Tim Brown On Current Design Challenges

prostoalex writes "Tim Brown is the CEO of IDEO, design company that is quite famous for its work on designing office chairs, Palm computers, Microsoft mice, Nike shoes, etc. MIT Technology Review interviewed Tim Brown on current challenges in the design world, exciting fields for a designer to be in, current annoyances in the user interface design."

Comments

i-Mode has nothing to do with design

[xtal]

The idea that people are going to use their mobile devices to do things like watch movies is just wrong. I think this is as the reason that the Japanese i-Mode has been so successfulâ"its applications are very small.

I'll agree using a cell phone to look at movies and pictures is stupid.

However, i-Mode services took off because anyone can easily make themselves an i-Mode application and have it run. Here, I am limited to very expensive applications and only ones that have been endorsed by my digital cell provider. Meaning that I have never so much as LOOKED at any of those features. I'm not going to spend a quarter to send a instant message. I'd balk at a nickel. I'll just call - I pay a flat fee for voice, to a point. Text uses a FRACTION of that bandwidth.

The phone companies want to be in the applications business, and so long as they control the content, these services are just a bad joke. That's the secret of i-Mode.

Re:i-Mode has nothing to do with design

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears that Tim Brown has actually managed to make the leap from the mess that was WAP in Europe two or three years ago. Basically it took a large, online medium (The web) and tried to just force it onto a mobile device. As he notes, it didn't work and no one wanted it. WAP is dead.

Seems as though the major 3G vendors in Europe could do with contracting Tim, though. All of them are desperate to push their mobile platforms as some sort of miniture web platform. But as Tim notes, do you really need or want to watch streaming video on a mobile? It seems that they are all so wrapped up in the technical side of things that someone forgot to ask the people they're trying to sell too.

My personal opinion is that 3G will fail to take off until the vendors drop all pretense of it being some sort of mini-web device and actually recognise that people do not want to watch a postage stamp sized weather report video.[1]

What do I know; I don't have billions of Euros in 3G licences I'm desperatly trying to claw back.

[1]: This is an actual advert from 3 here in the U.K. An example of a phone being used to watch a weather report. It looks very nice, sure, but what extra information does a little colour 3D map with clouds on offer instead of a spoken report?

Re:i-Mode has nothing to do with design

[tgma]

His point doesn't disagree with yours - the reason why i-Mode works is because people have been able to produce services for it that are different, and appropriate to the mobile platform.

TR: Are there historical parallels to this phenomenon?
BROWN: Sureâ"it's the whole horseless carriage scenario. Early cars looked like carriages, early TVs looked like radios. Every time somebody brings you something thatâ(TM)s new, it looks like the old thing. Itâ(TM)s only the second or third generation before it finally starts to look like the new thing.

The problem is that most of the firms producing both hardware and software for mobile applications are trying to force people to use handsets as though they are using a desktop. For instance, the browser on my P800 works fine, except that it's such a tiny window, it's a real pain to use for a site that has been designed to read in 800x640, or whatever. What would be good would be a browser that could work out what was interesting, and strip out all the rest. This is a nontrivial requirement though, and maybe I will just have to restrict my browsing to those sites that I know to be set up for my small screen.

For instance, I have an application that takes stock prices, and formats them for my screen, which is very useful. Now if someone could only do the same for sports scores...

Re:i-Mode has nothing to do with design

[winksite]

I work at a company that has built a product that is micro designed to work on mobile phones and other devices via the mobile Internet. The challenges are quite amazing, because, as we know, the web doesn't fit well on a 1" by 1" screen, or even a little bit larger. There are also a host of other issues that need to be addressed, and the challenges mount. But, I believe, we have come up with a successful solution that is device indenpendant and network agnostic. You can visit the Beta of this product at http://www.winksite.com If you have a wap-enabled phone, just go to winksite and try it out from there. We are a start-up with domestic and international patent pending technology that is welcomes feedback. PS: I believe i-Mode is a culture, a way of life. I visited NTT DoCoMo's booth at CeBit the other day, and it was #%$@#ing cool. 'Tude was everything.

Re:i-Mode has nothing to do with design

[d99-sbr]

What would be good would be a browser that could work out what was interesting, and strip out all the rest. This is a nontrivial requirement though, and maybe I will just have to restrict my browsing to those sites that I know to be set up for my small screen.

