Month: October 2011

  • London conference on cyberspace

    The Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the British Government has always had the best online presence of all the different government departments, but I still find it interesting that it is they rather than the department of media and culture who are looking to lead a discussion on the future of the web and associated technologies. The FCO are hosting a conference on cyberspace in London on November 1-2, 2011 and are extending it online through social media platforms. I can’t help but feel the dialogue is aimed as much within the UK as internationally.

    Of course, the ironic thing is that the UK isn’t at all progressive in terms of all things internet related compared to the likes of South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, Iceland or Finland to name but a few countries. The Digital Economy Bill and actions done by the likes of Ed Vaizey have shown resistance rather than working out how it can benefit from the change. The music industry tried to fight the change and has torn itself apart so it will be interesting to see how that stance will work out. I look forward to following the conference on cyberspace; in cyberspace.

    Find out more here. More online related topics here.

  • Think Outside Stowaway

    I first got hold of a Think Outside Stowaway portable keyboard at the start of my agency career. It was 2000, the over-enthusiasm for internet-based businesses, alternative telecoms providers and Linux eco-system businesses was in full-swing and I was building my agency career helping further fuel the economic bubble.

    Broadband wasn’t a word in common parlance, streaming video windows were about the size of a postage stamp; that didn’t stop sites like UK business technology site Silicon.com from trying to develop and promote video content for the web.

    We weren’t living in the real-time always-on world of now. At this time wi-fi devices were online starting to be launched on to the market and was some way from adoption. Wireless meant using IrDA infra-red connections between devices (like a TV remote control having a long conversation) and wireless data meant the then new digital mobile phone networks with SMS and patchy voice services.

    You could could get some Nokia and Ericsson phones to talk to other devices to connect to the internet but it wasn’t cheap. The only people I knew who used it were news photographers getting pictures over to picture desks at photo agencies and newspapers.

    My biggest client at the time was Palm who were spun out of 3Com with Carl Yankowski at the head of the company and Bill Maggs as CTO.

    I had gone out and bought a Palm Vx PDA three weeks before being put on the account (where I would have got one for free).  The Vx became my primary computing device, as I was away from home much of them working in the office, at client meetings or traveling. I started to write on it, but the stylus would only get you so far.

    I had looked at devices like the AlphaSmart 3000, which was cheap, ran on three AA batteries for weeks at a time, and could transfer text via USB. It had proper keys with decent travel on them and was sturdily made, but it had a similar footprint to a modern-day 13-inch MacBook Pro.

    I eventually ordered a Think Outside Stowaway portable keyboard from Amazon in the US. The keyboard used the Palm Vx as its ‘computer’ and and PDA became a compact word processor that would fit into two jacket pockets and was more productive than even the current iPad.

    I managed to draft emails to colleagues, positioning documents, media tour briefing documents and press releases on it. You could type away quite happily on the train or an airplane, which I frequently did when I went back home to see the parents.

    How on earth did a they get the Think Outside Stowaway keyboard to fit in a jacket pocket?

    This came down to a bit of product design genius by a Silicon Valley-based start-up called Think Outside Inc. who came up with a Jacob’s Ladder-type keyboard design which gave you 19mm keys and then folded into four sections – connected together with a flat ribbon cable. The pieces were locked together by sliding in two handles (the red bits in the picture above) to provide a stable flat keyboard. The design was so successful that Palm sold their own-branded version to be sold to people like me and Targus-branded versions did a similar thing for Handspring, Compaq and HP PDAs. But none of them had the elegant design solution collapsing the keyboard like the Think Outside Stowaway unit.

    A flip-up connector plugged into the serial port of the device and held the screen at an optimum position for viewing. Later versions of the keyboard used Bluetooth wireless connectivity, unfortunately the electronics were less tolerant of being folded up so the keyboards became less elegant and bulkier. Eventually Think Outside was acquired by cellphone charger company Mobility Electronics (iGo) and eventually touch devices pretty much killed the mainstream demand for a portable keyboard all together.

    You can still get keyboards that embody the ideas of the Think Outside Stowaway. Unfortunately, they aren’t any more compact or robust than their predecessor. Which is a shame given the prevalence of iPhone users is many businesses. More throwback gadget related content here.

