Because they are a cycle or two behind. While they are catching up with features and throwing in an extra bit or two (see 3G and GPS), companies like Nokia and Apple are already testing their next revisions for the next release that elegantly solves major issues and more.

So a whole bunch of news is trickling down the pipes with new phones coming out of every mobile handset carrier. The ones getting most attention are the ones with touch screen, 3G, television, music, fashion something, blah blah blah. However, a lot of these kinds of ambitious handsets came out post-iPhone (speaking more to the marketing than actual technology/implementation). What I’m trying to say is that without companies like Apple and Nokia taking a leap in design, consumers wouldn’t have these kinds of wonderful interaction models for another several product cycles. But ever since big names like Apple entered the market, the whole house goes crazy with finger flicking interfaces and tiled buttons. Yes, these are great products, and they are designed and developed by smart people, but the business side didn’t get it until someone else did it first. What does that say about the whole vertical (in America)? Do you believe you will get the same kind of awe inspiring experience daily from such a thing? I question that.

Japan is way ahead of us because of their bold steps to try something different or created a handset that was for a very specific niche. What’s nice is that they get to try out very interesting and immersive user experience models that could inspire new ways to do mobile for the regular joe. These companies are the same ones thinking about the future and are positioning themselves for success with multiple product/service deployments for the next several years. Game changing models. Not the, “well people want 3G so lets give it to them, or and a 10 megapixel camera too! too expensive? okay make that 5.” WTF would you do with 5 fucking mega pixels on a lens smaller than your IQ? Wonder why you couldn’t get that night shot of that Justin Timberlake picture with your phone? because you fell for the marketing. 3G? why do you think the Black Jack comes with two batteries?

My point is not to say my needs are your needs, because their not and you have every right to want certain things. However, you should think about the details: the interaction you have with your phone on a day to day basis. Is it fun to use all the time? Is it easy to get to where you want to do? Do you feel delighted to have such a product? How do you talk about it with your friends? What kinds of words do you use to describe it? Are you even excited about it when you talk about it?

Those “Wow” features are only Wow-tastic if it really does enable something greater, like saving me time and frustration by finally letting me listen to voicemails in any order I want and stop and play as I want. Or show me text in a way that acts like a conversation (IM) thread as opposed to an ugly list of text where I need to click in and out of screens to read the messages from the same person within the same conversation! Form and Features (should) follow Function.

What does your phone really enable you? Notice the commercials Apple used to show off the iPhone. They didn’t talk about features, they told stories about how those features affected your life beyond the phone. That’s a forward thinking product. That’s a design thinking company. That’s the kind of company I can trust in making sure I enjoy what I buy, even if it cost me $600.

Okay, so the new iPods are out, and they are hot (minus the nano, sorry). Wireless iTunes. Ringtones. 8GB iPhones get a $200 price cut. Starbucks partnership. So while everyone is getting their knickers in a bunch for whatever reason, this announcement brings many compelling questions to mind:

Apple is leveraging the huge iPod user base and pushing their technology adoption rate at incredibly fast speeds. By lowering the barrier of entry and by eliminating any major switching costs, more people will be familiarizing themselves with virtual keyboards and mobile web experiences.

Multi-touch interfaces are going to blow up and just about every mobile handset creator will be on this bandwagon if not already. We are looking at a periodin time where gestures, touch based computing and the like will be even more important to figure out in interface design than ever before. This is more complex than the mouse and keyboard days. Touch based computing will go beyond just these tiny screens. We might start seeing these screens embedded in the physical world. Crazy huh? Think Minority Report.

Anyways…

For most consumers, the iPod and iPhone will be their first significant experience with touch based computing. They will shape their understanding and model these interactions based on how Apple defines that experience. Given Apple’s track record, they do a damn good job of creating magnificent user experiences, so other competitors will have a very hard time overcoming this when everyone is deeply invested in this way of doing things on the iPod’esque interface. This is more than just a feature, this is building the right interaction model. This is about making sense with new technology and using it the right way. It’s the small details. Boy do I feel like my studio will be getting a lot of proposals on touch based interface work.

