Classic Apple icon design by Susan Kare

You can tell a lot about how much someone knows you by the gifts that they give. A good friend gave me this gift today after returning from a trip to New York.

He bought it at MoMA and the label said it was on sale for $3.95 from its original price of $14. The edges are all curled, but I don’t care, it’s a Susan Kare classic! The only thing that would have been better, would have been a mousepad showing a Moof.

IDEO Method Cards

IDEO’s excellent Method Cards for human-centered design are available as a widget for Mac OS X users. (Saves you $50)

Available as a download in the right column of the news page. Really easy to miss. Incidentally, Fast Company has an article on IDEO Method Cards Turn, Um, 7!

Happy birthday Method Cards!

UXforGood.org

Just launched a new blog UXforGood.org which tries to bring together my often intersecting interest in user experience (UX) and social change.

In quite a visionary statement with far before the birth of the internet, Charles Eames said:

Beyond the age of information is the age of choices.

It is an understatement to say that we are today flooded with information. But what to do with that information? I personally believe it needs a purpose, and that purpose is social change for the benefit of ourselves, the communities in which we live in and our environment.

I do want to leave a better future for my two kids. Or at least leave them with the knowledge that I tried.

Touch screen NYC ticket vending machine (photo credit: yuen_long / flickr)

Here’s a comment I posted on Changemakers AshokaTech discussion board in response to question How would you use touch-screen technology for good?

Following our blog post on touch-screen technology, I’d love to hear about your ideas on how we can make such technology work for the social sector, or if you’ve heard of organizations that are already doing so.

The great thing about touch interfaces are in the ease of use. It is intuitive. I moved to Korea two years ago and learning to type in Korean on a keyboard or a cell phone was not without its pain. Computers have a keyboard and mouse as its main input devices, however the use of these have to be learned. Not so with a touch-enabled device.

Touch-enabled devices is closer to how the real world works. You directly press buttons on the screen rather than moving the pointer with a mouse to a graphic that represents a button and click on the mouse that in turn simulates pressing the button on the screen.

Touch devices are intuitive to use. Look at a well designed touch-enabled subway ticket vending machine. The ones in New York thousands of tourists use every day without having ever used them before.

Computers 20-30 years ago were only accessible to those who were trained to use them. Windows (or MacOS) is a big step but it still has a learning curve. Use an iPod Touch for the first time and the learning experience is actually enjoyable. That’s the power that an intuitive touch interface brings.

So the potentials are huge. For those who do not use PCs or laptops everyday it can be a way to overcome the digital barrier. It can be used to bridge the digital divide. For kids, it’s a more intuitive, educational device. For the elderly, its a more humane interface especially for those with arthritis. For developing countries, its a better way for them to access information.

Displays, touch-screens and processing power are becoming cheaper everyday. I spent a whole week without using my laptop while it was in repair, surviving on my iPod Touch. It was possible, and this opened my eyes to the future that will be touch-enabled smaller devices that are as powerful as PC’s, but infinitely more portable and intuitive to use.

I would love to hear more about the actual application in the social sector.

Great Hanoi business cards printed by MOO.com

As part of the Master Urban Plan of the Expanded Hanoi Capital (a.k.a. “Great Hanoi”), we printed some business cards from MOO.com.

I chose photos from our last trip to Hanoi (no need to worry about copyright there). I purposefully chose images about the current urban condition, monuments, historic and symbolic places to act as conversation starters when we hand them out.

The first batch printed on recycled paper came out awful, but the reorder batch on standard coated paper came out really well.

In a serendipitous discovery, I found on Slideshare a beautiful presentation entitled The Brand Gap on clarifying what branding is, and the gap that exists between business strategy and design.

Custom wood case for iPhone by Miniot

Mobile phones and most personal electronics devices have been made for durability. My Samsung phone is finished in stainless steel, plastic and glass. It is black and shiny. My iPod Nano is aluminum.

