Making digital human
We believe technology can make the world a better place, by helping people to find, learn, improve, grow, communicate, connect, gather, express, promote, protest, create, work, buy, and have fun.
Ilana, CEO
Bill, Evangelist
Gwyne, PR
What we’ve learned, for CHI 2010
We’re going to have a booth at CHI in Atlanta this year, and have printed up a batch of little cards with UX-related tips and tricks that we’ve seen recently in our client work. Take a look at our cards, and drop our booth for an orange soda if you’re at CHI next week.
“Placelessness is a huge problem. With a paper magazine, newspaper, or book, you know where you are and how much remains based on the pages in your hands.” - Daring Fireball
Completely agreed with Gruber on this one. This is something that continues to show up in digital interactions. If the user doesn’t have a mental picture of the dimensions of the thing they’re trying to interact with - the number of products, extent of the feature set, or whatever - then it’s that much harder to engage with the experience.
That’s one of the biggest differences between the philosophies behind the iPhone and Android interfaces: the iPhone typically exposes most of the features available on a particular screen; the Android requires that you long-tap or use the menu.
We’ve been doing a lot of innovation work recently around media and devices, and are seeing some interesting trends. Here are four that stand out above the rest:
“Watch TV’ has become ‘Consume media’
The ‘long tail’ is alive and well in the living room. People are no longer content to sit back and watch whatever is on, and are increasingly turning to the DVR, Hulu, iTunes, YouTube, Facebook, and personal media instead. And, importantly, much of this viewing is being done on the small screen, not the 50” plasma.
People still want programmed media
It used to be that we could just turn on the tube and sit back for our nightly dose of the zeitgeist, ready for the water cooler chat the next day. People still want programming - they don’t know what to watch, they want to be entertained, or they just don’t want to put out the effort to assemble the evening’s media - and they’re finding it through Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and friends.
Media anywhere
There’s still a big divide between traditional media (on cable, satellite, and the DVR) and web-based media. We’ve seen lots of people trying to bridge that gap, with all sorts of makeshift solutions to getting their web media onto their big screens, but little success. And manufacturers’ attempts at IPTV give flashbacks to the early days of mobile phone walled gardens. In the end, we’ll see all media share a common platform, and the living room TV will become nothing more than the largest display in the house.
From broadcast to conversations
Corporate branding has gone through a transformation: what used to be a one-way message has been usurped by thousands of conversations, all over the web. Companies are scrambling to catch up and are trying to participate through authentic engagement in social media. The same will happen with the future of TV: people are having conversations all over the web around broadcast media. Media houses need to get involved - not through “AOL keyword ‘housewives”’, but through rich media sidecars - creating real-time and time-delayed community and conversation around their shows. Think “live DVD extras”, real-time Twitter feeds, background information, and real-time chat on Facebook and beyond. Otherwise, third parties will step in and siphon off the chatter - and the revenue
Enter the iPad
And this is where the iPad (or any similar tablet) appears on the scene, making it that much easier to consume sidecar content while watching media. Where the laptop didn’t work - due to a hard-to-handle and hard-to-pass-around form factor - and the netbook fails with a tiny screen, the iPad provides a big-screen, easy interaction with content, and the ability to share the experience with that special someone sitting next to you on the couch without craning your neck over their keyboard.
Photo credit: coolmikeol
Live from SXSW in Austin, TX, Sunday March 14, 2010
Sol Design Lab
Sol Design Lab has created solar-powered ‘gas pumps’ in the Austin area, which are 50’s gas pumps that have been retrofitted with solar panels on the top, and outlets below.
First electric vehicle 100 years ago got 100 mph, we’re at 30 mph today, there’s a lot of potential here.
One of their key factors is to “make energy visible”, to help people stay within the means of solar energy. They display how much power is coming in from the sun, and how much is being drawn by whatever is plugged into the pump. This helps have consumers demand things that are more efficient.
DOE did a study to look at forward demand for energy. Greatest new energy source that DOE sees - 40% - is to reduce energy consumption.
Rechar creates carbon-negative systems
Build off-grid plants that turn biomass into electricity and biochar (like charcoal in BBQ grills) which can be used for power or buried in soil as a fertilizer and improves crop yield up to 200%. Can sequester 200B tons of CO2 a year this way.
Live from SXSW in Austin, TX, Saturday March 13, 2010
Presenters collectively have more followers than the top 10 banks combined. People are coming together to invest better than the pros on Wall Street. Making products that are relevant to what people want. Transparency into what is going on with one’s finances, no more black boxes. Anytime, anywhere.
The paradigm has changed:
New wave of financial products
Live from SXSW in Austin TX, Saturday March 13, 2010
Presenting: Robert Fabricant, frogdesign
Growing appreciation of the need for awareness of health issues; people don’t work very logically. Mobile technologies can provide awareness around our own understanding of situations and decisions of health considerations.
Four people in frog talking about this: Robert, Fabio (“Design for awareness”), Clay, Josh Musick (“Augmented mindfulness”)
Augmented mindfulness: ‘A growing field of UX design that brings together methods for recording, processing, and feeding back to the individual or group so that they can better understand what they are doing.’
“It would be a great tool for people who have a harder time feeling what’s going on in their body. It gives people a way to ‘see’ the result of an exercise or activity in their body.” - Chiropractor reacting to early product design from Robert
Happy to have sponsored InfoCamp Berkeley 2010 last weekend. Lots of great people and ideas! (via InfoCamp - Berkeley)
Books in the Age of the iPad — Craig Mod
Interesting take on how the traditional page flipping metaphor no longer applies when reading on a device. Why not an infinitely long horizontal scroll? Why not other navigational mechanisms?
