Made for People

My Appreciation of Design

Josh Walsh — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:06:31 +0000

I’m on a crusade to surround myself with beautifully designed products, as much as I possibly can. I’ve always preferred owning fewer items, that were of higher quality, than a collection of normal items bought at a fleeting glance. But, it has become so normal to purchase poorly designed products without questioning it, that I’ve found it surprisingly hard to eradicate them from my life.

To get through my door, products need to be designed well. They should not just be pretty, but functional too. They need to be designed with a specific person in mind, even if that person isn’t me. They need to be aesthetically beautiful — both to look at and touch. And where appropriate, they should have a spark of originality that gives it a personality.

Rob Walker, New York Times columnist, in the film Objectified:

Because we all have so many things that are just around – they’re in the closet, they’re in the attic, whatever… that we don’t even think about anymore because there isn’t enough room left in our brains because we are so busy processing all the exciting new developments.

At the end of the day, when you’re looking around at the objects in your house and you’re deciding what here really has value to me… they’re going to be the things that have the most meaning in your life.

As important as it is for me to select products with care, it’s equally important that I ruthlessly eliminate items which don’t fit my vision. These objects are a form of distracting clutter which have no place in my life.

How good UI design cannot fix a broken solution

Josh Walsh — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:21:52 +0000

Rian van der Merwe:

Once again: it doesn’t matter how great and fun an experience is, good UI design cannot fix a broken solution. Good design can effectively differentiate a good solution, and bad design can completely ruin a good solution. But good design simply cannot make up for a solution that doesn’t address a core user need really well.

[…]

I’m afraid that in the case of both Google Circles and Path 2.0, they might just be flawed solutions wrapped in a layer of beautiful UI design. It’s fun to play with for a while, but when it inevitably becomes tedious you eventually just forget to use it. Forever.

I guess it’s not just me.

Why did Path add sleeping as one of its five moment types?

Josh Walsh — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 21:55:37 +0000

Dan Morin, Co-Founder & CEO of Path, answering on Quora:

Second, because we now carry our mobile devices everywhere, they have become the best way to journal all of the important personal information from our lives. There is a trend around personal health applications which help you live healthier happier lives. Sleep data has been an interesting part of this trend, and something we thought would be nice to start with on Path.

Services that journal your life have potential to enrich our lives. Imagine a refridgerator that monitors what food you put into it and take out of it. Then, it reports that data to your family physician each night. Under ideal privacy restrictions, that could be helpful technology.

But, Journaling your life is different than publicizing your life. I wish this “lifestreaming” trend would end. It’s creepy, exploitive and just terribly boring.

Chalk one up for Responsive Web Design

Josh Walsh — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 22:33:37 +0000

Jakob Nielsen:

Using designs intended for a full screen on a 7-inch tablet is like squeezing a size-10 person into a size-7 suit. Not going to look good. But that's what the Fire is trying to do. Accessing full (desktop) sites on the Fire was a prescription for failure in our testing. Users did much better when using mobile sites.

Using sites optimized for 3.5-inch mobile screens on the bigger 7-inch screen felt luxurious — somewhat like using a regular website on a 30-inch monitor. You have all the space in the world and can see the entire page with little (if any) scrolling.

Path offers pixel perfection, but that's about all.

Josh Walsh — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 03:40:06 +0000

Path is superbly well designed. It’s exquisite. As a designer, it’s more than inspiring, it’s influential. But, despite all the spit and polish, I’m not excited by the app.

The app doesn’t have a unique value proposition. It’s been done before. I’m becoming numb to check-in apps and I already have more places to hang out with friends, than I have friends to hang out with.

I’m looking forward to delving deeper into the user interface, but only to satisfy my inner-designer. It doesn’t add anything to my life but more social-media noise.

