industry. But because most companies and organisations still don’t understand this crucial piece of secret sauce, designers will become another checklist on the project management chart. Is it designed? Yes. Tick the box.

If the question had been: is it enjoyable? The answer would have been different. The product would end up different and the market reaction would as well. Next time you read a review, don’t look at the feature list or the score. Find the sentence where the author says if he/she liked it or not.

It’s time to make sure we start asking the right questions and stop looking at features or design as checkboxes.

This list of questions can help you start:

1. Does the feature work?
2. Does it work every time and in every circumstance?
3. Is it enjoyable?
4. Is it enjoyable even when you’re in a hurry?

If the answer to any of the questions is no, you need to start over.

Like Steve Jobs so eloquently put it “Design is how it works“. Sadly, he didn’t stick around to explain how anyone could check for that emotion.

Ask the question: Is it enjoyable?

Oddly enough, Chrome became the first really native iOS app by google. Odd because Apple is severely restricting apps that compete with iOS native functionality, and the browser could be said to be more important for iOS than the actual phone app…

Chrome launched with a slew of welcome mobile optimizations for a browser that apple has since copied to their own app, safari. Syncing not only accounts, but history, tabs and even sessions didn’t exist on iOS before chrome. But for all it’s glory, such as less browser chrome and actually useful tabs, Chrome also has a number of weaknesses.

Tab refresh

When I switch between tabs in chrome, something goes terribly wrong. For all the fast loading and fast tab switching goes straight out the window as I am forced to wait for a page refresh. This might sound like it makes sense as first, most pages need to be refreshed before I can see any new content after all? But I often switch between apps, while reading, looking something up or for any other reason. The several clicks and wait that safari makes me do to access my other tab is bad enough. Forcing me to wait for a full refresh, and especially on a mobile network, just breaks the experience. Why would I keep waiting? F this. I’ll be on Facebook.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels the same way, but I haven’t gotten any word from google on whether they are working on this or not.

The dark UI

Google has always had a light, cheerful, design aesthetic. It might not fit everyone but its google. With recent android generations they’ve stepped back from this to offer a darkes, softer, design. Chrome fits perfectly into this. Except of course, that its on iOS where nothing is dark.

Not only does the app look like android rather than google, but it doesn’t fit into its environment at all. It’s I’d just a plain bad design decision. With the reasons why painfully obvious.

Summery

Just a few days ago Google released new, native, apps for gmail and YouTube on iOS. Both of these apps show a lot of promise, especially for design. So I’m hopeful that google will get around to fixing these issues with chrome soon.

Though I still wonder why google feels its services are worth more to customers on android? Int google all about the services? Why deny iOS users google now? I’m a google ecosystem user since 2007, nothing so far has made me change my mind. I’m also an apple device user since years back. Apple allows me to use google services, why won’t google?

The mouse

As a tech savvy person it’s easy to forget all the knowledge we take for granted for using our devices. I uncovered one this I had been taking for granted, short commands. A someone who spends most of his waking time in front of a computer I started memorizing short commands and gestures many years ago. But most people don’t. For most people, short commands just don’t feel all that necessary. Using the mouse to point and click the bold button is simple enough. To me, it’s a huge waste of time.

The touch device

On touch devices however, this problem isn’t there. Either you touch the bold icon, or you don’t. The only short commands that are available are gestures which, while not always intuitive, always tend to work the same way. There are only about three gestures to learn on iOS for example. This is annoying to me, because my normal power-user habits need to change. But for the market at large, it’s the same interaction but finally without a mouse to get in the way.

Intuitive

The touch panel is intuitive because what you see is what you get. But what we, the power users, tend to forget that it’s more intuitive than we believe. Because all the hidden extras that we use on older devices just aren’t there.

Touch devices are leveling the playing field. And that’s why we feel we still need our old devices to get real work done.

Sime is a special sort of conference because it is focused on marketing entrepreneurship and creating a forum for entrepreneurs and investors. While similar conferences might slog through technical details while zombie hordes of coffee ingesting listeners try to stay awake, SIME is more about showmanship. Almost every session is 20 minutes or less, even for the big players, and our host, Ola Ahlvarsson, is always on stage pushing things along.

The first day was a back to back parade of speakers from the tech business, talking about where we are and where we’re going as a business. The message was unanimous:
> The customer is already mobile. Where is your business?
- Facebook, Microsoft, Google, etc

It’s an important lesson that really can’t be repeated enough. I Sweden, around 40 percent of all Internet connections are through a mobile network. Some are computers but most are other sorts of devices. Around the world there is s landslide increase in mobile use, smartphones are almost half the world market of phones, there are over 100 million tablets sold, and everyone is expecting information to be ubiquitous. But companies are holding out.

Companies everywhere are waiting for others to lead, they hope to see hard numbers on why they should move to mobile before they take the plunge. There are of course a lot of really bad agencies out there, simply not able to deliver responsive web, but for the most part statistics are holding us back.

While the large players show us statistics on mobile usage. Companies have become affected by tracking blindness and can’t act before the users are mobile on their sites. The problem of course, is a classic chicken and egg problem. If the site doesn’t work on mobile, customers will just use other sites, and since the companies can’t see mobile usage increasing they won’t rebuild their sites.

SIME is all focused on pushing the message of where tech is to everyone, making sure that the users, developers and companies are all looking in the same direction. And I hope that this years focus on mobile hit the spot. Because I really don’t want to be tied to my laptop.

While tracking makes our decisions gradually better, tracking does not make any new connections. Do you think RedBull is tracking any direct ROI on sponsoring Felix Baumgartner’s record breaking sky dive from the edge of space? No. But I think few people would argue that they didn’t get more than their share of media coverage. Very few marketing schemes get that kind of eye-ball-action, but the important thing is that tracking would never lead you to invest in such a venture.

Neither would tracking lead you to think that a generous return policy could generate profits. Yet every single report tell us that it does.

In the 50′s a young designer made a nondescript electronics company a house hold name by creating memorable and user friendly designs for their products. The company was Braun, and the designer was Dieter Rams. Rams, who’ve since been credited as an inspiration for designers behind cars and even Apple, didn’t do it by tracking.

There is nothing wrong with tracking. In fact, without tracking it’s extremely hard to reach a goal, once it’s set. But tracking is quite probably holding you back. If tracking is the basis for your strategy, you’re probably not seeing the full market. That light at the end of the tunnel might turn out to be a train.

Strategy is taking the broad view of a business and aiming your organization. Tactics are how we get there. Tactics make great use of tracking and statistics. Strategy does not. Depending on strategy will keep you constantly running to catch up with the world, because the numbers can only really show you what used to happen. And only in a very specific situation at that. It’s harder to argue without numbers. Which is why most people eventually stop trying. Next time you are in a meeting and someone offers a contrary view of a situation you might want to think about it a few minutes. Don’t throw out your innovation because of the result of a skewed question asked by bored data miners.

“Hey could you email me that picture you just took?”

While sharing online has taken the web by storm and has since become old news. Sharing digital information locally has always been a hassle away from out computers and high speed internet connections. Not any more.

Say hello to Chirp

Chirp is the little mobile app that let’s you share anything that has an URL or can be uploaded and given an url locally. All you need is the app. It’s free. It’s tiny, takes seconds to download and starts instantly and you’re set. No, you don’t need an account (though you can get one) no you don’t need to connect it with facebook. You just start it. And now you’re receiving anything being shared.

How does it share? This is the other brilliant part of this app. It sends the URL (everything is shared through their servers so an internet connection is needed, albeit not a fast one) through a short sound clip.

That’s right, you hear a short blip-blop message as if R2-D2 really needs to pee, and there’s the photo on your screen. It’s cute. But i’s also really smart. Since it shares through sound you can share messages with someone over the phone. I myself got a picture from the host of a Podcast I listen to. He just told me to open Chirp and I got to see what he was talking about.

Business model suggestion

Since I hate to see great services like this go away, usually because it’s hard to figure out a business model. I thought I’d share a suggestion. Chirp, you listening? Great. Here’s one way to monetize.

Providing the app for without an account is absolutely crucial to grow. If users need to jump through any hurdles at all Chirp will become another Bump. But without the first-mover-on-new-platform-hype. Keep it simple to share.

Instead charge for feature where a cost is tangible for the user: Access and Storage.

Access

Later access to the files. Keep the latest 3-5 shared things be available. Let the users purchase access to the rest. One advantage to this is that it’s obvious to users. There’s an understandable cost benefit. It’s also just on the front end which makes it easy to implement (until you’ve got an open API).

Storage

In short: Huge. Ass. Files. Trying to share a 500MB HD movie clip? “Sorry this file is so large you need to pay 99 cents to cover the bandwidth costs”. No problem.

Summing up

Chirp is awesome. Go get it.

And please Chirp, add support for all platforms. Open up an API and let developers go crazy with the free service. I’d love to Chirp stuff to my Mac or my friends PC / Android.

Ye Old Way

I’m starting to think all PR education begins with the creed “keep the customer as far away from the company as possible” since most companies I contact have elaborate systems in place to “streamline” the communication out of existence.

Enter a new marketplace: The social web. Suddenly recommendations are worth double their weight in gold, but companies are still struggling keeping up. They start Facebook pages with no idea of what to do there. They start Twitter accounts that only tells tweeps to call customer service.

The new way

But then there are the other companies. Companies that have embraced the tribal culture online and depend upon customer interaction for their business. They are no less motivated by profit than the other sort of company, but their strategy makes them a very different sort of animal.

Yesterday I downloaded an app to my iPhone. The app was supposed to show me my Google Analytics numbers quickly and beautifully. I was thrilled I finally found an app that looked like I might use it. But it didn’t work. I couldn’t log in.

I immediately browsed over to the company’s site and looked for any information of the problem. When I couldn’t find any I emailed them a question, expecting to never hear from them again.

Within ten minutes I had a response.

Someone from the company read my message and sent me a quick response. Short, to the point. Solving my problem. Apparently the guys and gals at Google had changed the API and while the app had been updated the new version wasn’t in the AppStore just yet.

They even offered to buy me coffee while I waited:

Sorry about that. It sucks. We can buy you a coffee while waiting for the new version ( we’ll PayPal you the money for Starbucks if you want).

Since it was late at night in Sweden I declined. But I was also a surprised and happy customer, not only had they solved my problem (or at least, explained what the problem was and had fixed it), but they had given me relevant information, a schedule, and a coffee!

When was the last time a bank or a telephone company did that?

The result

Because of this short communication, not only am I inclined to tell people about my experience. I’m also more inclined to recommend the product. The cost of this interaction for the company is negligible but the worth of a happy customer advocating the product is huge.

The take away

Invest in communication. Realize that all interactions with the customers are chances to turn them from faceless consumers to happy ambassadors of your company. Keep them close. Keep them communicating with you. The costs might be high, but compared to losing those customers to the competitor this should be a no-brainer. If you’re in a huge corporation, try finding customers who became ambassadors and use them as arguments that the model does work.

And also, download Analytiks right now. It’s awesome. And Blatt Labs does a great job.

Telecom companies still don’t sell most computers on the market. But they do sell the internet connections, the smartphones that are increasingly like computers, the minutes and text messages we plow through every day to communicate.

I used to work for one of the largest telecom companies in Sweden. I started my carrier there with the hope I would help them transition from the “minutes/texts” model to the content distribution model. Because eventually, all the services a telecom company offers today will be software only. Based on open internet technology. How do I know? Because it already happened. Delivering content could’ve been a profit model that outlasted the current model by decades. Then the iPhone launched.

