Future UX

The new designer: You're not the expert

Wed, 14 May 2014 00:27:01 +1000

Nor should you be. The new designer’s roots lie in the advertising and graphic design world which was fueled by winning awards, creative egos and design superstars labelled as creative ‘geniuses’. Not to understate the quality of design of the past few decades, today’s design is different. We’re not interested in pretty pictures, but solving problems. Pretty design is ubiquitous, but great solutions are not. Today’s designer should possess little self. Today’s designer should seek no awards. Today’s designer doesn’t know the answers. But, today’s designer knows the questions. The new designer is a master facilitator who looks at the bigger picture, the business, the user, the context. Understands. Creates. Validates. Learns. Repeats.

This is the new designer.

Wireframing with Keynote 6.0

Sat, 26 Oct 2013 18:10:00 +1100

After playing with the recently updated version of Keynote, I can’t help but notice that the workflows of this unsuspecting design tool seem to have been made with consideration for uses other than presentations. Although a big fan of Adobe’s Fireworks, I’m clearly seeing how some of the key functionality in Keynote combined with the redesigned inspector and tweaked canvas layout can now potentially become a strong contender for use in the design process. Why? Let me show you some of the features which hit the sweet spot.

Canvas layout

The slide (art board) is strictly centred on the x-axis in the canvas window. Too much canvas pan-ability is a huge frustration in tools such as Bohemian Coding’s Sketch.
The whole document retains a single zoom level of a canvas for seamless transitions between screens.

Export

Ability to easily export full sets of screens in one swoop.
Linking elements to different slides and exporting as HTML allows for rapid prototyping.

Typography, drawing and layout tools

Vectorised elements with good set of arrange/manipulation tools in the inspector window.
Fantastic alignment guides to help with layout consistency. If you’re pedantic like myself, you can also manually enter values to ensure elements are aligned to the pixel (some more keyboard shortcuts to hide/show would be useful).
Typography tools for tracking, leading, indents, alignment etc. are first-class citizens.
The updated inspector window is ever-so-welcome inside the main application window. This was long-overdue from Keynote.

Styles palette

Create, save and then apply various element styles. Tweak a style and have all elements using that style updated automatically.

Master slides

Create page templates as master slides to create global elements that remain the same between screens/pages. This is also handy for handling different resolution templates in responsive designs.

Stability

Sometimes the best feature isn’t specifically a feature. Keynote is far more stable than Sketch, and much more lightweight than Fireworks. I’m keen to see how it performs under more stress, creating large projects with hundreds of screens.

These are only a few of the cool things Keynote has to offer. Although some of these features have been around for a while, the recent UI improvements have made it much more conducive to using Keynote as a design tool.

"It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer"

Mon, 14 Oct 2013 13:47:28 +1100

“It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer”

- Commonplace phrase in 13th-century scholastic writing

"Graphical embellishments that serve only to underscore the ‘realism’ of the design such..."

Mon, 15 Jul 2013 09:34:21 +1000

“Graphical embellishments that serve only to underscore the ‘realism’ of the design such as the sheen of simulated brushed aluminium buttons, the sparkling splash screen or the specular reflections on spherical plastic buttons eventually grow tiresome despite the initial 'oohs’ and 'aahs’. These qualities rarely add to the long-term visual appeal of the product because they subvert rather than enhance communication.”

- Kevin Mullet and Darrell Sano, Designing Visual Interfaces, Sun Microsystems, Inc. (1995)

Influence

Tue, 14 May 2013 10:17:59 +1000

The two highest levels of influence are achieved when a) people follow you because of what you’ve done for them and b) people follow you because of who you are.

Influence comes easiest to those who are generous and trustworthy.

Comment on UC rebranding uproar: “I can’t defend the...

Wed, 08 May 2013 10:05:46 +1000

Comment on UC rebranding uproar:

“I can’t defend the work, but I do wonder if there is a level of bias toward change. Over the years, I can’t recall one major logo change that wasn’t scalded by the design community.”

Anonymous response:

“Looks like it’s still loading. Give it time.”

Sketch. - Dribbbles of my work

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:19:51 +1100

Sketch.

- Dribbbles of my work

Credit card information - Dribbbles of my work

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:15:06 +1100

Credit card information

- Dribbbles of my work

Smart-cover-esque watch band? Perhaps not. - Dribbbles of my...

