Tag / apple
The Intuitive and the Unlearnable
Why some designs won’t ever stop sucking Again, it starts on ze twitters
I have a phrase, "Unlearnable design," for when something is so counter-intuitive you keep making the same mistake over and over.
My example: I always click the comment icon on twitter to read comments. Does not work (if it did, might improve dialog.)
Do you have one?
— ~c (@cwodtke) May 26, 2018
Intuitive is one of the most used terms in tech. Everyone wants their app to be intuitive. It’s worth asking what intuitive means, really? Working Knowledge offers this definition
Intuition is compressed experience.
Which means for an app to be intuitive (or more correctly, intuitable) it must be consistent with the end-user’s experience. Some product folks think that means if Apple or Facebook does it, they can too. For example, the unusable hamburger menu. But your user’s world is bigger than the hottest bro-co, and even the big guys make mistakes.
To make interfaces truly intuitable, we have to understand metaph..
How Robinhood Emphasizes Design to Make Stock Trading More Accessible
The idea of trading stocks, for many people, triggers a porcupine-like reaction. It’s too complicated, too expensive, and the platforms that allow you do it feel straight out of the early 2000s.
That’s why Robinhood has had such success. Since launching in 2015, the millennial-friendly investing app has accumulated more users than E-Trade and is valued at nearly $6 billion. Where its competitors charge trading fees, Robinhood charges nothing for trades and a key part of its success lies in its clean, easy-to-use interface, which has been recognized in its own right; in 2015, Robinhood became the first financial services company to win an Apple Design Award.
Alex Bond, 29, is the senior product designer at the Silicon Valley-based startup. After studying fine arts and graphic design at Colorado State University, she went on to hold several design jobs before spending two years at Pinterest. From there, venture capital firm Sequoia Capital brought her on as the firm’s 2016 Design Fello..
Be Frugal with Everything Except Your Bed, Your Chair, Your Space, and Your Team
In the process of building a business—and in life, generally—you should manage expenses carefully. But sometimes frugality backfires.
For example, given that you spend 30 percent of your life in bed and that sleep has such a great impact on how you feel awake, you should not skimp on your bed. Same goes with your office chair: In this modern age, we often even spend more time sitting at our desks than lying in our beds! So go buy the best damn chair you can find. Beyond your chair, the overall work space matters. While I am certainly not a proponent of expensive offices, the thought you put into the tools and environment you use to build things influences the quality of what you make.
Most companies classify their spaces the same way they do office supplies: negligible. Facilities planners tend to focus on the cost per square foot and logistical efficiencies rather than how space impacts the psychology of its inhabitants. But how you locate and design your space is as important as yo..
Rem Koolhaas and Irma Boom publish in-depth survey of building details
When it comes to landmark architecture books, Rem Koolhaas’ literary output is as iconic as they come. The celebrated Dutch architect – and famous co-founder of international architecture firm OMA – has been known to produce some of the most widely referenced and treasured publications in the field. Now, the master’s latest offering, the hefty – at some four kilos heavy – Elements Of Architecture has just hit the shelves. From 1978’s Delirious New York, a unique insight into the Big Apple, to 1995’s S, M, L, XL, where the author explored the expansion of the architecture office through his projects, arranged by scale, and his more recent foray into Japanese Metabolism, with 2011’s Project Japan (written together with curator Hans Ulrich Obrist), Koolhaas is a master in taking one strong theme and digging deep, meticulously exploring his subject. True to form in his new publication, Koolhaas takes the material from his widely acclaimed...
Rethinking disruption: User empowerment
First in a series
The idea that incumbent businesses and even whole industries can be unexpectedly disrupted by newcomers to the market is a powerful one, and we have Clayton Christensen and his 1997 book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, to thank for this insight. In the over 20 years since the publication of Christensen’s seminal work, however, we have seen violent disruptions that were not predicted by Christensen’s description of disruptive innovation. This article begins to explore how we might update our understanding of disruption in a way that is more useful to businesses desiring to either disrupt or ward off disruption.
Seeking a meaningful definition of “disruptive innovation”Professor Christensen says on his website:
Disruptive innovation describes a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors.First Edition, The Innovator’s DilemmaBut ..
Demain, tous nos gadgets répondront-ils à la voix ?
