Recent Blog Posts

You’ll be seeing a new voice around here, as we have finally managed to bring on board Christopher Nemeth.

Chris comes to us from the web world, with skills from animation to sound to creative director. And, in general, he’s a great guy. We’ve got him working on a contract for the next few weeks, but you’ll start seeing his writing and other content pretty soon. In fact, we’re lining up a series of mobile design interviews that Chris is doing for us.

So be nice, and welcome aboard Chris. Or you can use his Pretentious Artist Name, Krysztof. He answers to that, as well.

So, I’m working for Little Springs Design now, and I’m surrounded by brainiacs. Seriously, some of the smartest people I’ve ever had the pleasure to be working with, and already I’m on task to start researching Africa. Africa, as in the hot topic of fast-emerging adaptation of mobile technology. Africa, as in understanding what “Designing the Mobile User Experience” is gonna flesh itself out as, as our company credo and tagline suggests.

As a designer, I love this stuff, of course; but even more so, one doesn’t design in a vacuum. Any assumptions of cultural differences, social relations, and general understanding of any and all design standards of both hardware and software will be tested at least, thrown out at most. So, time to start poking around and see what I can find – not only about the facts of the matter, but the inspiration of it as well.

Of course, part of my “experience” (the experience of discovering) is going after the ideas, current trends, observations that are already out there. There is “facts & figures” information such as Innovation Africa’s number-crunching of Africa’s phone market which shows it being the world’s fastest-growing. There’s this great blog by Dave Tait, a “design strategist interested in social and economic change through design and education” set ground-zero in Africa’s emerging market itself. We’ve got Nokia designing devices with sharing and personalization of technology in mind for the African Market, and we’ve got a great observation of how that same technology is applied in real-life through the creative lens of ICT4D members Martin Konzett and Anders Bolin in their film “Hello, Africa.”

The facts and inspiration i’ve gained the most from, however, came from reading Adaptive Path Design Researcher Natasha Sakina Alani, in her blog post about their Mobile Literacy project that focuses on “Using Respect & Instinct to Reach the Heart of Mobile Design Issues.” In her entry, Natasha recollects how she and her small team “went native” to learn, first hand, through a very close interaction with members of rural communities in India to develop an understanding of the people they were designing for, what their needs were as users, and ultimately, to enhance their lives in new ways and uplift their existences.

From Natasha’s post:

“To gather our information, we pushed out of our own comfort zones deep into theirs to get to the people that needed to be heard. Once there, our goal was to provide a safe space and to inspire confidence, allowing our participants to openly share their experiences. Conducting research with this mentality allowed us to get personal with the people we sought to understand and to hear their issues within a short time frame.”

It’s more than “developing personas,” here. She and her team got to not only talk to their inherently “foreign” customers face-to-face, but to live as they lived to really get the “experience” of being of that market. They had to develop trust amongst their host communities so that they’d be able to “actively engage with our participants and to become participants ourselves.”

It’s very inspiring. Imagine if we all had this opportunity to immerse ourselves completely in the worlds of the people we design for. Natasha suggests that we as designers should abide by the notion of “Do what feels true,” and by that to “research with boldness.” Attempting to delve into a market (such as the emerging one in Africa, for example) and to design for a culture so different than my own, I see this as an incredible challenge in the truest sense of the word; as not an impediment to my design abilities, but as something to strive and attain a higher standard of accomplishment towards.

It’s an obvious notion that any designer who is filled with the passion of their craft wants to change the world, to offer a product that enhances and enriches the lives of it’s users – but here’s where the real meat of the matter is in my mind. It’s one thing to design for an audience that can afford the high-end, luxury gadget, but it’s a much more noble goal to set one’s sights on uplifting the entire existences of those in parts of the world that are more than just “emerging markets,” but societies that crave empowerment; those who so want to be able to better themselves and their lives.

Being a new part of Little Springs Design, I’m very excited to be part of this as a designer, and even more so as a person.

