Facebook Home isn’t a mobile operating system. But normal users who buy or download the Home experience won’t know or care. They’ll suddenly have Facebook phones that look, feel, and behave totally different from Android phones.

And the answer to the question “What kind of phone do you have?” will be “Facebook.”

“In a lot of ways, this is a totally new type of phone,” said Facebook product designer Justin Stahl via email.

“Traditionally, phones and operating systems were designed with apps and tasks in mind. With this, we wanted to recreate the most social device you have around people.”

In a roundabout way, Facebook has gotten into the mobile OS game without actually building a mobile OS.

It’s kind of like what Google did with Chrome OS. They took a browser — a downloadable piece of software — and stuck it on top of an open-source operating system (Linux). They then distributed it on hardware, making it difficult for normal folks to see or use the core OS underneath their own software.

Now, Home doesn’t block a user from getting to the parts of Android they’re expecting to use. It just makes it a little bit more difficult. But the extra layer of software between the user and Android is significant enough to make it, in the eyes of the non-technical beholder, an entirely different animal.

In a recent interview with VentureBeat, Facebook product director Adam Mosseri said most users will think of Home as an OS, but this doesn’t matter too much (as it shouldn’t).

“It’s important that people understand it’s software, and they’ll understand because they can download it,” he said.

Here’s what Facebook home will look like on tablets.

“We didn’t think of it as being in the mobile OS game. People and content should be first, and we thought that needed to happen at a really deep level. Apps get in the way.”

So rather than a UI/UX paradigm that’s all about opening and closing apps, Facebook is serving something totally different. “If we can be a homescreen, we can get all that content and bubble up what’s most important to you,” said Mosseri. “It’s a new way to organize the information on your phone.”

And from the user side, all that new, beautiful organization, while it’s not technologically divorced from its less-organized roots, counts as a new operating system, if only from a look-and-feel perspective.

“Phones and computers have been designed for tasks and apps for decades, so we were thrilled to have the rare opportunity to shake things up, to build something personal and fun,” Stahl said.

Notifications appear in the center of the home screen on Facebook Home.

An OS for normalcy

When designing Home, Facebook’s designers, developers, and product team took the product into the real world for massive amounts of testing, making sure the interfaces and navigation controls would hold up under pressure.

“We looked at a million different use cases and tried to figure out the best way to solve each,” said Stahl. “What if you had only a few minutes while standing in line somewhere? What if you needed to quickly launch an app?”

While Stahl said that a lot of Home will be familiar enough, close enough to traditional mobile design, other elements will require users to abandon their comfort zones — row of tiny app icons, complicated widgets.

To compensate for Home’s departures from typical Android UIs, Stahl said, “We’ve tried to fill Home with moments of delight. The navigation is streamlined and intuitive, people get it right away. Immersive photos of you and your friends fill the screen. Objects move naturally and organically.”

And Stahl and Mosseri both pointed out how intentionally playful the interface and all its little details can be.

“We wanted to add an element of whimsy in there,” said Stahl. “Take Chat Heads, for instance. It allows you to keep conversations with your friends close at hand, but it’s also kind of delightful to move them around or fling them across the screen. We want this product to be as fun as it is useful.”

And for those moments when you encounter something too new, there’s Blues Clues, an internal name for coaching prompts that help new users find their way around the UI.

“They’re little tips to show you what you want to do,” said Mosseri. “This is something that grows on you, the more you use it the more you like it. We call it contextual help.” And, he said, the more features Home gets, the more clues you’ll see to guide you along.

Getting out of the way

The most interesting thing about Home is that it’s not, as others have called it, a lock screen. The phone it unlocked the minute you tap its button, and you’re immediately swimming around in your Facebook News Feed — but it’s bigger, brighter, prettier, and better than ever before.

There is no OS, there is no menu, no navigation. Just you and your friends and family, sharing jokes, pictures from the day, funny links, important moments.

“I love the moment you turn on your phone because it lights up with something amazing,” said Mosseri. “Having something meaningful show up the second I turn on my phone is by far my favorite part of the experience.”

Mosseri continued that since he started working at Facebook six years ago, minimalism has always been a guiding design philosophy: to get out of the way and let users find and enjoy their stuff.

“Now, back then, that meant small type, small icons, thin blue bars, and the content was a larger percentage of the page, but it wasn’t big,” he said. “Then our interfaces got more and more complicated. Now, we want to go back to those roots, to make content big and beautiful.

“And we want to take care of content better, to respect that content. Poeple care about people, not about Facebook. It’s an aesthetic but it’s also a design value.”

As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said over and over through the past few years, Facebook’s core goal is to connect the world, to make it more open to connections.

“That means pushing ourselves to design the best mobile experience across all platforms, to everyone on every phone,” said Stahl. “We’ll continue to innovate and create immersive products that speak to our core value of putting people first.”

Home isn’t just for phones

For our interview with Mosseri, we were sitting in a small room at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters. The announcement of Home had been made some seven hours before. He was slated to do mini-chats with press and bloggers all day in a junket format and had been talking and talking, answering the same slew of questions over and over for hours on end.

But even that natural fatigue didn’t dim his obvious enthusiasm for the product he’d put so much time and effort into. In fact, he said, he is looking forward to seeing elements of Home popping up on non-mobile screens soon, as well.

“It’s a new step, a step forward, and you’ll see us move our other products forward as well.” He thinks of Facebook’s mobile side, which updates its apps every month or so, kind of like Facebook’s iTunes. “Every time Apple releases a new version of iTunes, that will influence the design of their other desktop apps,” said Mosseri. “There’s a lot of value there.”

So, what Homey touches can we expect to see in other Facebook experiences?

“Chat heads would be awesome in the Facebook app,” Mosseri said. “A lot of the design values — less chrome, better physics, bigger images, the way everything moves and feels natural — everything should feel this fast and fluid and simple, really. And so we’ll do it more and more.”

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

 Charles Huang is the chief executive of Green Throttle Games. He also co-founded Red Octane, creator of Guitar Hero.

Smart phones, tablets, and smart TVs will soon be powered by the same technology stack — ARM processors running iOS or Android along with their respective app stores. That means the key differentiating feature between these devices will be staring you right in the face — screen size.

Screen size matters more than content creators think. For starters, look at this research from Google that shows engagement increases with screen size.

This makes sense, as people consume content differently on different screen sizes. 4-5” phones are great for checking emails, tweets, social networks (especially uploading photos you took on your phone), listening to music, and playing casual games like Angry Birds. Consumers surveys show that email is the #1 activity on smart phones.

7-10” tablets are great for reading books and magazines, surfing the web, watching videos, and playing casual to mid-core game, like Plants vs Zombies or Infinity Blade. Consumer surveys show that gaming is the #1 activity on tablets.

30-50” TVs are great for long session movies, TV shows, and video games. Big screen TVs are usually hooked up to the best speakers in the house, so it’s great for rich audio and video experiences. Perhaps most important, the 30-50” screen is for content you want to share with family and friends. Increasingly, the user experience in front of the TV now includes a 2nd screen in the form of a tablet/phone. This dual screen experience is common enough that the Wii U built an entire controller to facilitate this.

App Annie recently started to track Kindle app performance and their data backs up my thesis on screen size. According to App Annie’s data, all of the current top 10 paid apps on the Kindle store are games.

Meanwhile, on Google Play, seven out of the top 10 paid apps are utility apps. This makes sense as Play enabled devices are predominantly phones, while Kindle is a tablet. This juxtaposition shows that screen size matters for apps when it comes to phones vs tablets.