At the telecom company I worked for there was no uproar. In fact, I remember walking around in stunned surprise because of the lack of reaction. They didn’t get it. Or got it but didn’t let it show. Needless to say, the iPhone took the content market out of our hands. The App Store was now the de facto content distribution system. Then Apple launched iMessages.

I came in at work wild eyed and excited. Apple’s iMessages work by sending text messages through their notification system. Telecom operators usually charge per text message iMessages are not distinguishable from other notifications making them impossible to count and impossible to stop. Even if the telecom operators would like to stop iMessages they can’t. Not without breaking the notifications on the iPhone, making millions of customers complain and even worse; the CEO’s mail would stop working on the golf course. Now I knew there was only one way out, telecom operators would have to step back, and start charging for network bandwidth. A lot like the internet connections pre-broadband. But that isn’t happening.

Telecom operators take in most of their profits from text messages. The rest from voice and contracts etc. They generally take in very little profit from charging for data. On the other hand most of a telecom operators costs, except building the network, come from counting and billing for minutes and texts. It’s a hard and advanced process. Billing for data traffic is very easy. The future is clear, telecom operators will sell data plans and earn their profits form that. So why are telecom operators all over the world still bundling minutes and trying to block Skype?

I looked for answers at my company. I talked to everyone around me, no one cared very much. After weeks of this I started to realize that the middle managers didn’t care but the executives understood. But were stalling. For what? The same reason the music industry doesn’t embrace digital distribution.; the income model will change so drastically that the market will become instantly competitive and changing again. This is frightening.

Every manager and executive in the telecom industry today have basically made it their policy to stall for change. Until the market has evolved so far that they can not hold it back any longer telecom operators will continue to wish for the music industries dream: Not in my lifetime.

This is what they hope for. That the change will come after they quit. That the drop in profits during a turbulent shift will not be on their resume. That the scandal of firing hundreds of employees to pivot a large company does not land their name in the press.

This is why telecom operators are holding back progress, and trying to stifle products that run through their network. This, almost insane, way of doing business is helped by the fact that telecom operators are large enough to nudge law makers in their direction.

The next time you wonder why the network isn’t faster, why video calls are still no where to be seen and why your iPhone doesn’t do something amazing. Know that this is why. There are no technological hurdles to overcome. There is no law making it harder than it needs to be.

There is just a bunch of scared old men who have become scared of the inevitable. Who fear change.

Go to market problem

When asked what he thought about set top boxes a few years ago Steve Jobs famously replied that there was no good go to market strategy.

The TV market is very different from Apple’s usual markets in that consumers tend to buy new TVs close to 10 years apart. While Apple prefers to update their products every year.

“What is remarkable is how Apple can use iOS devices as wireless set top boxes for the Apple iTV.”

The Apple iTV though, won’t need to be updated every year. I believe Apple will release basically a huge monitor with some inputs and a decoding chip. The chip will easily be able to push 1080p or maybe even higher quality video in crisp quality. But in itself that is not remarkable. What is remarkable is how Apple can use iOS devices as wireless set top boxes for the Apple iTV.

User interface

Apple has always been famous for their interfaces. From the mouse to the click-wheel to the touch screen, Apple has always tried to create intuitive and immersive user interfaces. For the Apple iTV they have just released a UI that seems perfect for a TV set. Siri.

Using natural language to control your TV could be spectacular. Of course they’ll probably throw in an Apple remote just to make everyone comfortable. But I will bet we will all be telling our TVs to turn on and off in the near future. And all iOS devices would also control the iTV, of course.

Content

Think of all your content from your Mac, your iOS device and your iTunes account seamlessly streamed through iCloud. The Apple iTV hardly even needs any local storage.

Some exclusive deals with production companies are sure to come. But if we look in the Apple media library they already have a really good offering. What they lack is real time programming. Most real time broadcasting is already available for iOS devices however. Which brings us to apps.

Apps

The Apple iTV doesn’t need apps. Don’t get me wrong, I want apps. But here’s the magic sauce in my prediction. Apple won’t make the iTV a stand alone device. The market doesn’t update their TVs often enough for that. Instead the iTV will be an insanely great screen on which to project your content. From iOS devices. From iCloud. From Mac. Where you find AirPlay, you’ll be able to push content to your iTV.

Four devices could render 4*1080p…

Want to play a game? Use your iPad or iPhone for controls and they’ll sync the games graphics onto your iTV screen.

Want to see a movie? Start it on any device and just click AirPlay to show it on your iTV.

Want to listen to music? You get the point.

This might sound underwhelming. Apple’s announcements often seem so at first glance. But then you realize what a profound change in the way you use technology it offers. Think about having a monitor at home that can play all your digital content. No matter what it is. Playing a game on your Mac? Watching a movie on your iPad? How about doing both side by side. Since the devices steam it to the iTV, it can handle anything you throw at it. Why not let your kids play games while you watch the news? Someone walks in with some photos to show? Put them up there with everything else.

“The best thing about it is that it doesn’t need updates.”

The best thing about it is that it doesn’t need updates. Siri will get smarter through iCloud. More and more content will be available through iTunes. And every time you buy a new phone or tablet the iTV get’s a major bump in features and power.

All wireless. All simple. A perfect Apple strategy. Or is it?

Clear for iPhone from Realmac Software on Vimeo.

Intuitive interface

Clear has no interface. It just uses swipes pinches and touches in a list the same as you would on an image. While there is no such thing as intuitive, this is as close as I’ve ever seen.

But the best part about clear is it’s use of color and sounds.

Use of color for information

Colors are used in the lists to show priority. The more saturated the color, the more important the task. Now the tasks are already in a list, so one could argue that adding colors to it is redundant. But this is not true. Any human scanning a list will see each item as equally important. Most of us tend to try and put the most important thing at the top of the list but every time we look at the list we still browse more than one item.

Making the list colored gives a subtle hint that you don’t need to look at other tasks. This is the one.

It also gives the user a reason to order the list properly. While the app never tell the user they have to, just creating a rule that says the top is higher priority will make users want to use the rule. Think of it like a hidden keyboard shortcut. Once you learn it, if it’s a valuable shortcut, you stick with it.

Sounds that make it fun

Audio feedback has been used to great effect in games for decades. Which is why I’ve always found it odd that it’s had such little attention in software tool design. Until now.

Clear has a sound effect for every function.

New item? Pop.

Finished item? Ping!

Delete item? Swoosh

But I really mean sound effect. These aren’t just midi notes annoyingly stacked to make an awful racket.  These are effects that sound great by themselves and stack neatly. What do I mean by stack? If you complete several tasks in a row, you don’t just get an annoying amount of pings. You’d hate that. Instead you get a rising scale of pings that together seem to form a rising crescendo. Which incidentally is exactly like the normal sound design to gaining point in video games (remember picking up coins in Mario?)

UPDATE:
The awesome sound design was done by Josh Mobley.

Getting out of the way

The reason the design of Clear is so impressive is that, while the UI reinforces the users positive emotions of using a todo list, it get’s out of the way to let the users focus on thinking about tasks.

There’s simply nothing else to think about. And you won’t get those soothing sounds of completion if you don’t complete some tasks.

Summary, or: is it awesome?

Clear is the best interface for getting things done I’ve seen so far. On any platform. It’s also responsive like few apps on iOS.

It does gamification right by letting the user learn it’s features intuitively and reinforcing the actual use of the product instead of showering them in useless badges.

Sadly however, it also really doesn’t have a use. At least not for a todo-list power user such as myself. Enter a 100 tasks into Clear and you’ll be looking at an infinite list with no overview. There’s no search, there are no smart lists. But these features would not improve the product. In fact, I think including more features could destroy the product.

If you use lists often but don’t have 1000 tasks in them. This app will make you smile on your way.

If you use really long lists, this app will be nice to play with but not useable.

Should you buy it? YES. If only to support good design.

As usual, the Verge has the best video first look:

I’ve always been constantly surprised more interaction and UX designers don’t think in these terms.

The revolution started with the iPhone.

With the launch of their breakthrough device they didn’t intend for developers to be making Apps. Apple instead believed that developers would make web apps using HTML5 and save the web app as an icon of their phone. Surprisingly open by Apple’s standards the strategy soon changed to native apps because web apps simply didn’t feel quick enough.

Web technology is getting better

However, as HTML5 becomes a standard on PCs everywhere web apps are approaching the same sophistication as native applications. The hardest step now is for developers to take the plunge and create these great new interfaces and not get stuck in the old way of thinking and just pushing out another blog.

One of my favorite designers, Dustin Curtis, is leading the way with this new UI element on his site; the Kudos button.

It looks great. It’s fun to use and it’s a really simple way to add some life to a site. It doesn’t work on touch interfaces for obvious reasons. Sadly Dustin hasn’t made the code available yet, but most programmers could probably copy the concept. It’s that easy. We just have to make sure we starting thinking less about static web and more about user interaction.

Another example from a 2011 app is the amazing full screen representation in Wren.

White space apps

When I first saw Wren I was amazed. It was focused and minimalist. Therefore I was shocked to see the full-screen button in the top right corner of the app, “Wouldn’t that completely wreck the experience” was my knee-jerk reaction. Then I tried it and another trend was obvious, apps that scale without bloating their feature sets, or White space apps.

Why are White space apps different? Mobile.

The mobile revolution has some interaction and UI designers scratching their heads or pulling their hair trying to fit all the usual information. The current computing paradigm has relied on massive amounts of text and information tags for a long long time. Even programs that have really tried to rid themselves of rarely used functions or unnecessary amounts of help information have sometimes been stuck in contextual help hell due to the modus operandi of desktop interface design.

No more. Mobile has rid us of all these things. And some designers are provocative enough to realize that less really is more and simply scale their apps without adding more information or complexity.

Is this good or bad?

Only time will tell. But the dominance of mobile design today tells us a lot about what people like. I think it is less about the iPhone being a must-have product and a lot more about really smart and beautiful apps that are just complex piles of engineering on other platforms.

Simple is better. And using white space to focus the users attention on a sparingly chosen set of functions beautifully designed makes this clear. I believe these minimal products will in the future continue to trump the feature behemoths of yesteryear.

Due for iPad

But time and time again I see these same big brands translating the phrase… Somewhere, some person at these companies missed a fundamental part of branding: don’t change names all the time!

It doesn’t matter if these phrases are verbs such as in the “Like” button. It’s a part of your brand. If you translate your brand, you’re starting a new brand.

(image via Techcrunch) 

An example trend from previous years is the scroll down to refresh design. Created by Loren Brichter for his famous Tweetie iphone app it has since become the standard for refreshing feeds and lists in apps everywhere.

Example from mobile webKit build

Related function Panels

You’ve seen them already. Open your Facebook app and look at the button in the top left corner. Tapping the button or swiping the interface from left to right opens the menu:

This background panel is always there. Neatly integrated in iOS navigation panel.

The iOS navigation panel? At the top of all iOS apps with many views is a bar that usually has two buttons on it. This bar is called the navigation bar in the iOS SDK and intended to be used like this:

• the left side button steps you back in the app. Just like the back button in your browser.
• the right side button steps you forward. Showing the next step or function in the app.

