Back in June of 2008, I wrote a post detailing a vision I had for Apple tech working with television for enhanced viewing. Well, ABC Television just released the My Generation Sync app for iPad which behaves pretty much how I imagined it. The video does a better job of explaining it than I can: Of technical interest is how the app syncs with the show. It uses the … [Read more...]
Prioritizing Preferece: The Challenge of Managing Design
Managing any initiative is a complex affair - juggling timelines, milestones, and dependencies; managing risks and mitigating factors. The management of design processes gets geometrically more complex when you add the wildcard of personal preference to decision points. Many non-designers are incapable of articulating their reasons for preference-based choices in a way that … [Read more...]
Toward a More Usable City
A B-Cycle kiosk was just installed in front of the John Hancock Center in Chicago. It's good to see bike sharing make its way to this side of the Atlantic. I've already seen bikes being rented from the kiosk. I think the fact that the bike can be grabbed from a kiosk is critical to the success of the program. If people were forced to go into an office, fill out paperwork, … [Read more...]
When You Assume…
Recently, there was a post over at DiscoBlog on the Discover Magazine site that mentioned a study that claims that women who wax have better sex. It reminded me how quickly we can be led astray by settling on the first assumption. At first blush, one would assume that if you are a woman and you want to have better sex, wax. Reading the comments on the post showed me that the … [Read more...]
Objects Could Help Design Themselves
Expanding on the previous posts, it's clear that the objects and gadgets (and spimes) we interact with understand a great deal about their current context and record a great deal about the way we use them. These facts present specific design challenges. Designing for Context First: As objects become increasingly aware of the context in which they are used, they can help … [Read more...]
Our Objects Are Listening
In the last post, I mentioned that our objects are listening to us. Much of this is done in the name of providing a better experience - if an object can adjust to the way in which you interact with it, it should be able to anticipate some of your future requirements or actions. In doing so, these objects gather quite a bit of data about us. Objects are gathering data about … [Read more...]
Shaping Things: Helping objects help us
I'm currently reading Shaping Things, by Bruce Sterling. It's a brilliant essay examining the relationships humans have with objects. Specifically, it looks at the way designers interact with objects and how what it means to be an object and a designer are changing. The reason I'm writing about it here is that there is a fundamental shift not just in the way we experience … [Read more...]
Evernote for iOS 4
I love my iPhone. I love Evernote. Being an early adopter by nature and a member of the iPhone dev program, I jumped at the chance to install iPhone OS 4 betas on my phone. The downside was that Evernote didn't work and, for me, that's a big downside. I've been holding my breath for them to update the app to work with the new OS and I am finally able to exhale today. If … [Read more...]
Eee-liminate the Negative?
Master Marketer (or, so he tells us), Seth Godin, put a piece on his blog today about the downside of dwelling on criticism. I completely agree that you don't want to spend the majority of your time stewing on harsh comments that undermine progress and your sense of self-worth. However, criticism does serve an important purpose: it makes you aware of perceptions and opinions … [Read more...]
Weekly Wordle: The News
This image was created at Wordle.net using today's edition of CNN.com as the source. … [Read more...]
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