So what does this mean for developers? Sophisticated iOS and Android game devs need to build games with target screen sizes in mind to deliver an optimal user experience. Better UX is needed to improve monetization. In my field of video games, I’ve always believed that World of Warcraft doesn’t work on mobile and Angry Birds doesn’t work on TVs. It’s also worth pointing out that Guitar Hero (my game) never sold well on PC.

So why did we at Green Throttle Games target Android-based TV games? Because data shows that bigger screen sizes lead to longer engagement sessions. Our thesis is that longer engagement sessions will lead to higher monetization. This is true for video (think YouTube snippets vs. TV shows vs. movies). And of course, this is true for games (think phone vs. tablet vs. PC vs. console).

Galaxy S IV photo by Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Mark Curtis starts by telling a story. The Egyptian king Thamus is visited by the God Theuth, who offers a gift to the people of Egypt, the gift of writing. To the God’s surprise, the king refuses the gift, saying that his people would lose the ability to remember if everything were written down. “For every step forward in technology,“ says Curtis, “you lose something and you gain something.”

Curtis is the co-founder of service design agency Fjord, which works with large companies like banks and mobile operators — the kind of companies we all love to hate but whose services we rely on every day.

Driven to distraction 

Curtis is also the author of “Distraction: Being human in the Digital age.” Distraction was published in 2005, but its concerns — how technology is changing our notion of space and time and making us prefer the distant to the close at hand — are even more relevant in the age of the smartphone.

“Technology distracts us from the here and now by opening up avenues of possibility to the rest of the world all the time. Those avenues are deeply distracting because what could be over there appears to be more exciting than what is in front of us right now,” explains Curtis. In the same way that it was 80 years after the invention of the automobile before countries started to make seatbelts compulsory, Curtis contends that we haven’t yet defined ways of counteracting the negative effects of technology.

“Technology has created a permanent fifth dimension in our lives – virtual space. Every time human beings have perceived a new dimension, it’s led to seismic changes in society. We moved from thinking in two dimensions in Medieval art to three dimensions in the Renaissance. In Dante, Heaven and Hell were in a direct line up and down. At the same time Copernicus and Galileo started to realize there was something called space, which completely undermined the whole notion of Heaven, because if space is infinite then where is Heaven? That fundamentally changed the way we see everything.”

Keep it simple, stupid 

That fifth dimension also creates a challenging design problem that Fjord is tackling by reducing the amount of cognitive effort required to absorb information. “One of my colleagues calls it ‘design for the glance’,” says Curtis. The device best designed for the glance is the wristwatch, and Curtis expects to see plenty of products for the wrist following the flawed but groundbreaking Nike+ Fuelband.

Curtis points to David Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow, in which he explains that the brain works in two ways. “System 1 is where I say to you ‘What’s 2+ 2?’ You know the answer immediately without having to think about it. System 2 is where I say ‘What’s 24 x 17?’ Your brain then goes into lockdown because of the cognitive effort.” Fjord is trying to design nudge services into the realm of system 1 rather than system 2.

Last year Fjord created a new mobile app for the Swedish mobile phone operator 3, which displays all the information about a customer’s bill and usage using simple data visualizations. “If I want to know my own data usage, my carrier says ‘You have used 320 MB out of 1,024 MB and it’s now Feb 25′. What do I do with that information? I immediately have to go into system 2 to figure it out.” 3 itself offered over 200 different subscription models. My3 displays a visual snapshot of usage and trends over the past six months as well as showing how the bill compares to that of a typical customer. Hundreds of thousands of customers now rely on the service.

Banks and payment companies are also starting to think simple. “Paypal and Square have been brilliant at simplifying, although largely for merchants rather than customers.” Fjord itself produced a new set of mobile applications for the Spanish bank BBVA that now have 1.2 million users. Recent usage statistics show that customers log in 21 times a month on the mobile apps versus three times a month on the web site.

Experience design is dead

The next frontier in service design is what Fjord calls living services, where the same service is delivered via a whole plethora of interfaces and becomes ever more atomized. “We are already seeing financial services clients saying how can we break up what they do into little chunks which other people can use in discrete ways. Spotify, for example, will deliver the service in my car, through my phone, through my PC, through my Sonos system at home mediated by Ford or Apple or Android or Sonos.”

This complexity means that designers can no longer entirely control the  user experience. “What designers can do is set the stage and assemble the props, and the customer will design the experience.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

This is a guest post by mobile design consultant Mariya Yao

People downloaded over 30 billion apps in 2012, yet the average smartphone owner only uses about 15 of them every week. Even worse, a study by Localytics estimated that 22 percent of apps are only opened once.

With all the money and effort being poured into mobile right now, why is engagement so low?

While the answer to that question is certainly complicated, a number of common mistakes companies are repeatedly made in the app on-boarding process. We’ll be discussing user experience and more at VentureBeat’s upcoming Mobile Summit.

Can you guess what any of these apps actually do?

Mistake 1: Forcing registration before demonstrating value

When you demand that users go through a sign-up process or hand over their social credentials before you’ve offered them any clear benefit, you risk losing them right off the bat.

Pheed (left) and Tumblr. Both apps require you to register before you use them.

Consider two apps: Pheed and Tumblr. Both are popular social media platforms that allow users to broadcast photos, videos, and other content to their friends and followers.

While Pheed forces you to signup before you can see anything, Tumblr immediately displays new trending content you can interact with as an unregistered user.

Mistake 2: Overly detailed tutorials

Tutorials are quite common in mobile apps. Sometimes you do need to guide a person along with a timely explanation, but unfortunately, most mobile tutorials inundate them with too much early information.

If you require a ton of labels to clarify your app’s functionality, you are basically admitting that your U.I. is a failure.

The new Flickr app gets it right

Your aim should be to design user interfaces that are clear and intuitive for your intended audience and require minimal coaching to navigate.

Another error I commonly see in tutorials is a focus on explaining U.I. details rather than communicating the app’s overall value. In studies that I’ve done, potential customers typically miss those details because they blast through the tutorial, preferring to play with the app directly.

Mistake 3: Unusual interface elements or gesture controls

A key part of designing an intuitive mobile U.I. is knowing when to apply standard design patterns to make it easier for users to get to know your app. For example, swiping between pages and pinching to zoom on photos is ingrained in the habits of smartphone users. Additionally, Android and iOS both offer detailed human-interface guidelines that are adopted in most of their apps.

Often, my clients “overdesign” their apps by ignoring standards and choosing to apply unfamiliar gesture controls, vanishing or hidden menus, and flashy visual elements without context and purpose. In testing, most people typically find these unexpected elements confusing and frustrating.

Even apps that are beautifully crafted and win design awards are not necessarily usable for mass-market consumers. Take Clear, a to-do list app that garnered acclaim for replacing standard visual controls with just physical gestures.

The Clear app: Six walkthrough screens for a to-do list. Is that good mobile design?

The Clear app has to use six walkthrough screens and interactive coaching to teach users how to use the app.

In studies I conducted, smartphone users couldn’t remember more than 10 percent of the tutorial content, even if they were smartphone savvy. They frequently got lost and couldn’t remember how to perform basic functions like create a new list or delete a task.

If you want to maximize usability and reduce friction, stick to designs that users already know how to use. Don’t deviate from familiar patterns unless you have compelling reasons to do so, and be sure to test unconventional designs thoroughly.

Mistake 4: Make customers fill out lengthy mobile forms

Your new customer has downloaded your app, made it through your tutorial, maybe even played around with some basic functionality. It’s time to register.

You want to learn the most you can about each user, so you ask for a few more pieces of information in the signup form than you really need. No biggie, right?

Wrong. While you may think that a few extra little questions are harmless, major companies like Expedia and Best Buy have lost millions in sales from drop-offs due to unnecessary form fields.

