Montblanc's e-strap is an intriguing concept to be sure, but it might have been better on the drawing board than in reality. Just because your customers like a bulky watch doesn't mean they want a second, slightly less bulky, display on the opposite side of the strap. Also: I've seen better displays on digital radios.
The Camera to Beat
Hot on the heels of the iPhone toppling all-but-one camera brand on Flickr comes this piece on The Verge by Vlad Savov:
The iPhone’s lead as the smartphone to beat has rarely been defined by just one thing. At one point, the biggest advantage was the simplicity and speed of its interface; at another, it was down to the diversity and quality of available apps; and most recently, the iPhone has distinguished itself with the quality of its 8-megapixel camera. Today, the combination of all these things — simple and fast operation, strong optics and image processing, and a wide app ecosystem — is helping people create the best possible images with the least possible hassle.
It's been a while now since the iPhone pretty much replaced all of the my other cameras—I haven't taken either my Canon DSLR or my Ricoh GR Digital 1 out of the house since I bought the iPhone 5s, and the iPhone 6 has made me miss them even less. (Hat-tip to MyAppleMenu for the link).
Innovation is Mostly Hindsight
I was asked yesterday to review part of a project proposal I'm involved in and—for the purposes of the funding application—highlight aspects which might qualify it as innovative. It's not an unusual ask, especially when the funding is meant to go to innovative projects, but it made me think about just how difficult it is to define innovation.
Reading through the proposal a number of different kinds of innovation seem apparent, and I think it's worth enumerating and thinking about them seperately:
1. Pure invention: This is characterised by a high degree of novelty or unexpectedness, though this might not be immediately apparent. Sometimes there are things we just haven't heard of before, and where we don't know if there's prior art. We can probably rid ourselves of quite a few of these simply by doing more research, and shifting the innovation into another category; some examples that remain might actually be bad ideas—novelty for its own sake, as it were. We should probably eliminate those too, unless we're working in a field of pure research. I'm not sure that this approach has much to offer those of us working in design contexts.
2. Extension: Some of our innovations are really extensions of what's been done before—a kind of dialling up of key aspects of the work. This is often what passes for design iteration, though it's less than all that implies. Much of what passes for consumer product innovation Is just this kind of amplification: faster, thinner, more. Almost every project does at least some of this,
3. Recontextualisation: Perhaps the most interesting kind of innovation is when something established (and sometimes mundane) in one context suddenly gets relocated into a new space and it just all makes sense. Think failed low-tack glue becoming Post-It-Notes. We're big fans of this over on the Visual Communication Masters course too—it's often what's happening when students are creating what we call new knowledge.
4. Synthesis: You can combine disparate elements and end up with a teasmade, or you can create the iPhone. When it works, when two conceptual frameworks overlay each other and tessellate perfectly, then true magic happens. Very hard to do well, and a quick read of The Design of Everyday Things is all you need to tell you why.
What's apparent from yesterday's exercise in innovation-spotting is just how hard it is to definitively call something innovative, except in hindsight. More often than not we're just pointing out areas with potential for design activity that fits one or more of our categories, and where we hope that innovation—with the application of design, commitment to iterative processes , and more than a little luck—might take hold and flourish.
Unearthing the Early Web
Fascinating web archeology in old VHS cassettes.
In the late aughts, Baio figured out where he might be able to find this historical data. He began collecting instructional VHS tapes about the early web from thrift stores and Amazon's used video section, where he could get them for about a dollar each. With names like Internet Power and Computability they contain plenty of outdated jargon and quaint "gee wiz" attitudes, and were largely aimed at people who had an Internet connection but didn't know what to use it for. Turns out, these videos make up some of the only documentation left of that online era.
Will 2015 be the Year of the Laptop?
On the heels of all the 12" MacBook rumours comes this CES piece from The Verge:
The most significant (and consistent) CES absentee every year is Apple, but even its MacBooks managed to get into the news this week with a leak suggesting there’ll be a leaner and meaner 12-inch MacBook Air coming this year. The key to making that happen, beyond the move to the more efficient Broadwell CPUs, is the newly introduced USB Type-C connector. Shaped like Apple’s own Lightning plug, it’s slim and symmetrical, and it’s going to make it possible to build even thinner laptops than we already have. It’s crazy to think it, but Type-C is the sort of blindingly obvious upgrade in convenience that may push some people over the edge to go and finally upgrade their years-old laptop.