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:14:29 +1100

Smart-cover-esque watch band? Perhaps not.

- Dribbbles of my work

Account verification details - Dribbbles of my work

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:13:37 +1100

Account verification details

- Dribbbles of my work

Data portal navigation - Dribbbles of my work

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:11:33 +1100

Data portal navigation

- Dribbbles of my work

Delivery address - Dribbbles of my work

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:10:14 +1100

Delivery address

- Dribbbles of my work

Commonwealth Bank - Dribbbles of my work

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:09:03 +1100

Commonwealth Bank

- Dribbbles of my work

Mobile payment wireframes - Dribbbles of my work

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:07:00 +1100

Mobile payment wireframes

- Dribbbles of my work

Customise product - Dribbbles of my work

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:05:00 +1100

Customise product

- Dribbbles of my work

How do people really hold (and use) their mobile?

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:52:00 +1100

Thanks to Steven Hoober

Solved! The 20,000 photo problem

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 21:12:00 +1100

Does 40 photos a week/weekend sound unreasonable? That’s over 2,000 a year. Add in a few holidays, birthdays and other events and you’re building a pretty large collection of priceless memories over the years; memories that should be kept safe. However, it’s also hard to keep all these memories open for us to see and share. So many of us have built up large photo collections that sit on an external drive (mildy considered safe, if at all) and are only rarely pulled out to share later on.

Enter Everpix.

I’ve been waiting for this for a while. A long while. Flickr has had unlimited photo storage for a decent price for a while, but the ability to upload, view and share those photos is a joke. Canon’s Project1709 has been promising, but promised developments have been too slow. I knew that eventually there would be someone who would hit the market with a strong offer, and here they are:

Unlimited photo backup for $40/year
Native iPhone, iPad applications for viewing your collection
Intuitive organisation of your photos
Beautiful ways of viewing/sharing your collection
Multiple ways of smoothly uploading your (huge) collection

Additionally, Everpix claims they’ve got some cleverness that analyses the content of your photos to group them into ‘Moments’. Sounds promising, and anything additional is simply a bonus, but not too sure how it works and whether it does a good job until my tens of thousands of snaps are up.

iPod Watch design attempt from a User Experience consultant

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 12:20:00 +1100

The hype is ridiculous. Plenty of ideas have been flown around, some more plausible than others, but nonetheless, I think there might actually be something in this and would make a lot of business sense for Apple.

Apple thinks ahead like most companies should, but don’t. It seems they have this magical grand master plan where they’re secretly working on ideas, but at the same time all the clues are sitting right under our noses helping them learn, while making money. It seems to me that the last two generations of iPod nano have been nothing more than experimenting with the upcoming iPod Watch. The Gen 6 form factor was rather conducive to a watch, especially when LunaTik and subsequently millions of other watchband accessories became a hit. Gen 7 was a little more subtle. I think Apple realised the 1.55-inch screen on Gen 6 was too small and that it wouldn’t be able to augment enough features from our iPhones to make it a plausible additional accessory. Although the Gen 7 form-factor threw us off the iPod Watch smell, the screen size at 2.5-inches is surprisingly ideal for a watch, especially if combined with a curved-glass display.

I’m generally quite a skeptic to the rumor-mill and prefer to arrive at conclusions myself as to whether suggested ideas would be considered plausible by Apple, so the only way to figure this one out was to start the old-fashioned way.

Brushing up on my maths skills, I measured out the screen size cut-out based on the current Gen 7 iPod nano. My objective was to wear it for the day and hope that some use-cases would spring to mind. Even my fiancée was nice enough to allow it at dinner (it was Valentines day), despite the strange looks I got from the tables near us once they noticed that my e-ink watch was actually just the regular, non-changing kind of ink.

Ultimately, I came to a few interesting conclusions for how the watch could be used and I think there are a few pretty convincing use-cases, but I’ll focus on those in an upcoming post. Right now I want to put forward some findings on how the watch would be designed. Here is a user experience consultant’s first attempt at product design:

Download high-resolution image

Design

Straight to the point: nothing that shouldn’t be there. Clean, simple and more importantly, practical.

First thing that should be noted is that the iPod Watch is removable from the band. This was a key design decision as I think it allows third-party watch-band accessories to suit different people’s tastes and given this device is going to be worn daily by many, needs an ability to be replaced with wear and tear. Will surely bring in the pennies for Apple too.
I’ve opted for rubber in my concept as I think it’s comfortable, friendliest to your skin, robust, weather-proof and, with high quality rubber, can look really elegant.

