The QWERTY keyboard seems to be making its way to living room remotes these days. I would assume the two needs driving this are "TV apps" and the increasing challenge of finding content on these systems.

The push for TV manufacturers to provide web connected application/widget platforms has made text input a barrier to entry (app authentication etc). The rush is probably driven more by a desire for feature parity from consumer electronics companies than actual customer needs. If you have spent time with these widget platforms, they tend to be lackluster, something akin to a dumbed down mobile app. Forcing mobile interaction models into the 10 foot experience is like forcing a square peg into a round hole. Sure you can hammer it in there with a remote that looks like a phone (at least they have familiarity going for them), but is it really the right place to start when pushing the connected living room forward?

The other reason that these keyboards are cropping up is simply for reasons of findability. Things like Boxee bring the fire hose of web content to the living-room and there has to be a way to cut through to what you want without drilling down through levels of hierarchy and long scrolling lists. Anyone who has tried to type out a movie name with a D-pad like the one on AppleTV knows it s a total pain in the ass. What happened to sitting back and vegging out? Are the days of passive lazy consumption over?

While it makes practical sense to bring QWERTY to the all of the boxes sitting in your living room I can't help but feel like its a bit of a short-term bandaid. Technology like voice recognition and gestural interfaces will eventually burry the remote control as we know it. Will the slide out keyboard remote be its last incarnation? Make these remotes any more robust and it just starts looking like a damn iPod Touch... then from a customer perspective you have to wonder why it needs to exist at all?

Big win for my personal informatics quiver. I didnt even know it, but with Google Latitude enabled on my Motorola Droid and location history enabled on the Latitude site, I now have set and forget location tracking using Google's latitude apps. I enabled it last night and when I got to work this AM I check my latitude history and it appears my droid had been quietly phoning home while I trundled into the office through the Western Addition and Tenderloin (see above image). I didn't press record, I didn't hit go. It just did it. A+. Those of you grounded firmer in reality than I am may ask how the hell this is useful at all. Its not exactly useful yet. It matters to me because looking at our lives through the lense of data and tracked behavior is going to become more useful and powerful in the next few years. There is an interesting group of folks that meet under the guise of "The Quantified Self" and get together around the states to talk about this stuff. But the main reason I have switched on latitude is so that I can have a nice stockpile of data when the analysis and aggregation tools start to arrive on the seen.

Currently I track...

• Personal finance using Mint.com
• Productivity / software usage with RescueTime.com
• Listening habits with Last.fm
• Travel with Dopplr.com
• Now location with Google Latitude
• And soon, sleep and fitness with FitBit

"The fastest way to improve your interface is to improve your copy-writing." -Bokardo

One of my favorite web folks, Bokardo, has been talking about microcopy lately and even started a flickr goup for it. He has a post about Writing Microcopy which is a great place to start on the topic. In addition he has posted some interesting test results at A/Btests, some of which relate to microcopy. Microcopy highlights an interesting intersection of interaction design and content strategy. Small tweaks to copy can make a BIG difference. So who owns it? Paraphrasing Halverson - Who cares, get it DONE!

1) The design presents itself as if there are two separate feeds, a live feed and a news feed. This is reinforced through their awkward navigation-like treatment of the functionality. The truth is there is ONE feed with different filters to apply. Those filters are lists, networks, locations, apps etc... You know, all the stuff in that big left column.

2) There is an over focus on realtime. I can't believe they included an unread count for the live feed. Its probably there to get people to discover the feature and hang around longer. If people do discover and use the feature they are exposed to unfiltered information, a lot of which I find completely useless. Not exactly something new, and not helping solve the information overload problem. Is a raw unfiltered list of stuff really a new feature these days? Do I need an unread count for my Facebook news?

I would love to have been a fly on the wall for some of the design conversations that led to this. I thought facebook had a big filtering win with their last major re-design. The addition of lists, the ability to change the default filter on the homepage and the other application and network filters in that left bar were fantastic enhancements. So what happened here?

I sketched up a few other ways they could have gone...