Whether it’s Intel’s chips, Apple’s design chops, or the continuing refinement of Windows machines, you’ll have more reasons to consider buying a new laptop in 2015 than in the previous three years combined. It’s a good time to be in this market, that’s for sure.
Though I use the iPad as my primary computer I think the death of the notebook is a way off. Heck, I've fallen back in love with my iMacs over the last year or so (and could easily see myself getting a retina iMac this year). In truth, all these device formats (and I include the Watch as a potentially useful space) have a place, and we're just beginning to figure out how information and functionality can move between these spaces in meaningful—and comfortable—ways.
Disrupting Meat
Fascinating article on the work done by a new generation of food scientists to eliminate the inefficient process of using animals to turn plants into meat:
Considering the speed of change, the money and smarts being thrown at the problem, and the desperate need, it seems likely that sometime in the next decade, Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods or another rival will perfect vegetarian beef, chicken, and pork that is tastier, healthier, and cheaper than the fast-food versions of the real thing. It will be a textbook case of disruptive technology: overnight, meat will become the coal of 2025—dirty, uncompetitive, outcast. Our grandchildren will look back on our practice of using caged animals to assemble proteins with the same incredulousness that we apply to our ancestors’ habit of slaughtering whales to light their homes.
As someone who was vegan for 18 years—mostly for environmental reasons—I'm convinced we can do a better job of making affordable protein to feed the world. I look forward to trying some of these new attempts.
Designing for the Long Haul
Carlos Gomez might not like what Apple has in mind for the future of the notebook Mac, but he absolutely nails the approach it's taking:
When Apple finds an opportunity to rethink a popular device, they engineer it to the user and use cases three years down the road and wait for the hardware and software to catch up. They’re rarely content in just making a better version of what they already sell. That’s a recipe for being leapfrogged in the marketplace by a younger and less-entrenched company. It’s a story they wrote. I think it’s not too risky to say Apple lives in a perpetual fear of having what they did to Palm and BlackBerry done to them by someone with clear vision and nothing to lose.
Return of the MacBook Air
Over at Six Colors, Jason Snell offers some historical context on the heavily-rumoured 12" MacBook Air:
If Gurman’s reports are accurate, this new model pulls the MacBook Air line away from the MacBook Pro. In fact, it returns the MacBook Air to its roots—as a product full of choices that we consider crazy at first, because they’re out of step with conventional computer design, but that will appeal to a target audience that doesn’t actually care about those de rigueur features.
I owned an original MacBook Air too (the curvy first model, in its second—slightly speedier—revision), and loved it in spite of the inherent design compromises. This was before iTunes Match, before DropBox, before iCloud, and using it as a primary computing device meant making some pretty tricky decisions about what you were going to load up on that pokey SSD. Nevertheless I considered it a no-brainer: I had lugged my laptops around half the globe for the best part of a decade (first a PowerBook G3, then a white iBook, a 12" PowerBook, and finally a brace of Intel MacBooks) and though each delivered a different balance of convenience and functionality, I found myself inexorably moving towards valuing portability over power.
This was of course driven by the changing nature of my own employment (less design and coding, more writing and researching), but also by the dynamics of hardware and software: Moore's Law and Mac OS X seemed almost conspiratorially intent on delivering more functionality for less with each refresh. By the late 2000's it seemed faintly ridiculous to be hauling around the equivalent of a desktop system when all I really needed was a note-taking and communication system. Less than two years after adopting the Air I was well on my way to replacing it with the first iPad.