This is exactly what XML could be really useful for, in theory. In the best of worlds proper content markup would enable you to browse your material in whatever way you wanted.

Sadly, McLuhan's ideas makes this pure utopia. The medium and presentation greatly affect the content in most situations, which make machine interpretation of whats "interesting" extremely difficult. We're shooting at a very moving target.

An example: The New York Times is excellent to read from dead trees. It also transfers reasonably to high resolution screens, but as everybody knows, reading long articles online just isn't as pleasant. Now transferring it to my 1.25" cell phone screen just isn't gonna cut it at all. Too many words, too little information.

The only papers that have been even remotely successful in going WAP here in Sweden are the tabloids. They write short pieces that convert well into a handful of WAP cards. Oops, there I go rambling again.

Make Ergonomics Open Source!

[Lieutenant_Dan]

I think that the designs implemented could be further enhanced by having the blueprints and patents available to the Open Source developer community. Their dedication and strict attention to detail would allow these corporations to tap into new markets.

We must consider what the impact on the global market that these products will have. Will they be able to reduce the inflation while increasing the gross national product? Only with a strong currency can a country have a voice.

By communication with its neighbors, any country can forge alliances and trade agreements that increase its population's well-being. Their health is one valuable asset when one wants to compete against some of the established powers.

Medical progress in turn will be accelerated by the sharing the knowledge and a strong investement in R&D. Only then can we liberate the world from all the ails and diseases.

So in summary, if the patents are made open source, we can probably find a cure for cancer.

Re:Make Ergonomics Open Source!

[tsangc]

I think that the designs implemented could be further enhanced by having the blueprints and patents available to the Open Source developer community. Their dedication and strict attention to detail would allow these corporations to tap into new markets.

That's the funniest thing I've read all week. Either it's a hilarious troll, or a comment on how little Slashdotters know about human factors. Or maybe, the article is a troll, the guy who moderated it as "Interesting" is the idiot.

Re:Make Ergonomics Open Source!

[ch-chuck]

It depends on the funding - how was Salk's research paid for? Who bought the lab equipment, glassware, chemicals, test animals etc? If it was state taxpayer subsidised then the backers (taxpayers, public domain) should get the benefits. However modern pharmaecutical companies invest their OWN bucks (and their stockholders) into R&D to create lifesaving drugs, and they naturally want to recoup that investment, plus profits to plow into further research. They simply cannot afford to invest 500 million into a new drug, only to have some other lab steal that work and simply make the pills cheap.

However, patent holders need to pay attention to their public image - patents are useful up to a point, but beyond that the holders start to look like criminal extortionists. Patenting something to improve a product consumers have a choice in usually works, but people in need of new lifesaving drugs who can't afford it are difficult to turn away. It starts to look like a price gouger taking advantage of a crisis to reap a bundle (like people selling water for $10 / gallon after a hurricane, etc).

Re:Make Ergonomics Open Source!

[abe ferlman]

You need to read about the Bayh/Dole act. Corporations now can patent ideas made with government funding, since the early 80's.

PR is not a useful check on the tendency of corporations to be jerks- it is a last ditch safety check, not a proper restraint.

Feature Creep

[Lothar]

"Well, one big problem is feature creep. Companies feel pressured to add features, because they want to put a check mark in every check box in the product review magazines"

That seems to be true anywhere these days. Feature creep is at least as bad when it comes to software.

Microsoft Mice?

[Anonymous Coward]

Intellimouse = biggest waste of my money, ever. I've blown through 3 of them, and one of the times, the woman on the phone at M$ had suggested I had a "stolen" mouse, because the Product ID wasn't authentic.

I laughed and told her I don't buy my mice from shady men on the street. Yay @ crappy story.

IDEO designs?

[Surak]

Well, first off, these guys only designed the original Microsoft "dove bar" mouse, none of the current designs. Other designs include the and of course the Palm V, which is looking a bit tired these days. Interestingly enough they also designed the Handspring Treo and the the Handspring Edge.

Their design philosophy makes sense, but doesn't always lead to good designs. IMHO, the Microsoft Dove Bar mouse was one of the worst designs as it had a lot of usability problems -- the buttons (esp. the big one) were notorious for sticking, and the odd differently sized left and right buttons left much to be desired.