My wallet is made of leather. When I first bought by wallet, it was stiff, and uncomfortable. But at some point in time, it yielded and started to conform to the curve of my posterior. Same thing happened to my watch strap, also made of leather. It is has morphed to the size of my wrist. Shoes, jackets, baseball caps.. I can name numerous examples.

In the flood of hyper-niched marketing world, I am still surprised that very little effort is made in the personal electronics space to take advantage of this property of personal artifacts: that it registers the physical interaction between the artifact and user. Guitar frets have show well-worn usage by its owner. Yet phones resist this natural aging process.

Most aspects of our environment can be better personalized than our electronics. We can choose wallpaper or paint color for our apartments, adorn it with our personality over time. Personalization to mobile users usually means changing the background or ringtone or those little dangley phone accessories that you see all over Korea and Japan. Nothing that registers gradually over time. Why not a mobile phone made with leather or wood. Why not a iPod where a friend can scratch their message into the surface instead of having it laser engraved.

Bamboo, the degradable phone (via core77)

“The Chute Smartphone (via Yanko Design)

It was refreshing to see a couple of example recently. Here are two concept phone examples, The Chute Smartphone and Bamboo phone, and iWood handcrafted iPhone case by Miniot made from high quality wood (commercially available).

Yet another argument for the use of natural materials in personal electronics is environmental. Massive amounts of mobile phones are consumed each year. The rates of mobile phone penetration is close to saturation in the US, Korea and in most developed countries. It’s rare that we find any recycling of mobile phones. Most people just throw away their phones when it is broken or when they switch carriers. Here’s where the mobile telecom industry can learn from the automotive industry. There is a whole secondary industry build around reclaiming, reusing, and recycling used car parts on one front, on another front there are movements to make more efficient cars. Why are there so few examples of environmental friendliness in the mobile phone industry? I think this is a marketing opportunity that begs to be tapped for both the consumer’s and industry’s benefit.

TED conference

I’ve been systematically going through the TED video podcasts ever since I got my iPod Nano in late October, 2007. I’ve finally achieved my goal of being up-to-date with the podcast, sitting through some 180 episodes.

TED for those who are unfamiliar, is handful of annual events, the heart of which is a conference hosted in Monterey, California. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, and the events brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

The next TED conference is Feb 27 – March 1, 2008 and is completely sold out, except for a few tickets that show up on eBay for $33,000

Most of the presentation are amazing, but a couple really stand out for me. Here’s my personal top 10 list and my reasons why. They are listed in order of ones that have inspired me and I find myself recalling most often.

1. Ken Robinson Humor aside (this is one of the funniest presentations), Ken Robinson makes a compelling case for creativity in education. He makes the point that current education has a strong bias towards the languages and math (which is good for training college professors) whereas in order to tackle the complexity of the problems facing us today and in the future, we’ll need to educate the next generation to be more creative than we’ve ever been.
2. Evelyn Glennie is world-renowed, and incidentally, the first ever professional percussion soloist. She is also deaf. This provides her with a whole new perspective that most of us miss: Music as experience, and not just a series of notes to be played.
3. Cameron Sinclair is one of the founders of Architecture for Humanity, which explores sustainable housing solutions for impoverished nations. It’s action-oriented mottos is “Design like you give a damn”. In his talk, he advocates an open-sourcing of design ideas where local solutions can be shared and refined globally, while being protected through a Creative Commons Developing Nations License.
4. Malcolm Gladwell is just an amazing storyteller. He takes the example of the common pasta sauce to illustrate that often in marketing there is no platonic idea of perfection, but many points of perfection. “There is no perfect Pepsi; There are only perfect Pepsis.” Different people will be drawn to different ideas of perfection, though the may never admit it overtly. Hence the creation of the “Extra Chunky” pasta sauce. A perfect example of uncommon wisdom.
5. Barry Schwartz is the author of “The Paradox of Choice” and explains that we often confuse freedom with limitless choices. More choice can often be paralyzing and leads to misery.
6. Vilayanur Ramachandran‘s presentation show how parts of the brain are linked and function in a integrated manner, and how emotion plays an important part of how we process information.
7. Hans Rosling analyzes global health data, but uses a tool to adds the dimension of time which illuminates trends and relationships that are harder to grasp as static charts. He takes what seems to be boring statistics and animates them not only through software but through his humorous commentary. He goes even a step further by swallowing a sword in his sequel presentation.
8. Charles Leadbeater advocates an approach to design that takes it outside corpoarte walls and start harnassing and incorporating the power of passionate non-professionals and communities into the design process.
9. Janine Benyus Biomimicry is something we all need to know more about. Period.
10. Thomas Barnett outlines a post-Cold War solution for the foundering US military. Dead serious pill, dispensed with a healthy dose of humor.

