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.
Thursday, 6 May 2010
Monday, 22 March 2010
Saturday, 13 March 2010
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.
Monday, 8 March 2010
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!
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
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!
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!
Friday, 8 January 2010
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:
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.
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.
Monday, 12 October 2009
Universal principles of design
I often come across the assumption that because daily business revolves around a specific medium, one's design expertise is limited only to that discipline. By day, my primary focus is on designing engaging user experiences for the web, but I don't consider myself to be a web designer. In my mind, design is far, far broader than that.
I recently had the opportunity to design an EPG interface for a television set-top box. To me this was an interesting departure from my day to day work in e-commerce, social media and application design; a chance to look at the world from a different perspective.
When the design was complete, the technical director of the project seemed genuinely surprised that I had understood and adapted to the peculiarities of the EPG, and had designed a user interface that was both intuitive and technically correct. Not bad for a web designer.
He'd worked with many web designers in the past who had attempted to translate their UI design principals to the television screen, and had failed miserably; Delivering a web experience that was neither practical nor technically possible on a television.
The World Wide Web is just one medium that I work with, and I am particularly good at it. But design, for me, is universal. It is about finding a balance between something over which you have no control, and something over which you have no limitation.
On one side you have the immovable truth: The problem, the business objective, the strategy - whatever it happens to be. On the other, you have possibility - a blank canvas. What you put into this space, in order to answer, solve or fulfill the immovable truth, is Design.
Televisions and EPGs have some immovable truths:
Some might see these as obstacles, but I see them as truths; Neither negative or positive. It's just the way things are, and I have to work around them. I have to design an intuitive and engaging user interface around these truths.
I avoided problematic colours in situations where they might bleed. I used fonts and type-sizes that would shrink gracefully and still be legible when reduced to Standard Definition. I created a grid that respected the 'safe areas' and didn't put anything important close to the edges. I included 'on focus' styling so that the user could see which button they were on, without relying on a mouse-cursor to tell them.
In my world, Design is about solving problems and answering questions. Good Design is about solving problems in new and interesting ways. Great Design is about taking those fundamental principals and applying them to any given problem, regardless of the discipline or medium.
I recently had the opportunity to design an EPG interface for a television set-top box. To me this was an interesting departure from my day to day work in e-commerce, social media and application design; a chance to look at the world from a different perspective.
When the design was complete, the technical director of the project seemed genuinely surprised that I had understood and adapted to the peculiarities of the EPG, and had designed a user interface that was both intuitive and technically correct. Not bad for a web designer.
He'd worked with many web designers in the past who had attempted to translate their UI design principals to the television screen, and had failed miserably; Delivering a web experience that was neither practical nor technically possible on a television.
The World Wide Web is just one medium that I work with, and I am particularly good at it. But design, for me, is universal. It is about finding a balance between something over which you have no control, and something over which you have no limitation.
On one side you have the immovable truth: The problem, the business objective, the strategy - whatever it happens to be. On the other, you have possibility - a blank canvas. What you put into this space, in order to answer, solve or fulfill the immovable truth, is Design.
Televisions and EPGs have some immovable truths:
- They are generally navigated with a remote control, using directional arrows
- They don't have a cursor
- Anamorphic HD will be squeezed into a Standard Definition screen, losing resolution
- There are 'safe areas' to observe, in order to avoid having your interface cropped
- Televisions don't handle certain colours particularly well
Some might see these as obstacles, but I see them as truths; Neither negative or positive. It's just the way things are, and I have to work around them. I have to design an intuitive and engaging user interface around these truths.
I avoided problematic colours in situations where they might bleed. I used fonts and type-sizes that would shrink gracefully and still be legible when reduced to Standard Definition. I created a grid that respected the 'safe areas' and didn't put anything important close to the edges. I included 'on focus' styling so that the user could see which button they were on, without relying on a mouse-cursor to tell them.
In my world, Design is about solving problems and answering questions. Good Design is about solving problems in new and interesting ways. Great Design is about taking those fundamental principals and applying them to any given problem, regardless of the discipline or medium.
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