TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Design Products As a User
April 3rd, 2013When Apple announced the iPhone in 2007, they presented it as a device that did three things: made calls, played music and video, and browsed the web. When I saw the announcement, I knew that day that I had to have one when it was released.
That wasn’t because I was an Apple geek (although I certainly was). It was because I immediately knew what it did and what it would do for me. It would do what I’d tried to do with a PocketPC for a couple years—put the web, my contacts and calendar in my pocket, wherever I am—and combine my phone and iPod into a single device that is superior to them at their intended function. I knew it because that’s how Apple presented it. They presented it as a device that did those three things.
They could have presented it as a technological marvel, a device that combines a high-resolution multitouch screen, fast mobile processor, cell and WiFi radios, and proximity, ambient light and accelerometer sensors into a handheld device with desktop-breed software and surprisingly-good battery life, a PC in your pocket. But they didn’t; rather, they presented it in terms of what it did for users and what they would find useful about it.
This isn’t important just for presenting the iPhone, however; of course, doing so made it immediately intelligible to me and many others, even those for whom the technology underneath it is closer to magic than science. They presented it from the user’s perspective, rather than from the creator’s, and showed what role it could play in our own lives, rather than make the viewer do that translation on their own. That’s an important lesson for how to market a product, but I think what’s even more important is that this focus on what it does for the user didn’t start at Apple when they began creating the presentation to introduce the iPhone—it began all the way at the beginning of the project itself. They envisioned and designed the product as a user, rather than as a designer or engineer.
What this means is starting with a problem or unfulfilled need that people have, something that, if it were improved, would make people’s lives better in some way. Then, you must understand precisely what that problem is, what the person really wants, and what the underlying causes of it are. Only then will you start designing a product or service. By doing so, the entire product creation process—from generating ideas (“ideation,” a word I loathe) to packaging and delivering it to customers—is within the context of solving a concrete problem. Every design and engineering decision made happens within it, and there is a built-in decision process for whether to add or remove something, and metric for how well each part succeeds: does it better solve the problem for the user?
This goes beyond “empathizing” with users.1 Instead, it means thinking as a user, from beginning to end, and using that perspective to decide what you should or shouldn’t do, and what your product or service should or shouldn’t be.
Apple does this better than any other company, and that’s the case in part because they are ruthlessly focused on it. One of Jobs’s more well-known sayings is that he is as proud of the products they didn’t ship as the ones they have shipped. This line is held up as a reminder that to do great work, companies must focus. But focus on what? This provides us with an answer: focus on what will do the most good for users. All decisions flow from that.
- “Empathize with your users” has always seemed rather disgusting a concept to me—it shouldn’t be some great insight to empathize with your users, and in fact, it sounds clinically calculating to me: empathize with your users and you will have more success! Empathy—understanding the feelings of others and caring for them—should be the starting point for all businesses rather than something to bolt on in order to increase sales. [↩]
Urban TxT’s LA Hacker Space
April 1st, 2013Urban TxT is an L.A.-based group that introduces Los Angeles high school students to web and software development, and to the process of coming up with an idea for a product, designing it and building it. The group is doing fantastic work, and I’ve been lucky enough to help start a short iOS development course for their students. It’s a wonderful group.
The group and their students have a big idea for how to make L.A. a great place for youth (and people of all ages) to learn how to build things and to work on their own projects: they want to create a “hacker space” that’s open at all times for people to work and learn from others:
Imagine what life could be like if a teen in South Los Angeles could see more computers than liquor stores while walking home from school. Imagine if South LA did not have the highest unemployment rate in the city but instead produced the highest number of tech pioneers in the country. URBAN Teens eXploring Technology (URBAN TxT), a local nonprofit with a city-wide focus, seeks to accomplish that by building a technology innovation center in one of the most underinvested areas in the city. URBAN TxT will build a “hacker space” – a space with technology equipment and an open-door policy for everyone who wants to express creativity, address social issues through computer programing, and innovate through collaboration.
