Just as Microsoft seems at last to be struggling out from under the weight of it’s own mediocrity, and is finally, albeit under palpable threats to it’s survival, starting to put usability and desirability at the forefront, Google appears, in turn, to be reaching that tottering, preponderant level of product-portfolio obesity where corporate arrogance begins to seriously outweigh business sense. (more…)
Archive for the ‘Interaction Design’ Category
Is Google the new Microsoft?
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010Is interaction design finally going mainstream? ;-)
Monday, February 15th, 2010
For many years, north america’s hi-tech behemoths have had a tendency to favor engineering over design, leaving the art of creating products that are at once useful and desirable to the likes of Apple. Now, finally, the era of mainstream interaction design is upon us, or at least, that’s the impression I’m getting as 2010 gets underway, particularly after watching today’s launch announcement from Steve Ballmer regarding Microsoft’s latest refresh of their mobile platform.
Windows Phone 7 is a major clean-up, but it had to be. Apple has rightly poured scorn on Microsoft’s previous design mis-fires and Redmond was heading for redundancy in the mobile space. Design-wise, the Zune player was a step in the right direction, but is an irrelevant product in a market that has already been lost. Mobile is a far deeper space, and one in which the race is still open – certainly for a number 2 or 3 slot. (more…)
“In The Bubble: Designing in a Complex World” by John Thackara
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
Happy New Year!
We took a couple of week’s holiday over the new year, and I finally had the time to sit down with John Thackara’s profound, although somewhat disturbing, book “Designing in a Complex World” and give it the attention it deserves (much to the consternation of my 2-year old daughter, Rosie).
Thackara, design guru and consultant extraordinaire, runs the “Doors of Perception” series of conferences (and blog, linked to by this site) amongst a great many other things. His range of experience is incredibly broad, and this is reflected in the book, which explores topics including (but not limited to) manufacturing, architecture and social media, but nevertheless carries with it a couple of predominant themes – that of ‘human-centeredness’, and that of ‘lightness’. (more…)
Interaction design could (should?) rule the future of news.
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
Although I continue to subscribe to The Economist, it’s an exception that essentially lives in the bathroom; in general I read all my news online. If The Economist online service was a little less awful, and there was a convenient handheld reader with a large, color screen, I would certainly switch to that. (more…)
Why non-designers should not design products
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
OK, so that’s not really a fair title. I have no idea if the idiot(s) that coagulated (to call it ‘design’ would be an insult to designers) this laughable disaster are professional industrial designers or not, but I seriously doubt it. However, it’s a case-example of how-not-to-design-a-product, and the mentality that thinks that adding more features, and thus complexity, to a device will automatically improve it is not the mentality of a designer.
In fact, I have done a little research. The inventor of the ‘OOMouse‘, which is apparently the product of having gained access to “the data gathered from more than 600 million actual mouse and keystroke commands enacted by users”, claims to be a game designer. One must assume that he was very good at game design, and made loads of money, for it is hard to see who else would bankroll the development of this monstrosity. (more…)
Google Wave invites
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
I’m currently testing Google Wave and I have to say it’s a lot of fun!
I have a few invites left, and am prepared to offer them to readers who pop over to the contact form and send me a request with an email address. First come, first served! Oh, and if it seems lonely, try entering “with:public” into the search box, and watch the entire wave world update!! (thanks Kim)
Writing useful requirements
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
I’ve been researching and writing software product requirements for over a decade. Through sometimes costly trial-and-error, I’ve learned that writing useful requirements of any kind is extremely difficult. Frankly, anyone who tells you otherwise needs a good clonk on the head – and should immediately be isolated far, far away from the product team.
Good requirements are one of the biggest success factors for a product development project. Take the time, get them right, and everyone involved knows what the goals are, knows what the product should be, and who it’s for. Get them wrong, you fail to articulate the product clearly, and each member of the product team will ultimately follow his or her own agenda, more often than not designing and developing whatever is most interesting to them at the time.
Microcopy – little comments that make a huge difference
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009
I’ve just discovered a very good article over on Bokardo (via User Experience And Design) about “Microcopy”, which is all those little comments and hints that get scattered around a user-interface, and how critical it is to creating a rewarding and trouble-free user-experience.
This whole issue connects with some of the ideas that Donald Norman explores in “Emotional Design” http://iforma.ca/main/?p=75; that our relationships with complex objects are in an unconscious way relationships with entities, and so unless we are treated with consideration and even a degree of politeness, we experience such products’ dumb intransigence as rudeness, which makes us frustrated.
The article, by Joshua Porter, is well worth the read. Go check it out here: http://bokardo.com/archives/writing-microcopy/.
The Concept of Play
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
I’m more often than not contracted to work on software tools projects, where the software product under development must address a specific set of business or work objectives for it’s target user.
However, I think it’s clear that many of the basic methodologies of interaction design (ethnographic research, goal-directed method, holistic iterative product process, etc.) apply equally well to recreational activities, so it’s especially pleasing to see work done in this area.
One example I’ve recently encountered is from respected IxD practitioners DDO, who have published a ‘concept model’ of play on their website. Their model develops the idea of play as a conversation between two people, but I think the model serves eaually well to demonstrate the expectations a player has when (for example) interacting with an NPC (non-player character) in a videogame, or indeed, any recreational digital product.
You can find their concept model and accompanying notes here – http://www.dubberly.com/concept-maps/a-model-of-play.html
29GPS iPhone Apps
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
I’ve just come across this great series of iPhone apps by the 29HD Network. Clean, sexy visuals and simple, tidy user-interaction make what are basically advertising vehicles into very entertaining coffee-table or bar diversions. Well worth the 10 seconds it takes to download them – http://www.29gps.com/