Method

image from PSFK.com

To ring in the new year, PSFK has tapped some of the world’s established innovators to share their insights into what we should be on the lookout for in 2013.

Among the fascinating minds on the list is Method Principal, Marc Shillum! Marc shares his predictions for what will happen to design in 2013, exploring the two important movements he sees happening parallel to each other in 2013. Read it here.

What do you think of Marc’s predictions? What do you think will happen in 2013? Let us know in the comments!

Having partnered with Method to launch ViewChange.org in 2010, Link TV came back to Method earlier this year to design an iPad news app that would allow readers to explore its rich library of international television news, raw videos, and documentaries.

With the Link TV team, Method helped to create the LinkTV World News, an app with an array of tools for news junkies who only want the most informative, relevant, and trustworthy information.

Launched in November 2012, we’re excited to report that in it’s first week, the LinkTV World News app reached #1 in the App Store “News” category! It has been extremely well received by the media, with major news sources and tech blogs raving about the app’s features. “LinkTV World News is basically an alternative video news outlet that can help you find stories you’ll likely miss if you spend most of your time on mainstream news sites and Youtube,” said NBC News.

For a deeper look at how Method designed the LinkTV World News app read the case study.

Download the app for free from the iTunes App Store!

When I began writing Brands as Patterns in late 2010, I hadn’t fully realized the potential of the argument.

What I had foreseen was the convergence of interaction design with brand thinking and how that was going to change the business of building brands forever. What I hadn’t foreseen is that that same convergence has the potential to change the face of designing for interaction as well.

It occurred to me after this week’s verdict on the Apple – Samsung patent lawsuit that this goes beyond vilifying copycat design and begins to challenge the underpinning of all design for interaction.

It is, of course, somewhat ironic, that a discipline that was founded upon recognizing and notating the common patterns of users and is responsible for creating the standardized building blocks of design has produced one of the most hotly contended intellectual property battles.

The outcome of this verdict could mean that any designer of interface or behaviors could be financially liable for whether the function or behavior they’re designing is unique, or appropriated from a commonly held usage pattern.

Of course it is the declared goal of interaction design to make use easier, and building upon commonly held usage patterns had been the primary way this was achieved.

Some of the patents being protected—the bounce back behavior, the unlock gesture, pinch and zoom—have quickly become the standard way we all have come to understand touch interfaces. It seems incredulous to design a plethora of permutations as to how a user may perform these standard tasks. But, if you think about it, this is exactly what has happened in the physical world. A pin tumbler lock is pretty much the standard for physical locks and was patented in in the 1800′s by Linus Yale. Yet if you look at your key ring, there must be at least three kinds of keys that all have different behaviors, and that does not take into account numeric combinations, electronic key cards, or biometrics.

Traditionally the choice for any competitive brand, when faced with patent issues, is to license, innovate, or avoid. And because it would be hard to imagine someone like Apple licensing its core patents to the competition, the only real choice is to innovate.

This brings about an interesting conundrum: are we really going to reinvent standard interactions to create differentiation? And do we then pass on this inherent complexity to the user?

But, therein lies the opportunity. By creating a set of behaviors, functions and organizing principles that is unique and protectable, you create a stickiness within the interface that a user grows attached to. They begin to organize their systems through your tools, create value through your functionality, access and respond to your behaviors. Much in the same way that it is easy to become accustomed to the handling of a particular car, users become accustomed to the handling of the interface.

This is the true power behind brands as patterns. Branding has moved away from the tails of planes or the logo on a business card that can only signify the breed of the company. Branding has become the way you use something, the way you interact with a company, and the way you experience their products. So far, it is as protectable by law as a logo, a trade mark, or a slogan.

So, there are 2 implications for the interaction design community to consider:

1. If this thought presents a fundamental challenge to the very core of the discipline and blocks best practices, the user will ultimately suffer. Future users may be unable to convert between interfaces and will have remaster even the simplest of tasks. The adoption of standards solves this massive problem. Imagine the web without http; measurement without standard weights or distances, or currency conversion without a centralized rates. The standard patterns of interaction are only shared between designers with an adhoc agreement to create better experiences for all users.

To protect standardization in the future, we must create a legal entity that would hold the global decisions on which interactions are kept as common and which are created into Brand IP. This would represent the Standards of Common Interaction if you will.

2. If this thought embodies the true spirit of innovation and presents the opportunity to fuel innovation for the coming centuries. It’s clear that we must all begin the race towards creating more ‘brand owned’ experiences and interactions in earnest.

Ultimately, we must delight and engage the user in the uniqueness of the product or service as it relates to the ownable pattern of the brand. To do this, we have work ahead of us.

Over the last couple months, Method has been closely collaborating with Adobe to launch ThRead, a new cross-tablet application that focuses on enhancing the online reading experience by enabling content to be easily organizable and sharable.

Today at 1:30pm PDT, we will be demoing ThRead live on-stage at Adobe’s design and technology conference, Adobe MAX 2011! For those of you that can’t be there to watch the demo, here’s a sneak peak of the application.

As our content consumption habits become increasingly fragmented, we are constantly skimming digital and social channels, building a thread between all of the disassociated articles, posts, snippets or papers that we read. When we annotate, share, or use a piece of content, it assigns greater value to that thought.

The concept for ThRead stemmed from the realization that the value of digital content is selective. Blogs can contain content that is both useful and completely useless to a reader. Finding the valuable pieces of content within a blog can be daunting, hindering the reading experience.

In contrast, when designers and developers read code, they read and organize information at once. Hiding, revealing, or tabulating information creates a legible and clear sequence.

ThRead takes the way developers read code and applies it to everything – enabling anyone to organize and annotate anything that’s interesting or useful. It allows readers to transform what they’re reading into a more digestible, and inherently more valuable, piece of information that can be easily shared with everyone.

ThRead makes reading a truly valuable social experience.

In the science and tech world, taking a weekend off from your RSS feed means potentially missing all the big news. So here’s a little roundup of exciting news on our radar that happened this weekend:

Canadian researchers show off the future of mobile with thin, flexible “paper computers.”

The Boston Globe shares their pictures of Atlantis. The shuttle programs’s last flight ended on Thursday.

Read it Later shares their usage statistics. The iPad is affecting when we decide to read. People are reading less during work hours and more in the evenings.

iPhone movement across Europe tracked in this neat visualization.

Facebook’s iPad app leaked, then blocked as users started unlocking access to it from their devices.

In other news, this weekend we said goodbye to our friend and colleague, Ellie, who is leaving Method New York for graduate school, where she’ll be studying architecture! We took a break from the heat with cake and gelato and said our goodbyes. We’ll miss ya, Ellie (and we know you’ll miss us too)!

Another successful New York Method PLAY – this one on wearable technology was so successful that we had dudes sewing! Click here to see more to see tutorial slides on how to make your own soft switch & more pictures.

Google is using Arduino for the “Android Open Accessory Kit.” Phillip Torrone of MAKE wrote a great article on why Google choosing Arduino matters. Three obvious reasons initially jump to my mind.

Today is Google’s I/O event, where they bring together thousands of developers and technologists to do a deep dive on building the next generation of web, mobile, and enterprise applications on Google platforms. This includes some really exciting announcements from Google.

Watch these videos of electronics from 20 years ago. There are incredible similarities to the electronics of today.