Oldie but oh-so-goodie – Lavender Concept Phone Design

Posted on | June 9, 2010 | No Comments

I had been spoiled designing for iPhone and some of the nicer Android mobile phones, but recently I had to do a few projects on simpler, smaller, much less elegant devices running J2ME.  It got me thinkig of that thin line that separates the beautiful, slick devices from the ones that lack the ‘wow’ factor completely and would be only bought based on their discounted pricing.

Being a designer myself, I would definitely pay the premium (within reason) for a mobile phone, just to have that feeling every time I pull it out of my bag or pocket that I am holding a highly functional and usable yet beautiful product, a culmination of hard work and talent on behalf of both engineers and designers.

I looked again at the concept Lavender phone from a young designer named Andrew Kim that made a splash some time ago:

Clearly, the perfume functionality is very questionable, and functionality is not worked out in detail, but I just love the overall feeling of completeness of this phone.  Unlike many phones on the market, it boasts a beautiful cohesive design, where everything is just where it should be.  Though, of course, it is much easier to achieve the cohesiveness in concept products than in production models.

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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.

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Playdate with iPad

Posted on | April 8, 2010 | No Comments

I finally made it over to the Apple Store today to play with the iPad.  While handling it, like most other devices that come out of Apple, is pure pleasure, I still won’t buy it.  Here is why:

1) I don’t spend a lot of time traveling on planes and trains
2) I don’t have young children
3) I am not much into games
4) I already have a small laptop and an iPhone.

If you don’t see yourself in any of the use cases listed above, then you are better off saving your hard-earned $500.

San Francisco Apple store has 2 large tables with 10 iPads on each. Most people start by checking the utility/productivity features (Address Book, Email) and then quickly move onto video, books, movies and games.  Especially movies and games.

Frankly, I am a bit puzzled by this device.  It’s not a replacement for a laptop, nor for your iPhone or even your iPod (too big to drag around).  It’s sort of… in between.  The problem is, unless you are sitting on a plane, you probably don’t need an in-between solution.  It lacks important features like a camera, for example.  It’s not very good for doing a lot of typing (better than on iPhone but still awkward and not nearly as good as using a physical keyboard).  It doesn’t tilt up.  The list goes on.

It didn’t help that I got stuck while using a keyboard on iPad.  iPhone conveniently highlights the main action button once you start typing. As a normal lazy person who doesn’t want to think much, I now learned to trust iPhone to let me know what I need to tap to enter the text or prompt the most likely next action.  iPad doesn’t highlight the most likely to tap button – and it took me a few hits on ‘delete’ button (back arrow with x), the closest and brightest one, before I found “Go”.  Hmmm…

That said, I do think that this device will be a  hit with preschoolers and elementary-middle school children.  It makes sense to them. It can make reading interactive, it can make education more fun.  “Poking” the screen and using gestures is natural for kids, and for that, if I was a parent, I would have gotten an iPad.

I am already being asked to re-design existing apps for iPad, and I encourage my clients to really think whether their iPhone apps will get any use on an iPad.  Upon some reflection, the answer is often ‘No’, or ‘Not yet’ for utility, productivity, and many lifestyle apps.

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Google Search and OXO Grip

Posted on | April 7, 2010 | No Comments

Much of the discussion on the CHI-KIDS LinkedIn group has been about how kids search for things on the web.  Within the group, rumors have surfaced that there is a special lab at Google that is working on developing better ways to search.  I designed multiple web and mobile educational apps for children and have some familiarity with this user group, so that got me intrigued, and I did some of my own digging.

A NYT article from December 2009 summarizes Google’s latest findings:

- Pre-teen kids are not well-versed with multi-step keyword searches.  Given a task to find out, say, when Lincoln was born, they would often try to type in the entire question into the search box
- Related searches seem to resonate with kids very well (makes perfect sense since it provides a degree of interactive guidance to the kids who have harder time resolving a situation when they are stuck)
- Visual search (both images and videos) is much more effective and intuitive for kids.  Interestingly, since “Bing used more imagery than other search engines, it attracted more children. Microsoft says Bing’s audience of 2- to 17-year-olds has grown 76 percent since May”.
- Kids are likely to benefit greatly from good voice-enabled search solutions

While the results of these studies are certainly useful, they are not really revolutionary by themselves – at least for anyone who worked on apps for kids (or simply has kids). It makes sense that kids are looking for visually informative, intuitive ways to communicate with search engines in a human way.

What I thought was more interesting is that Google is seemingly not working on any specialized solution for kids. Instead, Google recognized that what kids want is, to some extent, what everyone wants.  Kids naturally follow the most intuitive, straightforward and “human” interaction patterns, such as asking a question when they need information.  Of course, then we grow up and learn all those synthetic keyword search strategies and other tricks – in other words, we give up our natural way of doing things in order to communicate with computers.  But once technology catches up, we are happy to go back to our natural ways for a superior user experience, given such option. Google smartly recognized that creating a search experience that would work for kids would also work for adults.

Roll the tape back to the late 80s.  The founder of a small housewares company observed that elderly people with diminished dexterity due to arthritis and other progressive issues had troubles gripping narrow sleek handles of kitchen utensils.  Sam Farber developed his line of OXO Grip kitchenwares with thick, non-slip, rubbery handles specifically for the aging segment of the market, but as soon as the product went to market, it became a hit with everyone – not just the elderly!  Everyone recognized a superior, more usable product – even people that could manage the thin handles with no pain preferred the comfortable, secure feel of a thick, rubbery (yet stylish) one.

These are just 2 examples from 2 very different industries.  Often people that are  in charge of designing products (or interfaces) have learned the rules of the game way too well for their own good.  It’s hard to get out of that mental shell and look for really intuitive, natural patterns.  Looking to the ‘bookend’ user groups, such as children, or elderly people, or perhaps another user group that falls out of the mainstream for clues can be quite enlightening.  Designing for marginal groups may often result in a better solution for all.

For now, we do know that Google has already extended the length of its search field which can accommodate longer queries and questions.  What’s next?

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