Facebook is the new Google – as in, they are building up an army of the best damn software developers on the planet. But having great engineers is not enough. Microsoft, Google, and Facebook have each had a monopoly on great engineers for a period of time. But engineers want to solve hard problems – to build abstractions – to unify 3 different things that seem kinda similar. But this has nothing to do with solving real user problems, which is what Apple excels at. So these amazing engineers need a Product Person to direct them. Someone who doesn’t just unify stuff because it’s neat & challenging. Someone who thinks, “what problems do people have?” and then solves those problems .
Some good stuff in this post around the danger of not maintaining a balance of engineering and product design.
Multiple times a day I find myself with an idea, note or task I want to remember in the future. I’ve tried a variety ways of dealing with these fleeting thoughts – email, to-do in my GTP app du jour (OmniFocus 4EVA!), evernote, Apple’s crappy Notes app and even voice memos (back in the day!) – and each has its strengths and its flaws, either on input or on the processing side (turning that note/idea into *something*).
Enter Capt.io, an iPhone app that is designed for exactly this use case – the quick note to self. Here’s how it works:
You open the app and land right on the input screen. Tap out a note and hit “Send” and you’re done.
Or you can choose to add a photo (camera or library) to your note with a top of the paper clip in the top-left.
This simple and pure experience is largely made possible by the smart way that the developers have offloaded some crucial info to the Settings screen. You just give the app an email address you want all these notes to go to and you can also add a prefix to all your notes which makes them really easy to filter in whatever mail client you’re using.
In a world when even the “simpler” apps we use have too many features, it’s really refreshing to see an app that isolates a very common use case and designs a pure interface around it that is as useful as it is simple. Well done.
For 99 cents Capt.io is an absolute no brainer for anyone who has ideas (and it makes a pretty great design case study to boot)
The whole interview is a great window into the spirit that drives his work but I found this particular section interesting as it reminded me a lot of how we look at badges here at foursquare:
I think that “dangling carrot” is a good term for it, even though there has been a lot of research lately that the carrot, in general, is a bad motivator. We don’t want to chase carrots, it turns out, when it comes to the most important things in our lives. But if you think about the visual metaphor a bit more, I think it is actually a really good trick of psychology. You dangle a carrot in front of someone when you want them to go in a certain direction. Now, what happens when you’re dangling carrots in front of yourself, and you get to choose the direction? That’s the truly magical component. If you can align your “carrot” with your values, aspirations, and goals, then what you end up doing is providing a little kickstart towards a goal that will eventually become intrinsically motivating.
People love getting foursquare badges and there’s a new startup launching every day ready to give you a badge for doing just about anything but I feel strongly that badges for the sake of badges is a fleeting reward and ultimately not something that’s going to create any sort of strong relationship between you and your users and more importantly between your users and themselves.
For us at foursquare, the reward has always been in getting people to do something they might not already be doing, or necessarily feel comfortable doing. It’s that potential for discovery and profound behavior change that’s so core to everything we weave into the foursquare experience and it’s great to see Buster articulate that so well.
I definitely recommend reading the entire interview if you’re at all interested in leveraging technology and game mechanics for self-enhancement.
This home video really shows the impact the iPad is only starting to have on the way all kinds of people will interact with information. This particular video focuses on a child but you can imagine it (disclaimer: I know there will be other tablets but until I see them executed in the same way, I’m sticking with the iPad as the category-defining device) will have a similar, profound effect on a variety of other kinds of users.
ps: anyone know what apps “bunny alphabet” and “rainbow keyboard” are?
Who knows if this is actually even physically or technically possible but I’m totally in love with the concept and the thinking behind it. The renderings are mesmerizingly well executed, too.
MLB.com is taking the rich data they have from major league baseball games and presenting them within the context of the social activity that’s happening during a game. They do so by laying each bit of data on a timeline – tracking tweet activity throughout the game and even letting you slice it by team – and letting you interact with that data.
MLB.com has always been at the front of the pack in handling complex real-time data (with Gameday as the flagship product) so it’s nice to see them extend that to include social data as well. While I was only able to find these visualizations for games that were over, I expect (hope) that they’re going to give this a go in real-time as the games are happening.
Update: You can grab the deep link to this feature from the game wrap screen by clicking on the Twitter icon in the top right. Thanks to Jason from the MLB.com team for pointing that out in the comments.
Other game companies at the time assigned alphabet letters or colors to the buttons. We wanted something simple to remember, which is why we went with icons or symbols, and I came up with the triangle-circle-X-square combination immediately afterward. I gave each symbol a meaning and a color. The triangle refers to viewpoint; I had it represent one’s head or direction and made it green. Square refers to a piece of paper; I had it represent menus or documents and made it pink. The circle and X represent ‘yes’ or ‘no’ decision-making and I made them red and blue respectively. People thought those colors were mixed up, and I had to reinforce to management that that’s what I wanted.
After all these years, it’s great to hear the rational behind the symbols on the seminal controller. Triangle, Circle and X make sense (though I’m with “management” on the color choice for the last two).
I find Square = piece of paper to be an interesting relic of a tool that was designed before “digital” became the norm and we still had to hold on to analog metaphors.
One could argue that “No Manual” needed is the pinnacle of product design but if you’re going to make a “manual” you could do far worse than this. So much nicer to help people experience your product in order to learn rather than just telling them how it works. Just lovely. (ht @adamwohl)
How did it take civilization this long to come up with something that makes SO MUCH SENSE? Sadly, you can’t go out and buy one yet but hopefully someday soon you will be able to.
Speaking of economy, it unfortunately looks like you can’t buy these yet, but now that the idea is out there someone will be marketing them soon. Nothing that’s invented ever dies. Especially not when it’s this cute and immediately useful.
My friend Abhishek shared this photo of a smartly-designed lock & key system. What makes the lock special isn’t the result of groundbreaking technology but rather a desire to make it easier for those using it to be successful.
What kind of subtle changes could you make to your product/website/application/service/business that would discretely help your customers succeed, thereby feeling better about themselves, and in turn, your brand?
This site is meant to be a constant river of content that I'm finding online, delivered directly to you. You can get these links by following @everydayux on Twitter or by subscribing to the everydayUX RSS feed.
I maintain a more traditional blog, covering a wide range of topics over at www.alexrainert.com.
I'm a husband, new father & owner of a lovably neurotic vizsla. Obsessed with information, design, emerging tech, sports & food. Years ago I co-founded dodgeball.com and I'm currently head of product at foursquare.