Uber breaks up its registration form into manageable chunks.

In general, for every additional field you add to a form, your completion rate will take a hit. This dropoff rate is exacerbated on small mobile touch screens where typing is frustrating and error-prone. Additionally, users are far more time-pressed and distracted on mobile than they are on desktops at home and the office.

What’s the takeaway?

Keep in mind that no design works 100 percent of the time for 100 percent of products. For instance, you may find that your brand is so well known that you can get away with a mysterious start screen, or that your customers are a particularly patient bunch who relish reading through complicated tutorials (good luck finding them).

The important takeaways are to be mindful of best practices and to test, test, test your mobile designs with the people who use them in order to catch possible mistakes early.

Mariya Yao is a mobile product designer and the founder of Xanadu, a mobile strategy consultancy. She partners with companies to ideate, prototype, launch, and iterate on their mobile experiences.

Follow her on twitter @thinkmariya. 

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Carin van Vuuren is chief marketing officer at Usablenet.

It’s no secret that smartphones are overwhelmingly the most popular and fastest growing mobile access point to the Internet today. Just recently we learned that by the end of this year, mobile devices will outnumber the amount of people on earth, and by 2017, there will be over 10 billion mobile-connected devices. So how does this influence the future of mobile development?

As consumer behavior continues to trend towards mobile as the primary channel for customer engagement, the stakes have clearly been raised for brands. Increasingly, brands need to offer tailored mobile experiences that are relevant, add tangible value, and meet users goals in the journey.

The early evolution of mobile was centered around optimizing a desktop site for mobile, but with rising consumer expectations, a fresh approach is needed.  Here are three ways brands can ensure a compelling mobile experience.

We’ll be diving even deeper into the mobile experience at VentureBeat’s Mobile Summit, an invitation-only conclave of 180 top mobile executives, next month. Request an invitation here!

1. Create a context-rich mobile experience

To drive meaningful engagement, it is essential to create a unique and engaging experience that takes the context of a mobile journey into account. To accomplish this, brands need to incorporate three core elements into the mobile experience: social, local and personalization.

The ability to share content and experiences socially is the bedrock of a thriving mobile experience. To do so effectively, brands must go beyond merely offering access to social networks and instead make social content from platforms like YouTube, Pinterest, and others an integrated part of each mobile experience. Successful mobile experiences must also leverage GPS functionality to deliver location-aware dimensions to mobile. Go beyond the basics of simply finding a nearby store or hotel and instead incorporate deeper location-based features that are triggered when a customer is within the proximity of a specific store, or starts a search on mobile.

A great example is specialty women’s retailer Caché, who is leveraging push notification technology on mobile to offer targeted, personalized promotions to its customers. Upon downloading the Caché app, users can opt-in to receive push notifications that are periodically sent to inform shoppers of sales and discounts in nearby stores. These notifications are also used to promote new products and special events. To ensure shoppers receive relevant information and offers, these sophisticated notifications can be customer-targeted based on recent shopping activity.

2. Define mobile UX to achieve critical customer journeys

In today’s world, where registration, booking, check-out, and payments present some of the most critical aspects of a customer’s mobile journey, it is essential to understand how mobile impacts every stage of the shopping journey. Mobile experience considerations include how to present large amounts of information on a smaller screen size, device interactions (click versus touch), fluctuating network bandwidth, and limited time to complete actions before a user loses interest.

The key to ensuring effective UX is simplifying the process of any action to make sure a user can complete it in two minutes or less. Keeping this “two-minute use case” rule in mind will significantly help reduce the barriers to task completion via mobile. The check-out process, for example, has the highest drop-off incidence on mobile, which underlines the importance of applying mobile UX to all actions surrounding the cart, payment field, and purchase confirmation.

Amazon is a prime example of a brand that has mastered mobile and set a new standard in customer expectations. Beyond simply optimizing its website, Amazon has created a mobile experience for customers that is streamlined, seamless, and facilitates mobile commerce. To start, Amazon offers keyword search functionality, mobile barcode scanning, even allowing customers to take a photo of a product for the site to match. Amazon’s mobile merchandising is also top notch, making it easy for customers to browse a range of products, curated pages, comparison shopping, and more. Further, the company clearly understands the hassle of entering data via mobile, and keeps form-filling to a minimum while storing all purchase and shipping details securely. The site also offers one-click checkout and free shipping to help further drive repeat purchases and stimulate impulse shopping.

3. Effectively integrate mobile promotions

If implemented correctly, mobile can be both an engagement channel and a central hub for a brand’s marketing strategy. Currently, mobile drives less than 10% of all online revenue, but its impact and influence across every aspect of retail is extensive. For example, more than 40% of all email offers are opened on a smartphone – making mobile an integrated part of the marketing mix. We’re seeing more and more loyalty and email campaigns that offer mobile-only redemptions, coupons and discounts. And innovations like Apple’s Passbook makes it even easier for brands to drive sales and increase mobile engagement through real-time, integrated promotions.

Starbucks stands out as a brand that effectively offers mobile-only promotions. The brand is known for its innovative SMS messaging campaigns, QR code scanning and mobile payment offerings that allow users to check their mobile balance, purchase history, and receive mobile-only offers. Their ability to incorporate mobile directly into the in-store purchasing process and promotions offerings sets Starbucks’ mobile presence apart from many other brands.

It’s not mobile first, it’s users first!

We’re clearly living in a mobile world, and it makes sense that the rallying cry of designing for “mobile first” would resonate. However, this idea should be adjusted to reflect a design approach that start with users’ needs first. The winning approach is one where technology does not impose limitations, and experiences can deliver on business, brand and user goals in every channel and device.

Carin van Vuuren is Chief Marketing Officer at Usablenet, the global leader in mobile and multi-channel technology and a pioneer in mobile usability. She is an experienced marketer with a diverse background and over 15 years experience in brand-building and strategic marketing communications.

But let’s face it: That train is in the station. What’s next?

Also see: Forrester’s top 10 mobile trends for 2013

Analyst Bryan Hopkins gave us a peek into what Forrester thinks is next, and much of it builds on those four horseman of disruptive change. “We went a level deeper in our research by examining how today’s hot technolog[ies] create platforms for future disruption,” he wrote this morning in a blog post.

Here they are, in four groups:

End user computing technologies

1. Next-generation devices and UIs
   New sensors and new user interfaces. Think Leap Motion
2. Advanced collaboration and communication
   Think social inside, like Yammer or other social-inside-the-enterprise solutions
3. Systems of engagement
   Real-time data, in everyone’s hands. Think Roambi

Sensors and remote computing technologies

1. Smart products
   Thing that can sense, react, and communicate. Think operating system for places and buildings
2. In-location positioning
   GPS and in-building location sensors
3. Machine-to-machine networks
   Background intelligence on people and things. Think ReelyActive

Process data management technologies

1. Smart process applications and semantics
   Real business processes are a lot messier than your flow charts. Smart process apps know that.
2. Advanced analytics
   Smarter, more predictive data. Think Cloudera’s Impala tool for Hadoop
3. Pervasive BI
   People need business intelligence that comes every hour, not at the end of the month
4. Process and data cloud services
   Scalable, burstable, and cheap computing capability. PaaS, BaaS, etc. 

