Interface Design Blog: the good, the bad, and the utterly unusable...
Gmail keeps getting smarter
Posted on | May 6, 2010 | 1 Comment
I love Gmail. I love that it keeps all my emails INDEFINITELY. I love that I can find any email from 5 years ago just by typing in a keyword. I especially love that all these features allow me, a dumb forgetful attention-challenged user, to not bother with folders.
My love suffered a minor blow a few months ago with Gmail introduced Buzz. Much is said about Buzz, most people I polled don’t use it and generally find it annoying, even if mildly so. So that was a bit cooling. For a moment there I wondered where Gmail was headed.
But today my love has been re-ignited in a major way: Gmail is even smarter that I suspected! I wrote in my email that I am attaching a file, then wrote a few more paragraphs, forgot all about the file, and clicked “Send”. And this is what I saw:
Gmail detects the words 'attachment', 'attaching' in your emails and warns you if you forgot to add the attachment
I am truly impressed by this. It’s a great example of a system helping the user where it matters – safeguarding us where our fickle human memory fails.
My Balance
Posted on | May 3, 2010 | No Comments
My Balance mobile app for iPhone and iPod Touch was designed, as the name suggests, to allow people to keep track of their daily life balance.
The goal was to design an interface that did not customers to enter any numeric values. The interface is intentionally simplistic: categories measuring one’s balance of life are grouped into 3 sections: Nutrition, Fitness, and Lifestyle. Users can see their daily change throughout the day and make adjustments as necessary. Users can also look up their historical daily balances to keep a tab on their trends.
Upcoming features may include analytical features to give users better feedback on their progress, as well as ability to share results with friends.
The app was developed by Maksim Pugach and Paul Zabelin.
Designers Needed
Posted on | May 1, 2010 | No Comments
I went to the first TEDx at Berkeley last weekend. It was an exciting and well organized event, very “Berkeley” in spirit, as my former coworker at Life360 (a Berkeley Incubator startup), and a Berkeley graduate, described it. The event brought people of various disciplines together, but the underlying theme that united all speakers was ‘Doing the unprecedented’. Speakers ranged from underwater photography guru Eric Cheng (www.wetpixel.com) to UC Berkley Men’s Octet… Very fun.
One talk that stood out for myself was Fred Dust’s (Partner at IDEO) discussion titled “Designers Needed”. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the presentation anywhere online to repost, but the idea was simple: much design improvement can be done in all areas of our lives, and there aren’t enough designers to take on these jobs. Solution: by applying a few most important design principles, anyone can make good design decisions.
I cannot agree more.
Many developers and early stage entrepreneurs, given the lack of funding, take the first stab at design of their websites and apps. Later on, they often bring in professional designers who end up taking apart V1 and redoing everything entirely. A lot of time and money could be saved by applying a few basic principles of good design at the beginning. Putting effort into understanding what drives your users, practicing empathy for your company’s customers really pays off in the end.