They’re competing for a grant from the Goldhirsh Foundation to make this a reality. I think it’s not only a wonderful idea, one that would benefit a lot of people, but the kind of idea that can improve how our staid and ineffective education system works—and make it more engaging and more transformative for students.
Watch the video they’ve made about their vision, and if you think it’s a good idea too, you can help them out by leaving a comment showing your support (or, even better, with your own ideas for the project). They’re doing fantastic work, and I think they deserve all of our support. Let’s help make this happen.
Thanks to the people behind Shopster for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed. Shopster is a grocery shopping app that learns where you buy certain items so it can remind you to pick them up the next time you’re around the store. Clever idea. The amount picker for entering how much of an item you need is really smart, too.
Looks like a great little app, and it’s only $0.99.
Shopster is a new kind of groceries list app that learns what you purchase and where, so it can remind you later on.
Whenever you check an item as purchased, Shopster learns the location where you got it. The next time you look for the same thing, a geofenced alarm will be triggered when you are near the location.
Features:
- Autolearning of locations when checking items as purchased.
- Geofenced reminders for your products, based on your prior buying history.
- In-place editing table, for quick corrections and editions.
- Unique ruler to quickly enter the number of items you need to buy.
- Smart autocomplete, to assist you entering frequently purchased products, based on your previous history.
- Reorder items with a simple tap and hold.
Check out Shopster on the AppStore, it’s only $0.99
April 1st, 2013The Pebble is like the Model A. When people looked at the Model A, some realized it was the future, and that one day, everyone would drive one. Others thought Henry Ford was off his rocker and that his invention was a one-off that wouldn’t ever go anywhere.
Good analogy.
March 29th, 2013Wow:
In March 2010, just a couple of weeks before the iPad was due to be released publicly, I had a reason to contact Steve. A friend of mine was dying of liver disease and I was going to San Francisco to hopefully see and communicate with her while it was still possible. She was a friend from my Adobe days and was very much into technology. I thought it would be a treat for her to see an iPad. And I had one. But until the product was officially released I could not show it to anyone without permission from Apple management.
This is a short little story from David Gelphman, but it’s a must-read. This is an example of how a company should be run: make exceptions when necessary, empower employees, and trust them to do the right thing with that power.
Oh, and be human.
What a beautiful story.
March 29th, 2013I’ve started to notice a trend with the apps that garner my personal praise. Some traits that they almost always share.
Simplicity, ingenuity and gumption. I love that. Very good way to summarize what good design is.
March 29th, 2013Sean Sperte wrote a short, but very good, piece on hashtags. Here’s one part that stuck out to me:
Hashtags do have great potential. Even in their most basic form – for taxonomy – hashtags can trump inferral through machines. No one knows better what they’re saying than the person saying it.
So, so right. One of Cheddar’s features that seemed immediately obvious to me after seeing it, but had never even entered my mind beforehand, was categorizing tasks using hashtags within the task itself. Then, to see tasks with a certain hashtag, you just tap one of the hashtags. It’s instant categorization that somehow feels both quicker and more natural than managing a categories list and choosing one from a drop-down menu.
That’s one small example, but Sean’s right that it could provide much more accurate taxonomy for virtually all forms of text (or anything, really) with very little effort from users themselves.
March 28th, 2013Google introduced a same-day shopping service called Shopping Express. Here’s John Gruber’s take:
This, from the company that shitcanned Google Reader because they wanted to “focus”.
Hard to disagree. And undermines much of what I wrote last week about Google. And by “undermine,” I mean “make completely wrong.”
March 28th, 2013Brent Simmons on why you shouldn’t use iCloud, even if it worked without issue:
Here’s the thing: half the mobile revolution is about designing and building apps for smartphones and tablets.
The other half is about writing the web services that power those apps.
How comfortable are you with outsourcing half your app to another company? The answer should be: not at all comfortable.
That’s right, and his other arguments (which are similar to the ones I made last year) are convincing, too.
iCloud is limiting, and building your own service allows you to provide more services. All true, but sometimes, all we want is for our data to follow us around to each device we use. With Quotebook, for example, I don’t really want unique social features that they could only build with a custom sync service—I just want all of my quotes on my iPhone and iPad, and I want to be able to add them from any of my devices.