Infrastructure and application platforms

1. Big data platforms
   Infrastructure to handle big data and high speed … and use all that data you’ve been uselessly storing
2. Breakthrough storage and compute
   Yes, hardware may still be necessary, even if you’re never going to be like Google
3. Software-defined infrastructure
   Software that dynamically routes your networking and data center capabilities
4. Cloud application frameworks
   Technologies for deploying and running distributed apps in the cloud, like, perhaps, a multi-continent-spanning database
5. New identity and trust models
   New federated trust and identity models for a changing world of jobs and careers … and maybe even killing all usernames and passwords

An interesting thought for executives:

If you want a good look at the future of end user computing technologies and sensor and remote computing devices, check winning Kickstarter and IndieGoGo campaigns in the technology and gadget categories. And for a picture of the future for the last two groups above, process data management and infrastructure and application platforms, look at Google and Facebook.

photo credit: ginnerobot via photopin cc

Over the last several weeks, reviewers, analysts and reporters seem to have forgotten the very raison d’être for being in the technology industry in the first place – “to go boldly where no man has gone before.” This is especially true when it comes to Windows 8′s user interface.

Certainly, the Windows 8 UI is a very distinctive departure from the previous versions. However, Microsoft was very clear about why it undertook such an initiative. The company wanted to bring the world of mobile, touch and traditional clients closer together. And this new “modern UI,” as I understand is the proper nomenclature for the new interface, achieves Microsoft’s goal very well.

First of all, Windows 8 finally legitimizes the poor Windows key that has sat mostly in the proverbial wilderness of the 104 keys on a keyboard for over 17 years. It operates much in the same aspect as the Windows key on a Windows 8 Phone, the home key on an Android-based phone or tablet, and the home key on an iPhone or iPad. This is smart!

While I must admit that the left-to-right scrolling of the Start screen takes a little getting used to, it’s not exactly taxing my cerebral capabilities. That said, the outcry from critics over the loss of the Start button is a mere distraction. Essentially, the Start screen is the first true progression in the Windows user interface since 1985, when the original Microsoft Windows was first introduced.

And if the absent Start button is the only thing critics can gripe about, then frankly, Microsoft has done a magnificent job. For those die-hard needy users who won’t use their computers without a Start button, there are solutions. Microsoft has generously promoted a cottage industry and micro economy for Start button replacement applications to be developed.

I encourage everyone to try the new interface for a couple of days, and then go back to Windows 7 or XP (or Vista – ugh!) for a couple of days before writing off Windows 8 — which is what I did. And although I have been accused (and probably rightly so) of being a power user, the way I utilize my computer is not much different than most other people. My primary applications are the Microsoft Office applications (namely Word and Excel), web browsers, email clients, instant messaging clients, and Evernote.

For me, Windows 8 has a very careful balance between those of us who prefer the use of a keyboard rather than a mouse, as well as those who are progressing toward using tablets and touchscreens more often. I found the upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8 completely seamless. Some of the personalization applications that I have installed to make my life easier have no issues running in Windows 8. All my peripherals such as webcams, printers, etc. all work without modification or fuss.

Do I question some of the UI decisions Microsoft made? Yes! However, it is a case of getting used to the new interface. I like the Windows Store concept Windows 8 employs, which aligns very closely to the way I use my tablet and smartphone.

In fact, as a result of Windows 8, I have been able to uninstall several applications because the functions are now native to Windows 8. These included my full disk encryption application as Windows 8 Pro comes with BitLocker — a program that I encourage everyone to use.

I have barely scratched the surface of Windows 8, and there are many more things to get used to. But this is absolutely no different than getting a new laptop and adjusting to the new configuration of the Home/End, PgUp/PgDn, Insert/Delete keys. It is no different to adjusting between a touchpad, a pencil eraser top-style mouse on a laptop, or a new shape of a mouse.

Once more, to all the reviewers, analysts, and reporters out there, this is a call to action for you to help users evolve and progress. I want to understand how to take advantage of Windows 8, not read multiple pages of rhetoric of why Microsoft ruined your life because you can’t find the Windows button on keyboard.

Hulk artwork via el-grimlock/deviantart

Benjamin Woo is the founder and Managing Director of Neuralytix, Inc. He frequently speaks at industry and customer events worldwide and is often quoted by leading business and technology press. Prior to founding Neuralytix, he was the Program Vice President of IDC’s Worldwide Storage Systems Research, where he led a team of analysts responsible for advising clients on the evolution and trends related to data storage system.

Smart TVs have the dumbest input devices, don’t they? From sliding through a carousel of apps to searching letter by painstaking letter for your favorite shows, it sometimes seems like the whole process was designed to induce mass outrage among early adopters.

Face it: TV remotes weren’t made for modern TV usage, and keyboards and mice weren’t made for TVs, either. What’s the alternative?

Check this out:

That up there is called MoveEye. It’s a smart piece of eyewear that works with software to let you control computers with gestures. It’s from Tarsier, a startup presenting today at DEMO, and it’s intended to make pain-in-the-butt interfaces like Smart TV screens a lot easier for us consumers.

“Computers aren’t as easy to communicate with as they should be,” explained Tarsier co-founder Shafa Wala in a recent email exchange with VentureBeat.

“For each person accessing the quality learning and information sources computers provide, six remain in the dark. We think the world is a better place when people are informed and using computers. … MoveEye has the ability to bring computing to the masses in a way no other technology has since the mouse.”

MoveEye is specifically designed to let humans interact with computer screens (including TV screens) from any viewable angle and distance.

The MoveEye product includes the Google Glass-reminiscent glasses seen above, as well as software that maps out the areas of the screen you’re controlling. The software also includes a gesture library. Unlike Kinect, MoveEye devices see what the user sees and are able to operate from the user’s perspective rather than solely from the device’s perspective.

Here’s a pic of the team showing off an early prototype device today onstage:

Microsoft’s Kinect controller is a step in the right direction when it comes to UI and navigation. In fact, the popular gaming device is now being brought into broader use cases such as education and retail thanks to Kinect for Windows. But the Tarsier team thinks Kinect doesn’t go far enough.

MoveEye’s creators also see it as a great tool for experiencing immersive 3D, interacting with the interface using depth cues. Can you imagine how useful that might be for, say, surgeons?

“With new computer designs like the Raspberry Pi, the barrier to entry is no longer the cost of the computer itself; it’s the skills to be able to use it,” Wala continued.

“We think the technology we have created has the foundation to be one of the most intuitive ways to communicate with computers the world has seen.”

Tarsier, founded in St. Paul, Minn., in 2010, has currently taken a small $55,000 round from local investors and is seeking more funding. Next up, the startup team hopes to grow its employee headcount.

“Once we have the right personnel, our engineering team will be working to transition the prototype to a consumer-ready device while our business team seeks out potential licensees and strategic partners,” said Wala.

Tarsier is one of 75 companies and 6 student “alpha” startups chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2012 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After we make our selections, the chosen companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

Photo credit: Stephen Brashear. Top image courtesy of Kiselev Andrey Valerevich, Shutterstock

Streaming video service Netflix has a vast selection of movies and television shows, the majority of which probably aren’t appropriate for younger children or require supervision.

For that reason, the company has created its own “Just For Kids” user interface, which Netflix is making available on its iPad app today.

The Just For Kids UI takes all the child-friendly content (appropriate for ages 12 and under) in Netflix’s library and dumps it into a simplistic interface. Images are brighter and larger, to put stuff like Dora The Explorer and Spectacular Spider-Man front and center. Parents can toggle on the new UI by clicking the button in the upper left hand side of the Netflix app’s screen. This is undoubtedly a win for anyone who’d like to keep their kids occupied by handing them an iPad.

The move is sure to be popular with parents and children. And on the business end, Netflix is undoubtedly looking for another way to add value to its service. The company can only increase the number of titles in its library so much before it stops adding value, so making its streaming service more versatile for the whole family makes sense.

The Netflix Just For Kids UI is already available on iPad 2 and 3. The company said it will come to the original iPad and Android-powered tablets in the near future. Check out a video demo below for a closer look at the UI.

