Archive for the ‘Design thinking’ Category
Forbes recently featured an ...
Forbes recently featured an article on “Steve Jobs and MTV: Nine Steps to All the Power You’ll Ever Need”. The article discusses the importance of communication and story telling, and details how to become a more effective and compelling communicator.
The article also goes on to cite Method Principal, Paul Valerio, in his 10×10 Raiders of the Lost Overture:
“I’m a huge fan of Paul Valerio who heads up the Customer Insights team for the design and innovation firm, Method. As I noted in a previous article, Building Brands by Killing Frogs, what I like best about Valerio is his ability to write creatively about creativity. He takes examples from everywhere and applies them to business and the black art of branding.
Valerio is as entertaining as he is enlightening and his article 6 Secrets to Branding, Ripped From “Raiders of the Lost Ark” is no exception. Here he applies an iconic movie and the amazing power of storytelling to super successful brands like IKEA. His overarching theme is that powerful communication means Show, Don’t Tell.”
Read the full article here.
Daniel Nacamuli is an Interaction Designer out of Method’s London studio. We’ll be pulling in some weekly posts from his Tumblr showcasing his thoughts around various user interfaces.
This week, we’re featuring his thoughts on Instapaper, an article filing service for browsers, iOS devices, and the Kindle. Daniel highlights some of the common interface problems he experiences with Instapaper, and how he imagines things could potentially be improved.
I was having a think about how to improve Instapaper’s article filing process on the iPhone. In this post I’ll go through some of the problems in the current implementation, and at the end offer a potential workaround.
Instapaper is a web service that saves articles for later reading on browsers, iOS devices, and Kindle. The service saves articles via its “Read Later” bookmarklet and presents them using a clean, minimal layout. On portable devices the articles can be read offline in the associated app. It’s a fantastic piece of software.
Articles appear in a Read Later folder, and from several places in the app can be deleted, moved to user defined folders, or archived. For the rest of this post I’ll refer to moving, archiving and deleting as ancillary actions or filing.
Filers become Pilers
I spoke to a few people and they all have a common problem with Instapaper: even though they can file articles from the reading view, they do this far less often than they would like to. This could be seen as a user problem, but if people use a feature less than they want to, I prefer to see it as an interface problem. I’ll be focusing on how we can improve the filing process when we have finished reading an article.
How filing is currently done
In the next three screens I’ll illustrate the user flow for filing articles from the reading view and highlight some of the problems along the way.
Access the ancillary actions using the Action button.
This feels a bit awkward: our thumb’s dominant role on this screen is to scroll, therefore it rests naturally on the left hand side of the screen. Accessing the action button requires that we aim for and tap the bottom right corner.
An action sheet gives access to ancillary actions.
Delete and Move to Archive can be done in one tap. The apparition of the modal overlay jars with the reading experience, and visually feels heavy compared to the app’s flat UI. Previously hidden, the status bar also drops into place for no apparent reason (though this may be a property of the action sheet).
Move to personal folder.
From the action sheet, tapping the Move to Folder… button enters another mode from which we choose which personal folder we want to move the article to.
So in the current implementation the use of an action sheet for ancillary actions has a few problems:
- Accessing it does not feel like a logical next step after reading
- Hidden behind a button its function is invisible to the user
- The filing actions take two to three taps to complete
- The transitions are visually noisy
How filing could be improved
Let’s take a look at an easier way to file when we have reached the end of an article. Going back to the first screen, if my thumb is here…
…maybe the ancillary actions could appear here too: inline at the end of the article.
This gives us a few advantages:
- With my thumb near the controls, filing feels like the next logical step after reading.
- Filing becomes modeless: no more noisy animations.
- Everything can be done in one tap.
The existing action button still gives us access to the share features and lets us file from anywhere in the article; so this isn’t mean to replace it.
Nice write-up on Marc’s Brand as Patterns #SXSW Panel in Digital For Real Life:
One of the best things about SXSW is its ability to create multidisciplinary panels that provide unique insights on marketing issues. “Brand as Patterns,” a panel comprised of Marc Shillum, Robin Lanahan of Microsoft, and composer Walter Werzowa (he created the famous Intel Mnemonic) is the perfect example of this. Each with their own views and experience, they point to a major challenge facing brands both old and new: the inherent conflict between building a brand (authority, consistency, repetition and identity), and ownership by individuals (freedom, diversity and uniqueness).