..a pretty neat idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

The other classic example is digital watches, where the cost of adding extra features is so low, that you end up with all these features through this incredibly low bandwidth interface that nobody can ever remember.

Insert Douglas Adamas joke here.

Network Selection

[BigBadBri]

"Iâ(TM)d want my tablet or my PDA or maybe even my phone to use the best network available wherever it is. So if Iâ(TM)m in my office, I donâ(TM)t want to be using the cell network, I want to be using WiFi, because I can get ten times the bandwidth that way. But as soon as I walk out of my building, I donâ(TM)t want to have to say: OK, Iâ(TM)m flipping from one to another. For this to happen, service providers like Verizon would have to say: we're going to manage you your experience, whatever network that youâ(TM)re on."

Why expect the network to handle this?

The OS should be able to monitor WiFi signal strength, retried packets, etc., and make the decision to switch to the mobile network automatically.

And a periodic retry of the WiFi network isn't going to cost the earth, in processing or in battery life.

The more things change . . ..

[vizualizr]

I have absolutely no expertise in interface design, and almost as little REAL expertise in hard-core technology, but I am a designer by profession; I'm a Landscape Architect - mostly designing neighborhoods, resorts, and other places where we live out our day to day lives.

One challenge we face in the design projects I'm involved with that I'm fairly certain translates to the kind of design Brown talks about is the "lowest common denominator" problem. We can design some public plaza space or neighborhood that is absolutely award-winning, and on the cutting edge of the design world. The problem is, we often have to (at our client's direction) water our design down to something that the average Joe can understand.

The general populace tends to be slow to accept radical changes to familiar things like the way a suburban street or a park feels. They have an expectation that has built up over several years, and things that are different (and often much, much better) seem strange, and are sometimes rejected outright. We fear change. Change is bad. The same is often true for things like community zoning boards (made up of average Joe, average Bill, and average Jane).

Its an interesting problem, and the major challenge for us is to keep our designs current and progressive without succumbing to the temptation to just arbitrarily "dumb down" our work.

Re:The more things change . . ..

[pubjames]

The general populace tends to be slow to accept radical changes to familiar things like the way a suburban street or a park feels. They have an expectation that has built up over several years, and things that are different (and often much, much better) seem strange, and are sometimes rejected outright. We fear change. Change is bad. The same is often true for things like community zoning boards (made up of average Joe, average Bill, and average Jane).

I'm sorry but this demonstrates an aspect of designers that I find somewhat annoying. If you are designing for the average Joe, Bill and Jane, and they aren't happy with your designs, it's your fault, not theirs.

It's like when I'm working on a piece of multimedia/website with a graphic designer and they come up with some original concept that the client rejects on practical grounds -- the designer goes into a big huff and thinks the client is stupid.

Some designers always tend to think their ideas are the best in the world. Really good designers design what people want and are humble about it. Some designers seem to think that because they can come up with original ideas they are in some way "brilliant", but there are a lot of people with a lot of good ideas and good ideas are not restricted to designers. As my old boss used to say, "ideas are cheap".

(Sorry if this comes over a bit strong. I don't really mean this as an attack on you personally, it's just one of my pet peeves.)

Re:The more things change . . ..

[Salamander]

Reading your post, the phrase "too clever by half" comes to mind. If the client doesn't want some avant-garde artsy design, you should know that up front; if you're overshooting their design comfort level and then having to "water it down" you're wasting their time and money. The problem is, everyone who studies design wants to be on the cutting edge, but there's really only room for 10% (at most) to be there; the rest should get used to working on less exciting projects unless/until they can prove that they deserve to be one of the few who get to do the good stuff. It's the same as in programming - a few get to strike out in bold new directions, the rest earn their stripes by making derivatives or lesser enhancements.

It's not about people thinking change is bad. You only say that because you want to be the one making the changes, and I suspect you'd seem just as conservative about unasked-for "screwing around with stuff" in areas outside your own specialty. Do you use any software? How would you like it if the entire UI changed, just because someone thought they had a better idea? How about if your ZIP code or telephone area code kept changing, just because someone came up with a more "logical" way to assign them? If some traffic designer had the "bright idea" to make some of the streets in your neighborhood one-way, would you just say "cool, change is good"? Hmmm. What this is about is balancing change with consistency. Too bad if that leaves you frustrated because there aren't enough opportunities to do what you want to do.

Re:The more things change . . ..