The Carnival of the Mobilists is hosted this week by Igor Faletski at Mobify. The Carnival is a weekly collection of the Web’s best writing on mobile and wireless, hosted and collected by a different site each week. If you are already reading our blog, you should add this collection to your subscription list as well.

As usual, you should read most or all of the linked articles, but especially my “incredible article discussing various mobile hardware form factors and their applicability in different contexts,” seeking the perfect phone form factor. And it even has pretty pictures, to make it easier to understand what I am trying to talk about.

Man, I gotta start coming up with my own ideas, instead of just riffing on everyone else’s. Every few years I run across someone talking about the latest trends in mobile handset design, usually seeking to codify the best parts in a manner that will lead us all to some nirvana of design, and everyone will want this. I’ve seen reviews that rip some particular design as not appealing to everyone equally.

This article from All About Symbian yesterday reminded me of all this, in their desire to find the one, true form factor that – naturally – everyone will want. I think, as usual, I reject the premise.

For some years now, Alison and I have had two vehicles.

A station wagon which is our primary people transporter. Right now it’s a 1999 Volvo V70, with an extravagant roof rack, but before that it was a series of Suzuki SUVs, which we also considered just tall wagons. It serves well as a transporter for Alison and myself and our personal effects and Atka (the dog) but can carry three more people without undue effort, lots of luggage and actual cargo from bikes to pipes if needed. Most of our friends and family think it’s a bit large and ugly, and like their cars-with-trunks instead.

And a pickup truck we use regularly because we garden, and build and generally do work requiring “dirty cargo.” The 1996 T-100 recently replaced a 1994 Chevy K-1500 we drove into the ground. We really need this vehicle. But most of our friends and family mock it as redneck and silly and large and inefficient (less so the Toyota than the Chevy, though). Until they need me to haul something, at least.

I think my mobile computing device selection is exactly similar to this.

My phone is an N95. Partly because Alison won it at a developer conference (and I, having a SIM, stole it) but I had coveted it anyway, and had an N75 before this. It’s my “everything phone” but is still fundamentally a phone. I triple tap well, but it’s not a message device. It plays music, but somewhat less excitingly than it could. And a lot of people think it’s too big and has too many features. In many, many ways, this is my station wagon phone. (Alison has a waterproof Casio, so except for the terrible Verizon software that makes the features hard to use, essentially has a Suzuki SUV phone).

My heavy lifter is a laptop. Wait, but you thought we were talking about mobile. Sure. We’re talking mobile computing. But my needs are not gaming, or email, or music or anything conveniently done on a small screen. So I don’t carry a PSP, iPod or anything else. I jump straight to a MacBook. With an aircard. it’s got wires hanging, but I am online everywhere. I have streamed internet radio when we cannot get actual radio. This is my pickup truck, that does all the heavy lifting, but still has comfortable seats and a stereo.

(I guess desktop computers would be houses in this analogy?)

This proves my point precisely. Mobile computing is variable, individualized and broader than you think. Let me break it down for you a little more. Here is how I personally categorize mobile computing devices today, and in the near future:

Sub-micro – I am thinking of stuff like the Livescribe pen and iPod Shuffles, things that have a limited or different interface more than they are just small. This is also a near-future category, as all of these are cable-synched, and I want them to be network-aware devices before I really consider them mobile devices.

Simple Keypads – 10 key phones. Simple here doesn’t mean simple devices, but simple and expected entry methods. The device as a whole can be any size and have any set of capabilities. Small devices with complex keypads (fastap, etc.) do not count.

Thumb-boards – Anything with a more complex keypad than 10-key for the primary entry method. These days, really the full QWERTY systems found on all the message phones and exemplified by the Blackberries. I would not be surprised if some other keyboard arrangement does emerge, even if only temporarily, but learning on the most compact ones (like chording systems) is likely to be a barrier to mass adoption.

