A new era for search?
Two interesting developments in the world of search reached the news lately. Both connected strongly to the factor of time. Google rolls out the realtime search and becoming a topic based knowledge stream. While Yahoo is experimenting with a search tool with a timeline. Facebook is also busy to enter the search domain focusing on the enhancement of search with the social graph. Question is if this is signaling a new era of search or just an natural evolution.
The hidden next steps of an Apple keynote
Why are those Apple keynotes of new products always that big fun. Of course it is the excitement of the new great products that are introduced. But even more the knowing there are some serious steps ahead which we cannot think of yet. These steps are in a way hidden in the talk.
The real surprises are not anymore the product that is introduced. The secrets are not kept anymore, deliberately or not. The interesting guessing starts only after the speech: what are the real consequences of this new product.
So we have a new iPhone and it is beautiful. But what are the hidden developments this time? Some thoughts.
- rebranding iPhone OS to iOS is expected to be the sign of making this OS a carrier of a lot of new devices that will be connected: of course the iPad and the expected new AppleTV. But maybe even a small desktop. As Steve put it: “we will be connecting ten million of devices this year”
- especially on the AppleTV the expectations are high. Will it be just an upgrade of the current concept with the new iOS or will Apple make real TV’s as an intelligent screen. I think the last is not so logic, but there is a chance that the new AppleTV will turn every screen in an internet connected TV by adding live TV capabilities.
- with the introduction of an open standard for FaceTime the are going for videochat domination in the device world. Well maybe, but it is of course crucial that as many people as possible are FaceTime enabled, you have to obey Metcalfe’s Law.
- creating a new gesture interface experience with the glass back. Adding tickling-on-the-back features in coming releases will be interesting. Or just adding new sensing possibilities for light our devices will be more an more sensors to our environment.
- the introduction of iBooks, iMovie, unified inbox and later as expected also iWork shows the cloud computing focus where the device is just the remote control of the mobile life service Apple is providing. Seamless syncing will be a central feature.
Overall I think the new iPhone contributes a lot to the strategy of Apple to keep and expand there share of the market by put real focus on the best device experience and above of all the most balanced ecosystem that will be the key to success. In that manner they will keep there differentiation of other players as Google that never can meet up with this product and service quality. There will be room for both in the market but Apple will prove to make the best profit and lock-in.
This happened 6 on the soul of products
It was a remarkable edition of This Happened Utrecht again. This time with some more off-the-standard talks I think, but with high quality and good inspiration again.
The most off presentation was the statement of Matt Cottam from Tellart. In his normal life a rather straight forward (…) builder of model and apps, but once in a while he do something different. Researching the boundaries of making digital stuff. Closely together with the Berg London people, so conceptual thinking is guaranteed. The project he presented was Wooden Logic. A concept to add conductive material to growing trees. With a special developed device it is possible (in theory) to make a digital product out of every tree. A funny demonstration video made the hilarious story compleet.
There was of course a serious angle in this story. We will create objects with a soul, in the next ten years we will be introducing emotion into existing objects by making them smart. An interesting and inspiring thought I think.
The start with the children’s game Mijn Naam is Haas was much more practical, as presented by Sanneke Prins and Berend Weij. They built a 15 people company out of the game system they developed as graduates, very respectable. Well thought-through and executed. With some good insights in building game systems, not only for children. I like the insight on the difference in creating worlds in games. A storytelling world which has more boundaries than a open makable world offers a lot more result in achieving the educating goals for toddlers.
Some more straight forward Interaction Design promised to be the work on the iPhone app for Classics by Sebastiaan de With. Or better; it was about experience design, because of the strong focus on finding the exact right experience in folding pages and putting books on a shelf. Impressive to see that Apple borrowed the design for the iPad iBooks app. They helped the popularity of the app a lot to put it in the commercial of the iPhone. The downloads rose from 250k to 2,5 mln.
Sebastiaan delivered a solid This Happened presentation with the exploration of the most important choices he had to made in the design process. From animation to color pallet, and behavior of the books and icons. Classics offers royalty free books and the preparation for the app in making tiny PDF-files turns out to be a real monks work (is that also a English expression?).
Last but not least was Keez Duyves from PIPS.Lab, a collective artists that create music performance theater with high audience involvement. He showed how they developed the app Radarfunk. A good performance need to be simple and silly and the simplicity of Radarfunk is very strong. The idea to transform a loop control into a circle a genius move.
And especially the play aspect in it was cool. But above all it showed how a strong clear and essential concept for a tool can be extended to an unlimited number of installations and performances. And besides that, it turned out to be a great product in order to achieve a purpose: keeping PIPS.lab together.
The play factor as driver to achieve another purpose was shared in all presentations in a way, but to declare a theme for this edition I think we need more poetic stuff. I think you can see in every presentation a struggle between the translation of real life interactions to a digital invironment. They all make their own choices how to do that and what the role of this choice was. The choice for an figurative adaptable worlds for toddlers by Mijn Naam is Haas and the choice for the animation effect to make a crispy reading experience in Classics and the choices in making noise rythmes in Radarfunk. The project of Matt is completely on this theme of course and played in that sense a key role in This happened 6.
As Bill Buxton points out in its supplementary Skype-presentation: the beauty is in the experience. Looking forward to the next edition!
Adding the layer of context to multi-touch magazines
Today is iPad day. With the launch of the iPad articles on the iPad are all over the place. And I think that is not for nothing, I expect some real impact from this new step in casual computing.
Among all the articles on the iPad I found some extra inspiration in the video of an interview with Jack Schulze from Berg London who was showing some new design principles that emerge from the iPad. A new approach to design content for magazine art directors. The biggest Dutch publisher of magazines in the Netherlands did the same in a way when they presented there example of translation of the Autoweek magazine.
But the video of Schulze triggered me with some other thoughts. What will happen if we adding an extra layer in the multi-touch magazine, the layer of context?
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Location as the new black, also for Facebook
Location is hot again. And a lot of speculations are made on the position Facebook will take. Will Facebook be the One Ring of Location gives a good overview. I think there will be a smooth integration of location in your Facebook profile and new targeting options will be connected to it.
For me the concept of location in Facebook can have three elements:
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Come to me marketing
I think I did some post before on this topic here, but a new post triggered some quick thoughts; the shift to the so-called come-to-me-marketing is really happening.
We are profiling ourselves all the time if we are using advanced social tools like Facebook and Foursquare. Permission based will get a new dimension. We will use the new emerging context driven use of online media to obtain useful information when we want it. In our Facebook presentations we often use the example where we show that the number of people interested in books on Facebook according their profile (3 mln) is maybe much more interesting to target than the number of searches to kindle (3k/month).
The same goes for the examples on location aware marketing made possible by the profiling analytics which is added. This will be the next big thing. For commercial messages, but also especially also for services.
Will persuasive games dominate the economy
In my report of This Happened #5 I stated that the there was no excitement in connecting gaming as theme to interaction design. (…) “game principles are part of every good interaction, so that would be not fair and just confirmation of the quality of the designs” to quote myself.
But yesterday I saw the presentation of Jesse Schell on the future of persuasive gaming in our daily context. A great presentation that shows us that it can go even further. I think Jesse also wants to warn us on the effects and call to all of us to do good when implementing. And I think his future scenario will be far more subtle. You can think of this example as the new deeper principle in the economy where money is replaced with whuffie reputation currency.
Or is that to far fetched?…
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