[stubear]

"Really good designers design what people want and are humble about it."

No, account managers give the client what they want. Designers try to give the client what they need to effectively communicate the message. Sometimes the two don't mix, particularly if you work with a client who feels the need to be creative themselves and art direct the piece. Designers are brought on as consultants, amongst other things, not pixel monkeys paid to make "kewl" photoshop effects. We understand color, pacing and composition in ways the average person can't, though they "get it" when the message is effectively communicated.

(Sorry if this comes over a bit strong. I don't really mean this as an attack on you personally, it's just one of my pet peeves.)

Re:The more things change . . ..

[Alan Shutko]

We can design some public plaza space or neighborhood that is absolutely award-winning, and on the cutting edge of the design world. The problem is, we often have to (at our client's direction) water our design down to something that the average Joe can understand.

That's not a problem. That's a solution. The problem is that "absolutely award winning" designs "on the cutting edge of the design world" tend to be designed for other architects, instead of the people who actually have to use the space. So they end up being dead, unused spaces.

Tell me, have you read How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand or A Timeless Way of Building or A Pattern Language by Chris Alexander? They explain this situation in far more detail than I could here.

Re:The more things change . . ..

[ThaReetLad]

The problem with clients is that they usually don't know what they want. They know what they DON'T want, and have one or two fuzzy ideas about some small irrelevent aspect of the end solution. Part of my job is creating GUI's for a large scientific application, and the biggest argument we get into with the client (ie marketing) is over the colour of the damn icons, rather than how you actually access feature x. They key to good design has got to be functional simplicity with useful words like paradigm, metaphor and ergonomics.

What I want out of a mobile device is something which gives me directions to the nearest pub when it hears me say "Damn, I could murder a pint"

And another thing, why are mobile phones generally still things you hold up to your head to use, rather than always coming with usable wireless headsets?

Re:The more things change . . ..

[zangdesign]

Designers try to give the client what they need AND what they asked for, but many times the client is not clear on the concept because they don't have time to think through ALL the issues associated with a given design field.

Most clients are NOT stupid - they lack vocabulary and understanding, and any designer that fails to understand that IS stupid.

As for "watered-down designs" - that's natural. Most designers want to be visionary, to create something unique, a design that is both communicative and an enduring work of art. It's just not possible - so many things have an accepted form that is quite difficult to redesign because the public accepts that standard form. As a general rule - humans do not like extreme changes. So a lot of design work must, by definition, be an evolutionary process.

Re:The more things change . . ..

[StrawberryFrog]

And another thing, why are mobile phones generally still things you hold up to your head to use, rather than always coming with usable wireless headsets?

Usability. Because one gadget is harder to lose than two. Because one gadget is easier to charge than two.

Computer interfaces

[pubjames]

I really wish someone would give these guys a pile of cash to redesign computer GUIs. I can't be the only one that is sick of the slow pace of development of computer interfaces. We really haven't progressed much since the work of Xerox Park.

What we need are some designers - who are not technies or nerds - to sit down and completely redesign the interface from scratch. Forget the "windows" metaphor, forget "icons" and clicking with the mouse - really start from first principals.

If you've ever sat down with someone who hasn't used a computer much and watch them struggle to do the simplest things, you'll understand how bad current GUIs are. The trouble is people that use computers are so used to their bad design that they fail to notice it. For example, when I press the on button, I want it to turn on. Instantly. I don't want to have to wait several minutes for it to "warm up" like the old TVs used to. And when I press the off button, I want it to turn off. Instantly. And if I press the on button again, I want to see the same stuff on the screen as when I last switched it off. And that's just the functionality of the on-off button!

It's 2003 for christsakes. Why am I still using an interface that was designed in the 1970's, when computers had a tiny fraction of the power and functionality they currently have?

Re:Computer interfaces

[hoagieslapper]

A computer will never be truely user freindly until it under stands plain spoke words and gives us what we want, not what we asked for.

Since most of us do ot really know what we want, a truely user freindly interface is a myth.

Re:Computer interfaces

[Dot.Com.CEO]

The feature you are talking about exists in Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It is called hybernating and works marvelously. I don't know what the state of affairs is in Linuxland but last time I checked there was no such feature.