Exciting times.

Also, just extrapolating this idea: imagine gesture enhanced touch pads on mac portables, cinema displays with touch based screens and more. Use your imagination!

And finally, the whole Starbucks thing, should include a 1-touch ordering system that also keeps a history of your favorites. I mean c’mon! I’m expecting that within the year, otherwise I’ll be a little disappointed. For the record, this was a problem I had to solve as part of my interviewing process. Yea, my studio rocks.

Anyways, I just wanted to write to tell you all that everything is groung great and I am safe, eating 3 meals a day and walking a lot. It’s definitely a healthier routine than what I’ve been going thruogh back in the states.

I’ve taken about 600 photos so far, and you can find some of them here: http://alexkingdesign.com/europe/

I haven’t had a chance to put them on flickr or anything, but I hope you enjoz what’s up so far.  I wish I had my computer so that I can work on them, but whatever. When in Rome.

Even though it’s been great so far, there are some things that I do miss, like family and friends, but otherwise, Europe has a lot going on that I enjoy.

Anyways, hopefully you’re all doing fantastic and please tell me what’s new with you guys and any other update.

Oh yeah! I got a job. I will be starting work in Belltown (Seattle) at a great design consultancy named Artefact.  I will be employee number 12 as their User Experience Design Researcher. It’s perfect and the group is wonderful.  So hurray for disposible income!

Okay, that is all. Bye.

Anyways, so I got off work a little early to check out the University Village Apple store to check out the crowd during the unveiling of the most highly anticipated/marketing/sought-after/lusted/flamed/beautifully-built consumer device known to man and history. The Wii and Playstation 3 lines across the nation did not have this much attention prior to and now after. Well maybe the Wii, and also, I’m speaking to America only, not internationally. Otherwise, the Wii is just fucking amazing.

It was just hilarious to see the line form wrapping around the village and across the street. In the end, I made it inside after snapping a lot of pictures and had my mittens on a shiny new iPhone.

Stunning.

Reviewers say it lived up to the hype, and it does. It’s a beautifully crafted device that earns its strips not because of it’s features, but because the features it does include, they did is near perfectly. That’s saying a lot. Many times you find reviews doing those silly comparison charts of features where product A has 35 features (that are arbitrarily picked) while product B has 29, therefore product A is superior. Not so. Not ever. Hopefully you will learn not to fall into that mistake again.

It’s a great little device that in time will promise to be even better. Why? How? Well, Apple promises to provide free software updates. That is HUGE. You won’t have to buy a new phone when technology and features become more advanced. Instead, you just plug in, download and update your current iPhone and it will be like a brand new one! Save your $100 or $300 in the future for something useful, for like say… a pair of jeans you always wanted. Seriously.

Yes, like any other first generation device, or any device for that matter, there will be shortcomings. However, the value you gain from what is currently available will help alleviate any frustrations for a few missing elements. Some may have more dire needs that the iPhone can’t support, but then again, you can always get something else. Design 101, don’t design for everyone. Design for specificity and you will succeed (mostly). In time, everyone will be happy.

Aside from drinking the Kool-aid, you have to admit that this is completely unprecedented and Apple products are executed very well. That much is true. Casting aside your personal preferences and biases, this is a great example of a company believing in good design and the people who use it.

I love great design, and Apple does a pretty darn good job. Is that so wrong?

Daring Fireball First Impressions
Drop Test
WSJ Review
Crunchgear Review Round-up

Since graduting from the wonderful University of Washington, everything seemed to just cruise along. I’ve moved back home over on the east side and it has been the most unmotivating experience ever. It reminded me of why I don’t live here. I don’t really do much of anything except eat, sleep and watching a ton of Food Network. Not exactly the ideal post college lifestyle. Fear not though because it really has only been a little more than 2 weeks since walking down the soggy lane where I was presented my emtpy pleather portfolio signifying the milestone of intellectual achievement, if you can call it that.

