BASEMENT.ORG
Posted by Richard Ziade on May 30, 2008, 07:57PMRadiohead to Prince: Unblock 'Creep' Cover Videos
We're officially in the land of ridiculous. Prince covers Radiohead at a live show. Fans record the performance and put it on Youtube. Prince (who's notorious for aggresively enforcing copyrights) demands that the videos be taken down. Radiohead's Thom Yorke requests they be unblocked. So who's right? Who cares. The notion of "copyright" is officially useless.
Supercook
Supercook is a neat little search engine that hits up numerous recipe sites. The interface works well, allowing you to add and remove ingredients to your search easily.
Posted by Richard Ziade on May 29, 2008, 10:52AMDreamweaver CS4 Beta Released
The kids at Adobe have released a beta of the upcoming Dreamweaver on their Labs site. Key highlights: code-hinting for web frameworks (JQuery, etc.); Subversion integration; and a real-time editing mode built atop Webkit. Sounds sweet. Have at it.
DimP - A Direct Manipulation Video Player
DimP is a video player prototype that allows to browse video clips by directly manipulating their content. It's an interesting interaction approach, though I'm still wondering about its usefulness.
Posted by Richard Ziade on May 22, 2008, 02:32PMWhat Software And Hardware Designers Can Learn From Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon
Ok, I know my titles have gotten a bit ridiculous of late (and sometimes ridiculously long) but bear with me here...
On a long flight over the Atlantic, I cued up Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon. For the uninitiated among us, Dark Side is one of the great classic rock albums of all time. It's also one of the most famous concept albums ever created. A concept album is (and this is my anecdotal definition) an album where an overarching theme, and on occasion sounds, melodies and patterns, weave their way through the entire record. The notion of a "set of songs" gives way to an overall experience.
What's amazing about Dark Side is that it attempted to represent something bigger than your typical album. If you stop and think about the notion of a single "song," you'll quickly realize that it's a product of capitalism. Songs used to be sold as singles for a lot less than entire album. They also fit tidily within a radio station's play list. As a result, artists were asked to, and eventually became accustomed to, churning out 3-5 minute songs for mass consumption.
Dark Side flies in the face of such conventions. Yes, there are "tracks" that are each individually titled, but anyone that's listened to it will tell you they're relatively useless. The tracks bleed into one another seamlessly without interruptions of silence. In addition, some tracks are less than two minutes long while others exceed seven minutes.
In essence, Pink Floyd created a singular, cohesive, seamless experience. They were aware of the artificial delineations that exist around popular music, and simply set them aside. Instead, they created a work that represents an uncompromised expression.
As we think about engineering and more importantly designing software or hardware, we can't help but be aware of and heed the risks and challenges of technology constraints. When we design, we can't help but compromise because certain realities exist. But if you really want to build something great that represents singular, cohesive, seamless experience, we must check ourselves and challenge convention.
You could boil down the above ramble into a single example: you can't see the screws on an iPod. The hard realities that the engineers had to contend with in designing it are hidden away. The more we, as designers, are able to create the illusion of overcoming or better yet defying constraints, the more impressive and often-times magical our product will seem. And "seem" is good enough. For your users, it is reality.
Posted by Richard Ziade on May 16, 2008, 09:35AMRounded Corners, I Still Love You
Basement.org has been rolling for a few years now and I have to confess that I have a bit of a mini-relationship with every blog post. They're sort of like your kids. You do what you can, but in the end you really don't know how they're gonna turn out.
Early on, when Digg was actually still cool, basement.org got slammed a few times after landing on Digg's front page, and one of my favorite posts made it up there. The headline tells the whole story: Why Do We Love Rounded Corners? (It's also with great pride that I'd note that a "love rounded" search on Google yields this post as the top result).
Frankly, the post is ok. I put forth some interesting thoughts, but it's far from exceptional. But the comment thread. That's a whole other story. Yeh it's on my blog (so apply the usual bias disclaimer), but it's really one of the most entertaining threads I've ever read. In essence, people decided to give their own theories on why we love rounded corners. It's all well worth reading, but here's a few choice samples:
Why? easy: women have rounded 'corners'. It is something you can stroke... :-)
Rounded corners render objects less susceptible to damage and wear, and less likely to cause the same. Sharp corners can rip pockets etc. Rounded corners simply make the object more robust.
As children we discover sharp corners hurt, so we quickly learn to avoid them and develop a preference for smoother, rounder corners.
Breasts are curved.
Ergo ...."some guy designed the room I'm standing in
another built it with his own tools
who says I like right angles?
these are not my laws
there are not my rules"
-ani difrancoWho gives a fuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
it is just the designer conspirator so they will make more money and give the developers and manufacturers hard life!!!!!! Long live simple design!!!!!There is actually a basis in human vision for rounded vs. squared corners. Studies that track eye movements have shown an attraction to features such as corners. Use of rounded corners will serve to exert less distracting pull on a viewer's gaze.