Read the original article here.
Daniel Nacamuli is an Interaction Designer out of Method’s London studio. We’ll be pulling in some weekly posts from his Tumblr showcasing his thoughts around various user interfaces.
This week, we’re featuring his thoughts on the search experience with Safari on iOS. Daniel explores additional features for search in iOS that would make the recommendation function more relevant and efficient. His explorations and thoughts below:
When you search for a term in Safari, the live search offers, in most cases the suggestion you want, which is great. Tapping on it closes the search view, submits your query, and takes you to the corresponding results page.
Now if you want to build on the suggestion, things get little fiddly. Your query can be made more accurate by typing it in full to see if more relevant suggestions are offered, or typing it in full and adding a word of your own.
Case in point: you want to find the IMDB page for Billy Wilder, so you’d wan’t something like billy wilder imdb. By the time you reach wi, billy wilder is suggested, but there is no easy way to build on the term. You have to do something like select it, cancel the search, and reopen the search to see if imdb is now suggested, or type imdb in yourself and resubmit. This takes a two to three screens and search/cancel/search process feels a bit frantic.
Maybe something like this would be easier: A “+” button adds the suggestion to the search bar, and sets the curser to the next character so you can add to it.
Given that billy wilder is now the new search term, new suggestions appear along side it, so maybe grey-out billy wilder to show that if you hit “+” again, only the unique words will be added to the query.
I used the “+” button to illustrate this example, probably not the right control for this, but hey..
Our newest 10×10 piece, Brand as Context in Interaction Design, just launched!
What feelings do the words Nike, Fox News, or Facebook evoke? This article discusses the role of interaction design in building emotive and relevant brands through products and services true to a brand’s voice that simultaneously deliver coherent experiences. Understanding of the context a brand has created is critical for designing coherent product and service experiences.
Read the full piece here and tell us what you think!
TechCrunch recently posted an article covering Ubuntu, a newly announced product from Canonical for the Android. The device is presenting some interesting notions on multi-platform engagements – one device that can both work seamlessly as an independent phone and, when plugged into a computer screen, a full desktop experience.
Think of the implications, and what this could mean for the future of user interfaces – a single, handheld device that can switch its interface for any and every media context.
Our phones are becoming more and more the center of our communications, utilities and entertainment. We’d probably all tend to choose our phone rather than open up the laptop for quick searches or browsing online.
Method works hard for our clients to consider the entire product and service ecosystem: how their brand experience is seamless across multiple platforms, but an idea to create a single platform for all experiences would be revolutionary. Of course, the input interaction still differs between a handheld, desktop, and TV experience, but why should it originate from different devices?
We see that Apple is preparing to launch AirPlay Mirroring, which essentially mirrors your laptop with your Apple TV connected TV – and they’ve been working to keep all your devices in sync with iCloud.
But why all these devices for different uses? One device for home entertainment, one device for work, and and yet another device for mobile communications.
It feels inevitable that the next step will be to reduce to a single device for all these purposes. A true pocket phone-computer-media center. One such step is from Ubuntu. They’ve brought together these three uses into one Android device. They’ve previously created a free desktop operating system and a smart TV operating system, both running from your laptop, but now they’ve housed both systems in a phone. Here’s a description from their site:
When out and about, the phone operates as any other Android-powered phone; but when you slip the device into a dock connected to a monitor, keyboard and mouse you get the familiar Ubuntu desktop experience.
Another neat trick: if you connect your device to a television via HDMI you don’t get the Ubuntu desktop: you get the Ubuntu TV interface. You can browse media on your phone or access online content as you would with any Ubuntu TV appliance.
Regardless of your OS preference, the use of one platform and one device interacting with users at different levels is a great step forward in truly building a holistic experience for users. They currently use a wired doc to connect to a monitor and keyboard or to the TV, but I bet we’ll be seeing wireless connection quite soon.
The dream of ubiquitous computing is that all the clunky boxes that gather dust in our lives are replaced by a network of powerful processing units so small that all you really see is the interface.
This takes us a big step closer to that, potentially giving developers and entrepreneurs a large network of devices and users to start creating for. This is exquisitely in the original spirit of ubuntu – ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’.