I have mapped the on off button on the case of my pc to the hybernate function for the few times I turn it off to minimise the noise in the office. It takes about 5 secs from pressing the button to turn it on to a perfectly functioning Windows desktop, fully loaded. Most of the 5 seconds are BIOS checking and checking for CD-ROMs to boot from... Not bad at all...

Re:Computer interfaces

[skaffen42]

A computer will never be truely user freindly until it under stands plain spoke words and gives us what we want, not what we asked for.

Dude, you just described my relationship with my ex-girlfriend! I thought we were incompatible, but now I realize she just wasn't user friendly enough!

Re:Computer interfaces

[His name cannot be s]

Hang on a minute here...

Humans are learning creatures. Machines are simply that--Machines.

It is far simpler to have a human adapt to an interface than to attempt to build the ultimate interface that would be universally accepted.

By creating a system that is abstracted from reality (windows/desktop/icons) allows us all common ground, as there is no real example of this sort of thing in the real world anyway.

Heck, the mouse and the keyboard are both *arbitrarily* designed devices. Each it built to perform a purpose, but unlike anything else. I've learned to use them effectively, as have most people. This trend is growing too. Younger people adapt quicker and quicker, and don't need the kind of training that folks did 20 years ago.

Another example of this: Newton vs Palm.

The Newton tried to understand and learn from the human. The Palm had grafitti--You were forced to learn it's dialect of writing. You know what? Millions learned grafitti, even "non-techies". My wife, learned grafitti in about an hour, and can really rock writing on a palm. The Netwon never really caught on, in part due to it's handwriting recognition skills.

In reference to your instant on. Computer already have this. Use sleep mode instead of the power button. You'll get your instant on without the wait.

I for one, do not wish to "start from scratch". I'm happy with the progression of today's desktops, and In *my* opinion, we've skyrocketed past the simple concepts from Xerox PARC (That's PARC not Park. Palo Alto Research Center).

Trust me, if you have ever used the fruits of the original technology, you would understand some of the differences.

Re:Computer interfaces

[Sven Tuerpe]

I really wish someone would give these guys a pile of cash to redesign computer GUIs. I can't be the only one that is sick of the slow pace of development of computer interfaces. We really haven't progressed much since the work of Xerox Park.

What you will get is a computer with a color screen and a pointer device, windows, icons, and menus. What we know as computers today is a result of years of evolution. There is not much potential for radical change unless there is a radical change in the way computers work and interface with the real world. What is more likely to happen is more specialization of devices. Cellphones, digital cameras, etc. are besically computers but easier to use because the particular device is designed for some particular pupose(s). Universal computers supporting word processing as well as online brokerage, Java programming as well as image processing, and gaming as well as spamming, are different from that. They do, of course, not fit any particular purpose outstandingly well but that's a feature and not a design bug.

Also, the WIMP approach represents a canonical solution to the lower levels of interaction. Mice and windows help you to express what you want to do as soon as you what you have to do in order to achieve your goal at hand. They do help you to format text in a word processor but they don't tell you how typesetting works and how to produce a nice looking and readable document. Teaching higher level concepts through user interfaces indeed is a problem largely unsolved, but replacing mice and windows with radically different won't solve it either, at least not for general purpose devices.

If you've ever sat down with someone who hasn't used a computer much and watch them struggle to do the simplest things, you'll understand how bad current GUIs are.

Es dauert Jahre, eine Fremdsprache oder eine andere nichttriviale FÃhigkeit halbwegs zu lernen. Warum sollten Computer ohne jeden Lernaufwand zu benutzen sein? (It takes several years to learn to some extent a foreign language or any other non-trivial skill. Why do you think computers could be usable without any effort learning them?) Sure, it would be nice if they were but don't you expect too much here? Is your assessment of the current situation even correct? As a matter of fact, a lot of people is able to use current computers. It takes them time learning what they can do with their machines and how to do it but they do send and receive e-mail, surf the Web, and make friends online. And they achieve much more than just watching kind of interactive TV this way.

Get real, the revolution you are asking for will have to wait until the Holodeck(TM) has been invented, or Direct Brain Access(R).

Re:Computer interfaces

[Space_Nerd]

Maybe you should have bought her new hardware, that always help.

Re:Computer interfaces

[Sven Tuerpe]

You forgot the keyboard.