In chinese, we have a word similar: "無菱無角", describes people do not figtht againt other, like a rounded object, never smash others.
Then there's my personal favorite:
I love rounded corners, i think it's DNA...Woman have already round boobs, for over thousands of years...
I won't speculate as to the shape of women's breasts prior to thget ie "round era" outlined above.
I've since shut off comments on the post (too much spam pollution). I can safely say that this post has that rare trait that most blog posts don't: it's an unplanned work of collaboration.
Posted by Richard Ziade on May 9, 2008, 09:56AMI Have Seen The Future And It Is PicLens
For the uninitiated, PicLens is a full screen visual browser of photos and videos. It's available for Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. It is a very fast, very slick, frankly awesome way to view visual assets on your computer. I'm not one to play fan boy of any technology, but Piclens is just too good. Here's their promo video:
The progress loading of Google Image search results is really something. PicLens works with Flickr, Youtube and other photo and video sites. The beta (found here) lets you browse and view news, sports and photo assets. It's a great way to glance at news stories.
There's been a bit of buzz lately around "visual browsing." Apple has made coverflow a major part of Leopard's Finder and companies like Searchme are betting their future on "visual searching." I don't think visual searching or browsing works for all types of assets, but for pics and videos, it really is great...and nothing does it better than PicLens.
Now if we can just convince the PicLens guys to add RSS feeds...
Posted by Richard Ziade on May 6, 2008, 09:34AMThe Utility Computing Myth : The Real Reason Why The Sight Of A Fedex Truck Makes Me Giddy
So here's the crux of the utlity computing mantra: all that processing power and hard drive space on your desk isn't needed for a great majority of applications. Instead, we'll have big, huge datacenters serve up applications over the web that help you get your work done. You'll pay either a subscription fee or stare at ads to subsidize their existence. No more $199 for a box with a CD in it.
The days of downloading, unzipping, installing and and then "loading" software are numbered. Instead, we simply visit a URL and bam...instant application and away we go. So watch out Microsoft and Intel, we don't need kick ass PC's anymore. Watch out Seagate and Maxtor, we don't need your hard drives anymore. We just need a thin client good enough to run a browser. The revolution has begun. Right?
Wrong.
Anyone that's messed with web-based word processors like Zoho Writer or Google Documents knows that they're nowhere near as impressive as their desktop counterparts like Microsoft Word. They lack the responsiveness and fidelity and are short of a multitude of features. We're ok with it in some cases because it's damn convenient,
Still, web applications have come a really long way. They're getting better and better. If you want to see the future, check out Adobe's Buzzword. It's a very impressive, Flash-based word processor that gives anything you'd install on your desktop a run for its money and it requires you to just visit a URL. So maybe this is the revolution, right?
Wrong.
Let me put this in a not-so-subtle way: regardless of how you got your software, software still needs to be impressive and competitive. That datacenter is doing two distinct things, and neither are very revolutionary (in my opinion):
1. From Pony Express To Fed-Ex Next Day
First, they're eliminating all the Old World steps that were once necessary for delivering software to you. CD's. Registration Keys. Big, huge installable downloads. All those features don't need to be sent in one big crate anymore. The prerequisites to using software are virtually gone. Just go to a browser, wait a few seconds and off you go. This is how Youtube took over the world and Real Player died an ugly death.
2. Real Estate For Your Bytes
Second, the datacenter will house the assets we create with these tools. Images. Documents. Spreadsheets. They're all stored centrally and available to me wherever I am. This opens up new opportunities for collaboration and sharing and of course, it's very convenient. There's still an important privacy barrier but let's assume privacy is a non-issue for the sake of this post.
I Don't Need A Mult-Billion Dollar Datacenter In North Carolina To Resize An Image
For whatever reason, everyone is equating this with the end of traditional software as we know it. As far as I see it, that CPU on your desk is needed more than ever because it's still doing all the work. Yes, the software is being delivered differently, but the processing is still happening locally. Yes, Buzzword fires up in your browser, but it's your computer that's doing all the magic. In fact, one could argue we need faster processors on our PC's because so much of today's software is interpreted on the fly.
The Adobe AIR platform is all about delivering desktop convenience through a seamless (or near seamless) install experience. AIR is about leveraging what your PC can do, not what some monolithic datacenter in Indiana can do. Of course, your data can still be stored centrally and there's no longer a need to go through cumbersome installations, so the advantages are clearly there.
Many have argued that this notion of utility computing will transform the software industry. Computing power will be metered out like electricity as pay-as-you-go infrastructures take over. Undoubtedly, this shift will have an impact on business infrastructures. Small businesses will no longer need to host mail servers and web applications. They still have to make platform choices and still have to either buy, build or subscribe to software, but the IT headaches, to a large extent, will be outsourced.