Anyways, aside from the meandering, I’ve been spending late nights as usual trying to set myself up as a competitive candidate for employment. Right before graduating, three companies reached out to me and expressed interest in my skills. Teague, a product design consulting firm was the first. The position is a Flash design prototyping position. What that means is I take pictures of what software looks like and make them interactive. Valve - as in Counter Strike and Half Life Valve - showed me around their headquarters in downtown Bellevue. I had the privilege to sit in on one of their design discussions, which was quite interesting. The position was actually one that flexed between a lot of responsibilities, but their immediate needs were in marketing and communication (web design). Last to reach out is Artefact Group. This small firm helps software comapnies like Microsoft conduct research and create prototypes of how execution should be accomplished. There are only 11 or 12 people (I was told both) and about a year old. However, the experience in the house per person is anywhere between 5 to 10 or more years. The position I would primarily be researching people and how we can integrate software into their lives without frustrating them (read: Apple).

Each place has been extremely impressive and it’s great to know that there is so much talent in Seattle. It’ll be a hard decision to make no doubt. My professor, Axel, is happy to hear that I’ll still be in town so it’s also good to know I have his support.

Wednesday I’ll be flying out to Amsterdam meeting up with Richard aka “Giggles” Paterson and two other hooligans to experience what everyone should experience, life. Ha. I just picked up the last of the supplies I needed before venturing off into manhood and I plan to keep everyone informed of the misadventures via this blog. I’ll be creating an RSS feed for those who need’em, but otherwise, this will be showing up on Facebook anyways for the majority of my readership, all -9 of you. Be sure to check up on my Flickr account too. I’m going to try to do some moderate uploading as the days pass, but not too much since I need to take more than share for the time being.

Otherwise, I will hoepfully be seeing a lot of you when I return August 5th to share forgotten stories and and photos that would make any man cry.

One final though: I miss school already, I miss the house and I can’t wait to move out into my own place.

Updated
Here is the RSS feed to any and all entries to my time abroad: Travel Log [Yahoo Pipes]

A lot of people don’t know exactly what I do. What is Informatics? What is Interaction Design? You’re artsy fartsy (wrong, but I do love art, and especially great design). So on and so forth. Well it occurred to me that while I have spent my long summer hours exploring Flickr, it came to me tonight to use it as a way to showcase my portfolio work as of late. This is just a nice little intermediate step to show off something while I come up with a more complete design for my online and print portfolio - it’s just so hard committing to a design that will last a long time.

What would I use this for? Well, for jobs of course! Actually, it turns own that Teague and Valve are looking to contract some prototypers/designers (me) on their team because of increasing demands. On the 27th, I’ll be going through a portfolio review followed by four hours of interviews with the Artefact Group. It should be interesting. They are working with some new Microsoft technology that many critics have been raving about. Sounds like a ton of fun. All three opportunities have something in common that I really enjoy, that start up feel.

Enjoy! and wish me luck!

To me this is entirely new and refreshing. Apple demonstrates how specific technology, like IR sensors and accelerometers are used to create useful functions in real world settings. Often times, these technology features are not truly understood or misinterpreted by the consumer. For instance, the introduction of Bluetooth promised a lot of great stuff like wireless handsets and communication. People used Bluetooth the same way Google has turned into a synonym for “search,” however I’ve observed poor usage of “bluetooth” - not to mention “internet” and “wifi.”

Anyways, the point is that these terms get lost in translation and become unappreciated. With these short visualizations, I have become both informed and impressed with the clarity of understanding gained by watching them. This is good for the consumer because this gives them more power to make better decisions about product purchases and where to place value in the functionality that is respectful of their own context of use.

It’s true that these technological achievements are anything but revolutionary, but because Apple clearly demonstrates how it is broken down and worked within simple use cases, more trust is placed in the marketed product. This is far beyond just reading text and looking at comparative charts.

I hope more companies put more faith in their products that merit this kind of attention. Otherwise, more and more mediocre products will be bought and ruin another person’s day. Not to knock on Samsung, but they make fantastic products, but they turn out a new cell phone design for production every 6 weeks or less!