Skateboards – It’s my generic term, to avoid longer or more specific labels. These are generally what you all call “touchscreens,” trending towards few or no keys. My nickname is around the shape (generally longer one way) and manner in which it’s a featureless surface. Get it? Includes mass market things like the iPhone and nerdy things like the Maemo tablets. A key distinction for use now is that I am preferring to call these “point screens” as there is NO feedback except that you touched the screen. Good haptics will allow sensing before clicking, and feedback from input. Then I’ll call them “touch screens” and a whole new set of users and applications will open up.

Media Players – Portable game consoles, media playback devices, or anything with a set of controls dedicated to the I/O of the primary, expected media. Some game players especially are network aware and are just at the edge of being important mobile communications devices. Especially as they become internet connected, I am comfortable placing digital cameras into this category. And certain industrial tools, like for measuring and test. Input devices like lenses and sensors are just as valid as buttons and touchscreens. Note the name is sorta terrible, as these can be media capture or media interaction devices just as well as players.

Ultra Mobiles – The UMPC, which I define as any truly general purpose computer whose primary input is less than a computer. Very small keyboards, pure tablets and so on. Some PDAs in the past fit into this category nicely, which amusingly confused things by using a portable OS. Except these should all be connected, all the time. The new UMPCs with WiMax are the best of these now, since WiFi is so local it’s hard to consider that really being connected

Computers – Since we’re talking mobile, I mean laptops (or notebooks, or whatever makes you happy). I do not care what they look like, but they have to have a broadly full-sized keyboard, and a high resolution pointing device. Oh, and they have to be connected. Preferably, all the time, so WiFi as we know it today doesn’t count. Think embedded LTE and WiMax.

It is important to know that these are device classes. And that users will thwart you. As I envision a near future, each of these devices is in at least some way network connected and general purpose. While the PSP is designed to be a gamer, it’s network access and ability to load software (general-purpose computer) also supports messaging

Like a lot of technology, while waiting for this to happen, it snuck up on us. How many of you use Skype when travelling? Phone calls on your laptop. Who has typed an email, or written the start of a blog post on the mobile? We all use the cameras in our phones. I don’t have enough need for music to carry an iPod, so I use the music player in my phone. I have made presentations with the video out on my phone. These are all blurring the lines between these device classes. And making detailed design decisions (slide vs. flip) much more akin to styling and paint colors than really thinking about where devices exist in the ecosystem, and how to best address user needs in their environment as a whole.

I love this post from Dante Murphy on… well a lot of things I think. But it’s anchored around a panel discussion of how to hire and develop interaction designers at IXDA earlier this year.

While I went no further than making snarky comments in twitter, Dante actually stood up and asked a question during the session.

Of course, it’s relatively easy, when you work for frog design or IDEO or Adaptive Path (and others) to demand only top-tier talent and turn away those with incomplete credentials, unpolished portfolios, and imperfect instincts about design. But when you’re the hiring manager at an agency without marquee recognition, or at a company looking to build or expand an internal design team, you can’t just roll out the red carpet and wait for the Josh Porter’s to come strolling up.

My question to the panel was this: what level of incompleteness are you willing to accept in a new hire, in order to turn that rookie into an all-star. Skip ahead to the 53:00 mark of the panel and you’ll see why I walked away feeling that the panelists either couldn’t or didn’t want to answer that question…

And the reason I want to post this is that I could hardly agree more with his thinking on this.

At the individual level, the only criteria I demand of every person I hire are passion and intellect. Experience is nice, and a mix of experience is absolutely necessary at the team level, but I would much rather hire a recent grad who has Louis Rosenfeld’s “polar bear book” on her summer reading list than the person who read it ten years ago, has been milling out websites ever since, but doesn’t know who Dan Saffer and Jennifer Tidwell and Barbara Ballard are. I know this is true because I’ve done this time and again.