Although the episode was set in the near future, circa 2022, none of these gadgets are too far-fetched; in fact, some have already been seen as prototypes floating around CES for years.

Take Samsung’s clear and flexible concept tablet, which made huge waves last December when a CGI-laden clip hit the web. But the futuristic gadgets were already prototyped and being demonstrated to the public, thanks to Samsung’s strategic acquisition of Liquivista, a company specializing in those clear, über-bendy displays.

The idea of clear screens was also floated as a futuristic iPhone 5 concept, along with projected laser keyboards. But the keyboards are also a reality in the works; check out the Celluon Magic Cube, currently a stand-alone accessory but perhaps someday soon an embedded technology for smartphones and tablets.

Gestural controls like the ones seen in Minority Report were science fiction just a few years ago. Then Microsoft brought the Kinect to the game, and today we’re seeing people waving at computers to interact with them, a paradigm also called perceptual computing that’s only growing.

These kinds of tech snuck their way into the last Weeds episode, showing us a world where tech is even more ubiquitous, even simpler to use, yet still vulnerable to error. With most of these gadgets well underway in R&D facilities around the world, the biggest question finale raised for us was this: Which will come first — a see-through iPhone or legalized marijuana?

And, if I’m not mistaken, Twitter’s guidelines have a lot of do-as-I-say, not as-I-do.

Source: Twitter

The first tweet

On March 21, 2006, Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey posted the first-ever tweet: 24 characters, including spaces. Timestamp, source, and author.

All simple and easy — the marked difference from Facebook or other social networks that offered multiple options, full media, and unlimited status update lengths. And that very difference was a big piece of Twitter’s brand story and attraction to users.

Much of that simplicity has disappeared as Twitter has evolved into a personalized news network — the interest graph rather than the social graph — and incorporated images, video, and short previews of links in expanded tweets for favored partners.

In short, this has happened as Twitter has become more publisher than utility, and as Twitter gets all grown up into a corporation that needs to (shockers) generate revenue.

But with Twitter’s recently announced API changes, developers who integrate with Twitter and incorporate tweets into their apps no longer have display guidelines. They have display rules, and that means that there will soon be at least 32 Laws of the Tweet that developers need to obey … or risk losing their access to the Twitter API and the Twitter ecosystem.

Here they are:

1. Tweeter’s name must be displayed
2. Tweeter’s username must be displayed
3. Tweeter’s avatar must be shown
4. The username must always be displayed with the “@” symbol
5. Tweet text must be shown on a line below the author’s name and username
6. Tweet text must not be altered or modified in any way
7. Any mentions of other Twitter users using “@” must link to those profiles
8. Any hashtags must link to Twitter search for that tag
9. Any links must use the API URL field
10. Any links must use the Twitter shortener t.co
11. Reply …
12. Retweet …
13. and Favorite action icons must be visible for the user …
14. and the relevant actions must be enabled via API or Twitters web intents technology
15. No additional social or third party actions may be attached to a tweet
16. The tweet timestamp must always be visible
17. The tweet timestamp must always be linked to the tweet permalink on Twitter.com
18. The branding must clearly be Twitter’s
19. The Twitter logo or follow button for the tweet author must always be displayed in the top right corner
20. Any pics or images must be displayed as part of the tweet …
21. and link back to the Tweet permalink
22. Images may not be detached from the tweet and displayed separately
23. The user’s name and Twitter username must be displayed on one line
24. The user’s icon must be to the left of the name and tweet text
25. Timestamps should be in the top right corner
26. Use a short-form timestamp in …
27. seconds if the tweet is less than a minute old …
28. minutes if the tweet is less than an hour old …
29. hours if the tweet is less than 24 hours old
30. Use a date and month timestamp if the tweet is more than 24 hours old
31. If the tweet is a retweet, the name of the retweeter and the retweeter icon must be displayed under the tweet
32. No third-party content can be mixed in with Tweet content

This is the example tweet that Twitter included with the list of requirements, which seems to obey them:

Source: Twitter

Twitter example third-party tweet use

Of course, here’s the official Twitter app on iPhone, directly from Twitter. I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine whether or not tweets shown in Twitter’s own app follow the rules:

Source: John Koetsier

Twitter app screenshot

There’s a good reason why they don’t: Tweets that include all the voluminous information that Twitter is requiring developers to display will simply not be as simple, as clean, as readable … in short, as user-friendly as the Tweets shown just above in Twitter’s iPhone app.

Ergo: Third-party developer’s apps will not be as good as Twitter’s.

I should be clear: Twitter is under no obligation to make life easy or lucrative for developers. The company can do as it pleases and when it pleases, and it is only accountable to its investors and the law. Specifically, it can require different things from developers than it offers to users via its own apps.

However, when developers cannot easily and quickly build products of utility, beauty, and simplicity on a software platform, they can and often do choose to abandon that platform. As one developer replied to my initial post about the Twitter development guidelines:

Screw you, Twitter. You just saved me some development time, because I’m not going to suck up to a service that will arbitrarily waste it.

That’s something for Twitter to think hard about as the company continues to monetize. No platform that is not good for developers is likely to succeed in the long term.

photo credit: Stuck in Customs via photo pin cc

Note:
The guidelines (they will be rules when the API reaches version 1.1) are not presented as above but grouped for easier reading. I’ve separated some that seem to be different specific actions required by developers, but kept others together that seemed too trivial to separate.

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The challenge is not small: How to fit displays and controls for music, email, apps, timers, rangefinder, clockfaces, and any other apps developers dream up … all into one tiny 144-x-168 pixel black-and-white display.

Pebble’s user interface engineer, Martijn Thé, had a clear goal:

Source: Pebble

Prototyping designs in real time.

“I figured Pebble should be so easy that our grandmothers should be able to pick it up and use it right away.”

The difficult part, however, was how to make it simple enough for granny and also support the needs and desires of power users.

To design the Pebble’s interface efficiently, the team created a tool that allows them to prototype designs while viewing them in real time on a mock up (see image). Pebble will be making the software available for developers to use as they create third-party apps for the device.

In addition, the company created an iPhone app that acts as a Pebble, so that designers can interact with it on their wrists and ensure that the feel of the interface is natural and simple.

See it in action in the video below:

Image credit: Pebble

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Microsoft has officially unveiled its Windows Phone 8 operating system and, with it, a mighty change to the user interface.

The new OS features an all new start screen that features the familiar “smart tiles” design we’ve previously seen on Windows Phone 7 and, to a lesser extent, on the Xbox.

The new screen will allow users to add tiles from various applications that can be re-sized and rearranged to fit your specific needs. The tiles also feature a fair amount of functionality, offering real-time updates for calendars, email messages, social networks, gaming profiles, images, and even updates for a particular person in your contacts (like your girl/boyfriend, mom, or best friend).

While the smart tiles themselves are very colorful, Microsoft is promising to add even more color options in the future.

Check out a gallery of images below from the Windows 8 demo that shows off a few of the stereotypical personality customizations (Gamer, news junkie, etc.)

Design is determining the winners in everything mobile. The most successful players are focusing on one thing: How to make products, services, and devices as compelling and delightful as possible – visually, and experientially. MobileBeat 2012, July 10-11 in San Francisco , is assembling the most elite minds to debate how UI/UX is transforming every aspect of the mobile economy, and where the opportunities lie. Register here.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Love it or hate it, Apple is about design.

The company’s annual design awards were announced this week at the World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Calif., showcasing the best the iOS and Mac development communities have produced.

Since it’s better to gaze upon amazing design than to read words about it, here’s a visual treat: a tour through the best design on iPhone, iPad, and Mac for the past year. Scan through and pick up some inspiration!