We worked through some storylines to help make sense of our screens and find any gaps in information. We quickly discovered a lot of complexities with the information we were working with. List creation, inventory browsing and product comparison were all important elements that we need to incorporate, but were difficult to organize. We drew up on the whiteboard a lot of different layouts and screen interactions and came up with some UI elements we felt would be interesting to test in front of users. We came up with sliders to create the boundaries the user was willing to shop in and have the products fade in and out highlighting those that met the parameters. More information would be disclosed as few items were highlighted and given more pritority in screen real estate on screen.

Jumping forward in time..

Another challenge was integration with the physical device we were using: the keychain. How would this device be synced?, when and what does the interaction look like in store? This was something I personally enjoyed because the keychain afforded the event of having lighted shelves give immediate feedback on what the person can choose as a better alternative. However, looking at it now today, it just makes our system far too complex given our time constraints, and lack of testing. So we dropped the whole idea. No keychain. No lighted shelves. Sad story. My baby died, but at least we are making it easier for our user.

Instead of using a separate device and reinventing the wheel, we are going to adopt the usage of club or membership cards currently used by these stores that track transactions. This is practically the same data we want to record and report progress for our shopper.

We’ve presented our first round of prototyping to our class and also three guests from Microsoft (one MSR researcher, two MS product designers). We received some constructive feedback. Reiterating what I’ve stated above, we need to drop a few items. In addition, we have changed our model of being store independent to making a shopping application for Whole Foods. In order to show the success of comparison shopping and informing the benefits of better choices, we need to focus more specifically on a scenario our audience is familiar with. We needed to give them an example they can visualize and predict, like a story. We have our problem, a protagonist, but we needed a setting. Whole Foods will be our new playground from which our design will build upon.

Another bit of feedback that we were already concerned with going into the presentation was our usage of color to inform quality. The colors derived from the initial idea of using lighted shelves to show what choices would be better, same or worse than the shopper’s current boundaries. We had difficulty translating this into the entirety of the system. So we dropped it. It didn’t inform how much a product is better than others or even an absolute value of it’s quality in general. Time to hit the information design books for some inspiration.

We are now left with 2 weeks left to prototype another iteration, make it fairly polished and prepare our material illustrating our process. I have to admit, we have been doing a poor job of documentation. I’ve used this blog as an informal method of capturing some important events. Even then, I haven’t made that many updates. It’s a shame. This week will be dedicated to design and partial documentation - at least organizing how our process should be laid out. I will do my best to update next week on our progress and provide links to past prototypes/sketches/deliverables.

Here are some more at work photos:

Past entries:
Ambiguous Beginnings
Research and Analysis
Concepts and Design

• 1. mobile wallet
• 2. MANGA on mobile
• 3. mobile check-in at airports
• 4. mobile keys for door
• 5. mobile employee badges
• 6. mobile cinema tickets
• 7. mobile transport passes
• 8. fingerprint authentication
• 9. face recognition/authentication
• 10. mobile discount/promotion coupons
• 11. scented phones
• 12. mobile fashion consultant
• 13. mobile live TV
• 14. wii-like mobile phones (motion-sensor)
• 15. physical bookmarks for mobiles (shops)
• 16. privacy screens
• 17. 1D and 2D codes for marketing and even on fruit and veg labels
• 18. mobile GPS navigation for pedestrians
• 19. electric wave posters (uses RFiD)
• 20. waterproof phones

Now you say: “Well we have advanced productivity software like push-email and Outlook/Exchange Server architecture”

and I say, “Is your life that consumed by inboxes and to-do-lists?” Probably. Mine’s getting there.

A lot of those things listed are obviously reflective of the culture, and the architecture is literally built around mobile technology. It’s just interesting to see the differences in how industries grow in different ways around the world. The cell phone is a sign of socioeconomic status in China. If you ever visit, you will notice everyone has their cell phone either hanging on their belt or around their neck. We’re sort of getting there with business people hanging their Blackberry on their belt and the rest of us using some Motorola phone (ie RAZR, KRZR, SLVR, xxxR).

BooHoo For You [YouTube]