There is no doubt that ultimately Set Top Boxes, large desktop PC’s and laptops will be a quaint part of history the only question is how quickly. Whatever that timescale is – it just got accelerated, and that’s a great thing for all of us.
We’re very happy to announce that our web design work with Teaching Channel and AIGA have both been selected as winners in the 2011 Pixel Awards Competition. The awards take a look at a number of categories ranging from Apps to Fashion, selecting the best work that represents “a creative and technical blend of impeccable graphic design, artistry, technological expertise, and a powerful, simulating user experience.”
The Pixel Awards honored our work with Teaching Channel and AIGA in the student and community categories, respectively.
(image from FastCompany.com)
Fast Company recently posted an article on the developing tech war between innovation giants, Facebook, Apple, Google and Amazon, discussing in detail the various factors working for and against these companies. It sheds light on the fact that these organizations, originally known to operate within one vertical are beginning to expand their business and design thinking into other markets.
The article was keen in pointing out that we’re finally seeing once siloed technologies beginning to merge. Companies that once were known for doing one thing, and doing it well, are finding opportunities to compete in places where many never imagined possible. Using their core offerings as a foundation, product, services, and content providing are become one industry, and the current companies who didn’t embrace or acknowledge the change are going to struggle to catch up.
“To state this as clearly as possible: The four American companies that have come to define 21st-century information technology and entertainment are on the verge of war. Over the next two years, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google will increasingly collide in the markets for mobile phones and tablets, mobile apps, social networking, and more. This competition will be intense. Each of the four has shown competitive excellence, strategic genius, and superb execution that have left the rest of the world in the dust.”
Read the full article here. What do you think? Who will come out on top in the innovation economy. Comment below or tweet @method_inc.
As I visited www.apple.com to check on iOS 5, I was greeted by Steve. Or, I should say, Steve’s picture greeted me from the home page. It was made all the more poignant by the fact that the dates made it clear that I was looking at a memorial to a man, one who has certainly had a huge effect on my life.
For the past decade, I have continually heard clients talk about how Apple has totally grasped branding, experience design, product design, innovation (insert any variable that matches your context). In his passing, bloggers, pundits, and the media in general have begun to look back on his contributions. NYC Mayor Bloomberg even compared him to Edison and Einstein with regard to how his work has changed our world.
At Method, we live and breathe experience design. We live and breathe branding. We live and breathe innovation. And we live a lot of our work and non-work lives with Apple products. As I think of the contributions of Edison and Einstein, my mind raced to bridge a gap — Steve Jobs’ contribution to our world is not just for the benefit of designers, or “early-adapters” or “Mac Fanboys” or any other demographic/pyschographic segmentation that would allow the contribution to be reviewed with an asterik (*Steve’s innovations changed the world for 60% male/40% female, 24-37 yrs, $150K household income, urban/suburban, creatively inclined professionals).
There is a lot of information, from Steve verbatim, and from those who worked with him, about what the goal of all of this was. And it may be that it shifted over time as technologies matured, digital media disrupted industries and business models, and the nature of the network began to be woven more and more into our daily lives. But as I looked at Steve’s picture on the Apple web site, I had a profound realization for what he had done and how important has been to my life, our business, and the world at large: Steve brought the best of the opportunities enabled by the computer — processing power, digital media, connection to the network affect — and put it at our finger tips. From the early adoption of the mouse and the WIMP user interaction model, to the control wheel of the first iPods, to the iTouch, the iPhone, the iPad, literally everything Apple has done has been creating the best in experience design that brings the power and benefits of technology and putting it at our fingertips.
What a brilliant stroke of genius. While everyone struggles with balancing form and function of technology to deliver technology, Steve went straight to the heart of the matter. We are visual beings who see our environment and use our hands to take control. The hand-eye relationship underlies our specialization amongst animals, it part of the heart of every creative craft on which we have built our cultures and civilizations.
Yes, the iPad is a genius piece of design. Yes the iPod and iTunes changed an industry and will affect future generations — how will you hear that song that marks your first love? But in the final analysis, perhaps the most important thing that has been accomplished has been showing the world what technology can be, how it should approached from human terms. What we see, what we touch, he we manipulate; these are the core components of the human experience.
And Steve seemed to know that if these can be engaged in the right way, the world is your oyster.