Here are the winners in each section. Skip down for slideshows and links for each:

• iPhone
  • JetPack Joyride
  • National Parks
  • Where’s My Water?
• iPad
  • Bobo Explores Light
  • DM1 the Drum Machine
  • Paper FiftyThree
• Mac
  • Deus Ex
  • Limbo
  • Sketch
• Student
  • DaWindci
  • Little Star

iPhone

The best iPhone apps are sleek, sexy, and perfect for the task at hand, whether it’s gaming, organization, or education.

Here’s are winners as selected by Apple:

JetPack Joyride by Halfbrick Studios
A video game this successful with only one control? Wow.

Where’s My Water? by Disney
You know you gotta help Swampy find his water!

National Parks by National Geographic
Explore 20 of the United States’ most beautiful national parks on your Phone.

iPad

iPad gives designers a little more room, but the best user interface engineers know to not take that space for granted. Instead, they create user experiences that feel roomy and spacious, with everything just in the right spot, and nothing too closely crowded.

Here are some of the best of 2012 on iPad.

Bobo Explores Light by Game Collage, LLC
Who wouldn’t want a science museum focused on light for kids age 4-12, even if you’re an adult?

DM1 The Drum Machine by Fingerlab
You know it has to be well-designed to beat out Apple’s own GarageBand in this category.

Paper by FiftyThree by FiftyThree, Inc.
Capture all your ideas on paper the old-school way, except a little updated for iPad.

Mac

iPhone and iPad are getting all the glory, but the Mac is still chugging along with new Retina displays, faster processors, and new solid-state drives in Macbook Pros. The group is still growing faster than Windows-based PCs.

Here’s some of the best design on the Mac, where it all started.

Deus Ex Human Revolution Ultimate Edition by Feral Interactive, Inc.
Get augmented in a dystopic, futuristic cyberpunk computer game.

Limbo by Playdead
Dark and atmospheric, this is a creepy but beautiful universe to enter.

Sketch by Bohemian Coding
A professional drawing app, on your Mac, for user interface, icon, and web design.

Student

The best apps that the student community has created.

DaWindci by Reality Twist GmbH
Pilot your hot air balloon on the shifting winds of 45 different expeditions.

Little Star by BiBoBox Studio
A fully interactive book with bonus games

Design is determining the winners in everything mobile. The most successful players are focusing on one thing: How to make products, services, and devices as compelling and delightful as possible – visually, and experientially. MobileBeat 2012, July 10-11 in San Francisco , is assembling the most elite minds to debate how UI/UX is transforming every aspect of the mobile economy, and where the opportunities lie. Register here.

Image credit: ShutterStock

Microsoft is apparently going to great lengths to prevent people from using the familiar Start button and Start menu in the company’s forthcoming Windows 8 operating system.

The company is removing all code from Windows 8 referencing the Start button/menu to prevent third-party developers from creating a workaround allowing people to continue using it, according to Winsupersite’s Paul Thurrott. He also points out that several of the user interface hacks implemented to bring back the Start button functionality on the Windows 8 Consumer Preview will no longer work on the Windows 8 Release Preview (Note: Consumer Preview and Release Preview are different). We’re still waiting for Microsoft to launch the Release Preview, which is expected to roll out sometime this week.

We first learned that Microsoft was removing the Start button functionality back in February. The Start button, which made its debut in the Windows 95 version of the OS, usually sits on the lower left corner of the screen within the “Live Bar” (the bar that contains minimized windows and quick button shortcuts to apps). The Start button was also one of the primary methods used for people to navigate to computer settings, applications, stored files, and more. By contrast, Windows 8 is supposed to break with this tradition.

The latest version of the OS is part of Microsoft’s strategy to integrate personal computers with tablets and other mobile devices, much in the same way Apple has done with its OS X operating system and its iOS mobile OS. Windows 8 plans to do this with a brand new Metro-style UI that will easily transition between devices. And a start button/menu does not translate very well to tablets and smartphones, so it has to go.

Essentially, getting rid of the start button could be either a genius (and uncharacteristic) move by Microsoft or something that endlessly annoys long-time Windows users into sticking with Windows 7. Worse, it could even push those people into a situation where they’d like to try Apple’s OS X or the new Google Chrome OS.

There’s also the matter of Windows 8 business and enterprise customers. As many people will attest, the business world is usually the most resistant toward big changes for a number of reasons that I could spend several paragraphs discussing. Probably the most practical reason most large companies will resist switching over will come down to IT departments not wanting to deal with the backlash from less technologically savvy employees — all of whom they’ll have to train and retrain several times for the next five years or so.

Via The Verge; Photo via Dylan Tweney

Sadly, a great number of television sets are currently suffering from bad user interfaces, which is something Motorola plans to change.

At The Cable Show industry event in Boston today, the company showed off its DreamGallery media concept that’s powered by Motorola’s Medios cloud service. Essentially, it’s a pretty way to navigate and share stuff on your television set in a way that currently isn’t possible — assuming that all future televisions will have internet connectivity.

DreamGallery focuses on making the television a cross-platform media center that works between computers/web browser, tablets, and smartphones. It will also serve to aggregate all the content from cable TV services, the internet, and Video-on-demand services (like Neflix), into a single location.

Motorola describes the DreamGallery with edgy catch phrases like “Your media your way” in its demo video, which we’ve embedded below.

The only thing that Motorola didn’t mention? What will end up happening to DreamGallery when Google swallows the company? I say this because Google kind of already has a division in place working on the future of television with its Android-based GoogleTV platform. (Maybe you’ve heard of it?)

Let us know what you think of the video in the comments section.

Comcast is finally rolling its new X1 cable/DVR set-top box for the Boston, Mass. market, with a handful of other major markets following soon after, the company announced today.

We first heard about Comcast’s enhanced TV service nearly a year ago, with the cable giant touting a new line of cable boxes featuring a brand new channel guide user interface, integration with social services (Skype, Facebook, Pandora, etc.), and the ability to update software without returning to the physical service center. Well, the X1 is that cable box, which promises an eventual end to the crappy UI and Playskool toy-like remote that’s currently being used the majority of subscribers.

The X1′s UI is very similar to the look and feel of Comcast’s Xfinity TV web services, which is good because there was quite a huge gap in presentation quality.

The X1 box will also interact with mobile phone apps that act as remote controls, which is similar to what Roku, Apple TV, and Boxee already offer to their customers. It’s nice to see Comcast finally taking notice. You’ll also be able to navigate what’s on the screen using the app’s gesture controls. Right now Comcast is only making an iOS app available, but I’m sure Android and others will follow as the X1 launches in additional markets.

Check out a gallery of screenshots showing off the X1′s slick new interface, as well as the new iOS remote control app.

Via Engadget

Streaming video service Netflix is rolling out a spanking-new design for its website’s video player today, which may make people think twice about favoring their set-top box over the web browser.

As you can see in the screenshots below, the new player is gorgeous. The design better matches the user interface on Netflix’s main navigation pages. Player buttons are larger, as is the text displayed, both of which will be helpful for people who have a big enough screen to sit a few feet back when watching videos.

Another huge improvement is the navigation between episodes of a TV series. Previously, the Netflix web video player was pretty bland, and didn’t provide you with much more than the title and episode number of a show. I suspect this is because more people are primarily using Netflix to watch TV content instead of movies (which don’t really require navigation). Now, when a video is paused you can hover over the “forward” button to bring up a thumbnail of the next episode and a short description. Clicking the button next to it will bring up a full list of episodes within the current season of a particular TV series. There’s even a progress bar for each episode to show you how far along you’ve watched.

I’ll admit, I rarely use the website when it comes to Netflix because it lacks these basic pieces of functionality. But that could change now that the company has wised up.

