In response to an internal thread on this article…

I’m right there with folks crying foul when Apple does wrong, but I don’t buy this one. Apple’s “bastardization” of the ePub format helps push the format forward, just like Opera and Mozilla’s modifications to HTML yielded HTML 5, Microsoft’s modifications led to OpenXML and practically everybody’s Wi-Fi implementations led to 802.11n. I’m not saying it’s on as grand a scope as that, but I do think it’s a small part of that same sort of momentum. All Apple did was add some extra CSS tricks that weren’t present in the ePub standard and then tweaked the MIME type so the files identify themselves as being slightly different than standard ePub files. If nobody built on top of open standards like this, then nobody would use open standards because they would develop uselessly slowly.

And while e-ink displays are indeed better for reading than LCD’s, I take issue with the headaches-because-of-refresh claim. There is no refresh on LCD’s, just per-pixel changes when the image changes. Tablet LCD’s are the same as your desktop display, which folks read on all day long without issue.

I still prefer a tree-killing paper book to both, though!

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The automotive lineup for CES 2012 next week includes the debut of the Ford Evos concept car, a sensor-rich vehicle that is designed to connect to the cloud, all for the benefit of user experience. What a great approach! Why aren’t all occupiable spaces, including cars, designed like this? Let’s look at the car concept. What do the cloud and sensors bring to driving experience? In short, it could make driving as forward-thinking as an iPhone. The concept car features include connectivity with entertainment and content; energy management based on environment and locality; parental controls; and smartphone integration. Other auto companies are working on similar ”cloud connected” and sensor-rich concept cars, and it’s hard to knock any of them for taking another five years — the estimated time to get real vehicles into showrooms — to perfect the technology. I can’t wait!

That said, during this five-year span, countless buildings, schools, Starbucks, Walmarts, etc. will be built without the forward-thinking technology frameworks for really enhanced user experiences. There are sensors, sure – like temperature management, which can effect productivity by gigantic numbers. But why is it not pervasive and evident, in ways that people can really notice and appreciate? Is it cost? Is it the building process? Is it the profit model? Maybe it’s all of these, but if there is meaningful benefit to user experience, shouldn’t the architect be thinking about technology frameworks – the way they think about new exotic building materials that only they have access to? It should be noted that it isn’t only architects that can leverage these tools and frameworks – retail marketers, advertisers, product managers, and property owners can reap benefits.  But architects have more opportunity to thread infrastructural thinking into the program and design of the space.  (I have spent much of my career working in both architecture and technology, which is why I pick on architects.)

What could an architect do with a rich technology infrastructure like the Evos concept? I’m open to suggestions, but the answer is likely a combination of the internet of things (sensors and other hardware), my digital self (i.e. Facebook, Linkedin, and particularly smartphones, which are broadcasting all the time), a robust web-services community, and great user experience design.

Here are some things that it’s not: The Jetsons, where everything has a robotic arm. It’s also not exactly “responsive architecture,” at least the physical part where buildings deform to meet changing conditions or provide some interactivity. And it’s not a marketing element, like lobby displays, although the best ones, like the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, are beautiful and certainly benefit user experience.

If not robotic arms for better services, then what? We can use tech infrastructure to augment and improve the delivery of services. A great example is the gate redesign work that’s happening at some of the major airports. Why should the airport gate look like a bus station and serve terrible food anymore? OTG Management, an innovative airport food and beverage operator, has revolutionized the gate holding area by making major restaurant improvements (actually good food) and extending that enhanced experience throughout the terminal with food delivery service via iPad-based menus and ordering systems, along with charging stations and comfortable seating. Now travelers are able to relax and dine from any seat.

Also, instead of deforming a building physically, perhaps we can deform it digitally. Shopkick allows a retailer to install a small transmitter that can communicate with local phones. Shoppers can pull out their mobile devices and get rewards and offers based on their digital and physical histories. Invisible to those that don’t want it, but a new experience for hardcore shoppers.

Instead of “screensaver” signage for effect — again, some are beautiful — perhaps we can conform the content to the viewer base. Techstars startup Immersive Labs is developing an outdoor advertising technology that uses cameras (as sensors) and facial recognition to tailor content to viewers, as in Minority Report. Not everyone wants “billboards” at their school or hotel, but this same capability is a fantastic tool for user experience design.

These aren’t the end-all, be-all examples but useful data points. There are many. For instance, Walmart Labs is making lots of social and mobile aquisitions – Grapple and Small Society, and I haven’t seen the new master store…but then again, I don’t get to Walmart much living in Manhattan.

