Spinnaker Studio Mobile Development

Ageless Beauty Index

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 20:13:14 +0000

This iPhone app is a consumer guide to ingredients in cosmetics. It is designed to allow customers to quickly look up ingredients from the back of the beauty product containers as they are shopping. The app delivers essential information on what works, what doesn’t, which ingredients are safe, and which should be avoided. Customers can look up specific ingredients or conditions. The app also includes a glossary of terms and daily alerts for new deals.

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Mindgames at Toys’R'Us

admin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:20:35 +0000

In what appears to be an attempt to speed up the lagging evolution by weeding out the slow-brained, Toys’R’Us store in Redwood City, CA put this sign on its automatic sliding glass entrance door. David graciously took this photo for me as my camera was showing no signs of life.

Entrance Only sign at Toys'R'Us

What a fine example of a GUI twilight zone! Expertly blending the internationally recognized STOP/DO NOT ENTER icon design pattern with, essentially, an invitation to enter the store, Toys’R’Us caused my brain gasping for air while trying to reconcile the two. When we approached the glass door, the first reaction was, obviously, to not enter. After all, we all know what a red circle with a white brick across means. In any language and in any country. So, I started towards the other set of sliding doors. Turned out they had a similar (except yellow with a black brick) sign that said “Exit Only”. Which caused me to re-examine the original red sign and this time to actually read the words. Cautiously, we approached the door, still not completely sure if this was, in fact, the entrance (only). It was – the doors slid open.

Fascinating. Being a designer, I come across usability issues on the web all the time. I am used to it. But even in the virtual world, I rarely see something so disconcerting for the brain! When a person going through a sequence of actions on the web, an unclear next step makes a difference between a happy user (bought product, signed up for service, etc.) and an unhappy user (left the website unable to accomplish the goal). If I faced a similar navigational problem on a website, I would have abandoned it and looked for what I needed elsewhere. But in the brick-and-mortar world, we already drove to Redwood City, dealt with the weekend shopping traffic, found a precious parking spot… We weren’t going to leave so easily.

One is left to wonder what made the store managers decide to slap this sign on the door instead of a plain and simple “Entrance”. What bizarre occurrence or faulty logic led to this decision?…

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-06-11

admin — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 01:00:00 +0000

from the trenches: http://live.gdgt.com/2010/06/07/live-wwdc-2010-keynote-coverage/ #

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

emarks — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 22:40:03 +0000

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:

Lavender Concept Phone - Andrew Kim

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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Enter iPhone 4

emarks — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 06:03:12 +0000

In the WWDC keynote, Steve Jobs started with the iPad, but the new iPhone 4 stole the show: http://live.gdgt.com/2010/06/07/live-wwdc-2010-keynote-coverage/#11-45-55-am

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from the trenches: http://liv…

admin — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 17:59:57 +0000

from the trenches: http://live.gdgt.com/2010/06/07/live-wwdc-2010-keynote-coverage/

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Gmail keeps getting smarter

admin — Fri, 07 May 2010 04:50:58 +0000

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.

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My Balance

admin — Mon, 03 May 2010 20:35:59 +0000

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.

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Designers Needed

admin — Sat, 01 May 2010 23:15:29 +0000

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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MusiDash

admin — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 05:13:26 +0000

MusiDash is the perfect travel companion for music lovers. Its amazing graphics mimic a car dashboard while the app’s easy navigation lets users access their music library for favorite cruising tunes. Change displays, shuffle albums or keep track of the time, your battery level and cell signal – it’s all here in MusiDash. Click “…More” to learn why you should download this App today!

You know how hard it is to call up music from your iPod library while you’re driving. The buttons are so small, it’s nearly impossible to read them without causing an accident while behind the wheel. If only someone would develop an app with large, readable buttons that would make it easy to find your favorite music while in the car! Well, MusiDash has done just that.

MusiDash is a multi-utility app that works for your car or home. The MusiDash application has awesome graphics that look just like a car’s analogue clock with sub dials. This little beauty is going to fit right in with your dashboard, whether you go with a portrait or landscape layout. You can even change the backlight color to match your car’s interior or let MusiDash handle the lighting by switching between daytime and nighttime modes automatically.

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