"Live feed" as a filter

They introduced this powerful left-hand filter column last re-design... why not just make the live feed part of that? Certainly more elegant than adding another layer of clunky navigation on top of the news feed. The only logical reason to not do this is that they may want you to view other filters (lists, networks, geos etc) as both live or highlights in the future. So why did they not include the live option for all the filters? Why can't I see my TBG list bellow as both live and highlights? I would wager because it would take A LOT of computing power and other difficult tech. Understandable, but it sure would be nice.

"Live" as a persistent option

Computing power be damned, lets pretend. Lets also try something a bit more usable and clear. If you use the new feature you will notice the navigation items swap places and become headers for the news feed when clicked on, tisk tisk. Here is a quick n' dirty sketch of what it could look like if you were able to see all filters as either live or highlights. Even though this probably wasn't an option, I think it underlines the problem with the language they have chosen. News Feed and Live Feed imply two separate feeds... when in reality you are seeing either highlights or live updates of one activity stream. At least that is the mental model / agenda I am arguing for. All in all this approach is too busy. I really liked the simplicity of the filters on the left and a clean header. Although I am sure there is a more elegant solution in there.

My gut says the way they implemented this feature is going to feel confusing and not so useful to users. I think what Facebook chose not to include in the news feed was part of its charm. Giving the user the ability to see more information is not a bad thing, but getting there is not an A/B, black and white thing. Right now the faucet is either open all the way or at a trickle. Its the smart multi-levels of filtering, refinement and nuance that are missing. It doesn't feel like the same level of polish was applied to this as was to the lefthand filters.

The key to the realtime web is filtering and I like what Facebook did last redesign around it. But here, Facebook has backpedaled a bit and given its users the key to wide open faucet, again. Im being a bit hard on them yes, but these issues around filtration and pulling value out of activity streams are the problems to solve in 2010 for the realtime web. I was expecting more from one of the leaders in the domain, and hope they have some better thought out moves up their sleeve, or perhaps this a transitional interface to something new.

My comment:

I think part of the issue is focusing too much on the differences between advertising strategy and digital strategy or any other subset... I think this discussion should shift its focus to the overarching customer experience, not digital vs ad. By that I mean the sum off all experiences a person has with a brand. These different experiences manifest as "touchpoints." Touchpoints can be advertisements, physical stores, digital services, products etc. When brands are at their best their touch points are well orchestrated. By that I mean two things....

1) Their is continuity of experience between each touchpoint. You feel the presence of the brand viscerally and behaviorally from touch point to touchpoint as if you are in the same "place."

2) Their is harmony between the experiences at each touchpoint. In other words, the sum of all the touchpoints adds up to something more important to the customer than the experience at a single touchpoint.

I think orchestrating the harmony and continuity of customer experiences falls in the hand of a strategist of some sorts. The presence of "digital" in our lives has magnified this need for orchestration. We are interacting with brands at so many different levels and mediums these days. But the second we stop paying attention to the advertising touch points or customer service touch points, or any "digital" touchpoints we screw ourselves as a strategist.

Most of this thinking rubbed off on me from a certain school of people that tend to talk a lot about "DESIGN" ... so I offer up another HOT job title of late, just to perpetuate the semantic soupiness...

Design Strategist (because what does "digital" really mean these days?)

• 7 mentions Epicurious.com
• 3 mentions 101cookbooks.com/
• 2 mentions Foodnetwork.com
• 2 mentions Smittenkitchen.com/
• Realsimple.com/food-recipes/
• Foodandwine.com/recipes/
• Napastyle.com/recipe
• Doriegreenspan.com/recipes.html
• Lidiasitaly.com/
• Tastespotting.com/
• Thekitchensinkrecipes.com/
• Bbonappetit.com/dishes
• Cooksillustrated.com/recipes/

Thanks guys!

Peter Merholz has an interesting post over at HarvardBusiness.org about his framework for building customer experiences. I also found the framework valuable articulation of how to approach evaluating a potential clients situation in a new business situation. When dealing with big organizations with multiple touch points, multiple initiatives etc it can often get tough to see where everything sits clearly. I think this is a nice framework for a quick evaluation. Give the article a read to find out the specifics of what he means by systems, procedures, touchpoint, interactions and experiences.