For most users, this sense of super connectivity could be disturbing. As mentioned above, it’s going to be up to the designer, particularly the user experience designer, to turn this potential nightmare into a pleasant dream. User trust is essential – see Toby’s article on 5 Practices for Securing User Confidence for more.

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Today we got news that Adobe was ceasing development on Flash and focusing on HTML5.  We’ve all worked with or consumed Flash in our personal and professional lives over the years, so we have a a few comments on the matter:

Charlie: I’m not a developer, but from the perspective of a web end user I’d be happy to experience less Flash in my day to day browsing.  Does this lend some validation to Steve’s “Thought on Flash”? http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

Nick: I’ve been Flash averse since 1997.  Just sayin’

Michael W:  I’ve noticed that all of the Flash haters I know (not naming names!) are all Mac faithful and honed their hate ages ago. Still relatively new to the mac world myself, I found flash to be an annoyance when using Safari, and since then, realized it’s only in Safari I had those problems. Having moved on from Safari to Chrome, I have no need for extensions such as ClickToFlash (a thousand thanks to Ivan for that little beauty.) It certainly felt like it had been poorly executed there, but anywhere else I’ve used it, be it Chrome, Firefox, on both Mac and PC, on a handful of Android phones, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. Trying to load a page as simple as a Gothamist post in Safari chugged and made my (at the time) shiny new laptop moan and seemingly beg to be put out of it’s misery. ClickToFlash eased that pain since it would only load flash objects after I approved them, but I don’t see the same problem with other browsers/OSs/etc.

Applying a general troubleshooting logic to the situation, if you’re only having a problem with an app or plugin (Flash) in a specific instance (in Safari) and it works fine the rest of the time, it’s not the problem with the app or plugin…

Sure HTML5 is the future, it’s open, but give it enough time, everyone will look back at HTML5 with the same ire they are giving Flash right now when the next big leap comes forth. Just because the new hotness is here doesn’t mean the old one was never worth anything. Without Flash, we’d have no Home Star Runner, TROGDOR!, Super Mario Twins, NewGrounds, LineRider, Youtube, etc.

I for one am glad to have The Burninator in my life.  <Nostalgia>

Dan: Maybe Flash haters all live in thatched-roof cottages….

Will: I’ve disliked Flash since the days my computer still had a floppy drive. Slow and resource-consuming while rarely adding any useful functionality to whatever site it’s maligned.  While I have ethical qualms with how Steve Jobs leveraged iOS’ success against Flash, I think the ultimate goal of replacing a bad, proprietary technology with an open one is a good one. Now if only Adobe had a competitor so that they’d be motivated to fix the plethora of bugs in their products.

Ivan: Well, not for nothing but the development of Flash for OS X lagged behind the Windows version for years. Any institutional dislike for Flash has been taught to Mac users by Adobe themselves. Heck, I don’t think Adobe even bothered to match versions between the OSs until Apple started being vocal about not wanting Flash on iOS.

Otherwise, flash video was great for the Mac because we finally didn’t have to worry about having a WMV codec installed. That said, I’m glad we got away from it for obvious reasons.  I can’t say why Safari doesn’t work as well with Flash now, except to note that Safari isn’t the most plugin-friendly browser out there. I’m not big on them myself, so it’s no loss to me.

Nick (again):  To be clear, I was a Mac hating Windows douche until around 2002.  And I too loved Homestarrunner et al, and accept the necessity of Flash in very specific instances which are becoming less and less frequent.  The problem is, aside from the resource hogging bloated piece of dung arguments that everyone is tired of, Flash is completely over- and inappropriately-used in the vast majority of instances. And often ugly.

And I really hate ugly and unnecessary things.

Colin: It’s really weird to watch the rebirth of everything again “isn’t it amazing I can do x with HTML5?!” yeah, it is super cool, but it was cool in flash in 1999 too.  it was the coolest thing ever, then it got old and crusty and a pain in the ass to deal with…. like a lot of people I know

Thanks flash, on to the next, next thing.

Will (again): I haven’t used Safari in five or six years but still find I have to use Flashblock in Firefox and Chrome to keep runaway Flash apps from maxing out one of my cores when I’m not paying attention. Before its redesign, I found trying to load a MySpace Music page to be a guaranteed way to crush any and all browsers because of the obscene amount of Flash.  I see no reason why we’ll look back on HTML5 the same way. Its implementation is determined by the browsers, which are varied and competitive. (Also, I find HTML5 rendering engines already perform better than Flash ever has.) Flash, on the other hand, has only one implementation developed by one company that until recently had no competition. It took the largest mobile platform out there blacklisting it to make Adobe even start looking at improving its performance.