Why is this different from a menu

Is this good or bad

]]> http://jesperbylund.com/2012/01/ux-trend-predictions-of-2012-a/feed/ 7 http://jesperbylund.com/2011/12/how-to-create-quality/ http://jesperbylund.com/2011/12/how-to-create-quality/#comments Tue, 13 Dec 2011 17:22:03 +0000 Jesper Bylund http://jesperbylund.com/?p=397 Quality was what set the good craftsmen apart form the bad ones. It was why some brands became more revered than others. The illusive idea is why Apple sells so well, why some artists are better than others. But what the hell is quality? Does it change from artist to artist? Does it mean something different for cars than for software? No. I don’t think so. I think there’s a common feature for all types of good quality.

Using Cognitive Psychology to reveal quality

In academic circles scholars of cognitive psychology  have been debating and hacking the human perception for a very long time. One of my favorite tidbits of knowledge from my student days is that negatives are worth twice as much as positives. That means if I give you $100 and then take it back, you’ll feel as if you’ve lost more money than you felt you gained in at first. Put another way: if you spend $50 and earn $100 dollars you’ll feel you made about even. Losing something is negative, and is therefore twice as important to you perception.

This gives us valuable clue to Quality. Let’s see how far that can bring us.

If negative values, and negative experiences, create stronger reactions in users we should look at minimizing these as much as possible. If we get close to no negative values we’ll have a  really solid product experience regardless of the products positive values.

For example, if you create an app where every action gives clear feedback it will feel great. Even if the UX design isn’t all that great from the start.

Getting the values right

But wait, let’s back up a bit. What is a negative value? And what is a positive value? We’re talking about products here! What is a negative in a web app?

Happily, another branch of cognitive psychology has dealt with what value is. This is the theory: there is no “real” value. Only subjective, or perceived,  value. That is to say: water to a man dying of thirst has a lot of value, while water to a man at a cocktail bar in NY is worth very little. This sounds really basic right? But if all value is relative to experience that also means that we determine reasonable prices from prices around us. We distinguish beauty not by their own beauty but by how much less beautiful the other people around us are. Dan Ariely has some great examples of this in his book Predictably Irrational.

The good part starts 12 minutes in.

So all value is interpreted relative to similar experiences by each individual. How does that help us? That means every experience is valued compared to other, similar, experiences.

So?

Well if people experience negative values much stronger than positive ones, we need to focus harder on making our apps perform at least as well as other apps the users are using instead of trying to one-up our competitors. This will make out UX more positive than focusing on making the positive experiences better. Most Human Computer Interaction studies are actually based on this. They’re often studies to define how consistency works. And consistency is exactly what I’m talking about here. But not internal consistency, while that to is extremely important, but experience consistance for the user. No matter what that use might look like, spanning over machines, apps, platforms and use cases.

Summing up

A principle of quality, a rule of thumb that works for all products and services, is not making something really well. It’s minimizing the negative impact of shortcomings.

So how do we use this principle?

• Don’t show the user experiences that aren’t finished. Release early release often as much as you want, but don’t release half baked.
• Polish one feature instead of making two features.
• Make sure other apps aren’t making your experience feel broken by creating an experience gap that will feel negative for example the pull-down-to-refresh UI of iPhone apps.
• Look at the platform. Look at the most popular uses. Look at the environment it will be used in. Then try to be consistent.
• Make your marketing consistant with your experience, or you might end up making your product feel worse than it is

The perfect example of not understanding quality is the Nokia N97, enjoy!

Another great example of achieving quality, not by adding features, but by managing your negatives is the iPhone and iPad operating system. Just compare these transition effects from iOS to the Android counter parts:

First Impression

What does this do? Quora is a mess of questions. That’s a good thing. But it’s also a mess of features. There is no real overview to how the service is supposed to be used nor how the features fit together to create a whole. It feel like a mess of somewhat related features that have been randomly added to a wiki.

User feedback loops

All services and products intended to be used more than once work because their is a loop in user interaction. After we’ve done what we came for we’re back at the start and can do it again.

Feedback loops is a way to look at how feedback is introduced in the loop to keep users going forward and using the product. Quora does this really strangely.

There are two ways to understand what happens in a loop, one is to look at emotional impact or internal steps in the process from the point of view of the user. This is called the intrinsic loop. The other is to look at the service’s constructed steps from the point of the user. This is called the extrinsic loop.

Intrinsic

The value in looking at both of these is to see where they meet and reinforce each other. So how does the intrinsic loop look?

answer questions -> gain social proof in form of replies, votes and followers -> answer ranks higher on lists of answers -> return

This loop works well. Interacting with the site gives you a sense of communicating with other users. Though notifications are bad and it’s hard to really understand what is happening, there is a definite sense of activity spawned from other users interacting with your content.

Extrinsic

So how does the extrinsic feedback loop look?

Add information (unidentified) -> earn points -> use points to request answers -> no return

Basically it adds points but not to obvious steps in the loop. In fact, Quora only seems to add points for adding information. But Quora doesn’t tell us why, how much or for what we earn these points.

This is an extrinsic loop set up to give users rewards for interacting that doesn’t reward user for interacting. What went wrong here? Quora is giving out points for interacting with Quora, but not with other users.

The problem is humans don’t think of services as independent entities and don’t expect to interact with services, humans expect to interact through services. Another problem is that these rewards aren’t reinforcing the intrinsic loop but instead starts rewarding an entirely different behavior. And last but not least, there is no clear end or way to start again from when you receive rewards. Rewards are doled out in the middle of the intrinsic feedback loop.

Gamification or What Bumblebees feel about Bicycles

Points. Just add points and it’s a game. Just add points and the weird statistical exercise has miraculously turned into “fun”! Right? No. That’s not how it works, you can read all about how to add the fun here. But Quora doesn’t care about that, you get points for adding content but aren’t told when or how much. There doesn’t seem to be a differentiation between how you add content, you simply receive an arbitrary amount of points.

There’s only one way to use points. You can pay others to answer questions. That’s it. You can’t even compare your points to another users.

Summing up

Quora is awesome. What makes it awesome is the high level of interest from other users. The problem is, Quora does little of anything to enhance this. More often it gets in the way.

The service quickly became famous for supplying answers from high level CEOs and business savvy high performers. Sadly though, it took me hours to find any such answer. It took me hours just to find some interesting questions.

The random points thrown in just increases perception of randomness. Quora is a great idea, close to a good product. Over designed and under thought. It’s confusing as hell and weird to use. But if you’re lucky you can at least get some answers. Just don’t expect the question to be the same one you had in mind from the start…

I recently tweeted a designer at Facebook to ask why the UX of the app is so bad, in turn he asked me to describe what’s wrong so they can fix it. So are you listening Facebook? Great. Here’s what’s wrong with the iOS version:

Starting the app
Takes time. A lot of time. Why? There is no large graphics in use. Why does it start slower than some third party messaging or twitter apps? Short messaging on mobile devices is supposed to be fast. Loading the app for over a full second is bad user experience.

If I’d have to guess what’s wrong I’d say Facebook Messenger is loading the entire message database at startup when all the user really needs is something like the last 5 messages.

Loading and responsiveness
So the app is now loaded. Let’s start messaging! No? Unresponsive?! But why? Why is there a second load time?

This second load becomes even weirder when I start the app from a notification. The app should be loading the message I was notified about but instead it seems to load for several full seconds. Even on WiFi.

If I’d have to guess what’s wrong I’d say you’re syncing ALL the messaging data with the server…

Don’t, do, that. Ever.

Always smart load, download only the essential information to start using the app. Then download the rest in the background while the user is happily messaging away. This is critical on mobile devices.

Feedback
If even Apple, that clearly doesn’t get social at all, get’s the importance of user feedback in short messaging. And the Facebook web interface clearly shows when the other party is writing something to you… Why do you not show this information in the Messenger app? If someone starts typing, send that information. Show an indication of this in the app.

And please, don’t make my phone vibrate with every new messages when the thread is open on the screen.

Notifications 
Notifications on iOS  are a bit strange. They don’t sync between iPhone and iPad and the app can’t receive any data from the notification. So some odd behavior is simply inescapable. However, most of the odd behavior with notifications from Facebook’s Messenger app have nothing to do with that.

The main problem is that notifications aren’t consistent between mobile app and web. As a matter of fact I haven’t even been able to understand what triggers mobile notifications. In my tests some messenges have triggered notifications on both web and mobile while other, identical tests, have triggered only one of them. Once I even received a mobile notification while typing a response in that very thread on the web.

Notifications are hard. Really hard. But a few simple basics should at least get you of out this mess:

• If the thread open on web and the page is active (focused some time the last minute or so) – don’t send a notification at all.
• If the thread not open and the page is not active – send a notification.
• If the thread minimized in the web browser but the page is active – send only a web notification.

photo from iphoneguiden.se

Do I realize that these features are more complex than I have described them here? Yes. But they’re not very complex for a product team such as the one behind Facebook.

Do I realize that Facebook usually releases features and then iterates on them to improve the user experience? Yes. But this is a web strategy. A mobile app is often, like in this case, just a good interface on top of a web service. If the interface is bad, the service is bad.
Iterate all you want on the service. But “release early, release often”  is not a viable strategy for a mobile interface.

So why am I taking time to complain write all this? Because Facebook Messages, and Facebook Messenger, is a great product. It will help me organize my communication even better and have faster communications with my friends. No longer will discussions be spread through WhatsApp, iMessages, SMS, Email etc etc.

And the reason I can’t do that today is the Facebook Messenger interface. With god damn enourmous amounts of some luck this post might help Facebook create a really good Messenger app faster. Fingers crossed. Also, I’m available for hire.

Thanks to @MagnusEngdal and Sara Öhman for helping me with the testing.

Update:
Ben from the Facebook Messenger team replies with some information about the upcoming version 1.5 of the app. Early the next morning I had it and started using it. And I must say it’s a big improvement. I’ll write a follow up shortly about this new version.

SIME is a Swedish Conference on web, tech and startups. Where great speakers entertain for two days and investors and entrepreneurs mingle over coffee and champagne.

SIME 2011 was a flurry of great speaker on a wide area of subjects. While the set theme for SIME was “Passion Wins” another theme running through the conference was going mobile. Gamification was subtly introduced to the SIME audience in a panel on Gamification and marketing. Possibly to set the stage for a larger presence next year.

But what exactly is Gamification and how does it tie in with SIME 2011?
Gamification is the process of using game mechanics in non-game products and services. I am not talking about  3D characters or scoring points here however. Games have matured in relative obscurity thought the years to become one of the worlds largest entertainment forms, aimed mostly at adults. The foundations ofwhat makes a good game are similar and equally complex as what makes a great brand. The psychology or rewards have been used in training and products over the years, but only games have really delved deep and explored the territory. Pacing and storytelling in a product where there is no story is also only really explored in the games industry. Science and design based on concepts like these are migrating from games into “normal” products.

This is Gamification. And oddly, ties in excellently to SIMEs central theme.

The Passion of Gamification
Passion Wins. That theme was presented by Ola in his welcoming speech and it was central to almost all the talks at SIME. From presentations from promising startups, among them iZettle - the mobile payment solution, to using brain scans for better marketing there was not a presenter on stage that lacked passion. But how do we reach passion in our users or customers? While every panel spoke of the importance to engage users and inspire passion there was only one that talked about how thats done.

Panel on Gamificiation
A panel consisting of Elísabet Grétarsdóttir, Eve Online, Johan Sjöberg, founder Starstable, and Robin Teigland, Stockholm School of Economics, joined Ola on stage to discuss the most popular buzzword of the day.