Wed - Day 1

Arrived on a late-ish flight and got dropped at our hotel, Place D'armes. This hotel turned out to be fantastic for its moderate price. After getting used to SoHo rates and rooms for work trips I dropped a solid "SAY WHAAAT!?" when I walked in the room for the first time. Place D'armes is located in old Montreal. Because of our late arrival we hustled to un-pack and headed straight off to the first night of Mutek's "Nocturnes." The venue was a place called SAT and man was it cool. It was a large warehouse space split up between a main stage room and a loungey area peppered with installations. Top that off with nice sound, unique lighting plus huge projections everywhere and you've got a solid venue. Heres a shot of my friend Bryan and I messing around with an installation that looked like it was sponsored by Target. Fun..

First up on the main stage was Zombie Zombie who I had never heard before. They where a live two piece electronic band with one of the dudes on a drum set who also specialized in crazy yelping. Definitely channeling the frontman of suicide. This is easy to ruin, but he pulled it off. The music was something like jammy psychadelic electro with a serious injection of italo vibes and sensibilities. Hard to explain. Next up was the headliner for the night Palooski. He played a fantastic selection of disco-ish crowd pleasing edits and tracks that had us dancing our asses off. Somewhat of a welcome anomaly amongst the minimal and experiment music that would make up the majority of the rest of the festival. Check out the dirty edits compilations that Palooski is involved in if you are curious. I wish we had more DJs like him in SF.

Thurs - Day 2

Woke up and made the classic tourist mistake of letting our stomaches guide us to the nearest Americanized brunch, which of course was a total failure. With fueling up out of the way we started to explore a bit of old town. Beautiful churches and cobbled streets. A bit touristy but still a nice walk. On the boutique front we hit one of the cities gems, Reborn. As my friend Bryan said, its one of those places you walk into and know the chances of buying something are slim, but damn it was cool. The shop is very narrow with the left wall housing glass covered wall cabinates containing some really incredible jewely and art pieces. When I visited the contents where primarily matte black. The most eye catching pieces were by Natalia Brilli. The right hand wall of the shop had menswear by people like Surface to Air, Acne, and Nom De Guerre... aka 100 DOLLAR T-SHIRTS YALL! I didn't have a chance to look at the womens stuff but it looked equally as interesting. After Old Montreal we hoofed it downtown to the main strip, Saint Catherine. The usual H&M, Aldo, Footlocker etc etc, made it hard to find anything interesting. I did have one shop on my list to check out on Saint Catherine called Off The Hook. Could you guess it was a streetwear shop? Not my style usually but I still like to check out the shops. After looking around for a while I was surpised to find two things... One, there were a lot of kids in there well over 10 years younger than me (this contrasted with the SUPER crass dirty south and raunchy graphic Tees made me chuckle). Two, amongst a lot of crap there where some REALLy nice items. I snapped up a some Sixpack shirts and the Cadence X Lifetime collaboration shirt. I've been wanting something from impossible to find cycling clothing label, Cadence, for a while now. After a quick dinner at the hotel bar (quite good)

Was not prepared for this show. It was an incredibly polished performance and had a stadium level vibe rare for brooding electronic music. The music reinforced by their incredible 3 screen wide projected visuals. A handful of differently styled pieces ranging from looped film to generative 3D stuff were projected for each song. The performance ended with an encore cementing the stadium vibes. (Side note: One of the Modeselektor boys was sporting an all caps "AMEN" shirt for those who know). Unfortunately had to forgo Mala, the final performer of the night, as we were completely sacked from the day.

Friday - Day 3

Friday was a mellow day. We were tipped off to the Mont Royal neighborhood as an area we would like a lot. With the Metro mastered we strolled along Saint Laurent and Mont-Royal Blvd checking out the various shops and cafes. The highlights were Old Gold (great little clothign shop) and a wicked vintage mens store next door. I wish I could remember the name, something with California in it. It was flannel heaven. We walked back down Mont Royal towards downtown not realizing that some of the best Mont Royal had to offer was farther up. That evening a friend with some Montreal experience took us to a classic french bistro called L'Express. We ended up eating enough food and drinking enough wine to put us out of commission early. A little break from the festival wasn't the end of the world.