  • iPhone 4S

    I read through the Apple press materials following the iPhone 4S and iCloud services launch the other day. There was a lot of disappointment out there when the phone revealed wasn’t a massive step-change forward which is probably massively unfair for example Carnegie Mellon University professor or computer science David Farber posted the following message on his Interesting People mailing list:

    After yesterday’s announcement by apple I decided to   explore changing phones and/or carriers. I am specifically interested in the most advanced smartphone with “4G” capability.

    Any suggestions?

    Having done my own research, I ended up coming away with questions rather than forming opinions.

    Firstly, iCloud; I read and saw nothing that altered my initial perceptions and concerns when I wrote about the service back in June. So rather than repeating myself it is easier to link out to my earlier post.

    As for the iPhone 4S itself; the updates to the device compared to the iPhone 4, felt as much about feature catch-up as about innovation. The improved camera matched features in top of the line Nokia and Samsung phones. The much-lauded speech recognition application Siri was as much about matching the voice activated features in Android software.

    Unlike many online who were looking for a new thinner form factor, I was glad that the new phone kept the iPhone 4 size as there is already an unhealthy focus on size zero design at the expense of battery life, product performance  and ergonomic design.

    When Steve Jobs talked about the transition to Intel processors for the Macintosh product range, the rationale was mostly around a new focus on processors moving from computing power to computing power per Watt. I’d like to know what effect that Apple’s new electronics design for the iPhone 4S has on power consumption and battery life. Does the faster video transitions come at the expense of usability due to declining battery life?

    Only time will tell if the aerial changes and new electronics have improved the iPhone performance in areas such as call quality and dropped calls. After the initial rush to buy from completists and early adopters the word-of-mouth around these issues are going to be important for iPhone sales. More information about the iPhone.

  • Asian woman & more news

    Asian woman observations

    Marketing to the modern Asian woman: Trends to watch by Vic Corsi, Landor – WPP – “Shopping is a social activity and the goal is not necessarily to make a purchase. Group shopping is one of an Asian woman’s main hobbies—over 20 percent of Asian women go shopping every weekend with no expectation of purchasing. While she peruses the malls contemplating what to buy—either now or on some future shopping mission—the Asian woman is looking for brands to convince and entertain.” – the author is writing from a Singapore perspective, but still great content. The big challenge is that the asian woman as a demographic isn’t homogeneous. Shopping is an activity, partly because of air conditioning, which occurs in certain markets like Singapore or Hong Kong. But many asian women are very value orientated. A classic example of this Asian woman would be in lower tier Chinese cities, Indonesia or the Philippines where is the a huge difference in incomes. I suspect that the modern asian woman of the title is code for wealthy and relatively young.

    Consumer behaviour

    Report: Workers in China and India Most Likely to Play Hooky – WSJ

    Design

    JNKsystem.com  : NEIGHBORHOOD C.W.P. ALT.Zippo – I love the way Neighbourhood puts pocket wear and tear on these to provide authenticity

    Ethics

    A VC: Following Facebook Down The Wrong Path – interesting post on Facebook privacy

    Ideas

    Text of Steve Jobs’ Commencement address (2005)

    Talking To The Future Humans – Bruce Sterling | VICE

    Japan

    Japanese manufacturers see positive signs – FT.com

    Media

    Irish Post bought as going concern – RTÉ News – this is potentially good news

    UK Labour Party wants journalism licenses, will prohibit “journalism” by people who are “struck off” the register of licensed journalists – Boing Boing – this sounds very suspect

    Technology in Schools Faces Questions on Value – NYTimes.com – e-education doesn’t necessarily work: schools are spending billions on technology, even as they cut budgets and lay off teachers, with little proof that this approach is improving basic learning

    Online

    Questions Arise Over Yahoo’s Value as Buyers Weigh Bids – NYTimes.com

    Facebook: Sharing it all | The Economist – Facebook the sociopathic network

    Software

    Communities Dominate Brands: Analysis of Smartphone Wars and 3 Big News last week or so: Part 1 of 3: Intel + Samung – Nokia = Tizen (not MeeGo)

    Technology

    Why do some people really hate Apple | guardian.co.uk

    Michael Dell Advises Hewlett-Packard – NYTimes.com – its about scale in other areas rather than margins