The panel wasn’t that impressed with the term Gamification for starters. Elisabet described it as working with motivation in marketing to engage the audience, hopefully getting them to participate. Johan joined in saying that the term might be a misnomer, that the term Playification might be more appropriate. Since the focus is on engagement but not at all games.

“we are playful creatures” - Elísabet Grétarsdóttir, SIME 2011

The panel was in agreement that playfulness was important for humans, adding fun to anything should be possible. The panel highlighted experiments with gamification in education and Elisabet even made a pitch to add creative interaction in the fashion industry.

If we are playful creatures, play should be a great way to engage our users. Right?

Going mobile with gamification
As I mentioned earlier another trend runnings through the entire conference was going mobile. Google spoke of being a mobile first company, Ericsson spoke about communicating in a world where every device is interconnected. But what does this have to do with gamification?

Throughout SIME we heard speakers talk about new paradigms and the web/app divide. Essentially mobile web is taking over and has a different set or boundaries than the desktop web. So how to we make sure our mobile interfaces are good enough and engaging users? You know where I’m going with this aren’t you?

Mobile interfaces is a perfect place to start adding the fun.

Summing up gamification at SIME 2011
The passion at SIME was amazing. The energy was great. The game we played at the conference, bad. Basically we’re all looking into how to engage and interact with people through digital mediums. The only industry that has really done it is the games industry. Moving their knowledge to the rest of the web is gamification. Elisabet doesn’t think it’s through external motivation. Ola thinks it might have something to do with horses.

The only thing we know is: however it’s done, it’s going mobile.

Jesper Bylund is a Game Designer / Interaction Designer who blogs about Gamification on Adding the Fun.com

UPDATE:
Added a short explanation of what SIME is, thanks to @kenneth_aa for making me realize it was needed.

It didn’t work.

But Path is back! Path 2.0 is better, faster, turbo, everything you could possibly want. But is it good enough?

Path first impressions

Path is incredibly beautiful. No other mobile experience comes close. Seriously, it’s not just pretty graphics, all the animations and interactions, the structure of information, the loading bars and even the damned typing experience is just plain better than in other apps. It’s amazing.

So what is Path?

Path is a digital diary for your life. Everyone on Path has a feed. And at any time you can add stuff to your own: where you are, a piture, who you’re with, music you’re listening to or when you go to sleep.

Using Path

Is lonely. Sure it launched today but that’s not the main issue. Path is clearly going for the same feature set as Facebook Timeline (which is tied up in court and has yet to launch) but there’s no way you’ll get all your friends to come over. I’m an early adopter. I talk to a lot of other early adopters. And I’m still lonely on Path.

Still, it’s an amazing experience. Enough to make me want to use it. Maybe that’s enought? I’ll update in a few days and let you know.

All screen
No home button
Just swipe
Nokia N9
No way to know how to use it without reading a manual or being taught how
Just swipe, DUMBASS!

Nokia must really love being different. Or at least love patenting interaction models, so they can differentiate from iPhone.

To bad different isn’t the same as good.

But Twitter is about to face it’s doom
While Google struggle to reproduce the viral effect of micro blogging services Facebook’s grab for the real time feed was hampered by the need to privacy. Twitter has already gained wide acceptance and was never intended for private information in the first place. But a series of ominous events are slowly hollowing out the foundations of Twitter.

Twitter is being killed by…
Twitter has never been the most stable of tech startups. The service used to be plagued by downtime which became so frequent the Fail Whale error page became as famous as the service. The company itself is also changing management again, and again. Not a great trend this early in a one product company. The lack of leadership is clear to see.

Twitter UX
Twitter (the company) is constantly changing and evolving it’s product. Which is a great way to organically fit the needs of their users. But Twitter (the company) is doing this in a somewhat odd way. It started when Retweeting (passing on another users tweet as a sign of encouragement while marking it with their name and RT) was made a part of the product, after it’s wide adoption by users, Twitter (the company) decided to implement it differently than the usual Retweets. This lead to better statistics, but also a fractured UX as apps now had to implement both ways to RT because users didn’t like the new one. Eventually Twitter (the company) incorporated the old style Retweets but called the function Quote Tweet instead. And the problems were just getting started.

Twitter app insanity
Twitter apps were almost a category on their own in the beginning of the Appstore. Twitter has become so important to mobile phone manufacturers they always showcase a twitter app with their new flagship phones. But Twitter wanted to control the experience, like Apple. Maybe a good idea. But really bad execution. They bought Atebits, the developers behind the most popular Twitter apps for iOS and Mac. Have you ever pulled down a list to refresh? Atebits invented that. So why was this a problem? Sounds great, right?

Totally worth a years work right? Not just detail changes at all. Nope.

After being purchased by Twitter (the company), the newly renamed Twitter for Mac and Twitter for iPhone started being updated less frequently… Let me make that clear, having the developer of the apps work closer with the Twitter development team made them update the apps less often.

Then shit really hit the fan. Twitter (the company) redesigned all their interfaces to be similar across platforms. Starting with a roll out on iPad, then web then the rest, Twitter (the company) streamlined their interface development.. in theory.
What really happened? The interfaces now looked the same, but they didn’t work the same. In fact, certain features only exist on certain platforms even though the interfaces look the same. Which makes it really hard as a user to remember what you can do where.

Later on the developers behind Atebits have left Twitter (the company), possibly in raging despair. And Twitter (the service) is fracturing into a mess. Not just between interfaces but functions as well. For example with the roll out of the activity tab you can follow some of the things people are doing through Twitter, following, unfollowing, making lists and so on. These features, which btw totally contradict the extreme simplicity of the core product, are weirdly integrated into the web interface as the afterthought they are. And it’s only available on the web.

Summery
Twitter (the company) is destroying Twitter (the services) with some sort of odd design-by-committee culture.  No matter if you like or dislike these new features, the case is clear that teams behind Twitter (the service) definitely aren’t working towards the same goal.

This is sad. Because I love Twitter (the service). And I don’t like that it’s being killed by Twitter (the company). Please RT this if you agree.

Update:

Apparently the sentiment is echoed by people leaving Twitter (the company).

Update 2:

In December 2011 Twitter updated their entire line of interfaces. The design changes were clearly aimed at making Twitter a lot more interesting for new users.

Twitter divided itself into different parts, seemingly with different uses:

The new Twitter, totally intuitive.. Derp.

Sounds great right? What could possibly be the problem!

Twitter didn’t actually change. And Twitter (the service) does not actually have these different areas of interest. So any user checking them out will quickly get confounded. What is the difference between “Home” and “Me”? I have no idea. But to make this obvious, Twitter (the company) has removed Me and Tweet from the web interface which basically means they have these left: Home (My feed), Connect (replies, RTs and follows) and Discover (search damnit, it’s just search!).

To make things better worse, the UI is even more fragmented. Twitter no longer has updated clients for iPad and Mac. Apparently the job previously done by one single guy is just to much for an organization of 300 or so.

But it get’s even better worse. The UI of the web and iPhone version, while both being updated simultaneously for this new paradigm, still do not follow the same UI standards and are structured differently. Don’t ask about Android. Twitter (the company) must really, really, hate Android.

Anyone want to build a Twitter killer, possibly built upon the API of Twitter to simplify the transfer of users? I’m available right now.

Gamification is the latest and greatest buzz word in a long line of hype from digital marketing companies. But gamification is different because unlike social media and the like the Gamification concept is loaned from the hugely profitable games industry.

At SIME this year the panel consisted of representatives from World of Horses Online, CCP games and an associate professor from the Stockholm School of Economics. The topic was gamification and was simply introduced as the concept of using mechanics and design from the games industry to market products and services in non entertainment industries.

Elisabet, from CCP games, really gave a show with clear and consice ideas about gamification.
She started off by describing the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivators.
An extrinsic motivator, which are mostly used in gamification today, are external rewards given to the player for achieving certain tasks. Such as points to shoot a bird accurately or a badge to check in at a location
An intrinsic motivator is an internal reward the player experiences because he/she achieves something in the context of the game. Internal rewards are feelings based on. Social recognition or completing a challenge.

One of her most memorable quotes was saying she’d like to Gamify the games industry by moving from extrinsic to intrinsic motivators.

Another one was a sharp critique to enforced seriousness while stating a point about humans being playful creatures:

why can we hug at a soccer game but not in the board room?

Elisabet also rocked the end of the panel by giving an example of how she would revolutionize boutique shopping by gamifying a H&M shop into a “minecraft retail experience” to, in her own words, “create a platform for creativity and self expression”.

The audience and the panel alike seemed almost shocked by the simple truths laid out by Elisabet on gamification. I bet that if she has any say, gamification will be less of a buzz word and more of a business strategy from now on.
One can only hope.

PS
I’m writing this on an iPad balanced on my knee while I’m eating so if this post is in shambles, please check back in an hour or so and I’ll try to polish the turd.

Update 1
Robin from the Stockholm School of Economics mailed me an update, apparently I got both her school and her title wrong.. Sorry Robin, keep up the great work!

Hopefully this will be awesome. I’ll be live tweeting the event all day and half the night and writing about what she and the other speakers had to say as soon as possible.

So visit again soon for updates.

update
CCP link works now! Sorry about that.

My first day here and I’m amazed
Normally the Swedish conferences are timid and partly boring events as the swedes are quite reserved and the production values are quite low. Not so at SIME.
The production values are through the roof and people are talking fast to get around the room. None of them make it.

The topics are wide but the theme is central
The speakers here at SIME are varied and well drilled, no slow moments for the audience. From representatives of the BBC to new web startups to multinational investors playing the piano somehow it all ties in neatly with our moderator Ola Ahlvarsson’s set theme: “Passion Wins!”.

My head is buzzing
Not from the champagne but from the pace. The comedian wrapping up spotted my tweet and made me a bit and none of us can move more than 3 feet without talking to someone. This is not the usual environment for a Swede and for anyone interested in entrepreneurship it’s amazing.

Tomorrow is another day
Of SIME and with the schedule ahead of me it seems to be even more packed than today. Right now this rundown is the best I can do. Now I’m off to the bar to find out if there is more champagne and anyone interested in discussing gamification.

One more thing
I was apparently the most active twitterer today, even after the comedian made fun of me, and my tweets were picked up by a Swedish newspaper and retweeted widely.
Dagens media – de leder SIME twittrandet

The video is after the jump.

Life is not a chance event
You make choices – spend your time -
to create substance. Instead of just dreaming
about what might be.
But once in a while, you need a time-out.
Peace and relaxation that give you time to think.
To define substance…

-unknown

But if you’re still wondering why the iPad is good I did some snooping. Actually I’ve asked non-leading, weird, questions to every iPad user near me for close to two years just to understand the behavior. And I think I’ve solved it.

Why the iPad feels wrong for real work
Some people will tell you the iPad does multitasking and that it works great. That’s just not true. It does uni-tasking and great app switching.

The difference is it really forces you to focus on one thing at a time. I have no problem switching between apps to get stuff I need to send or reply to that email with facts from simplenote etc. But you can’t have all that on the screen at the same time like you are used to.

This makes people believe it’s hard to use for work. Simply because they have to relearn their entire workflow. The desktop experience simply doesn’t translate to the tablet and it makes people feel less efficient.