Michael W (again): To Nick’s point, Flash got out of control in regards to bad design because they made it so damn easy for anyone to pick up a (likely pirated) copy and start banging out animations within a couple hours. Suddenly Geocities exploded with wizz! bang! websites that had 7,392,103,134 things flying around. Same thing happened with animated gifs…

http://www.myspaceantics.com/images/myspace-comments/words/juicy-lips-blacks.gif

Chris R: I just hope that in all this opinionated side choosing, people realize that it is really about poor code from developers using the technologies. You’ll still see a bunch of crappy resource hogging crap using HTML5 technologies as well.  I prefer to just say, I like properly written software…I don’t care if you use AS3, HTML5 tech, C++, etc.

Ivan:  Damn it, where’s the Like button?

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We came across a blog post discussing the dichotomy between the minimalist, industrial design of Apple products and the emotional, human design of the software found on those devices.  The writer seemed pretty annoyed by it all.  http://madebymany.com/blog/apples-aesthetic-dichotomy

Our design and user experience team had some strong opinions on the matter. This was our email thread today:

Max Z: This guys makes a couple of very good points (although I don’t agree with his overarching theme). I think the problem is simply one of consistency. Calendar on the iPad looks like its physical counterpart, while Calendar on the iPhone does not. However, Find My Friends is an app that maintains its look on both with leather stitching. Then there’s Game Center, which attempts to hit on a playful theme with a green felt background and serif fonts, while iBooks has fake pages that flick across the screen. This just needs to be fixed.

The part where I don’t agree with him is the tangent he goes on when addressing Apple’s advertising, or regarding Apple’s use of mainstream media in its keynote events. Simply put, people know they’re watching advertising because…. they’re watching a commercial. No one drops their jaw when they realize that Batman is not a documentary of a caped crusader. Same thing goes for using Winnie the Pooh as the first book in an iBooks app.

Ultimately, the author forgets one thing. Apple’s primary target audience is American, and the majority of Americans don’t live in New York or San Francisco. The majority of Americans live in the rest of the country, and they’re not “technorati”, nor do they want to be. They like things that ARE mainstream. At the same time they are also human, so they like things that are pretty, things that feel nice in their hand, and things that are intuitive. In other words, mixing mainstream with unique, beautiful aesthetic is the perfect business strategy. That might just be why they’ve been able to sell a few of their products.

Hams: Another design debate about something Apple is doing?! F yeah, my favorite!

I think another key thing here is something everyone seems to be skipping around, and it’s one of my new favorite big words d bags I mean designers use: Ephemeralization. Apple’s industrial design strategy is different from their product design/development strategy because they both have different challenges and different goals.

Aside from the inconsistency of apps between devices Max outlined so nicely, the author seems to have an issue with the inconsistency in an iPhone’s industrial design and one of the apps on it, iCal. Because we’re designing in a time where our one slick singular device handles our communication, calendar, entertainment, shopping, etc. we have to stick to conventions and maybe even aesthetic cues (for now) that the majority audience easily recognizes from past life versions of each function.

If Apple were designing iCal as a hardware device that served a singular purpose, maybe we’d see a “true-to-calendar” design approach instead of a skeuomorphic take on our multi-functional iPhone. But we are not, because that would involve a hardware case you need to change each time you switch apps.

The industrial designers aren’t designing a calendar device, or a boom box device, or a bookshelf device– they are designing a pocket sized little electronic that takes the place of all these things for you, which requires a totally different design strategy than the utilities named above.

The product designers are designing what the majority audience right now understands as some of these things transformed onto a little screen in their pocket. This will always change and this is the benefit of multi-functional devices being able to update relatively easily. It’s not inconsistent, they are two different things that work together now.

I think the most interesting piece of this whole conversation is what happens when the majority audience doesn’t recognize torn sheets from the calendar anymore but rather this skeuomorphic take on it as their point of reference.

Ivan: It already happened.  My friend teaches elementary school children, and he told me that there’s no succinct  way to describe what the Save button is. This indicates Microsoft’s slavishness to history and precedent to me, whereas Jobs made it a point to do away with the past. (The Icon Garden is a prime example.)

Toby: Actually, folks (Apple users) won’t soon recognize the digital concept of a folder soon, either.
Apple is making a pointed effort to erase the desktop metaphor from computing in order to reify the place these tools have in all parts of our lives. Rather than being misappropriated office tools, they’re lifestyle enablers. Or some shit.
The future is all groups vs folders on Apple platforms. Springboard is the new Finder (and just when Finder was finally sorta working… and written in Cocoa!)

