Recently i took a trip to Prague. During the flight the captain bombarded the passengers with information about altitudes, temperatures and wind speeds. Why do we need to know that the temperature outside is -38 degrees? oh yes, so we don't forget our coats when exiting the aircraft at 37000ft.
Meanwhile once landed i spent the first 10 minutes in prague airport looking for a clock. Why? Well i didn't really know what timezone the Czech Republic was in. It would have been a far more pleasant experience if the captain had just said "Welcome to Prague. The Czech Republic is in the same time zone as Sweden, so there is no need to change your watches........" That would cover the needs of most passengers.
It just shows....interaction design principles can be applied in all areas of life.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Grey clouds please rain on me
For those that do not know the future is all in the cloud. So what does this mean. The idea is simple. All your digital content (music, videos, photos, word documents, pdfs, psds.....everything) in one place, on a web server. So why do this? The easiest answer is convenience. There was a time when we thought our devices would all converge into one super device. One device which is our computer, phone, games system, media station etc. The reality is that convergence is DEAD!!!!
In our highly mobile society we have different needs depending on the task we are performing. These needs heavily influence the size of the device. For example a business person fine tuning a presentation might want the luxury of a 15 inch screen to view material. When s/he goes for a run they might want a small music player. So why converge into one device? Doing the presentation on a small mp3 size screen isn't suited to the task and running with a 15inch screen strapped to your arm is not really going to improve your personal best. So i repeat, Convergence is DEAD!
The future is Divergence, many devices! and that is where the cloud needs to come in. Why should my mp3 player store a copy of my music collection, my laptop store another copy of my music collection and my media TV store yet another exact copy of my music collection? I then have 3 copies of my music collection to maintain. The cloud can allow me to have just one music collection that all my devices can access via a high speed data connection.....Clever huh?.....
Well yes, but there are obviously challenges to overcome. Now i don't want to go into privacy and security issues of storing all your content on the web. I want to to accelerate the death of another technology that is holding back the progression of this use of the cloud.....SYNCHRONISATION. Yes back to this idea of having multiple copies of the same thing on all your devices. Some people think this is great because you don't have the privacy/security issues of storing on the web. However the simple fact is that synchronisation just cannot provide the same experience because devices are limited by the amount of data they can store. Consider this, I have a macbook with 120GB hardisk, an Ipod with a 32GB hardisk and a mobile phone with a 4GB memory card. Simple physics dictates that i cannot keep these in perfect sync. The data on my macbook will not fit on my ipod, and the data on my ipod will not fit on my phone. Therefore it is quite common for me to get angry when i want to show a friend a cool music video on my ipod, and realise that it didn't fit on the device and it is instead on my macbook at home. This would work if all devices had the same hardisk space...but that is just never going to happen.
So let us all dress up in funny clothes and do a little rain dance. We need clouds!
In our highly mobile society we have different needs depending on the task we are performing. These needs heavily influence the size of the device. For example a business person fine tuning a presentation might want the luxury of a 15 inch screen to view material. When s/he goes for a run they might want a small music player. So why converge into one device? Doing the presentation on a small mp3 size screen isn't suited to the task and running with a 15inch screen strapped to your arm is not really going to improve your personal best. So i repeat, Convergence is DEAD!
The future is Divergence, many devices! and that is where the cloud needs to come in. Why should my mp3 player store a copy of my music collection, my laptop store another copy of my music collection and my media TV store yet another exact copy of my music collection? I then have 3 copies of my music collection to maintain. The cloud can allow me to have just one music collection that all my devices can access via a high speed data connection.....Clever huh?.....