Amazon vient d’annoncer étendre sa gamme de produits d’assistants vocaux… rapporte 01net comme LeMonde.fr, parmi lesquels on trouve notamment un appareil pour la voiture ou une prise électrique qui se commande à la voix ou via l’application Alexa. Amazon a également dévoilé une série d’amélioration à son interface vocale lui permettant par exemple de murmurer ou de tenir des conversations. Mais surtout, souligne le Wall Street Journal, Amazon a lancé une puce électronique à destination des fabricants d’électroniques pour rendre compatible n’importe quel appareil à la commande vocale : machine à café, ventilateur, horloge, four ou amplificateur… Le but : inviter les fabricants à intégrer la commande vocale pour faire d’Alexa le système d’exploitation vocal de la maison.
La puce d’Amazon pourrait offrir une solution à une industrie domotique qui est toujours restée à la peine en matière d’OS, de standardisation, d’interopérabilité, de services, d’interfaces… Reste que ces commandes voc..
Checklist for effective logo design
Satisfy your client and give them their money’s worth with this effective logo design checklistRockstar logo designer and overall great man, Aaron Draplin, has designed a ton of successful logos. Looking through his book, Pretty Much Everything, you’ll see all of the logos that Aaron has created from his initial sketches to full blown billboard spreads.
Whether it’s a humble logo for his friend’s hot dog stand or the audacious Nike Air Max 360 logo, Draplin has produced some fine logo designs. Each is an exercise in restraint, intent and efficiency.
Logos are powerful. They pack an emotional punch. A good logo can make you feel a sense of achievement or bitter to your stomach. It’s said that we see around 4000 to 10,000 advertisements a day so one can only guess how many logos we’re exposed to.
Paul Rand, the man behind such logo classics as IBM, ABC and Ford, believed that “the only mandate in logo design is that they be distinctive, memorable and clear.”
Thousands of logos are made b..
Why Focusing Too Much on App User Acquisition is Not Right
In the mobile app world, focusing on ANYTHING too much is already a growth killer. You know why? Because there are a dozen things to take care of and if you invest too much energy into one thing only, you might end up losing the others. The same applies to focusing too much on user acquisition. Of course, it’s tempting to invest money into acquiring new users especially if you are just starting but there are other growth factors you should consider too such as engagement and retention.
Let’s start with understanding what user acquisition is and how it can help you.
Basically, mobile user acquisition equals to getting people to download your mobile app.
User acquisition is sometimes rather costly but you cannot overlook it because let’s face it, you need people to learn about your app and to download it to understand what a treasure it is.
via GIPHYThere are tons of acquisition strategies you can use. You can start with the following:
You can build a landing page with links to your app ..
How to Play the Innovation Jigsaw Game
Image Source : Business InsiderCreative problem solving is a learned skill that every service designer, developer or researcher needs to master. Seeing a problem and devising a possible solution requires specific knowledge within a discipline and a flexible mindset. But new inventions come in many different shapes and sizes. Indeed, when a medical breakthrough is made, it is sometimes (but not always) referred to as ‘wholly original’. This means the solution is novel and no part of it has ever been used before. Which raises the question, are other inventions generally not?
“Most problems are multi-layered and don’t contain one solution alone.”As a matter of fact, no. Most problems are multi-layered and don’t contain one solution alone. This means existing solutions to other problems can be brought together to solve a brief. Often, the very best solutions are the product of other discoveries.
Take Galileo, for example. The Italian is often credited with inventing the first microscope, b..
Who uses Service Design?
“A “service” sign in a room lit up at night” by Mike Wilson on UnsplashNetflix, Google, Spotify & iPhone are all highly aware of the importance of good Service Design. We can see this through their business models. Did you ever wonder why Netflix charges customers on a monthly basis instead of per movie or why Spotify also only offers monthly subscriptions? And why did Apple switch from iTunes to Apple Music? The reason is simple. All of these providers wanted to move away from selling products and into selling services. Through well-designed services, providers hope to build and maintain a relationship with you, the customer. This relationship means that they can predict their revenue better, re-invest in improving customer experiences, up-sell and introduce new products and services more effectively to their existing customer base.
The benefits of brand loyalty, which companies such as Nike developed and cherished in the eighties and nineties, are reaped with more certainty through s..