There were also some close runners-up:

• John Meada talks about, you guessed it, Simplicity
• William Macdonough is working with cities in China to create sustainable urban planning solutions. He explains his philosophy of “cradle to cradle” design, which bridge the needs of ecology and economics.
• Jimmy Wales is the founder and the philopher king of Wikipedia. He explains how Wikipedia is not an idealized democratic society where everyone contributes anything but one that has formed an aristocracy out of social necessity for maintaining quality of content.
• Chris Bangle provides a rare inside look at how BMW designs its cars.
• Stefan Sagmeister talks about what makes for happy design :-)
• Jonathan Harris is the creator of the We Feel Fine project, the epitome of Web 2.0 atomization and regrouping of information.
• Stephen Petranek talks about 10 way the world could end and what we can do about it. Amusing in a morbid kind of way.
• Larry Lessig is the founder of Creative Commons and a board memeber of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He makes us think about digital rights in an age where lines are increasingly being blurred.
• Vik Muniz How can you resist an artist that makes art from spaghetti on plate?

After all those podcasts, I’ve found that the teeny screen Nano isn’t really sufficient or satisfying, user experience-wise. The iPod Touch looks so much more appealing now.

iriver booth at CES 2008

I used to live in Fairfax Virginia, about 10 minutes away from Tyson’s Corner Mall. Tyson’s Corner was the mythical location of the first Apple Store which opened in the summer of 2001.

When I first visited the Apple Store in 2001, it was like setting foot inside a gallery: very quiet, uncrowded, with patrons admiring Job’s masterpieces, slowly moving from one item to the next. Just before I left for Korea, I had a chance to visit the NYC 5th Avenue store. It was a madhouse.

However despite the difference in atmosphere, what remained the same in both cases was the consistency of the user experience throughout the store conveyed through the layout, knowledgeable staff and careful choice of architectural materials that furnish each store.

Our experience of a store is first impacted by the materials our senses register. Think of a GAP store compared to a Urban Outfitters store. It’s not surprising that someone took the time to take apart all the materials and furnishing in an Apple store, in case you want to build yourself a shrine to Apple’s retailing success in your living room.

A project that I was peripherally involved in was the iriver booth for CES 2008. iriver, best known in the US for its un-iPod MP3 players and other digital devices, is one of only a handful of companies in Korea that maintains a strict control over its products and branding image, much in the same way that Apple does. VINYL the company I work for (along with 607)was responsible for designing and installing the iriver booth (link in Korean). The team took a lot of care to project a clean, sterile environment and even suggested that iriver hire knowledgeable local fans to man the booth. The booth ended up on the Top 25 Booths as selected by Tech-Em and Event Marketer magazine. The most successful part of the booth in my mind is the interactive projection. When a visitor stand in front of the projection, speech bubble pop up above their shadow and follow them around, showing whimsical graphics. The walls of the booth is actually a screen, so all this interaction can also be viewed from the exterior, drawing curious visitor to come inside.

(Photo credit: Vinyl VLab)