This same dynamic leads me to agree with Jason Snell: The MacBook Air needs to return to its original position as an outlier, a statement of intent, a herald of things to come. In a couple of revisions the MacBook Pro will be as thin and light as the original Air was back in 2008, and pretty much every notebook manufacturer has a svelte model in its range (though inexplicably I still see people hauling the kinds of kit that make that original Lombard G3 look small). Apple can let the new Air point the way towards the kind of Mac that'll be mainstream in two or three years, and at the same time make the neither-one-thing-nor-the-other hybrid tablet/notebooks look ridiculously clunky and compromised.
I haven't bought a notebook for myself since the first IPad shipped, but if the 2015 12" Air is all that it's rumoured to be then I could easily see that changing..
Exceptional Cases
I'm not a big fan of phone cases—I'm pretty sure Apple's industrial designers don't design their devices and then hope you'll slap a case on it—but I know that for many people it's either necessitated by the way they need to use and handle their phones, or a part of how they personalise and express themselves.
if I was going to put a permanent case on my iPhone though, this would be it. Seems incredibly thin and elegant, and leaves the iPhone's aesthetic almost untouched. I might just order one to see how they feel.
For those who are interested, I've always carried my iPhones around in an Apple IPod Sock to protect them in my pocket. The iPhone 6 though is just a touch too long to be comfortably squeezed into one, and so I'm using a Knomo Leather Sleeve (in tomato red). I've also just picked up one of these wrap-around sleeves from Dutch company Mujjo, to use when I want to carry my iPhone, bank card, and nothing else.
Source: http://buypeel.com
iPads 4 U
If you're in the market for an iPad (retina Mini or original iPad Air) You might want to check out the site that's auctioning off stock from failed UK phone retailer Phones4U. Ends Tuesday. Worth mentioning that these are all wifi+cellular models (the auction site says WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS, but the model numbers check out as cellular versions). Also worth ploughing through the lots for iPhone 5 and 5c, and a bunch of other stuff if you're after Android phones or tablets. I can't get the search to give me more than a single page of results though, so you may have to click through all the stock to find what you want.
I Gave Up on Ultraviolet
Over at Six Colors, Dan Moren gives a great account (great post title too!) of the current state of the movie industry's attempt to do anything to avoid giving business to Apple:
In case you’re not familiar with UltraViolet, it’s the movie industry’s attempt to deal with the popularity of digital video. On the face of it, that’s a good thing, because it means that the studios are taking piracy head on, rather than sticking their fingers in their ears and humming “la la la la la la” as loud as they can.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t translate into a system that is particularly consumer-friendly. Allow me to recount the steps I had to take to redeem the free digital copy of Lawrence of Arabia that came with the 50th anniversary Blu-ray I received for Christmas.
Of course all of this was so much easier when they just included an iTunes download code with their movies (some still do, but they're getting harder and harder to find). I've tried to use the Ultraviolet codes on a couple of occasions, and always given up.
2015
So an intended month off here to concentrate on other things turned into almost three. A lot's happened in that time, not least a ton of work on revalidating the Masters Programme in Visual Communications, and a host of associated activity. More on that soon, alongside some new Resleeves activity (including our first live event in February), some additional design consultancy content, and—inevitably—lots of thoughts about the impending Apple Watch launch and the UX implications. For now, a very happy new year to everyone.
The Magazine Closes
A pity. I subscribed from day one, and I've never cancelled, but I've read it less and less frequently. Magazines on digital are still not a resolved idea.
My labor of love the last two years has been The Magazine, first as its hired hand and then, in May 2013, as its owner. The sad truth has been that, while profitable from week one, the publication has had a declining subscription base since February 2013. It started at such a high level that we could handle a decline for a long time, but despite every effort — including our first-year anthology crowdfunded a bit under a year ago — we couldn't replace departing subscribers with new ones fast enough. We're a general-interest magazine that appeals to people who like technology, and that makes it very hard to market.
How To Hire Designers
Mike Monteiro just writes the best stuff about the process of design as a job of work. You have to love the title too.
Most people have never hired a designer in their lives. They will live good, fulfilling, happy lives. They will throw birthday parties for their children, they will mow their lawn, they will upgrade their car at a reasonable pace, and they will grow old and happy surrounded by people they love, knowing they’ve lived a good life.