Why the iPad is awesomee
The iPad actually makes you more effective. Not efficient. You won’t be doing things at the same speed as you do on a desktop, and that might frustrate you. But it’ll also force you to think about what is most important. Usually, in both my experience and my sneaky interviews, making the end result better.

The iPad really does almost everything a desktop computer does. So far I’ve found two things it doesn’t do as well as a desktop:

• Create graphics, the iPad simply cannot compete with Adobe Photoshop and a mouse.
• Formatting text. Yes I’m serious. You can do it. But it takes forever.

The second thing the iPad doesn’t to really do highlights the efficiency vs effectiveness problem. It doesn’t format text well. But is that really what you should be doing? Yes a well formated document looks a lot more professional than a poorly formatted one. But the content is really the important thing, right? And seriously, you could’ve made a template for those visual documents years ago.

Don’t worry though, there’s probably an app for that.

The ending was intended as sarcasm and not rampant fanboyism. Though I probably am a rampant fanboy of Apple’s take on design.

This unicorn has never appeared though. Local seemed to be impossible with current tech.

Then I was on the subway this morning. And a tweet lead me to Google Mobile, below the search bar I found something odd…

It said log in. And it asked for my location (sorry about the Swedish btw, I’m in Sweden so Google assumes I prefer the deprecated language over English).

Now I’ve used Google Places before and I was not impressed. There simply isn’t enough aggregated data in Stockholm for it to work. Well that’s what I thought.

I logged in and pressed the icon marked “Cafe’s”. Lo and behold! Google quickly returned Coffee shops close to my location, on a map even!

Now this is impressive. But what is a lot more impressive is what happened next. I scroll down the list and instead of just finding aggregated information, which I come to expect from Google, I’m shown an impressive interface of detailed information and functions for each location.

Not only can I call the location directly from the app, I can also find reviews directly. But this is the most impressive part: the item on top of the list is shown on the map (which stays at the top as you scroll) and an overlay button appears letting me find Directions to the location…

This post is quite probably the worst I’ve ever written, and that is because I’m completely blown away by the UX of this SERP.

Google has really understood what I want out of a local search and given me the tools I need to use the information they present me with. A level of user experience I’ve never seen from Google and would only expect from the very best Apple products.

Google, I salute you. Keep this up!

HTML5 is a common term for the upgrade of all the basic web technologies. That tech that let’s you build web sites (HTML, CSS and JS to be exact).

HTML5 logo (yes, seriously)

HTML5 can be used live today, but it won’t become really wide spread until Internet Explorer 9 takes over the leading browser marketshare from IE 8. All modern browsers, including IE 9, handle almost everything that makes HTML5 so cool.

HTML5 was created to take the internet to the next level. Basically from Information sites to Functional Services more like apps. Basically people don’t just want information these days but they want simple functions that give them access to the rightinformation. This is what apps do; give users the function and the bite sized chunk of information needed to use that function. In the same easy to use interface.

There is a huge difference between this paradigm and the earlier paradigm of the web. The change won’t be very fast but it will come. The reason is that Mobile Web use is on the rise and the old paradigm of information heavy sites is simply really bad for that use. Already HTML5 is the norm for Mobile Devices, PCs are actually lagging behind.

I’ve listed some of my favorite examples of HTML5 apps below, please be aware that you’ll need Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or at least IE 9 to use them:

http://www.html5rocks.com/

http://www.chromeexperiments.com/

http://www.apple.com/html5/

http://mugtug.com/sketchpad/

http://www.web3mantra.com/2011/04/20/best-html5-applications/

http://data-arts.appspot.com/globe-search

A lot of the tech industry is claiming it really is a Facebook killer.

Here’s why it’s not

Google+ is basically a clone of Facebook. So much of the service is nearly identical that it would be silly to claim otherwise. Now this might be because Google is lazy, or it might be that Facebook has found a good way to view social information. I’m more inclined to the latter.

But similarity won’t get new users, they’ll understand Google+ easier (an important argument) but they won’t stay for that. So what stands out?

Circles, Sparks, Huddles and Hangouts

Circles are central to the Google+ experience. To share or follow anyone you have to assign them to a circle or group. The idea is that if all your friends are in groups from the start, having more control of what you share to whom is a lot simpler.

Google Plus Circles

That’s a great idea. Sadly it’s really annoying and adds work for the users. Every time you post something you have to choose which circles to share with. The ones you shared with last are offered as a default. I’ll bet that most people will add most if not all their circles and then never change. The reason for this is that we don’t share if sharing is to much work. That’s why social networking took off in the first place, they made it easier to share stuff we liked. Google+ is making it harder than on Facebook. Not a compelling argument for most people.

Sparks

Sparks are topics of interest that you can follow and get all the new information on right inside Google+. This is a great idea. Having content in the social network, ready to be shared.

Google+ Sparks

There is a problem. It’s basically just a Google search. So there’s very little filtration of content and hardly ever anything new. Google+ is still a beta so this could evolve to a killer feature. But for Google to invent a new type of search just for content in Google+… I don’t think that’ll happen.

Huddles

Huddles are group messaging. Yeah. Another one… And for some reason it only works on mobile devices, they don’t show up in the web interface. So basically a bit less useable than Facebook chat.

Google+ Huddle

Hangout

Hangouts are amazing. Hangouts are video chatroom that you can start at any time and than jump in and out of and just talk to people. Amazing tech.

Google+ Hangout

But a stupid idea. Why?
I don’t understand why companies keep dragging the video-calling, video-chatting ideas out every time they get more tech. The trend in general is moving from voice to text because it is less intrusive.

Intrusive is basically the definition of having friends looking at you while you work.

“But chat roulette was a hit!?”  I hear you desperately cry. Yes it was. Because it’s for fun it was quick to just spend a half hour jumping in and out of conversations or charades with dicks random people. But do you want to do that with just your friends? Probably not.

It is however an even simpler way to have video conferencing, which inside Google must seem like the thing everyone wants to do. I’ve never met someone who would like that. But I’m sure those people will be thrilled. I’ll use it to have drinking nights with my buddies in the UK no doubt.

Summing up

So far Google+ looks like a great, clean, new social network. With absolutely nothing to make it more useable than Facebook.

The only reason people loves this product is because it says Google right there on the logo.

But we should give it the benefit of a doubt, it’s still just a beta, it might be missing features or showing us features that are far from finished.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still be on it. It’s just that I don’t use it at all.

Trackpad Settings in Lion

To change back from Lion’s default natural scrolling open Settings -> Trackpad -> Scroll & Zoom and uncheck the natural scrolling checkbox. All done.

Why shouldn’t you?

It’s annoying right? Why should you have to relearn how scrolling works?

Because it makes no sense in Lion, and I’ll bet you anything it’ll make less and less sense going forward. This is the new paradigm, learn it now or later.

But why?

In the beginning of Graphic User Interfaces scrolling was done by clicking the scrollbars on the side of an application window.

Old school Scrollbars

Since this wasn’t a very efficient way to do it many weird solutions for simpler scrolling popped up here and there. It soon became standard for Mice to have scroll wheels on them. Making the entire representation of scroll bars a bit redundant. They take up a lot of screen real estate just to show you where in a window you are looking at any one time. It’s not like you didn’t scroll there in the first place right?

A Mouse with a Scroll Wheel - high tech in the 90's

When touch pads started becoming standard, this design thought was transplanted over from mice and scroll bars. Nothing wrong with that, reinventing the wheel isn’t always a good thing.

Except when it is.

In this case it made no sense. The mouse and it’s scroll wheel use two different controls to achieve two different things. You move the mouse to point. And you scroll the wheel to.. eh.. scroll.

But on a touch pad you use the same control. Your poking the touchpad to move the pointer and then poking the touchpad in the opposite direction to scroll. The only reason this feels “natural” is because we, as the ingrained PC users we are, are so used to scrollbars. We know that what we’re scrolling isn’t the content but the scrollbar. Which in turn scrolls the content…

See where the design falls apart?

The metaphor is broken. The scrollbar no longer makes sense when you scroll using the pointing device to move the content, instead of the scrollbar.

Alright. That makes sense, but why relearn? Why fix what ain’t broken?

In two words: Cognitive load.

Lion’s natural scrolling (directly scrolling the content instead of the scroll bar) will become the standard, like it or not, because the average PC user doesn’t change default settings and certainly don’t understand why scrolling should be inverse to the screen. The cognitive load of thinking about how to scroll will simply become to much as more computers are delivered with touch pads and more of our PCs become touch based (as tablets become more widely spread).

To clarify; on a mouse the scrolling direction won’t change. Because the scroll wheel isn’t directly linked to the content anyway. But a touch pad is directly linked.
Update: For some reason, Apple has changed the scrolling direction on the mouse wheel for non-apple mice. This is weird. Thanks to Dan in the comments for reporting!

It takes a little time to get used to, though less than you might think, but it will be worth it. And you won’t have to relearn later on which will get increasingly frustrating.

Not convinced? Check out MG Siegler’s excellent pre-lion post The iPad Has Broken My Brain; OS X Lion Will Help Fix It.

• 1 I have no experience doing projects like this.
• 2 I’m procrastinating to dream about having a finished book.

I’ll leave you with a few photos from my workspace:

And right now I have 30 days of vacation so I thought it was about time to do something about it.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be trying to write, layout and publish my own kindle book. Of course I’ll share everything about the process right here.

First off: Writing
I decided to try to tackle Ayn Rand’s Objectivism as a moral for the story. That set the stakes high enough. Over the next few days I’ll flesh out a plot and write a first draft.

Of course you can follow me actually writing the document LIVE right here.

Never add things unnecessarily.

This is my design for a new Notification system. The notification counter on top will ping in color and sound/vibration when new notifications drop in. The user can set which service does what in settings.

The entire notification list is under the spotlight window. If you use spotlight, it’ll disappear until you remove your search.

UPDATE:

iOS5 has been unveiled and while I’m not shocked to find I wasn’t spot on, I am a bit shocked by their adding another menu just for notifications. If you have no idea what I’m talking about check em out here.

In the 90′s tech evangelists started selling us this idea when they touted the imminent arrival of fridges that know when you’re out of milk and automatically add it to your grocery list. This was just before the bubble burst and they all went away to eventually become social media strategists.

Today though the tables have turned. We might be entering a second internet bubble but no one debates whether the internet is important or financially sound anymore. With the recent arrival of mobile devices that people really want to use, the iPhone and iPad still forerunners in the field, we’re seeing the beginnings of the internet of things.

Photo: Gizmodo.com

Things that just a few years ago only made calls now measure how many steps we take, what route we walk and how close to the screen we are. Sensors are invading our lives at an ever increasing pace to fill our information hunger. So far this is happening to our high tech gear. But since tech is still improving exponentially, according to Moore’s law, in just a few years there will be no point in having electronics that don’t have processors, sensors and wifi connections. With budding technologies waiting to take over such as IPv6 and NFC all these devices will be able to come online and stay online for basically no cost.

And that is just the start. When every lamp, machine and key in your house has sensors the prices will drop even further. Making sensors even more ubiquitous. There’s a tag on the apples you buy, why not add a sensor and check how ripe it is? There’s a stamp on that envelope, the sensors on it can make sure it hasn’t been shaken about to much.

Of course there will be issues with who controls all this data and not least what to do with it. But like all new technology the positive effects outweigh the negative as soon as we get over the fart-app stage.

The possibilities of this vast network of smart sensors are endless.

Left the door unlocked? Lock it from your phone. Did your son eat the last of the cheese? You will always know. The lamps will turn off when you step away from them to save electricity and you’ll never forget your keys again. Ever.