Well yes, but there are obviously challenges to overcome. Now i don't want to go into privacy and security issues of storing all your content on the web. I want to to accelerate the death of another technology that is holding back the progression of this use of the cloud.....SYNCHRONISATION. Yes back to this idea of having multiple copies of the same thing on all your devices. Some people think this is great because you don't have the privacy/security issues of storing on the web. However the simple fact is that synchronisation just cannot provide the same experience because devices are limited by the amount of data they can store. Consider this, I have a macbook with 120GB hardisk, an Ipod with a 32GB hardisk and a mobile phone with a 4GB memory card. Simple physics dictates that i cannot keep these in perfect sync. The data on my macbook will not fit on my ipod, and the data on my ipod will not fit on my phone. Therefore it is quite common for me to get angry when i want to show a friend a cool music video on my ipod, and realise that it didn't fit on the device and it is instead on my macbook at home. This would work if all devices had the same hardisk space...but that is just never going to happen.
So let us all dress up in funny clothes and do a little rain dance. We need clouds!
Monday, March 8, 2010
Curious displays
Back with a dose of inspiration for you. Check out this interesting concept on curious displays. I find the opening part where nothing is playing actually quite hypnotic and entertaining. I am really enjoying the exploration of movie viewing that moves around your living space according to the motion in the film.I am not to sure about the reminders to pick up dirty underwear though! Thanks to Magnus 4 for sending the link to this one.
Curious Displays from Julia Tsao on Vimeo.
Curious Displays from Julia Tsao on Vimeo.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Sinister people will one day rule
This one is less about design inspiration and more a rant. Recently i have heard a lot of poor design ideas being justified with the phrase:- "It is designed for right handed use because there are more right handed people in the world".
Now i am goofy, southpaw, cack handed or whatever mildy offensive term you want to use to describe a lefty. However this is not why i get annoyed. I get annoyed by the ridiculous idea that even though a person has 2 hands, they only use 1. Granted there are a few things you only do with your dominant hand. These are tasks that require great precision, for example writing. However for non precision tasks i argue that we are all lefties (and all righties).
Consider the following example
You are a righty. You are travelling on a very busy commuter bus and didn't get a seat. You are holding the only hand rail you can gain access to and you can only reach it with your right hand. Your mobile phone rings. The design team at Nokia have designed the device for right handed people (because their are more of them in the world). What do you do? 2 options: Let go of the handrail (and potentially lose your balance and fall) or answer the call with your left hand (with difficulty because it was designed for right handed use).
Now there are hundreds of situations like this in life and they are not uncommon occurances. If you are a designer reading this I urge you to think about how you use your own products. Do you always use them with your dominate hand? or do you actually switch them between hands depending on context. I argue that you use your non dominant hand more than you realize and that modern men and women in many cases are actually lefties and righties. By not realizing this and designing just for the righties you are not just failing the lefties of the world you are actually also failing the righties.
Just to point out some irony in this...creative industries have an unusually high percentage of lefties compared to other industries.
Oh, and the word sinister comes from the latin word sinistra, which means left. Hence the title.
Now i am goofy, southpaw, cack handed or whatever mildy offensive term you want to use to describe a lefty. However this is not why i get annoyed. I get annoyed by the ridiculous idea that even though a person has 2 hands, they only use 1. Granted there are a few things you only do with your dominant hand. These are tasks that require great precision, for example writing. However for non precision tasks i argue that we are all lefties (and all righties).
Consider the following example
You are a righty. You are travelling on a very busy commuter bus and didn't get a seat. You are holding the only hand rail you can gain access to and you can only reach it with your right hand. Your mobile phone rings. The design team at Nokia have designed the device for right handed people (because their are more of them in the world). What do you do? 2 options: Let go of the handrail (and potentially lose your balance and fall) or answer the call with your left hand (with difficulty because it was designed for right handed use).
Now there are hundreds of situations like this in life and they are not uncommon occurances. If you are a designer reading this I urge you to think about how you use your own products. Do you always use them with your dominate hand? or do you actually switch them between hands depending on context. I argue that you use your non dominant hand more than you realize and that modern men and women in many cases are actually lefties and righties. By not realizing this and designing just for the righties you are not just failing the lefties of the world you are actually also failing the righties.
Just to point out some irony in this...creative industries have an unusually high percentage of lefties compared to other industries.
Oh, and the word sinister comes from the latin word sinistra, which means left. Hence the title.
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