The upper bounds to quality

Josh Walsh — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 15:51:10 +0000

Alan Cooper:

The digital age changes our notions of quality, and in particular, our notions of the limits to quality. Generally, there are two limits to quality: The first limit is your imagination. If you are innovative, you can increase quality in many creative ways. The second limit to quality is what the customer will pay for. If your product is priced too high, even if it is of super high quality, you won’t be able to sell many.

We’re living in a new culture that rewards quality design more than ever before.

In particular, the Apple AppStore gives us the ability to sell a quality software product at a high volume with lower overhead for distribution and support. This allows independent developers to invest the resources at their disposal (sweat, and time), price their apps much lower and earn a serious paycheck in return.

Apps which don’t pay attention to design and user experience will fall off the AppStore leaderboards and never reap any reward.

It's the small things

Josh Walsh — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 19:17:17 +0000

I’ve seen Brad Colbow give this talk twice. First at MidwestUX and then again here at Re:Build. It’s one of the most entertaining talks I’ve ever seen and is chocked full of some of Brad’s amazing illustration work.

This is a must watch for any designer of the web variety.

Brad Colbow at re:build 2011 from re:build conference on Vimeo.

A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design

Josh Walsh — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 04:58:51 +0000

Bret Victor:

My problem [with this video of future interface designs] is the opposite, really — this vision, from an interaction perspective, is not visionary. It’s a timid increment from the status quo, and the status quo, from an interaction perspective, is actually rather terrible.

This matters, because visions matter. Visions give people a direction and inspire people to act, and a group of inspired people is the most powerful force in the world. If you’re a young person setting off to realize a vision, or an old person setting off to fund one, I really want it to be something worthwhile. Something that genuinely improves how we interact.

Bret makes some fascinating points anchored in real world experience. I agree with Bret that our vision for the future is short sighted. A future of “pictures beneath glass,” where we control our devices with only the “tips of our fingers,” is not a terribly exciting future 30 years from now. But, it is exciting over the next few years.

The release of the first iPhone triggered some incredible innovations. Pictures beneath glass, which we directly manipulate through touch, is nothing short of revolutionary. That technology is still very much in it’s infancy. While it is important to dream about fantasy worlds that our grandchildren will experience, it’s more important to explore ideas we can actually execute on today.

Technology changes through evolution, not just through dreams and visions. To get past the status-quo, we have to challenge it, push it, and create new products.

D-I Summit

Josh Walsh — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 20:43:45 +0000

Last weekend we held a small company event at the Embassy Suites in Downtown Cleveland. We gathered our team at D-I, our contractors, a few friends and our mentors together to talk about our plans for 2012. We wanted their feedback on our plans for 2012, before we made them public.

D-I has always been a tiny but mighty team. I started the company (in name) 10 years ago, but we really got serious in 2005. Dave and I founded the company to prove what just 2 guys, a developer and a designer, could accomplish together.

It’s been a fun ride, and we’ve contributed to some great projects in town. We launched 2 of our own products and have pushed pixels to millions of people around the world.

I’m happy with the company we’ve built, but I’m not satisfied yet.

In early 2011, we began to realize that while we’re proud of our contributions to these projects, we weren’t always proud of the finished result.

We’re Growing

We’ve accomplished a remarkable amount with just 2 people, but it’s time for our team to grow so that we can be more involved in the process as a whole.

We’ll be working with some exciting clients this year, helping them build some truly amazing products. Some of them are literally saving lives, others are just too fun to pass up. We’ve got a few other things up our sleeves too, but we’re not quite ready to talk about those just yet.

Apple's Take on Google Maps

Josh Walsh — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 22:55:00 +0000

Check out the the little details that Apple added to their Google Maps view for Find My iPhone.

The first thing I noticed was the change in base texture. It’s a leather-ish texture which matches their new Find my Friends app in the App Store. (Though you can’t see it in this screen, the title box on this page follows the same Find my Friends style.)

But, if you look closer you’ll notice they also added lines for latitude and logitude, as well as removing all text mentions of other businesses.