In cases like Quotebook, it’s still possible that iCloud isn’t the right answer, because there’s no way for them to build a web application on top of iCloud. But that doesn’t mean they should have to write their own sync service. We should, ideally, be able to build on top of existing sync solutions, and write our own only if it’s truly necessary. I don’t think it’s good for the future of mobile computing if everyone is effectively required to write their own sync service. The number of devices people use is getting larger, but syncing data across them is still a difficult task. The goal should be to solve much of it for people.
March 27th, 2013In 2006, Ms. Amoruso was a 22-year-old community college dropout, living in her step-aunt’s cottage, working at an art school checking student IDs for $13 an hour. Then she started a side project, Nasty Gal, an eBay page that sold vintage women’s clothing.
Last year, Nasty Gal sold nearly $100 million of clothing and accessories — profitably.
Great story. There’s a lot to learn from what Amoruso’s done.
March 25th, 2013A year ago, as the presidential race was taking shape, The Washington Post’s pollster asked voters whether they favored the use of drones to kill terrorists or terror suspects if they were “American citizens living in other countries.” The net rating at the time was positive: 65 percent for, 26 percent against.
Today, after a month of Rand Paul-driven discussion of drone warfare, Gallup asks basically the same question: Should the U.S. “use drones to launch airstrikes in other countries against U.S. citizens living abroad who are suspected terrorists?” The new numbers: 41 percent for, 52 percent against.
Wow.
March 25th, 2013Thanks to Wufoo for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed.
Wufoo? Who? It’s a web application that lets you build amazing online forms for your websites.
We host everything. We build the backend. You get an easy, fun and fast way to collect and analyze data, and it even integrates with many payment systems.
With Wufoo you get…
- Over 200 pre-made templates & themes from our form gallery
- Ability to customize branding with your own logo and themes to match
- Integration with over 50 web apps including WordPress, MailChimp, Basecamp, Stripe, etc.
- Support for beautiful typography with custom fonts and Typekit integration
Just because you’re working with forms and data doesn’t mean you have to do it without personality or style. Gathering information from your users is exciting, why shouldn’t your tools be exciting too?
Experience the difference. Sign up for Free and get started with Wufoo today.
March 25th, 2013Black Pixel said a little about what’s happening with NetNewsWire. The good news: they’re developing new Mac and iOS versions. The bad news:
As far as sync is concerned, we knew we would likely need an alternative to Google Reader as early as last year. At the time, the option that seemed to make the most sense was to embrace iCloud and Core Data as the new sync solution of choice. We spent a considerable amount of time on this effort, but iCloud and Core Data syncing had issues that we simply could not resolve.
Ugh. As Steve Streza said on Twitter, if they can’t get it to work—a team of incredibly talented people—who can?
I really hope Apple’s working to fix iCloud’s issues. It needs to work, both for developers and for Apple.
March 20th, 2013March 19th, 2013Every Sunday one of those people has the power to make it better. Every Sunday all it would take is one person who seizes the opportunity to care. And, if that one person took the time to find out why it is that every Sunday we do not get our paper, they might just find a solution that solves our problem and makes our lives that much better.
They might also find that there is a problem in the system that not only solves our problem but solves every problem of every delivery of every paper everywhere.
Google’s present position looks weak, but it has two big trump cards. First, Google has proven to be one of the few companies capable of creating, popularizing, and supporting a platform. Despite all the skinning and branding by handset makers, Google is still the driving force behind Android. This power can only be negated by another company that’s willing and able to match Google’s Android efforts on all fronts: OS development, app store, developer tools, evangelism, the works. That’s a tall order.
And they’re getting pretty good at hardware, too. Great piece—make sure you read it.
Apple’s biggest weakness right now is web services. Is Apple getting better at it faster than Google is getting better at hardware, as they move toward a more integrated approach? I don’t think so.
March 19th, 2013
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