On the tactile metaphors – even though they botch it (book metaphor + scrollbar = puke) – Apple has been telling designers at WWDC and via the HIG and design guides to replicate tactile, real-world, “physical” objects in their designs since the iPhone first came out.

They really push to make the point to designers that the iPhone and iPad (and with Lion, the Mac) don’t exist – they’re just pieces of glass that become different physical objects when an app is launched.

Why they chose to blanket Lion in what appears to be denim is beyond me, though.

Chris R: see what i just did there

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We love what we do.  So much so that we work on pet projects together outside of the normal course of business.

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I’ll come right out and say it, I miss my first generation iPhone. You remember the one I mean right? The very first one, the one that lagged behind, the one that didn’t support exchange email, and the one that had a 2 megapixel camera. But most of all, the one that had that great metallic finish on the back. It was the only phone that I can think of that actually wore to become an even better one – perhaps not in technical function, but definitely in an experiential one. All those little bumps and scratches made it feel like your very own digital pebble.

These days it seems as if our commercial world is littered with products and interfaces that constantly push the uber clean, “just minted” look; and as an experience designer, this is something that’s begun to trouble me more and more.

As human beings, but more specifically, as Americans, we love things that are new. This year’s new car… hell, next year’s new car; the next MacBook Air that you just read about; we can’t get enough. And the same applies to the interfaces that we use. Design is constantly tweaked and sharpened to look not just better, but more polished than it did a few months ago. You can see this in any site redesign, or better yet, in the latest release of an operating system.

All of this got me thinking– what if we tried designing for the long term?  What if the interfaces we design could “wear in” the way our favorite pair of boots does, so that they feel intrinsically ours?

The first thing we need to consider is the kind of interface that can benefit from this type of visual effect. The place where this feels intuitive is in touch-based interactions. There’s something about the tactility of these types of devices that connects very deeply to our basic senses, and by extension, our humanity. We leave our imprint on everything we touch– from fingerprints on glass, to creases in that old pair of jeans. When things wear away it makes us love them, respect them even, because in a way it reflects some sort of effort and input on our part; so why not extend that to the interface they bear?

The second component to consider is the amount of wear that can be applied to an interface element before we hinder its intent and visual clarity. This inevitably brings in the aspect of time and the length over which the process should affect the element: Too long, and the overall effect will be lost. Too fast, and it will feel gimmicky.

So what would a realistic scenario of this type of interface look like? Let’s take everyone’s favorite mobile note-taking app, Evernote, as an example. Currently, note’s are broken up by notebook, and each notebook simply lists its contents in order of the time that they were entered. You can also tag your notes and create favorites. In applying the “worn interface” model to this app, we could register each “open” action of each note with a slight visual effect, a change in color of a note’s corner, a tear or crease in the margin, or slight gradation in background. Instantly, we’ve created a visual terminology that organically replaces the need for favorites, while at the same time, creating a mechanism that can be easily understood by anyone using the application, regardless of language. What this approach offers the user is an intuitive manner of passively customizing their context of use.

The same model can be applied to a reading application such as iBooks. Borrowing from its physical counterpart, each book icon would start out life as a beautifully designed image, complete with the symmetrical rounded edges and reflective sheens that are all the craze these days. However, as the user taps the icon daily to open the book, the edges can darken, the perfect sheen can smeer, and the text can fade ever so slightly. The effect can also be applied to the pages of the application, as their edges begin to curl in and turn yellow as the user approaches the end of the book. Extending the metaphor further, the effect could modulate in impact between a book that’s finished quickly, versus one that’s read for months.

I loved my first iPhone because every scratch and ding was made by me – whether intentional or not – and every time I felt it in my pocket, those imperfections registered some sort of emotional response. It’s the same thing that makes a 5 year old cry when his mother puts his dirty blanky in the washing machine after having been dragged through every corner of the house. Self imposed imperfections ultimately create a bond that brands objects as “ours,” and often, imposed an air of quality that exists only in our minds.

In the end, the worn interface model obviously requires iterations of testing to achieve a usable application. But what it attempts to accomplish is to create an interface that can be customized organically, based on its amount of use, while exploring a new methodology in visual communication.

– Max Zabramny, Senior User Experience Designer

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Friendsourcing: the act of asking a friend for something – I swear I just coined that.

Old concept, new medium. And lots of folks like Paul Kedrosky and Dan Rose “Facebook exec” are all excited about it.

I see the argument as something like this:

• Search is getting too spammy with algorithm hijackers and sponsored content
• Crowdsourcing is great for huge amounts of data crunching, not so much for personal decisions
• And recommendation engines are interesting but create a feedback loop; after the first few good insights they offer, you start to go around in circles and get that vacant call-center auto-attendant feeling

Enter Friendsourcing – “Hey CK, where did you get those shoes?”

