UI::IU

User Interface - Intuitive Usabilty

I have to give credit to Hugh Macleod again - this print at the end says it all.

In design we often struggle with evolution. Legacy has killed many products, and the software industry often is not nimble enough to recognize when a wholesale revolutionary jump is necessary in order to keep pace with trending and market changes, keeping the brand intact but

changing the product. Few, such as Apple, have been able to truly both be evolutionary and revolutionary, but to no small degree by a clear vision and key perseverance.

Have you ever truly had an experience with a product that, is not only evolutionary in a new market, but could also be revolutionary in another?

This could be the advent of the mobile application market feeding back into the desktop lifestream.

How? Go, boot up your computer. A legacy operating system, built a step up but with an eye towards early adopters, technologists with a bent towards customization and programming, that has not kept up with the widening market of users that only want to click on an icon and run an

application. They don't want to know how it works. They don't want to spend hours trying to devirus the system or flush the cache. They don't want to dig for files.

They just want one window in which a clear set of intuitive interactions await their touch, sans thinking.

I handed my iPhone to my grandfather. This man, as I've come to discover, is the genetic source of my geekiness, a lifetime cabinet builder that bought his first computer at the age of 75. And, with his first touches, he got it.

And so, as a meandering wander through the computer section of Best Buy illustrated, Microsoft hasn't got it. A desktop. Sub folders. All exposed naked, as driven by programmers who supply the masses, historically true to their DOS predecessors.

But why do 95% of users need this? Why, when I go to the office, do I not press a button, and click a few icons into my applications? Why, when I need a new application, do I not click on the store and automatically install it on my computer? Why do I struggle through applications with 10 steps, with the illustrious 'install wizard', the very model of user unfriendliness for non-techs.

If the Chrome OS can spark a change, or Apple can scale their mobile OS to a desktop level, should Microsoft not be afraid? We never know how these elements pan out, but this is a landscape ripe for the taking. Will it be a push to the cloud? Will it be a redesign of a easily customizable, excessively user-friendly desktop experience, in which I have a hood covering the engine to my silicon car?

Let's hope so, if not to bring a level of stability and to finally show a significant step forward in our understanding of human interaction, and understanding of the how we behave.

Linden Labs vs. Google : Victor takes the virtual marketplace

First: Thank you BumpTop. Your 3D desktop has recovered my desktop, a task previously unthinkable.  It's stable, and you guys rock.

Second: The migration back into a 3D desktop has reinvigorated a perception I've had on the futures of the virtual environments by Linden Labs and Google. It's no secret that I've wondered about Google's potential for SketchUp, but is that far enough? Is it possible that Google Earth is the real competitor to Second Life?

Hugh may be saying it best: 

Walk with me here - Linden Labs has combined the perks of a social chat room with a  marketplace.  Throw a 3-dimensional GUI over this, and that's it. Not much different than your Apple store and iPhone interface, except that you have cute little avatars (well, not that cute) and less control on quality environments.

So, what if you had the following acquisitions: A) a powerful, user friendly 3D modeling application;  a foray (failed, but still a foray nonetheless - RIP Lively!) into an online 3D engine; a powerful, global-based database & map/3D graphic engine; GPS synchronization; a social network/IM stream; an open-source mobile phone OS and handset(s); and finally, a powerful search and advertising/marketing network.

LL, be afraid.

This isn't to say that Google has all of the pieces, but Google has all the pieces. Sony may be able to bring a variation of this to the PS3, but they are landlocked to the console. Apple is missing the advertising connection.  Microsoft isn't even in the same neighborhood (open source? whazzat?).

So how do these pieces go together? There is not much difference if someone is creating something for the web or modeling for real-world architecture (I'm still waiting for Google SketchUp to take on Autodesk, but I've vented on that enough for now...). An intuitive modeler is an enabler, and being able to port to Google Earth is a gateway drug.

Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash speaks of a world where there is relevance between physical and virtual locations. Anyone with Google Maps on your iPhone know of the surrealism of being able to always know where you are, and entering into the virtual based on the physical brings a parallelism unprecedented in 3D environments. Discovering new worlds or landholding your real estate in both worlds gives the ability to sync retail brick and mortar locations with their online presences. 

Now distribute this to your mobile phones. Virtual searches syncronized with physical products. Tracking search and purchase over a distributed network on PC and mobile. VR synced to the physical, yet the parallel with the truly virtual. Advertising pushed to your phone through GPS, driven from the VR parallel, and vice versa. 

Combine this with attributal building information, searchable destinations, or even being able to recombine and build your own cities based on search criteria. Market data beware, you can have user data at an entirely different scale. People could build and share their own virtual 'cities', pulling people to search and build their networks with each other.

Unimaginable, no?

iTunes Auto?

After a weekend of being inundated with Microsoft Sync commercials, it brings about a question of if/when Apple will take on this competition? From the standpoint of a direct download version of iTunes running through a car's entertainment system, linking up on-demand movies to your dvd player and downloading any song while driving through voice-activation...makes you wonder, eh?

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