    Wireless

    Sony Ericsson CEO: We Should Have Taken The iPhone More Seriously | TechCrunch

    Chinese phone systems ‘no threat’ to Google – FT.com – yeah right

  • Digital experiences & functionalism

    This post on digital experiences sprang out of my going through images on Flickr. I was looking at pictures that I had taken of products designed by Dieter Rams like the Vitsœ 606 shelving system and his work at Braun on the service. Rams’ approach to industrial design was part of the functionalism movement where the look of a product is dictated by what the object does. In architecture this was used as an excuse to build rough-looking buildings with little aesthetic appeal.  This partly explains by a number of the leading thinkers in modern architecture have taken a ‘user’ hostile approach to their designs, washing their hands of  having to think about form in their process at all.
    Braun SK1 radio

    The Braun SK1 radio designed by Dieter Rams

    Rams approach to design had quality very much at the centre of it, so his work has as much to do with the ethics and principles of traditional Japanese design as it had with a modern movement. I got into this chain of thought because digital largely fails to mirror the good design that Rams has done in the analogue age. Rams in an interview for the documentary Objectified says that Apple seems to be only modern company that subscribes to his principles of good design, or takes design as seriously as he did.
    Braun desk fan from the early 1960s

    So why are digital experiences failing to match the best analogue examples of product design? I have some ideas, but I wouldn’t pretend to think that they are definitive answer to the question.

    Horizontal industry structure affects design thinking

    When geeks wore ties, polyester shirts and pocket protectors technology companies used to make the hardware and the software and digital experiences that went with them. Economies of scale and standardisation brought about a business computing environment based on Microsoft operating systems and Intel X86 processors. The exceptions to this being a small amount of powerful UNIX workstations and Apple’s range of Macintosh computers. In web services it splits up via hosting and APIs at the very least. This tends to be very different to many manufacturing processes and leaves designers with a sense that they have comparatively little control over their devices. It also means that the point of interface between designs: like how to interact with the software is dictated by the software partner, not the device manufacturer. In digital services, the terms of service of the API limit the power and design choices made.

    Design isn’t taken seriously

    In hardware manufacturing businesses work with manufacturers like Foxconn Technology Group. These manufacturers have moved up the value chain doing more and more of the work around the product including design now. There are few manufacturers that keep much of that work in-house. Reference designs make tooling easier, give component manufacturers more power and allow the client get to market faster. But they are going to market with a commoditised offering. This isn’t a new phenomena: JVC used to make VHS video recorders for Ferguson under the Videostar name with only the branding changing some 3o years ago.

    Outsourcing design implies that the process isn’t core to the value proposition of the business, and that’s a shame.

    Focus on the ingredients rather than the cake

    If you look at the marketing of mobile and computing devices the adverts often read like a parts list rather than a marketing brochure. How many car magazines publish articles showing the components that make up the engine, who they are manufactured by and how much the car would have cost? How would really care about which brand of air filter the engine used? Yet tear-downs are an important part of consumer electronics coverage now. The focus on the ingredients probably started as a way for manufacturers to take some control of their own product as part of the horizontal industry eco-system; but now it has become a fetish. A great micro-processor is often not enough to make a phone great when consumers choose on all-up experience.

    It isn’t only hardware manufacturers who do this. When I worked in-house for Yahoo!; the company launched lots of different search products to try and get feature parity with Google’s offerings. They were good products but the consumers still stayed away in droves; mainly because it wasn’t enough to be just like Google. If the company had carved its own path the future may have been very different.

    Quality is relative

    If you think about buying a new car or a fridge-freezer being told that you could use it, but it wasn’t fully finished and would be subject to considerable change – you would be very worried  and I wouldn’t blame you. However software and services change, sometimes quite dramatically. It means that quality means something very different in the digital world, compared to the world that you and I live in. There is no ‘getting things right first time’ and there is a mentality of impermanence, the idea that anything can be fixed.

    The user case is malleable

    The malleable nature of digital services and applications mean that the user case may not have even been dreamt up at the design stage. Thinking for a moment about Twitter, it has morphed into an extremely dynamic system of interactions:

    • The hashtag accompanies events acting as a public ‘back channel’ where previously the technologically savvy would have used IRC (internet relay chat)  and the rest of us probably were oblivious to it all
    • It has raised money for charities, and has been directly responsible for helping Dell to sell refurbished computers
    • It has been the rallying point for political action
    • It is history in the making as the Library of Congress has been archiving tweets

    Given those vast differences it is understandable why it’s hard to design for use cases and hard to get great digital experiences.