The results have been quite amazing. Smart people who really love their job learn from experienced people at an alarming rate…

He goes on with lots of good points about collaborating and nurturing their talent. Do read this, as it’s full of good reminders (like try not to take over their design, but help them improve). But I wanted to add a little about how I’ve hired people.

Unlike everyone else I’ve worked with as a hiring manager, I am only marginally interested in people who have experience in this specific field. Sometimes, a focus on a specific area of interactive is bad, as people have acquired bad habits. I like, instead, to work with people who have the right core skills, care about the product space and are generally interested in how things work, and how people use stuff.

For me, this is artists and designers. I think I indeed prefer working with graphic and packaging and industrial designers, as they have some sort of a grasp on the real world. This also meshes nicely with the universal design philosophy that I’ve started working out. Design truths are always true, so any good design (or art) background is the same as any other. The differences between media or contexts are smaller than the similarities.

And we’re not alone in this. While a lot of places (see above) seem to insist you have all the technical skills and experience day one, lots of successful places do not. I think I first became aware of it when I heard an interview with some Pixar guys. Partly because they use internal, proprietary tools, they cannot go hire people who know their toolsets. But they also value artists, so that’s what they hire. People with passion and desire and basic skills. They then train them as needed.

And also, they let people wander between jobs. Getting stuck in one job you do well can be a terrible thing. Letting people explore other avenues has led to some of the best work – and happiest workers – I have ever had.

It can take time. One guy I hired years ago never was a really top performer while I still managed him. He’d come from a very boring technical job, and while he kept learning and trying, he never became my go-to guy for anything. Well, I heard just the other week (five years after I hired him on) he is that guy I always hoped for and is a design leader in the current team.

Yes, most folks learn faster, but – unlike many of the panel answers Dante commented on – this sort of thing pleases me a lot and gives me faith in the whole concept of hiring the right people and letting them become really useful producers for you,

The Carnival of the Mobilists is hosted this week by Ram Krishnan at the Mobile Broadband Blog. The Carnival is a weekly collection of the Web’s best writing on mobile and wireless, hosted and collected by a different site each week. If you are already reading our blog, you should add this collection to your subscription list as well.

I was a bit disappointed the new mobile website we designed (but which hasn’t launched yet) wasn’t mentioned in Paul Ruppert’s interview with Lisa Gersh, Managing Director of The Weather Channel among other things. And while I like design philosophy thinking, I need to think some more on Tomi’s entry on device inputs and Ajit’s entry on classes of mobile design before I can tell what I would do with them.

My submission is easy eye candy, on the other hand. I love science fiction, and how the concepts lead us to new ideas, and with that in mind posted a clip (and my own take on what it is) of a neat ePaper/messaging-tablet thing from a recently released TV pilot. Watch it now and tell us what you think. Personally, I actually want one of these.

I’m working out a hypothesis here, and would like some help. Does this distinction make sense to you? Would you add more to either list?

Internet thinking is characterized by companies like Yahoo, Skyfire, Opera, and Facebook, and ideas like

• the web browser is the only important environment
• services can be deployed across all users immediately
• most services are free
• no intermediaries are relevant; no third parties control content
• unlimited bandwidth
• one site, maybe with some CSS hacks to handle IE, is fine
• discovery by advertising, search engines, and portals
• customer support might happen over email
• lots of innovation

(Mobile) telco thinking is characterized by any mobile operator, companies like Microsoft, Nokia, and ideas like

• get a great experience for specific devices
• revenue sharing between all parties
• network (carrier) reliability
• service reliability & uptime
• third party oversight of content
• customer support is live and expensive
• interaction via multiple channels (web, SMS, voice, and more)
• walled gardens provide greater control and improved user experience
• silo thinking

You’ll notice I didn’t say that either side is smarter than the other. Both sides have strengths; both sides have blinders. And the blinders sure are interesting.

My thesis? You have to combine thinking from both to succeed in mobile. Google is kind-of there. Lots of startups start as Internet thinking but then get some Telco thinking smashed into their heads.

So, feedback please.