Back To Square One
Even so, you still need and want great software. It's important to distinguish the "utility provider" role that Google plays for example (providing storage space, support, uptime, high-bandwidth) with the "software provider" role that Google plays (providing spreadsheets, word processors and email). Amazon, Google and Microsoft are going to provide the utility infrastructure. That's a given. As a result, the "utility" end of the value proposition will quickly commoditize, if it hasn't already done so. The differentiator lies on the "software" end of things - in effect where its always been.
Regardless of where your software originates and its means of delivery, if it's better than a competitors, it will win. This key fact has not and will not change. And to win, you will still need to take advantage of the power on people's desktops and laptops. Technologies like Silverlight and Adobe AIR reaffirm the need to marry a click-and-run experience with the richness and power of desktop software. But more importantly, they validate the importance of delivering better software than the next guy, however way it gets there.
We may well pay for hosted software like we do electricity today. But the real variety of experience and innovation will not lie in the power outlets, but rather what we plug into them.
Posted by Richard Ziade on May 1, 2008, 09:24AMNeeds, Wants And The Great Wall Of Human Fickleness
User-centered design is arguably the single most influential framework by which interfaces are created today. The core of UCD is to meet the needs and wants of end users of a system. Few would doubt that UCD is a good thing. Machines that pass off the illusion of patience and sympathy and a prescient anticipation of what we want to do next is in fact, a very good thing.
When we decide to introduce new product, it's a very tricky proposition because we're effectively trying to bring something new and most likely frivolous into a user's world. This is distinct from a project whereby a team has been hired to meet needs or wants that a user community is conscious of and seeks help on. One of the most formidable and often-neglected obstacles towards successful product adoption is the lack of appreciation for how high and thick that user's wall really is.
When assessing the viability of your new product, it's important to weigh the core reasons and motivators of why people would consider and potentially use your product.
A new product aimed at a broad audience must peg these "wants and needs" with little validation. In this post, I'm going to humbly attempt to categorize the types of needs that may motivate a user to try a new product.
Basic (Primal) Needs
This is the easiest to peg and thus requires the least design work because the needs are so obvious and strong. If I created a complex and painfully confusing sign-up process that led to a $100 check being mailed to you no strings attached, people would tolerate it and go to great lengths to trudge through that process.
If we're providing a service that meets a basic and obvious need or desire, then we can worry less about the user experience. Pornography is another good example of this category (though I'm not going to spilt hairs here between needs and wants).
Organizational Or Financial Pressure
Here, the motivation to use your product materializes from the top on down. If you're able to sell an enterprise CRM application to a CIO or IT manager, their population will have to use it. It's part of their jobs. They may get trained on it and they may have their gripes about it, but there's an implicit understanding that you need to work with this tool to get your job done.
While you should still care about the user experience because bad buzz can still catch up with you, the value proposition is different here. It's more about return-on-investment and "number of transactions per hour" that a decision-maker is going to weigh. In this case, the "needs and wants" are more organizational than individual.
Social Connection
This category is a close relative of the Basic Needs category above. We love to be connected to, talking to, sharing pictures with, befriending (quote-unquote) other human beings. We are social animals and any tool that highlights and enhances our social connections is appealing to us.
If my good friend from high school is on a particular social network, I may well sign up to whatever service to connect with her. Myspace and Facebook are the most obvious examples of products that feed off this need.
Utility Applications
This is the toughest category to define because it's so broad. The products in this category rarely serve their own end but rather help us meet a multitude of needs. Word processing, email and web searching all fall into this category. They lie somewhere in the middle of the assembly line that leads to our goals.
Be very wary of introducing products into this category because utility applications are used heavily and constantly. As a result, the patterns and habits run very deep for many users. People get good at bad habits. When you're thinking through your product's value proposition and if it falls into this category, be sure to apply a heavy tax.
"It's Just So Darn Perty"
There are other, less critical factors that may drive one's needs. A product may be emotionally or aesthetically appealing. For example, Apple's hardware is intuitive and speaks to our desire to be associated with physically attractive objects.
What Is Your User Plan?
You'll often hear that a good business plan clearly states the problem or "pain" that its addressing. After all, without defining that need or want, why bother executing on a product? This is all well and good for business plans and overarching strategies, but it's critical to carry through that analysis down to the humans that need to interact with your product. What is the source of their existing pain? How will your product help? Which category of need are you going after and are you ready to disrupt their current way of doing things, however flawed it may be. It's great to have a business plan, but what's your user plan?
If people are going to touch your product, then be wary of their fickleness, tolerance and sensibilities. They may not seem like much, but when they work in concert against you, they are nearly insurmountable.