So what could be my secret drive or desire behind that omission, from a Freudian point of view? ;-) I don't know, but the keyboard certainly is my most valuable input device. I feel it is not because of desks; I still do love it sitting in a train with the laptop computer on my knees, or the stripped-down version my cellphone provides me with for typing of short messages, names, or calendar entries. There may be a reason for this even if we imagine fundamentally different input schemes like really perfect speech recognition were widely available. For instance the keyboard allows me to easily pause at any time, or to go back in already written text and edit an arbitrary portion of it. And a great deal of computer usage is some sort of text processing.

I don't believe that the desktop paradigm is the only possible computer user interface. It's only the dominant UI because the people designing, improving and using the UI all work at desks. Once computers become more ubiquitous, even in other parts of the world where there is less of a desktop user population, so the desktop will be more foreign to more users (...)

You have a valid point here, but I think it is not so much because of the way hackers and designers work. Rather, it is the fact that most computers sit on a desk today. I remember some HCI person giving a talk at the local university about research he did in interaction with smartboards, that is, large touchscreens attached to walls. One thing he mentioned was that typical WIMP interfaces as we know them from desktop machines break down entirely there, for a quite simple reason: the display is much larger than a regular screen and the user is closer to it. This makes e.g. locating a button or window on screen much much harder.

However, I do not see too close a relation between physical desks and current user interfaces. It is somewhat misleading to talk about a desktop metaphor here even though we use to refer to those interfaces as desktops. The desktop metaphor may have been a guiding principle when the first GUIs were developed but since then they have become a thing of their own. Do we really draw conclusions about our computers' domain using concepts from the domain of physical desks and offices as suggested by Lakoff's Contemporary Theory of Metaphor?

For instance, I can see a computer IU based on another very well known and mature interface that Tim made a brief reference to- the automobile.

Such interfaces do exist already -- for computers we use to call cars. No, really. A car is kind of a computer today. But frankly, I don't see how this could be employed as a computer UI if the computer does not control a machine that has an engine and wheels. The navigation metaphor you mention (and use) seems misplaced or at least overstretched here. Navigating the Web is pretty different from spatial navigation. For instance the Web is a discrete space where one jumps from one place to another while a network of streets is so only if viewed at a higher level of abstraction which is irrelevant to actual driving tasks like making a turn or changing lanes. Which might be the reason why those 3D information spaces largely failed so far.

Apple?

[peterprior]

I would be interested to see what this guys opinions on apple designs are, and why they are so goddam desirable.

Re:Apple?

[Draoi]

I would be interested to see what this guys opinions on apple designs are, and why they are so goddam desirable.

I'd suspect they'd be positive, seeing as IDEO also designed Apple products, though all of these were pre-Jonathan Ive.

This guy designed the Duo Dock. Cool ....

He just offended the readers of /.

[bigmouth_strikes]

TR: What kind of people do the best design?

BROWN: Well, I can tell you what doesn't workâ"and that is to have a whole bunch of people who are deep in their own technical domain but have no interest in engaging with the others.

Heh, good thing you don't find many of those around /. or any programming sweatshop :)

Seriously though, this is dead on. Too often UI design are developed by the same people hacking the low level stuff or the business side of an application. At the end of the project, usually 6 weeks after schedule, they have to release what they used for testing since there is no time to sit and think about usability.

Re:Cool! This guy works down the street from me...

[Salamander]

Heh. Same here. Why, just this morning I was making the turn onto Maguire, and I was thinking "what is the natural nickname for people who work at IDEO, anyway?" I don't think they'd appreciate the answer I came up with.

Thanks for Clarification...

[superdan2k]

Good lord, I'm glad you clarified who Tim Brown was, otherwise I would have thought he was an aging wide reciever for the Oakland Raiders.

Double plus good that that name wasn't attached to an article about black holes, then.

Disclaimer: If you don't watch football, you won't find this funny and shouldn't waste your mod points. You might not even find it funny if you do watch football because, well, I'm half-awake right now and can't be a good judge of what's funny.

Typical arty bollocks

[spakka]

We can design some public plaza space or neighborhood that is absolutely award-winning, and on the cutting edge of the design world. The problem is, we often have to (at our client's direction) water our design down to something that the average Joe can understand.

What is there to not 'understand' about a public plaza, even for an 'average Joe'? Or, do you just mean that most people dislike your designs?

Stupid 3G example from Notel

[GGardner]

actually recognise that people do not want to watch a postage stamp sized weather report video.