Sat - Day 4

After the ATOM performance I hit up a skateshop in the near by chinatown neighborhood called Temple Skate Supply.

I snatched up a complete Temple Zinger they had dropped earlier that month. The rain during the trip put the kabosh on rolling around the city, but the little guy has already gotten some use back in SF. Its been stickered up to boot with MASH and Benny Gold decals. Old Temple signage in Chinatown...

After the skate shop I popped by the first of the Mutek picnics. The weather was shit, but that didnt keep the rave massive from coming out. I got about an hour of The Mole in and then split. Finished up the night with some Tapas at a place called Pullmans. Delicious food, very light and thoughtful dishes. Just don't do what we did and order everything on the menu and end up dehabilitatingly stuffed for the second night in a row and pass out early.

Sun - Day 5

Charged up by a good nights sleep I got out the door before the girlfriend to go check off another few skateshops. The first on the list was Underworld. As I made my way down Saint Catherine, away from all the hurdy-gurdy, I realized that I had done this before... about 10 years ago. Ahh, the paths we beat. The place was huge, like a wallmart of skating. Def worth checking out. Interesting to see all the big skate brands full lineup of gear all in one place. The merchandising is well done to boot. Sleuthing out the next spot, Empire, was a bust as apparently they moved farther away than I was willing to walk. I hustled back to the hotel and hopped on the Metro with my girlfriend heading back to Mont Royal to find some of the spots we missed. This was crucial. We walked through some residential areas that had vibes I could see myself living amongst.

Very reminiscent of parts of portland, Boston, SF and Brooklyn. We hit two shops that are must visits. The first was Unicorn where B got a ridiculously cute pair of high-tops. The gal working their, was incredibly helpful and chatted us up about all the spots we had gone to our should go to. She sent us up the street to another boutique called Les étoffe, where her boyfriend was working. This place was really impressive as well. A nice selection of unique labels and meticulously hand picked vintage pieces. The gentlemen working here sent us across the neighborhood to the local fixie shop aptly named Brakeless. Brakeless was a nice mixture of frames and components as well as clothing and shoes. I grabbed a lot of stuff here including a pair of "port" Vans Caballeros and a Fuct. T-shirt. I hadnt seen a fuct Tshirt in ages, let alone one I liked. I remember going to my local skateshop in Northampton MA around 6th grade to get a snowboard with my mother and having to explain why there was a snowboard with a naked lady on it and a t-shirt with "FUCT." in huge lettering in the window as we walked in. Ah the good old days. My mom rules. Anyways, Sylvester, the proprietor of Brakeless was a really cool/nice guy. Probably my favorite shop in Montreal. Im honestly bummed I will only make it there once a year.

After getting caught in some nasty rain/wind we made our way back to the hotel. While the weather was the absolute worst, I ended up heading the call of some friends txts and headed back to the park for Mutek Picnic part two. Zip and Ricardo Villalobos where playing a 7 hour set that I had to catch at least a tiny bit of. After 20 minutes or so of brocking out with my rain hood up the sun came out out for literally one song.

For those who had been their for hours you could tell it was like the second coming. I endured the next wave of rain for as long as I could and then headed back to the hotel. We grabbed some SOLID burgers and Poutine at a joint called Merchant of Beef (best name ever) in the old town and then headed to the club to catch Akufen's first performance and new material in years. I wasn't really feeling it. But I don't want to be a negative nancy so I am going to chalk it up to being on my feet for 5 days and needing to crash. Ill wait for the album to elaborate on Akufens new bits.

Im definitely smitten with Mutek and would love to visit montreal once a year. The lack of lines and crowds makes it feel like much less work than say SXSW or Coachella. Side note: Air Canada has some game. Decent food (for airlines) and power in every seat. Chalk one up for Canada.

My recommended Montreal shops on Yelp.