The new video player design should work fine in most browsers, provided you have the most current version of Microsoft’s Silverlight plugin downloaded. Let us know what you think of the design changes in the comment section below.

Filed under: Business, Media ]]> http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/16/netflix-video-player-update/feed/ 0 Netflix web video player gets a gorgeous new design vbtomcheredar Netflix's new web video player Netflix-webplayer-1 Netflix-webplayer-3 Netflix's new web video player http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/02/bing-fights-google-with-simplicity-cleans-up-search-results-page/ http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/02/bing-fights-google-with-simplicity-cleans-up-search-results-page/#comments Wed, 02 May 2012 15:27:18 +0000 Ricardo Bilton http://venturebeat.com/?p=425213

Bing has had an epiphany.

Rather than compete with Google in the sheer number of features it can cram onto its results page, Microsoft’s search engine is going the opposite direction towards simplification by releasing a clean, more streamlined results …

Bing has had an epiphany.

Rather than compete with Google in the sheer number of features it can cram onto its results page, Microsoft’s search engine is going the opposite direction towards simplification by releasing a clean, more streamlined results page.

The result is pretty nice: Microsoft has stripped the Bing results page down to its very skivvies, tightening up the header area and moving the Related Searches from the left side to the lower right. The result is a clean, simple page that’s far less cluttered and far more attractive than the overwhelming mass of information that the Google results page has become.

Simplicity, it seems, is now a point of differentiation for Bing, and one that Microsoft hopes information-inundated web users will notice. It’s a somewhat perverse notion that simplicity has become a feature in the technology world – but its also very telling. As the success of simple interfaces like iOS has shown, less has now become more. And as you can see from the Metro interface on Windows Phone and Windows 8, simplicity is a concept that Microsoft finally seems to understand.

The Bing design shift is important for another reason. In the wake of the controversy surrounding Google’s Search Plus Your World results, users have been fleeing the search engine towards the welcoming arms of competing services like Bing and DuckDuckGo.

That’s evidence that Google, for all of its market dominance, is more than a bit vulnerable. And Bing may just capitalize on that.

Via TechCrunch

Filed under: Business ]]>

A former Apple TV engineer has revealed that the user interface implemented in the device’s latest update was actually rejected by Steve Jobs five years ago — a potential sign that cracks are beginning to appear in Apple’s design dominance.

Former Apple TV engineer Michael Margolis mentioned yesterday on his Twitter account that “the new [Apple TV] homepage UI makes me cry.” He then went on to reveal the following: “Fun fact — those new designs were tossed out 5 years ago because SJ didn’t like them. Now there is nobody to say “no” to bad design.”

Apple released a software update for its second-generation Apple TV in early March to coincide with the release of a newer and more powerful model that can play 1080p HD video. The new user interface is heavy on glossy icons and has been criticized by Apple TV fanatics  since its release.

Update: Margolis later made it clear that it was the grid design Jobs was specifically referring to — not the glossy icon design.

Since Jobs’ passing, everyone has been looking for signs of missteps. (Our own Jolie O’Dell wrote an impassioned post about the new iPad launch event.) The Apple TV redesign seemed like yet another example of bad design making its way into a normally flawless company. Ultimately though, the design is less of a problem than Apple’s abysmal support of the Apple TV platform (Where are the third-party apps? Why did this upgrade take so long?!).

On Twitter, Margolis made it clear he didn’t think this was a dramatic failure for Apple: “The new Apple TV UI isn’t a sign of a doomed “post-SJ” Apple, it’s a logical next step given their desire to match the iOS home page.” He added that the new interface is particularly exciting since it’s “just begging for apps,” something the original design didn’t support. Margolis also noted that much of the Apple TV design outside of the homepage remains the same, “I think that’s a testament to how good it was,” he said.

Via Macgasm

Earlier today Apple debuted the third version of its Apple TV set-top box, which enables higher-definition video playback, a new user interface, and some additional integration with the company’s iCloud service.

Overall these are nice changes, and they show the device is coming into its own. But most of what’s new about this Apple TV version is purely cosmetic and shouldn’t have taken over a year to see the light of day.

For instance, the ability to watch videos in 1080p is hardly a new concept for set-top boxes. Many competitors — such as the Boxee Box, Roku, Playstation 3, Western Digital WD Live, and Logitech’s Google TV Revue — already offer the high quality video. And since you can purchase 1080p HD movies and TV shows from the iTunes store, Apple fans have been increasingly annoyed that those purchases weren’t available (in 1080p) on the Apple TV. It’s also worth noting that, as was discovered in September 2010, you can play 1080p quality videos on Apple TV, but the output resolution remains 720. That said, this seems like a minor upgrade.

The reason Apple held off so long on enabling the 1080p playback probably had something to do with the notion that the old Apple TV’s hardware wasn’t good enough to support the high quality video without affecting the user experience. With the new version of the device, Apple has replaced the A4 chip with the faster single-core A5 chip. And while Apple hasn’t indicated that it’s upgraded the device’s RAM, I’d expect some kind of improvement over the 256MB offered in the old model.

When it comes to the updated user interface, there’s really no reason Apple couldn’t have pushed it out sooner. The old UI was mostly columns of text-based options you could scroll through that sat underneath pretty cover-style artwork along the top of the screen. At best I would describe this as acceptable for 2010, but not at all for any stretch of time in 2012. By comparison, the new interface is much more focused on images that I can easily identify from across the room. It’s similar to what I’ve come to love when using my Roku box. This doesn’t change the fact that Apple could have offered a sleeker, more TV-friendly UI at least six months ago.

The new UI also helps Apple further its goal of having the combination of iTunes and iCloud serve all of your digital media needs. The only problem with this is that Apple TV owners were not able to experience it sooner — like when Apple launched the iCloud service in October 2011.

Judging from the comments on VentureBeat’s Facebook Page, most people are still angry that Apple has yet to add access to a full App Store to the Apple TV. Earlier this year, Google rolled out its Android App Store (now called the Google Play Store), which allowed third-party developers to create “app channels” made specifically for a TV watching experience. Right now, the only way to get a third-party channel on the Apple TV is to work with Apple directly and then have them approve it. Apple is pretty particular about who it lets in. Only eight different third-party app channels are available on the Apple TV, and I doubt more will be added prior to the new Apple TV model hitting shelves next week.

Check out the demo video embedded below that VentureBeat’s Heather Kelly shot during the Apple event earlier today.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Mobile photo-sharing service Instagram updated its application today with a new filter, enhancement feature, and a makeover to its user interface.

Instagram lets you take a photo with your iPhone and layer it with different filters for that extra hip look. You can then connect it to your social networks and share it with the Instagram community. Now, the company is introducing a new, sleeker interface that’s easier to navigate. The updates include a new header, as well as different menu buttons on the bottom of the screen. The company explained in a blog post that these were the “first steps towards making it easier to understand and interact with our app.”

Notifications have also gotten easier to use by taking you directly to the referenced comment, photo, or profile when clicked.

The company has also added a new filter called Sierra. Filters are really what give Instagram its charm. They allow anyone to be a photographer with their phones. Sierra makes the yellows pop on your photos. If your photos don’t have exactly the look you want, or if they’re too dark, you can use Instagram’s new Lux feature, which automatically brightens dark photos and brings out more details, again catering to the amateur who loves beautiful photos, but may not know how to take them.

These updates aren’t the only love the application has seen lately. Kaitlyn Trigger, Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger’s girlfriend, created an application that lets you turn your Instagram photos into virtual Valentine’s Day cards. She calls it Lovestagram.

hat tip The Next Web

VentureBeat is holding its second annual Mobile Summit this April 2-3 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event will debate the five key business and technology challenges facing the mobile industry today, and participants — 180 mobile executives, investors, and policymakers — will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of the mobile industry. You can find out more at our Mobile Summit site.