My favorite example of this is a Nortel ad that was running frequently last year. It had a guy who was going to be speaking at some big meeting, but forget his speech at the office. He used his mobile videophone to have his office assistant read it to him quietly, and he repeated it to the unknowing audience, with the phone sitting hidden on the lectern.

Now, what use is the live video in this case? I can get the same functionality today with my plain-old 2G phone (no video, of course). If you just need to repeat what someone is telling you over the phone, you sure don't need the live video. If this gee-whiz, look-how-cool-the-future-is example, unconstrained by reality, is the best 3G can do, isn't it in a whole heap of trouble?

Design for accessibility

[Epeeist]

He talks a lot about usability, which is fine.

Here in the UK we are presently involved in implementing the Disability Discrimination Act, which is about Accessibility. How do you design for this?

3G is the feature creep personified

[gilesjuk]

All the adverts I've seen for 3G devices revolve around gimmics. Ooo look you can watch some video, you can phone your mates and have a laugh showing them things.

Currently 3G is an executive toy and needs a decent application. There are some instances where video calls could be very useful, doctors, police etc. but for the masses there has to be something that makes it worthwhile. Many people are happy with text messaging and instant messaging when online.

Re:3G is the feature creep personified

[Anonymous Coward]

In particular, there are two classes of advert. Smut, and Stupid. Any 3G advert you saw until very recently fit into either of those two catagories. A mutli billion Euro investment being sold on the basis of Smutty and Stupid. Quick, hire me that advertising agency!

As you say, 3G is an executive toy. In its current form it is the answer to a question nobody asked. An example I heard recently was from the CEO here at $WORK [1]. He was at a trade show, and came across a 3G vendor who was showing off their new toys.

"So what can this super video phone do then?" asks my boss.

"You can access streaming video!" enthused the sales person. The sales person then proceded to demonstrate the only video stream that was available at the time; a webcam which overlooked the their gravel driveway.

Hold me, I'm having palpatations!

I think secretly, the 3G vendors know they've fucked up, and bad style. You would have hoped that they would have learned after the abismal failure that was WAP, but no. You would have thought that they would understand why SMS is popular, and why video messaging will not be, but no. You would have hoped they would have a better way to justify billions of investors and share holders cash, but aparently not. Don't invest in any pure 3G vendors for a while..

[1]: Hence the AC.

Re:3G is the feature creep personified

[gilesjuk]

If using 3G they can provide faster than 56k internet connections on the move (ie. connect phone to laptop) for a decent price then 3G would actually be useful.

Don't Miss IDEO's Dilbert Ultimate Cubicle

[Mignon]

Background here and demo here.

Interface Interference

[howman]

As an Industrial Designer specializing in User Interface for the integration of the virtual and the physical, the two bigest problems I come up against is first convincing the manufacturer of the value of Interface design, which is getting easier I am happy to say, and secondly convincing them that a product that is a 'Swiss Army Knife' is perhaps not such a great idea. It is much better to have a product which does one thing well rather than a product that does a million things half assed.

We constantly see this in applications and new technology where the engeneers come up with all this facinating stuff and try to cram it into a device hoping customers will overlook the lack of need and only see the prettyness.

As product designers we are at a cross roads where we are only now starting to understand which services and abilities people want grouped together in a single appliance. This is not limited strictly to produts. We are seeing it in services as well. Things like digital television, cell phone service plans as well as in cell phones and PDAs.

Cell phones are great with a camera built in, perhaps even the ability to take a 5 second video, but there is realy no need for a cell phone which is a video camera, no matter how cool it may be to own one. Video cameras do a much better job of capturing video. In the same way you would not want a video camera which had cell phone capabilities... well perhaps you would, but unless your part of a profitably large enough group of consumers, you probably won't get it.

Please, stay on one topic.

[gosand]

What we need are some designers - who are not technies or nerds - to sit down and completely redesign the interface from scratch. Forget the "windows" metaphor, forget "icons" and clicking with the mouse - really start from first principals.

Not going to happen. That is like asking Alexander Graham Bell to design a cell-phone. You have to go in with knowledge about the function of a product. If not you either get something that looks great but doesn't do anything, or a single-purpose device. Computers are neither of those.

If you've ever sat down with someone who hasn't used a computer much and watch them struggle to do the simplest things, you'll understand how bad current GUIs are. The trouble is people that use computers are so used to their bad design that they fail to notice it.