But all these are only just from the tip of the iceberg, the real magic happens when these everyday objects start communicating with each other. We’re not talking about intelligent conversation here, just mere cooperation between systems. No risk of sentient toasters attacking us just yet.

Let’s say you’re at work planning a dinner with your spouse. You agree on a certain meal over the phone, video call, messaging service or whatever. Immediately your things at home spring into action. Your house butler service, a server the size of a doorbell, sees your conversation and finds the recipe. The fridge checks what you have at home and orders the missing ingredients. The ingredients arrive and your cleaning robot, vacuum and arm for moving things, lays out the ingredients on your kitchen counter. The oven heats itself.
As you open the door the butler starts playing the appropriate music based on your preferences and earlier conversation. The bottle of wine is open. You only need to wash your hands and cut those cheeseburgers in half.

Every single one of these services exist today. Some are expensive. Some still a bit rudimentary. But the essential differences today is that they lack information from sensors and the processing power to do something with it. And they can’t communicate without you acting as a translator.

The internet of things is almost upon us, and while we can’t say exactly what it will be like. Two things are certain: it will truly change everything forever, much like the internet already has. And it will be awesome!

Orginially guest blogged for www.saraohman.com

I see you, my dear Lucilius, I hear you at this very moment. I feel so very much with you that I wonder whether I shouldn’t start writing you notes rather than letters!

Writing a friend notes of events and thoughts and feelings instead of letter. This is how I use twitter. I share these things with my friends and anyone who wants to follow me. A quite futuristic idea for a Roman born over two thousand years ago.

New interface gestures for iOS 4.3 which shipped on the iPad2 lets you multitask without using the home button. Pinch to homescreen let’s you close apps without the button and swipe up to reveal the multitasking bar let’s you exit apps that are running in the background. Effectively making the home button a relic of the past.

So from the release of iOS5 (probably with the iPhone 5 this june) you might never need to use a button on an iOS device again. Some of you might think that’s a great thing, I for one would love it since I rarely double click fast enough, and others might think it’s useless.

The tail end of this effect is that you could, theoretically, controll all the interactions with apps running on an Apple TV with a Magic Trackpad…

Let the rumor mills run wild!

I agree.

But Nokia’s Tero Ojanpera countered on the same panel that there is still a place for consoles and console games because people won’t want to plug their tablet devices into their TV’s.

I don’t agree. In fact, I think Tero Ojanpera is missing a major trend in user behavior:

We’ve seen a trend for many years now that people are spending more of their time in front of computer screens. Most people aren’t actively turning off their TVs yet but the trend towards being online is clear. More and more people sitting in front of their TV but with a laptop on their lap. At the same time mobile devices and tablet devices are skyrocketing in use.

So why, dear Nokia, would people want to plug their tablet devices into their TVs? People are already choosing mobile screens at their primary consumption device. What Ojanpera is thinking of here is probably the block buster cinematic experiences that home consoles connected to the TV can offer. Titles such as God of War and Assasins Creed.

What he doesn’t realize is that while these titles take up most of the marketing budget for game companies they don’t sell all that well. A game of the year blockbuster hit still only sells close to 20 million copies. That’s a huge pile of money. But Angry Birds has sold over 150 million… The price makes the winnings less dramatic but the demographic implications are clear. More people are choosing mobile games.

Consoles are dead.

More and more services are popping up that solve the music industries decade long plight of piracy; Streaming music.

Services like Spotify and Rdio are making music instantaneously available for everyone at affordable rates that seem to make everyone happy…
Except the music industry wont go along in North America. ”Why not?” I hear you sigh ask. Let’s examine the models.

• Traditional Music Industry model
  Expensive music recording and talent finding or talent creating organisations made money off hits that had main stream appeal and sold records. Thus subsidizing less popular songs recorded and making tons and tons of cash.
• New Music Industry Model
  Dirt cheap music recording and no large organisation needed leaves music execs without jobs, making them scramble for larger marketing budgets trying to push out hits to people who’ve largely turned to youtube for their music finding needs. Streaming services pay music creators and labels for plays, not purchases, making income gradual over time instead of in chunks.

So basically, now we have the entire label org, music marketing and exec structures working against the change. At the same time pay is coming in in smaller doses over longer periods of time making hits less important. And very importantly, lowering quarterly income for the first years of change. Most probably lowering stock martet value. This is a most extreme case of the long tail economic model.

But in this new situation, the organisations that formerly cultivated talent are now cannibalizing off talent to fuel their inefficient cost structure of organisations that no longer work. How do they deal with this problem? Sue pirates. Legislate against sharing music people own. And worst case: deny new working models the right to use already popular music.

Great idea msuic industry! What do you think?

Adam Greenfield on his tenure at Nokia:

As it happens, the value-engineering mindset that’s so crucial to profitability as a commodity trader is fatal as a purveyor of experiences. Of course you still want to produce your offering for the lowest achievable cost — but that cost is bound up in intangible, nondeterministic dimensions of design, in ways that are only partially-at-best quantifiable. It’s just not particularly wise to allow engineers to make decisions about things like product and service nomenclature, interface typography and the graphic design of icons: they’re, I daresay, not even neurocognitively equipped to do so. And yet this is what happened when I was at Nokia and, I would imagine, is happening still.

This is really interesting, not neurocognitively equipped? This is of course a bold and non-scientific statement but basically this would mean that engineers aren’t biologically capable of understanding a users experience.

That would explain a lot.

So what do you do? Develop a new one in-house right? DON’T!

All software needs to develop over time, much like business or science, not only because the demands on them change but because the users change. As the world moves forward people learn new things and develop, if your app, tool, function or software does not it will become less usable even if it still performs the necessary function.

Third party developers work full time to make sure their software is good. Your in-house team does not. If you’re lucky or experienced enough to know that everything has to be updated from time to time you’ll schedule development time from time to time to update your app. But it’s still lagging behind the third party version. It might do exactly what you need, but that need will probably change faster than your app is updated.

Many companies grow into this problem and than takes it to it’s logical extreme. Make the team a dedicated department of your company.

But now you’ve basically created a company. And this team will get more and more out of touch with the goals and difficulties of the original company. Not to mention that to grow they’ll need to meet demands from outside the parent company.

There is another way to do it. Use third party apps. If the software takes over a function in your company, so that you can’t change it, you were in a lot of trouble before the software fails you anyway.

UPDATE:
After some constructive criticism from  Christopher McCann I’m forced to admit that the post is rather Utopian since it depends on not having to replace legacy systems that already lock you in to a certain way to handle data. I still prefer the idea that data should be more important than system, but it is Utopian, anyway thanks Christopher!

UPDATE2:
After even more criticism, this time from Magnus Engdal, I must concede the point that while my slightly Utopian post might be true for LAMP software it doesn’t really work for MS systems because of the size of the community and availability of solutions.

So why haven’t Apple already solved this?
We can’t know that for sure, secretive as Apple is. But I’ll bet it has something to do with the new iteration of OS X.

Lion
In Lion Apple is bringing iOS features back to the Mac. Specifically, for notifications, applications are now encouraged to be full screen. Full screen apps can’t use badges or jumping icons in the dock to notify users of what’s going on.

Lion has to redesign notifications.
And Lion has to make notifications work with full screen apps, exactly the same problem that Apple faces on the iPhone and iPad.

Unified notification system
I believe the new notification system will be the same, or very similar, across all Apple platforms. It just makes to much sense not to, all their devices need new notifications and they face the same constraints… Except input. iOS handles touch,  OS X has a mouse/keyboard. Both of them handle gestures however.

Universal Gestures?
In the new beta of iOS, 4.3, Apple has released a set of gestures to do multitasking making the feature a lot more powerful and easy to use.

These gestures don’t translate all that well to the iPhone (five fingers on a 3″ screen?) but I dare say Apple can solve that.
But I also notice there’s one gesture missing: down.
Right and left swipes change app, swipe up to show active apps, why not swipe down to show a notification app/menu?

Notification app/menu/dock
Gathers all notifications, only needs to make a sound or visual cue for new notifications and users can come back to it at will.
It would work on all Apple devices and could be accessed by gesture or from the icon.

Sounds pretty Apple-y to me. What are your thoughts?

This Thursday Twitter spokeswoman Carolyn Penner claimed that “Twitter favors novelty over popularity,”. The trending topics are set algorithmically and aren’t affected by human intervention.

There is however a huge flaw in this statement. We can clearly measure, using Google RealTime search, that the discussion about Wikileaks has increased in with the same frequency as Apple events usually do.  And Apple events DO show up in Trending Topics…

So the question remains, why is Twitter censuring Wikileaks?

picture credit MSNBC

Originally meant to be a short book I decided doing the research and most of the writing as a blog might help the project along. Who knows, it might actually be better for it.

You’ll find it continuously updated over on Tumblr: Adding The Fun

While such devices are severely limited right now (only for iDevices and not even Macs) the feature works like magic and is a revolution we’ve been waiting for in sharing media in the real world.

So why flawed? Coming home today I switched my podcast over to my stereo as I entered my apartment. While making dinner I was smirking at some droll statement when I received a text. The sound was played on my stereo. Not my iPhone.

If AirPlay simply tranfers all audio (or video) from the system to another system the practicality evaporates quickly. With the decrepid notification system still on iOS will we be doomed to listen to beeps and pings until iOS5?!

Steve, please, don’t let this continue.

I’ve been trying out AirPlay on my iPad (the developer preview) and I have to say this is the future. In http://www.apple.com/itunes/airplay/iOS has a killer app beyond anything else in the mobile space today. I’m not kidding.

AirPlay let’s you stream music and videos to and from any iOS enabled devices. Whole there aren’t many such devices yet this is the future of media we’ve been waiting for.

Coming home, sitting down with my iPad and than choosing what I want to listen to on my wifi stereo system is a form of media disintermediation that really takes the leap from 50s hifi systems to the visions of the future represented in movies such as Total Recall or Minority Report.

AirPlay really does change everything. Lets just hope Apple opened it up to third parties. This is the way we’ll want to consume media in the coming years. Let’s hope it get wide adoption on all platforms.

The only questions that remain are will Apple let us and how will the input work?

This design is really closely related to the official Twitter iPad app:

But what gets me most is that both these designs are so very closely related to the Palm HP WebOS:

Jump into the video and really check out the WebOS cards interface model. How different is it from Twitter panes model?

We’ve heard Apple state again and again that iTunes video is being released in the rest of the world and so far have yet to see it. But I doubt that this has anything to do with Apple, video rentals cross nations and even more so across regions seem to be the unholy grail of the movie industry. For some reason they just don’t want to open the flood gates to international video services.

Let’s hope this latest move by Apple can finally open a crack in that wall. Hulu EU? Yes please.

Apple has just released a statement that they are easing up restrictions for developers of the iOS platform. More specifically in sections 3.3.1, 3.3.2 and 3.3.9. Exact information is scarce so far but Gizmodo is digging hard right now and Engadget has found out that this means Apple will allow “any and all” third party development apps including Flash CS5!

Apple also says they’ll the App Store Review Guidelines to “help developers understand how we review submitted apps”.

Great day for iOS developers!

The were a lot of rumors around before the launch of the new Apple TV, the most interesting ones from Engadget that claimed the Apple TV would be fully compatible with iOS apps. But Steve Jobs claimed it had no local storage, how would that work?

