The Dud Samaritan

My first short film and directorial debut, shot on 16mm in my second year at University. Michael Pentney was DoP and Emma Dalesman was Camera Operator.

We actually shot the film twice due to a processing blunder that destroyed about 90% of the rushes. Fantastic performances by Adrian Hopper (Dennis) and Colin Cuthbert (Dwayne) hold it together despite the flimsy story line!

Oceanic

Directed by Michael Pentney, Oceanic is a weird art-house film shot on a budget of favours back in 2005, and starred the late Iain Etchells. I Produced the film, and also created the opening titles.

Augmented Reality on Bing Maps

PokerStars online TV portal goes live

Almost a year in the making, from initial planning to final delivery, PokerStars.tv 2.0 was finally unleashed on a hungry public this week, raising the bar for online poker experiences the world over.

Those clever folks at Microsoft have done it again! (no, really)

Yes, that's one 'C' word I never thought I'd use to describe the company who brought us Vista, but whilst leaving the office juniors to plot the next thrilling episode of Internet Explorer, Microsoft have been beavering away on something I find genuinely exciting.

Chris Harrison, Dan Morris and Desney Tan, of Microsoft Research have come up with Skinput, a bio-accoustic sensing technology that allows the human skin to act as an input device.

Still in early prototype, an armband detects the subtle differences in sound frequencies caused when tapping various parts of your body to locate the impact, making it possible to determine which button was pressed. Wireless Bluetooth technology is then used to transmit this data to other devices, such as iPods and mobile phones. Absolute genius!

While Apple makes yesterday's technology palatable for the masses, Microsoft seem to be really pushing the boundaries of HCI with experimental technologies like this, Surface and Project Natal.

As a developer and designer whose career has been blighted by Explorer's buggy, downright anarchic interpretation of my work, I find it almost uncomfortable to say it, but maybe Microsoft is onto something here!

Adobe to Bring iPhone App Development to the Masses

When I heard about this, I was filled with two overwhelming (and yet conflicting) emotions. The announcement that Adobe AIR is to support Smartphone platforms (Blackberry and Android for starters), along with support for publishing iPhone applications came as a breath of fresh air in an arena fraught with difficulty and unnecessary repetition of effort. And yet, somehow I found it hard to feel giddy or excited about it.

Don't get me wrong; the idea of being able to design and build an application once, then publish it to numerous devices and mobile platforms without having to re-write a single line of code is music to my ears. It would spell the end of those difficult client meetings, trying to decide which mobile platforms will be shunned because the potential uptake would be insufficient to justify the investment required to redevelop the thing several times over.

This move will open new doors to a generation of Flash developers whose skills have been rendered all but irrelevant in today's CSS-driven Web 2.0 market. Okay, so this could be good or bad; the Flash website was killed by poor user-experience design and amateurish implementation long before Nielsen ever got his claws into it. There's something about a looks-identical-in-all-browsers development tool that draws lazy designers like flies to a steaming turd.

But underlying all of this is a deep rumble than gnaws at my bowels like a tumor. Adobe.

My own experience of Adobe is one of mind-boggling frustration; from their utterly atrocious customer service to their buggy, bloated software. Adobe has helped me earn a good living, I have to admit that much. But they've made me pay for it - in more ways than one!

This has the potential to be a ground-breaking milestone in mobile development, and exactly the kind of unification this platform has desperately needed. But only if it's done properly.

And therein lies my greatest fear. The words "Adobe" and "done properly" rarely, if ever, belong in the same sentence.

Update: It seems that Steve Jobs shared my concerns!

The Paradox of Innovative User Experience

As a User Experience designer, I face an impossible catch-22 on a daily basis. On one hand, I have an obligation to my stockholders and clients to create experiences that actually, genuinely work. Every time I craft a proposal, I commit myself indelibly to the delivery of a piece of work that will generate more revenue, attract more targeted traffic or increase social engagement with a brand.

All of these things are now easily measurable, and UX designers are just as accountable for their design decisions as any conventional architect or engineer. Design is no longer shrouded in mystery. It is no longer a black art, understood only by the sacred few. Everything I do, I do for a reason, and my design decisions are based on a careful balance of knowledge, experience, fact and a little educated assumption.

On the other hand, what makes me attractive to my potential clients is something very different. Most people require effective design in order to deliver a ROI that justifies the risk, but what they desire is something better; something different. Something innovative.

And herein lies the conflict. To design something that consumers can use so easily that it feels natural to them, removing any barriers to conversion or engagement, means engineering something that is inherently easy to use; something intuitive. Jeff Raskin defined the word beautifully in his (still valid) 1994 paper Intuitive Equals Familiar:

"Intuitive [equals] readily transferred, existing skills."

For those who can't be bothered to read the whole paper (and I recommend you make the effort), Raskin defines intuitive as the ability to use an interface without having to learn anything new. Familiarity creates intuition, enabling an end-user to immediately adopt an interface without further research or training. But innovation, by its very definition, demands the creation of something new and experimental. If that's the case, how on Earth do we innovate in intuitive user experience design? How do we create an interface that is both unconventional and familiar, all at the same time?

When put like that, it sounds like an impossible task, and I'm sure there are many UX designers who are happy to hide behind this conflict, as justification for remaining within their comfort zone. But you only have to look at some of the big innovators in technology today to see how this can be achieved.

Until recently, the conventional means of utilising mobile phone software was via a keypad and joystick of some description. This was the case for almost a decade (it may be longer - mobile historians, please correct me) until Apple released the iPhone in 2007, changing the face of interaction design forever. With the iPhone, Apple had created a truly ground-breaking user interface, whilst making it more intuitive than ever before, by rejecting current mobile conventions, and instead mimicking the way we interact with real-life objects.

We naturally prod things, we pinch and squeeze them, and slide them around to reposition. We don't naturally do these things via a proxy, such as a mouse, joystick or keyboard. These input devices are relatively new to our consciousness, and have been adapted-to over a long period of time. Multi-touch technology has allowed us to revert to a more direct interaction with the objects we see on screen, effectively removing technology (psychologically, at least) from the equation altogether, and putting the power back into our fingertips where it belongs.

So what can we learn from the iPhone? The lesson I take from this is that in order to innovate in the field of user experience, without sacrificing effectiveness through lack of intuition, we must first look at how our current understanding of the world has been constructed. Only when we can separate truly intuitive behaviour from acquired constructs, can we begin to design interactive solutions that revolve around what makes us human. And with the almost sci-fi advances in 3D tactile touchscreen and voice recognition technologies over the last few years, we're coming closer than ever to that eutopia.