I have, and it is frustrating for everyone. But is it the design that is wrong, or the person? My mom didn't know anything much about computers until a year or two ago. She still struggles with the interface. My 8 year old neice picked it up very quickly. Don't blame the interface when the problem might be in the mind of the user. After all, in another generation there won't be anyone alive who remembers when there weren't computers.

For example, when I press the on button, I want it to turn on. Instantly. I don't want to have to wait several minutes for it to "warm up" like the old TVs used to. And when I press the off button, I want it to turn off. Instantly. And if I press the on button again, I want to see the same stuff on the screen as when I last switched it off. And that's just the functionality of the on-off button!

This is functionality, not design. Yeah, this would be a nice thing, but it has nothing to do with the interface design. You have to wait for the hardware behind the curtain to catch up to this idea. So you want a big, embedded computer. We'll probably get there some day, but it has nothing to do with UI design.

It's 2003 for christsakes. Why am I still using an interface that was designed in the 1970's, when computers had a tiny fraction of the power and functionality they currently have?

Umm, because the interface doesn't rely on the power and functionality of the device? So which is it? You want a super-powerful, multi-function computer that is instant-on that everyone intuitively knows how to operate? Gee, anything else? Maybe we could fit them on the head of a pin too. How about infinite storage?

I am all for forward thinking, but let's put a little more emphasis on the thinking part.

Self-contradictory?

[twifkak]

Ok, there's no doubt this guy knows what he's talking about, and TiVo's great :), but some of what he says seems to contradict itself.

First he says we want actions on PDAs to be quick:
That tells you a lot about the kinds of interactions that people want to have with mobile devices. They want to be quick. They want to be able to do something thatâ(TM)s just sort of chunked up into small things.

And then:
His belief in simplicity was what got Palm edited down to four buttons, and that was ultimately responsible, I think, for its success. Itâ(TM)s not that you canâ(TM)t do a thousand different things with your Palm Pilotâ"itâ(TM)s just that those thousand different things arenâ(TM)t right at the top level.

Now, I like the Palm, but his description of it makes it sound like it's a multistep process to get anywhere, which isn't quite "quick" to me.

He says e-mail is not displayed in a way that's easily manageable. I agree; my inbox is a mess. However, he says they should be more like blogs "because weâ(TM)re quite good at sequencing." Scuse? Is not e-mail organized by date?

I dunno.. I think e-mail might be better integrated with the calendar (sorted by due date, or as a floating item) than with the blog.

I could just be ranting, though...

WAP is not dead

[rexguo]

Although originally designed for mobile web surfing, WAP is now used a lot by content vendors as delivery mechanism for pictures, ringtones and java games. Even Nokia does it with their Club Nokia WAP site and its insert-coin download stations. The reason is simple. The users pay for the WAP pull, and all the vendor has to pay for is a simple OTA bookmark or something similiar. So WAP is far from dead, and has found its usefulness in areas that it wasn't designed for. Just like what the WWW is.

Re:too much time on his hands

[tomhudson]

technology does not differentiate PCs these days.

OMG, don't tell that to a Mac user. Or people running Linux. Or *BSD. Or AIX. Or those with multihead displays. Or touch screens. Or voice recognition. Or high-speed connections. Mind you, if he thinks technology doesn't differentiate PCs, maybe I can sell him an old 286 at today's prices :-)

So weâ(TM)ve got to shift the etiquette, and maybe make e-mail more like publishing: that is, you send something out and you might get one percent response. I think that the paradigm of e-mail as letters, as objects, is inappropriate.

So now he's telling us that he wants to make email more spammy?

one big problem is feature creep.

Right, after telling us that you want to change email into a "publishing" thing. Feature creep, or maybe feature creap :-).

So, after he's done, and your email no longer works as email, you'll be able to use something called imail (internet mail), which will be what we used to call email.

This is just change for the sake of change.

design is a funnel-shaped thing
design is a holistic way of thinking

Maybe we should point him to dictionary.com so he can make up his mind what design is?

Their web page might be titled "Master of Design" but I think they left out the letters "b, a, t, o, and r"

Yeah, I know somebody's going to mod this as a flame or a troll, but this guy's supposed to be influencing design, and he comes across as Faith Popcorn.