Looking at the tech specs page of the Apple TV site I can’t find any information about storage though. There must be some storage to fascilitate buffering of video but it could work just fine with only RAM.

What the future of the Apple TV will be no one knows. But if it doesn’t have local storage it won’t ever handle apps. We’ll have to wait for the next generation.

Now begins to long wait for the post launch tear down that will tell us if it has local storage or not.

iTunes 10 is out, the first major release for years. After playing around with it for a week this is what I’ve noticed:

• Still does not use the standard front end API for OS X making it laggy and ugly.
• The slight UI overhaul makes it less of a mess. But it still is a mess to use.
• It has Ping, a social network exclusively about Music. Not very engaging though.

Please Mr Jobs and Mr Ive, please do a remake of iTunes soon. It really is a terrible user experience and it does not stand up to the quality of other Apple products. I love the store(s) but the app is crap.

Update: the Icon has caused quite a stir and is being widely critized. Steve Jobs has commented on it sucking saying: “we don’t think so”.

But from the video’s available from IFA and other preview hands ons I have a question that might break the product:
It looks great. It sounds great. The specs are great. It runs the speedy Android 2.2 Froyo.

So why does it lag? Why isn’t scrolling silky smooth? Why does the interface have load times without transitions?

Boiled down to one question: Since the device seems to be more than a match for Apple’s iPad, why does it lag up the user experience?

The iPhone 4 is an amazing looking product. And it feels even better. I can best describe it as sleek, it’s thinness and glossy glass body makes it smooth to touch and to get out of a pocket.

The bumper takes all that away. With a thick rubber edge that sticks to your hand, your pocket, the table, everything really. With plastic sides making the bumper pretty useless for protecting the phone from dropping it on the sides.

I don’t know. I can’t figure out what it’s for.

Basically, don’t go near this thing. It really sucks.

Just think about it, coming home from a shopping spree just aching to tell your spouse about the hideous dress/jacket/guy you saw. Whipping out your iPhone and displaying the picture on your Apple TV or iPad. Sounds like the future to me!

There are only two questions that come to mind I’m really interested in:

1. Will Airplay allow us to send content to a Mac as well as from one?
2. We know third party devices will be able to receive media but can third party apps also send media through Airplay? Since it’s a part of iOS it should be an open API… right?

Check out the CNET write up for more thoughts on Airplay.

The great design site UXmyths recently wrote an article claiming to debunk the use of Millers number in design. The article is a great read and really well researched, I recommend reading it to anyone who hasn’t studied Miller in psychology or cognition class.
But the article missed the mark. It debunks how people use Millers number, but not the importance of Millers number nor it’s application in design. Basically, I think somewhere along the way someone misinterpreted the theory. Let me explain why.

Millers number
The renowned psychologist George Miller is most famous for discovering a certain limit to the human short term memory. This limit has to do with the number of information bits that a person can remember at any one time, he called it the Magic number 7 +- 2.
This in itself has absolutely nothing to do with design, just as the article on UXmyths has detailed.

Short term memory and decision making
To think about something we need to hold the different thoughts or parts of thoughts in our minds. This is especially important in decision making where it is not to your conscious advantage to forget parts of the decision. Since this is limited to 7+-2 we can never remember more parts of any choice. But what about ideas? What about bits of information that are really just the sums of huge amounts of other information? To handle things like this we use chunking.

Chunking?
Chunking is the process where we categorize information that fit together, for any satisfactory reason, into one bit of information. For example a car is seen as a car not “a metal body with chair in that sits on four wheel rotated by an engine”. For the best explanation of chunking vie seen to date check out visual chunking and the law of Prägnanz. LINK

Why does this support Millers number in design?
Millers number sets a upper limit to chunks before they become noise. So while it is quite useful to have a menu with more than 7+-2 choices it would be really frustrating and hard to remember if there were more areas of interest or chunks of information on any one page.

So millers number is excellent in design, UXmyths is dealing with the simplified use of Millers number which leads to results that are just plain wrong.

In a sentence: Make sure you understand complicated psychological theories before you apply them to design.

Nicole Lazzaro has a presentation scheduled on the future of UX where she argues that design focusing on increasing positive emotions rather than minimizing negative experience is the future of UX development. A field where game design is leading the way.

I for one am really happy someone is bringing this up at a large conference. I studied game design for this very reason and I’m still having a hard time selling the idea to my colleagues, the notion that games are basically toys is still deeply ingrained in western culture and it’s now starting to hold us back from creating better experiences.

For anyone interested in learning from game design I recommend you start with legendary designer Raph Koster‘s excellent book A Theory of Fun.

A week later I hadn’t really changed my mind, until I was typing away earlier tonight and realized why I didn’t feel it fitted into my life. It’s a unitasking machine.

The iPad doesn’t multitask, yet, but after comparing my experience using the same apps on my iPhone 4 I’m now convinced that my problem is not a result of the device lacking features, but instead that the iPad forces me to focus on my work.

Work which I’ve learned so well to digress and be distracted from on my other machines. I’m just not used to having to focus for more than a few minutes at a time.

This discovery has really turned my experience around, I can’t wait to work like this for a few more days and see where it leads me. Unitasking is the new productivity buzz word. Let’s see if this machine helps me become more productive or leaves me doing less complex work.

RT @durietz: “Why does Dropbox rock but Apple’s iDisk suck balls? How hard can it be to copy an existing service?” [link]

Good question.

And how come some Apple products are so amazing while others, as @durietz put it, suck balls? What’s the difference in the pipeline at Cupertino?

In person this is rude and we all grow thick skin over the years to bear the bleating of haters. But in business it can be a huge problem.

Making haters into evangelists is on of the best uses of social media to date, but I want to talk about a beautiful way Jason Calacanis recently monetized the hate aimed at him.

For those who don’t know, Jason Calacanis is a serial entrepreneur with some great successes currently developing Mahalo.com and the ThisWeekIn podcast network (not to be confused with the TWiT.tv pod casting network run by Leo Laporte). Being successful and especially in a public space means you will attract haters in the hundreds or worse.

Tired of the haters Jason put on a special podcast featuring all hater guests. That’s right, anyone with any complaints again Jason were invited to speak against with him about whatever it was they didn’t approve of.

This is brilliant.
The podcast earns its revenue from ads and lo and behold the haters were filling the podcast with compelling content, not just for loyal listeners who’d chuckle at the event but for even more haters who’d love a go at Jason.

Short and simple, Jason was making his haters earn him money by hating him and looking all the more noble and right for doing it.

Jason, I don’t agree with everything you say but my god; that was one brilliant move!

Watch the episode here for a great example of how to monetize your haters.

EpicWin was released today and I downloaded it on the subway on my way to work. I was happily choosing my avatar and plowing through the “tutorial” quests (the first few to do’s that get you up to speed with the app) and I find myself creating smaller and smaller to do’s just to progress in my quests.

The way the game handles valuation of tasks makes it a bit strange but I’m not going to say to much to early. I’ll keep using the app a few days and update when I’ve really come to terms with it.

It’s just a few bucks and worth it just for laughs. You can find out more at the developers site: EpicWinApp.com

Update:
Launch trailer is up

Update 2:
EpicWin apparently closes all other music or sound processes. So if you’re listening to music and open EpicWin your iPod/Pandora/Spotify will actually stop the music, not just pause it. This is really annoying if you’re just quickly adding a task.

A lot of games are opting for cooperative or immersive multiplayer modes to allow players to be more social and have even more fun with their products.

But there’s a problem. Sorry to be the grouch, but the first step of getting out of a trap is noticing it’s there.
Cooperative and multiplayer games are mostly synchronous. Which means you have to play them at the same time. In fact minimizing gameplay lag is on of the largest problems game developers have today.

But is that really a good thing?
It’s great for action. But it’s terrible for pick up and play gaming. Which is already the dominant form of play if we compare online games and casual platforms such as the Nintendo Wii, DS and the iPhone with more core audience devices such as the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360.

The problem with multiplayer is the same as with loading times.
If we, as developers, are trying to convince our players to spent $60 and 20 hours to play our game, the game really needs to be fun and easy to get into. Loading times subtract from the experience, but not nearly enough as waiting for friends, not having friends or worst of all; having friends that all need to cash out $60 for the game. This kind of tribal synchronisation is very probably not that usual.

We need to open up to the fact that games are a part of life and start designing for finding new friends or, if possible, playing with friends asynchronously.

Flipboard is a news aggregator. Much like feed readers you’ve probably used in the past. The difference is that Flipboard reads your Twitter and Facebook streams, scans them for content and present it to you in a fantastic UI.

Flipboard is extremely competent and feels great to use, it’s well implemented into Twitter and Facebook functionally making it easy to reweet, comment, like and share.

Flipboard is free in the Appstore right now but I’d recommend giving it a look as fast as you can as a lot of media companies are gunning for Flipboard for scraping material not presented in their RISS feeds. Well see how it pans out in the end but this is really how you’ll want to use social media in the future.

RT @cameronmoll: So, anyone still using their Magic Trackpad?

I just unpacked my own and tried out most of the functions I’ve been looking forward to. Unsurprisingly it feels like my iPhone only the screen makes the entire experience slightly more immersive.

As I’m typing this there is no doubt in my mind that this is the future of computing, at least the near future, but should you get one? If you work on the road or need to upgrade a net book the answer is Yes. If you have a great laptop or use a desktop machine however, don’t. Not yet, let the platform mature a bit and you’ll be much less grieved.

Please bear in mind that this theme is made exclusively for NEW browsers and therefore does not support browsers from last year or Internet Explorer.

I’ll make due with this minimalist placeholder theme for a few days.

This argument is strikingly similar to Wittgenstein trying to persuade us that we don’t exist.

No template for life is a template for life.

A circular argument that only shows that you haven’t thought about it very long. There are actually endless templates for life, thousands of manuals on how to live, all of them true. For a given value of true. And most of them conflicting.

(Talking about the Gamecube controller) the greatest videogame controller ever designed, mainly because it had a really big button on it.
- the RexBox blog

Simplicity was created, not by actually removing buttons, but by showing the user a primary button. Subsequently most design focused on that big green button. How we perceive an object, function or service is a lot more important than how that object, function or service actually works. Most companies get this wrong again and again.

Why do Apple command such rabid fans?

Like pixels on glass rather than pixels under glass. This is the result of a new manufacturing process Apple has pioneered. No other company gives a shit about things like this.

- John Gruber on the iPhone 4 display

Because they give a shit. Every other company can learn from this. Making quality products instead of focusing on internal politics or increasing the profit margin just a little bit more will be a lot more economically sound.

This situation leads to the belief that the organization itself is of importance, even though it was just created to solve a specific issue. And the people working in the organization loose focus of the organizations function and the organization starts growing in areas without return, administration and administration of administration.

The way to make sure this does not happen is to keep organizations small. Create another organization to solve a new problem, do not grow the old one.

Well, this argument is correct. But most of the people using it are really wrong and they don’t always understand the argument itself.

Web applications will, for the foreseeable future, be the most cutting edge and flexible way to develop functionality. They will surpass anything native clients do very soon. This is because cloud computing will make computing a lot more flexible and less reliant on hardware.

But these web apps will only be functionality. User interfaces in the web will lag behind tremendously. With HTML 5 and faster browsers UI’s will become more responsive and more complex. But user interfaces online, just like native app user interfaces, must be disconnected from the functions themselves so that errors or problems do not interfere with the users experience of the application. In other words, if your Internet connection times out the user interface can’t just stop. That would be similar to a Windows 95 blue screen and user would never be able to rely on the applications.