And then there will be people who have to hire a designer at some point in their lives. Maybe just once. Maybe on a regular basis. This article is for them.
Thanks, Rackspace
Rackspace have always been great, but this is awesome. Kudos.
Cloud-computing company Rackspace, a target of a lawsuit from Rotatable Technologies, refused to pay $75,000 to settle a suit and challenged the company's patent, US PAT. No. 6,326,978. Rackspace won, and the patent was declared unpatentable.
"This means that Rackspace will not pay one penny to this troll, nor will Apple, Netflix, Electronic Arts, Target, Whole Foods, or any of the other companies sued by Rotatable for how they use screen rotation technology in their apps," Van Lindberg, a Rackspace vice president, wrote on the company's blog in a post headlined: "Another Patent Troll Slain. You Are Now Free To Rotate Your Smartphone."
Andy Ihnatko's Apple Watch Ambivalence
Interesting observations. And whether I agree or disagree with Andy, I love that he's the kind of guy who properly pluralises mouse as mouses.
And remember that this is a watch, strapped to a human wrist. It can’t be dogged down too tightly or you’ll cut off the blood flow to your hand. So the demonstrator sometimes used their right thumb to steady the opposite side of the watch while their index finger was working the wheel or pushing the button underneath it.
Mind you, photos, videos and descriptions of the original Mac seemed clumsy to many people who had never worked the mouse themselves. In the abstract, you’re constantly taking your hands of the keyboard to push this chunky bar of soap around the desk and then going back to the keyboard. But in practice, it’s not awkward at all.
So long as I’m comparing the controls of the watch to those on the original Mac mouse, though, I can’t help but point out that it only had one button. The mouses that preceded it has lots of controls but the Mac team decided that with this brand-new device, one button was sufficient and led to a cleaner device that was easier to use.
It really is important to remember how each interface breakthrough comes with a learning curve. The original Mac (and the Mac Plus that followed it) came with an audio cassette explaining how to use a mouse.
The Apple Watch Is Perfect For Chinese Input
This is a great idea. I'll need to get learn Chinese for it to be any use to me: At the moment I can only manage numbers, and my girlfriend's name.
I was absentmindedly fondling my old-school Swatch watch while reading Chinese when it struck me: A touch-sensitive watch face is an ideal size and shape for inputting Chinese logograms — better even than a smartphone, because you can do it continuously, and inconspicuously. Just frame the watch face with you thumb and middle finger, then “sign” with your index finger.
That’s enough to let another Apple Watch wearer read your full-fledged Chinese texts in real time. You’re not even dependent on OCR software to transcribe your scribbles into machine-readable text — the only recognition ability needed is that of another human.
Standing Up For U2
The knee-jerk U2/Bono hate gets on my nerves too.
Call it the Tony Blair test: I’m a Labour voter, and he still gives me consistently egregious reasons to regret that he ever won power. But if push came to shove, I’d still vote for him as a Labour PM, because he’s the least worst option. I’d certainly vote for Blair a thousand times before I voted for the heartless, bloated, conservative monstrosity that came after him – just like I’d buy (or accept graciously) thousands of U2 albums of diminishing quality before I bought one by Coldplay.
Scribble Pen Funding Gets Canceled By Tilt
Despite our best efforts to resolve the matter with Tilt, they have not provided any material response. Therefore, we have made the difficult decision to end our crowd funding efforts and seek private investment for Scribble Pen in order to continue the pursuit of our dream. Any donations will be refunded to you per Tilt.com terms and conditions and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Disappointing for those hoping to get a Scribble Pen soon, but it must be devasting to the team working on it. Here's hoping they find their funding soon.
75% Of Ikea's Product Images Are CG
There were people who said, ‘It’s CG, so it can’t be as good’. But the real turning point for us was when, in 2009, they called us and said, “You have to stop using CG. I’ve got 200 product images and they’re just terrible. You guys need to practise more.” So we looked at all the images they said weren’t good enough and the two or three they said were great, and the ones they didn’t like were photography and the good ones were all CG! Now, we only talk about a good or a bad image - not what technique created it.”