Aesthetic integrity

Just saw this from the Apple iPhone Guidelines about “aesthetic integrity”:

Aesthetic integrity is not a measure of how beautifully your application is decorated. It’s a measure of how well the appearance of your application integrates with its function. For example, a productivity application should keep decorative elements subtle and in the background, while giving prominence to the task by providing standard controls and behaviors.

An immersive application is at the other end of the spectrum, and users expect a beautiful appearance that promises fun and discovery. Although an immersive application tends to be focused on providing diversion, however, its appearance still needs to integrate with the task. Be sure you design the user interface elements of such an application carefully, so that they provide an internally consistent experience.

Nicely said, imho :-)

Design for “expected convenience”

Had a great brainstorming breakfast session with a couple friends starting up a new digital product. During the convo, the profound yet alarmingly obvious concept of designing for “expected convenience” emerged (okay, I think I coined it. Hey if Dan Saffer can invent “topless meetings”, I’m gonna claim this one! :-)

The idea is quite basic: instead of killing yourself desperately clawing your way to get the “next iPod”– a massive gamechanger and cultural and economic powerhouse–focus on modest, simple targeted improvements to your product, and thus the overall user experience, leading to delight and satisfaction. Many of these things are those Aha! moments of user’s gratitude–where the user says “thank you”, literally! Why? because someone thought about the small things–

  • The iPhone has the ring silencer on the outside as a physical switch, not a digital control lost in the menus.
  • Firefox download window has an icon to view the file in the Finder
  • Photoshop palettes snap and can be re-combined in infinite ways
  • Google Mail shows a link to view your just sent message immediately after sending it to calm those freakouts of a bad email
  • Mac OS prompts you if your files are too large to transfer to a drive, before copying begins

The funny thing is the concept arose from talking about a totally non-digital item: wheels on luggage. It’s simply expected fact that most pieces of luggage have wheels on them but it’s a relatively recent invention that has become simply expected convenience. Small shift in insight and change that yields great ease/satisfaction for the user. And of course your user base will love you for it, because they’re clever, smart, well-thought out, and… well, convenient. This gets your user to think “how did I live without this” yet it’s so effortless, transparent, intuitive, and just blends into their tasks/activities flow.

Attending interaction’09 in Vancouver!

After a long break from attending design conferences (haven’t been to one this year due to work commitments) I just registered for the IxDA’s interaction’09 event being held in Vancouver, Feb 2009. Should be a great event, with a nice mix of notable and influential keynote speakers, including Dan Saffer, John Thackera, Marc Rettig, and so on. Lots of fabulous networking to be done ;-) I’ll be staying at the Four Seasons, so I hope to see you there!

Hiatus and transitions

It’s been admittedly a very long while since my last post. I’ve been on somewhat of a hiatus from blogging and designing since voluntarily leaving my Sr. IxD position at Cisco a month ago (within the Voice Technology Group). Since then I’ve been exploring other options affording greater personal creative potential and strategic design innovation. In the meantime I’ve reunited with my friend and mentor Andrei Herasimchuk at Involution Studios on a short yet very exciting contract…who knows where it might lead :-) In addition, I’m providing ad-hoc UI consulting guidance for friends in the Bay Area and continuing to teach part-time at SJSU this fall. It’s an interesting time personally and professionally for me at this point in my career, having spent the last 7 years working at a variety of companies, large and small! No doubt, working in Silicon Valley has been incredibly beneficial on many levels, not the least of which the great multitude of options without having to relocate!

During my time off, I’ve been pondering what issues specifically to continue writing about, that continue and extend the general theme of “Ghost in the Pixel”. Here’s a tentative list of upcoming topics. Stay tuned…

* Lessons from corporate design

* Challenges of establishing a new design initiative

* Dark truths of designing: power, control, ego, and politics

* Preparing for your next job interview: what to really ask!

* In defense of creative talent…yes it still matters!

* Reviews of some new UI’s: Cuil, Chrome, Picasa, Firefox 3, etc.

Article published in ACM Interactions!

A brief notice to all that my article “Experiential Aesthetics: A Framework for Beautiful Experience” has been published in the latest issue (No. 5, Sept/Oct) of ACM Interactions here: http://interactions.acm.org/content/XV/5.php

This article represents a concise summary of many of the issues concerning aesthetics that I’ve previously written about on this blog. Hope you enjoy it!