The solution, which is commonly used today, is to separate the user interface from the functions and simply run them asynchronously with user interfaces providing feedback while waiting for the servers to respond. No matter the issue with functions the user interface can keep users in the loop and provide them with the feeling of control.

Why is this different from native apps? It’s not. Native apps on devices such as the iPhone are quite often just interfaces for online services. And as such they are not different from online user interfaces. This is why native apps will not go away. native interfaces will continue to be much more responsive for years to come, providing the user the sense of control we all want from our apps.

“Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don’t take the time to do that.”
– Steve Jobs 1996

Most people I’ve talked to seem to have this conception that design is somehow visual only. Preferably graphical for the game & web business. This is a preconception we really need to change if we’re ever to get mandate to properly design.

And yes, this is the last Jobs quote in a while I promise.

But more importantly they’re highlighted the iPhone OS 4, and renamed it iOS 4. Why rename it?

Well first the iOS is also on the iPad. But I don’t believe that is enough of a reason for the change. The more interesting implication is that the iOS will become a wider device OS that Apple will keep developing hardware for.

Apple TV? Maybe. But be sure that Apple will release information late and that hype will build up.

“The desktop metaphor was invented because … you had to manage your own storage”
– Steve Jobs, 1996

He was right.

The desktop metaphor was great because you had all your files and needed to be able to navigate and store them. Today with standards for different types of data this metaphor is becoming obsolete. Most things can and are stored on the web.

Stored in accounts, used and read by apps that handle those file types.

How much more intuitive will general computing be when people no longer need to handle the management and storage of files?

Stupid sign hides stupid design

I took this picture of a door in my office. It has two handles. The top large green one is for emergencies only, and people have apparently been using it. To solve the problem, a large sign has been taped to the handle bearing the legend:

“Do not use this door handle unless it’s emergency situation”

Problem solved. Anyone can see that there’s something wrong here. But let’s boil it down:

The handle problem

If the handle is not to be used, placing it above the normal handle, making it larger and green is probably a bad idea. In fact, it’s the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to do according to various studies on cognitive processes, visual recognition and psychology. Of course, this design is made for emergencies only and for such is pretty good.

The normal handle below the emergancy handle requires the user to touch a button on the wall first in order to open the door. The additional step of course makes it less useable, but the really interesting design choice here is WHY THE F why in the world one of the handles require a button on the wall and the other does not… The result is the same so there is no difference to the user. Couldn’t the second handle also be used by just, you know, pushing it? And while we’re at it, why not just have one handle from the start? It would be much more cost effective.

The sign problem

The sign is another great feat of design. First of all it obscures the handle. Rendering it useless in an emergency situation. But since the sign is well fastened and laminated with hard plastic you wouldn’t be able to use it even if you knew where it was.

Smart people were involved in every step of this process. But noone looked at the overall intended function, nor the users intended use. Not one. This is why you need designers.

“As individuals, people are inherently good. I have a somewhat more pessimistic view of people in groups.”
- Steve Jobs

Couldn’t agree more Steve, well said.

Update: Read the entire Wired interview with jobs here. It’s from 1996 but Steve is amazingly insightful about the internet of today.

My design is based on a rethinking of what iTunes manages, namely media. But lot’s of different forms of media. In this design of iTunes every media item is considered to be a media bit no matter if it’s a song, an album, an app or a book.

As you can see this design is radically different from the current version of iTunes. I’ve followed Apples recent reductionist standard in design and tried to eliminate everything unnecessary while retaining the purpose of the program.

There are three main areas of interest in this design:

• The top navigation bar which holds filters, search and player controls. Allowing users to easily find what they’re looking for.
• The media view which allows users to browse through media, partly for fun and partly for aimless just looking. It also gives a great overview of what types of media and with modal boxes for more information can give users details if they want.
• The bottom devices dock. This is where media is divided to the available devices as well as start and stop the currently playing list. I’ll explain a bit more about devices below.

The start screen shows you the available devices as well as your favorite and most recently used media bits, this way the user instantly has an overview of where they left off last time.

I’ve considered devices to be anything that has media in it. From left to right:

• The currently playing list displaying the artwork for the currently playing media with a simple play/paus control for the queue. Users access the queue by clicking this icon or just drag and drop media to it to add it to the queue.
• The computer library. WIth home sharing different computers can share with all devices over a home network, I’ve just eliminated the extra fuss by reducing it as far as I’ve been able.
• Peripherals, in this case my iPhone. Used in the same way as computers, playlists and the queue. Drag and drop or click to view contents.
• Playlists, drag and drop media to and from and click to view.

A lot of people use playlists as a way to traverse their media libraries. I have actively made this harder as playlists are a lot more harder to search through as media libraries grow. Instead I’ve focused on search and filtering to allow easy browsing of the library. I have however thought this to be a perfect place for Apples famous horizontal scrollbars should the number of devices increase.

Filters are used to group media bits making it easier to find what you’re looking for in a large library, seach is however crucial since most people tend to grow really large media libraries. Click a filter and all media is displayed as stacks or bits, click one suck stack or bit to see it’s contents and either filter further or search the stack.

The currently playing queue acts as both a queue for media and as the main media player. It’s a simple principle to learn and as all devices work in the same way the user needs never get confused or irritated at features appearing and disappearing depending on context.

Media bits can be freely moved between devices, making sharing and syncing simple and easy to understand.

Each media bit has detailed information available only if the user wants so know more.

The player controls have been moved aside leaving only the large play and pause button on the icon for the currently playing list/device.
I’d love to get some more work done on this project in the future but I think Apple might beat me to it. And I’m excited by the thought of comparing my work with that of Jonathan Ive’s team!

There are a few weak points in this design so far, namely the lack of the iTunes store and the lack of a way to arrange Apps on devices. While I’ve thought about solutions for these and believe that this design can accomodate them I haven’t had the time to sketch it out yet.

Hope you like my work, and if you’re reading this Mr Jobs; yes, I’d love to come work for you.

See higher quality versions of this design at Flickr

Since then Atebits have been purchased by Twitter and Tweetie2 for iPhone has been rebranded and rereleased as the official Twitter app for iPhone.

Well that’s great. But before that happened I was waiting for the OS X update for Tweetie that Atebits had been working on for some time. Twitter might be more interested in the mobile market but I hate to see good design wasted, and I really want to keep using Tweetie on my mac. So please Twitter, release the official Twitter client for OS X, the app formerly known as Tweetie2 for mac.

If you are a developer you can start apps within the SDK but not, as far as I know, apps downloaded from the appstore.

See my previous rant about it here.

It’s all made in Keynote on my 13″ MacBook Pro.

Help us out! Just add #whyItweet to your tweet and explain why you tweet. We’ll be posting more about the project and following up on the results.

We can now officially regard the iPad as a great success, both for Apple and for the Tablet computer.

Update: It’s now official.
Apple said in a press release today that they sold their millionth iPad last Friday, 28 days from platform launch. Less than half the time it took to sell that many iPhones. Anyone still not believing in the iPhone OS? Find out more here

Tempus fugit.

=)

Design is all about focus. What to focus on, what to disregard. There is limited time and no designer has the time to make anything perfect.
Apple is sublime in making the 90% mostly used parts of the user experience near perfect.
Except one thing.

You have an iPod, what do you listen with?
You have an iPhone, what do you listen and make calls from?
Apple’s headset and/or head phones.

In the 2002 article Mind your language,  by Game Developer Ben Cousins, Cousins explains what to focus on to make a successful product. In short: whatever the user spends most time with. Apple is usually great at this but seem to be missing the headsets.

It’s not that the headsets / head phones are bad per se. They just aren’t really good. And the quality is awful, I’m on my 6th pair this year and mad as a hat when the sound goes in one ear.

Apple should really look into making a better headset, ensuring that customers are using headsets with the intended functions.

Let’s define two more: Object and Model.

Any interaction consists of a one or more systems of thought. In cognitive psychology such systems (or representational models of the real world) are called cognitive models.

When we interact with something we use a lot of these models. But the term isn’t fleshed out enough for daily use in interaction design.

An Interaction Object is the entire interaction process with a thing or a process. Using a pair of scissors (holding them correctly, using them to cut and understanding in what way they cut) consists of many cognitive models but only one Interaction Object.
But every process or new function is a new object. A Swiss army knife has as many objects as it has tools.

A Interaction Model is one set of possible interaction methods. Much like the cognitive model a Interaction Model consists of only a single thought process about something. A pair of scissors can be held by the handles, one model. A pair of scissors has cutting surfaces that are sharp, another model. Etc etc.

Using these terms we can discuss interaction design for abstract products such as games and web apps with much greater efficiency.

Example 1: A menu on a web page is an Interaction Object. And if it has more than one or two Interaction Models you’re making it to complicated.

Example 2: A game avatar has several Interaction Objects. To be able to understand them they must have very few Interaction Models.

Example 3: Facebook has a lot of Interaction Objects, but most Objects only has a single Interaction Model. Does this make Facebook easy to use or harder to Grok?

Can you use these terms or are they still to complicated or undefined? Let me know what you think.

“When my son asks me questions like ‘What’s fertilizer?,’ ‘What’s a black hole?,’ ‘Why do supernovas explode?,’ I can answer those questions. Why? Because I have the internet. We learn together.” – Bill Gates 2010

Check out the rest of the Forbes article here.

But let’s make things easier
For most designers working with abstract design the term user interface is crucial. But exactly what is a UI? Sure, it’s the thing the user interacts with. But where does it start and where does it end?

User Interface
Interface is a proxy layer between a human being and a function.

But what does that mean? For a pair of scissors, the scissors themselves are the user interface between a human hand and the function of cutting.

A computer has two layers of user interfaces between the human and most functions. The keyboard/mouse or physical UI, and the graphical or text based abstract UI.

But what if the user interface is a part of the function? The iPhone for instance doesn’t really have a physical UI. There is nothing physical to interact with (excepting the home button, volume and mute controls but lets not digress from the example). But it does have a graphical abstract UI.

Why is this definition important? Because now we can all say user interface and know what we’re referring to. No more wordplay to guess what the other person is talking about.

How to know whats good or bad?
Thankfully, our old friend Cognitive Psychology provides us with the key. Just record a user using your UI (or use it yourself and make notes).

• Every time they try to do something that requires testing or a moments thought counts as negative.
• Every time they do something that doesn’t require thought and was intended counts as a positive.

Every negative counts twice, that’s how humans perceive negative impact.

The higher the score, the better it is.

Of course, this is only generally true, performing 200 actions to change a song on your MP3 player is not a good UI. Even if every step was intuitive.

During work, time with your family, even at parties most of our time seems to be spent not doing the things we want to.

We cant do them all of course. But we could live a bit more.

Why don’t we?
Fear of success: My own worst enemy. The fear of succeeding and adding to the pressure can be daunting. This is why we find errors in our own work, why we focus of details that don’t really matter.

Fear of failure:  The fear of not succeeding can be stifling because we fear the mocking of those around us. This is why we find reasons that projects have to fail. Why we spend a lot of energy on finding reasons or scapegoats to blame tha failure on.

Learning to indentify when and why we’re backing into our comfort zone isn’t enough. When you’ve identified such a situation, your doing something right. This is when you should get going.

Try it, right now. Go do anything that makes you nervous.