The band design would need to be purchased in your size and connects with a magnetic aluminium clasp. The fitted sizing is one decision that I’m still battling with. How would the sizing system work? How could you order online and know your size?
Headphone jack: there’s no place better than the bottom of the screen. On the left of the watch, the headphone cord would hit your hand, on the right would be obstructed by your clothing, top would leave the cord dangling annoyingly over the screen. Once again, wireless is preferred, but the option for the jack should be there. The headphone jack could also serve as the speaker output. (In hindsight, the design is a little flawed as the jack would leave really little room for the screen to sit above. Would probably need to drop the inset a little lower on the band).

Mic on top of the screen to facilitate augmented calls and input for Siri to handle text input (obviously no keyboard on this thing). Who knows, perhaps even an iSight camera wouldn’t be so ridiculous? Perhaps we’ll leave that for future iPod Watch generations.
Button on the right handles sleep/wake functionality to show/hide the display: very similar interaction to your Gen 7 iPod nano.

Lightning connector on the inside for charging and potential data transfer to third-party accessories: I’m thinking extended battery watch bands, additional sensors etc.

Screen

Obviously multi-touch, based heavily on the current gen iPod nano.
Has to be curved. Especially given that it’ll need to accommodate different wrist sizes. Apple just needs to nail the angle of curvature and they should be right. The curvature should also be on a consistent angle (following a fixed circumference) so that it would allow alternate methods of attaching 3rd-party accessories/bands. I’m thinking sliding into a metal enclosure/band for classic metal watch designs, bling and so on.
Doesn’t necessarily need to be flexible. I imagine this would cause complications with the band having to accommodate compression/tension. Just because it can doesn’t mean it should.

Battery life

People are firstly skeptical about how short the battery life would be in an iPod Watch. One thing I noticed when I purchased my iPad, was how much longer my iPhone battery lasted. Splitting our interaction time between multiple devices is, strangely, a great way to improve the battery life of each devices. I think the same applies to an iPod Watch.

A few days on stand-by, and roughly 24 hours continuous music playback doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.

Connectivity

Bluetooth 4.0 makes sense. Low power means that augmenting your phone is possible without depleting precious charge on both your phone and the iPod Watch.
Lighting cable. Makes me wonder how far in advance Apple plans their project pipeline. The shift to the Lightning cable seemed useless, but here is where the new tiny size makes things much more sense. Ideally the watch should be completely wireless, but I think that battery life is a crucial trade-off that shouldn’t be made. To tell it any better, I’d need tests and the data to verify the trade-off.
Headphones. It’d be nice to expect everyone to connect to bluetooth headphones, but once again, truth is that the 3.5mm jack ain’t going nowhere any time soon. If you think it’s annoying running with headphones connected, consider that most people do it today anyway, instead they hold their iPhone in their hand. I’d prefer the former.

Download high-resolution image

The magnetic band clasp could eventually contain an NFC chip to facilitate payments. The clasp would be connected to the watch through the band in order to give UI feedback on transactions. The paper prototype clearly indicated the best placement of an NFC chip would be the inside of your wrist. This would be the killer use-case, but lets hope the solution is baked and ready to eat first.

In my next post, I’ll cover some of the use-cases I’ve considered, especially what the watch would be capable of together with an API, how Siri is crucial to it’s success, and how your iPhone will increasingly become your pocket modem.

Looking forward to see what Apple comes up with.

Transaction data is due for a huge overhaul

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 18:18:48 +1100

Definitely not saying there aren’t a couple of hurdles, but there’s an obvious gap that stems from a few key problems:

No one should need paper receipts
Bank transactional data isn’t complete and could be more useful
Subsequently, there two sources of data for transactions that we need to deal with, and both are a pain.

The two need to be combined into one source of transactional data that is itemised. Our bank should be the key to this data, and we should be able to use the bank data as official records for purchases, and data mining of our own transactions.

The only piece bank’s are missing is itemised lists for a transaction, but that could ultimately be solved by offering a decent point-of-sale system or working on some kind of integration with other systems.

Timeless Design: NYC Metro

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 14:25:53 +1100

A beautiful example of how simplicity remains timeless. Here’s to the Swiss style.