We trust our friends, or at least we know which of our friends we trust. We know where they come from, what they stand for — and what their budget is.  We know what they are good at — really good at — and what they think they are good at (of course we wont tell them, because we are, after all, their friends).  Dan knows cameras inside and out. If I ever need a recommendation on a single-speed bike, I’m going to ask Eric or Nick. And my mom is 100% definitely going to ask me which laptop she should buy.

The trick is exploring our social connections so that we can discover which friends are experts in different domains and then benefit from their expertise and experience.

That’s what fav.co is all about. We give passionate consumers a place to rave and rant about products they love, or maybe ones that have let them down. At the same time it becomes a place for friends and family to find products that have been researched and vetted by their trusted inner circle.

It’s pretty much what humans have done forever, but we’ve made it fun and easy to explore the knowledge of our ever-growing circles of friends and find cool products and maybe even find something out about our friends that we didn’t know before (Lisa is awesome with baking!)

Friendsourcing, amazing stuff. Just don’t ask me to help you move.

-c

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Digital studios and post houses need to incorporate new storage technologies now more than ever. It’s not as simple as storing data anymore — they need a strategy for centralized storage, transcoding, rendering, backup, and archiving, not to mention a workflow that incorporates all these solutions.

One company where we helped incorporate this type of strategy is media arts firm thelab. Our latest case study on this deployment is now live on our website.

In addition to a high-performance media SAN, StorNext and StorageManager, Control Group installed a centralized rendering solution for Maya in the form of a powerful render farm. This helped thelab complete a 30-second spot for the world’s fastest production sedan, the 2010 Cadillac 2010 CTS-V, in just 25 days.

Check out the finished product, and read more about CG’s solution!

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Autodesk has announced that AutoCAD will be released for OS X coming this fall. While it’s true that this is a return of sorts for Autodesk’s flagship product (AutoCAD was available for Mac OS in the ‘90s), the release represents a fresh start for Autodesk on the platform. Showing that Autodesk is treating this as a first class Mac application, AutoCAD will support core OS X technology such as the always-useful Quicklook and multi-touch gestures with an Apple laptop trackpad or Magic Trackpad for desktop computers. AutoCAD for OS X will also play nice in mixed environments with the ability to read and write the same drawing files that its Windows brethren can.

The excitement surrounding this news is understandable for architects. Familiar with OS X from home use, I’ve heard many of our clients lament not being able to run their preferred platform in the office as well. The benefits of doing so are certainly undeniable.

First and foremost, OS X enjoys a relatively malware-free existence. It’s no secret that cleaning viral infections from Windows machines constitutes a large portion of workstation downtime. Apple computers also tend to enjoy a longer lifecycle than their Windows counterparts. Complementary software suites and products for OS X, such as Adobe’s Creative Suite and Autodesk’s Maya, take the architecture workflow from design to pre-visualization. With the announcement of Outlook for Mac (Also a returning Mac product!), the technological reasons for avoiding OS X have all but evaporated.

As if the promised release of AutoCAD for OS X weren’t enough, Autodesk has also announced an upcoming application for Apple’s iOS devices. Not just a viewer, the new application will reportedly allow architects to annotate drawings, making site visits that much more productive. If it’s anything like Autodesk’s excellent iPad app SketchBook Pro, it’s sure to be a winner.

Being equal parts designer and engineer, architects are sure to love AutoCAD on OS X. I look forward to our first Mac-based rollout.

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Image via STYLEMOM/Flickr

The official site of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week is live!

The site enables members of the media to register for the event as well as to download press releases and images — and features new technology from Control Group.

Once an accredited press person has created an account, s/he can receive and manage show invitations as well as pick up seating assignments at self-serve kiosks on the day of each show. We’ve been working for months to develop the technology, so we’re excited to see it live and can’t wait for Fashion Week to get started!

The site itself also provides detailed information on schedules, as well as photo galleries of shows in previous seasons and the ability to browse designers for additional information — including each individual designer’s website, Facebook page and the date and time of his or her show. You can even find a map of where you can purchase clothing from your favorite designers and sign up for email and mobile updates.

See the official press release here.

This project was highlighted in the Wall Street Journal last week in a story about how technology is transforming Fashion Week this year. Read the story here.

You may also want to check out Fashion Week’s YouTube channel for videos, photos and other behind-the-scenes content. And you can follow @MBFashionWeek for updates on the show’s progress!

And, while you’re at it, follow @controlgroup, too!

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