Microsoft has removed the “Start” menu button from its upcoming Windows 8 operating system, according to a consumer preview released earlier this week.

The Start button. which made its debut in the Windows 95 version of the OS, sits on the far left side of the “Live Bar” (see screenshot above). The Start button was one of the primary methods used for people to navigate to computer settings, applications, stored files, and more. The leaked screenshot, obtained by PCbeta, reveal that Microsoft has removed the button. This was probably done as part of Microsoft’s Metro-style UI effort to make the user interface more intuitive across multiple devices.

While the Start button may be gone, the button’s core functionality will be retained using a “hot corner”, according to a report from The Verge. The hot corner, which you activate by either touching or mousing over one of the screen’s four corners, will supposedly activate a start-style menu screen when the operating system is both desktop and Metro UI mode.

The Live Bar, which allows you to pin frequently used programs to, will continue being used in Windows 8, according to the report.

The most successful designs are the ones that make the intermediary disappear, or be so unobtrusive or intuitive that we completely fail to notice it.

Think about the brilliance of the hammer as that “bridge” — when you want to hang a picture on the wall, there is no doubt in your mind which tool to use, which side to hold, and how to apply it. The hammer is so easy to use, not only because it is well designed, but because of our cumulative experience with hammers, which creates such a familiarity that the tool is almost universal.

But what about the new technology products that pop up daily, such as mobile devices and apps, for which we have no frame of reference?

Building a bridge in a labyrinth of outcomes (or avoiding UX of a PacMan)

When it comes to software creating an unobtrusive path for the user to realize her intent gets a little more complicated, even the simplest task tend to have many steps.

Imagine that you want to share a photograph with a friend through email. The main means available to user experience designers in order to create this intermediary are visual displays, buttons, and sound. The intent of sharing that photo needs to be translated in a series of button clicks with labels that hopefully align to what the user is currently thinking about.

From finding the picture to selecting it, choosing to share it via email, providing the email address, and sending it out, these steps are not straightforward; rather, they create a labyrinth of multiple paths with different outcomes. And if our goal as designers is to build an unobtrusive bridge between intent and outcome, we must really know every turn and dead end of the labyrinth.

There are many examples of technology products that delivered the same outcome, yet some failed while others were embraced by consumers because the experience was more intuitive. Examples are so numerous that no one questions any more the role of the user experience design to the success of the product.

Understanding intent based only on a succession of clicks is not easy. It works well in situations where it is very clear what you want to do.

For example, when you type and the text editor auto-corrects your typos, very often the right outcome is achieved. In other, more ambiguous scenarios, it is a complex process and science. Furthermore, as consumers raise their expectations about what a product experience should be, the science of intent becomes key to the success of UX designers. Luckily, we have more tools than ever before to study it.

The digitalization of our daily lives and the proliferation of mobile devices give us an unprecedented amount of insight into the context of many scenarios and situations. We are used to GPS devices that sense we are driving and provide us with the exact location, but this type of experience was impossible a few years back.

The second factor is that as we use more natural user interfaces, such as speech or gestures, where much of the tangible interface might not even be present, intent might be clearer because the user literally states it.

Finally, recent advances in neuroscience, behavioral economics, cognitive psychology, and anthropology allow us to understand how our brains work and how we make decisions.

As our understanding of intent deepens, UX designers will be able to do more things automatically on the user’s behalf. For UX designers that means that a major aspect of the design becomes the definition of the rules that get activated based on the current context and input, rather than the visual aspects of the user interface.

Apple’s Siri functionality is a good example of this. It derives intent from the user’s natural language and can string together a series of tasks that normally might have taken many steps from the user. Suddenly, creating a calendar appointment with someone at a certain time takes a single Siri command rather than a long sequence of taps.

Finally, as UX design becomes driven by intent and context, we have to come to terms with the fact that we as UX designers will inevitably lose some of the control of the overall experience.

The set of rules will not just be defined by the people creating the device or application, but also by the people providing the context. The same way that a designer at Starbucks aims to design the experience within the store, she will want some control over what happens on peoples devices when they enter the store. For example, will your presence there immediately order your regular drink? Will the payment UI on your phone automatically launch so you can easily confirm it?

On the practical level, design becomes a lot more integrated into the actual code, requiring the developer to understand human behavior better than ever and requiring the designer to understand the code that executes these rules. As a result the designer and developer need to work even closer together. We see this at Artefact all the time — our most successful team members are the ones that design with the developer’s perspective in mind or develop with the designer’s sensibility to the experience of the product.

The age of responsible UX design

Understanding context and behavior are factors for successful UX, but with that, as with any piece of knowledge, comes the responsibility of how to apply it. And the impact of UX design on product adoption, lifestyle, and behavior is so significant that in addition to striving to achieve a certain outcome, we also need to evaluate the impact of the outcome.

It is a sign of our profession’s significance that we need to be thinking ahead about the implications of our efforts. The time has come for us to think about an ethical framework to guide us as we shape the user experience in 2012 and beyond.

Martijn Van Tilburg is Senior Design Director at Artefact, the innovative technology product design firm, whose mission is to utilize the power of design to improve people’s lives.

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google is planning to release a new set of design guidelines for the latest version of its mobile operating system, Android Ice Cream Sandwich.

Many critics have pointed out that Android doesn’t have enough unifying elements among third-party applications (unlike Apple’s iOS), which leads to a broken user experience. However, a set of design and style guidelines could give Android more consistency that would in-turn improve usability overall.

The guidelines will offer developers in-depth instructions (sort of a best practices) for design and style when they’re building new applications, according to Director of Android user experience Matias Duarte.

Duarte, who made the announcement while speaking to The Verge at CES today, said the design guidelines would be made available on a new Android Design website. The guidelines themselves will be built out over time to include more detailed instructions and advice.

Initially, the guide offers information about suggested design elements like typography, color palettes and more. It also contains a list of components that make up the Android UI.

Since Android is an open platform with no centralized hub to approve each application before making it available to the public, developers aren’t required to use the new set of guidelines. Duarte said the guides are intended as developer resources.

The design guidelines won’t give Android instant consistency in regards to the user experience. Yet, I feel pretty confident that over time I’ll personally receive fewer Android smartphone-related questions from parents, friends and other not computer people.

Netflix is testing out a new, simplified interface for its ‘Just for Kids’ section in a bid to make it easier for children to find shows to watch. It’s unclear how long the new features have been in place, but we can confirm some users have it.

Netflix did not respond to our queries about the new design asking if it was permanent.

The new interface (as seen above) has a row of clickable cartoon characters on top. When you select a character, the next page shows every episode associated with that character’s show. For example, if you click Aang from the show Avatar: The Last Airbender, you will be taken to a list of 54 episodes of the series. Individual episodes are represented by thumbnails and slider that shows how much of each episode has been watched. You can see the thumbnail view in this screenshot taken from my own account:

The design is very appealing and makes it easier to navigate quickly and select TV episodes. I wouldn’t be surprised if Netflix offered the episode thumbnail design in the near future for non-kids television shows as well.

The move to simplify the user interface follows news a few weeks ago that Netflix had an open position for a “Senior User Experience Designer for Kids & Family.” Based on the new changes, it’s possible Netflix has already hired a designer and put them to work.

Do your kids watch shows on Netflix? Are you comfortable letting them make their own show decisions?

Comcast released a video on its blog Thursday showing the Skype app in action. The video, which features an interview with Jamie Hall and Susan Oppelt of Comcast Interactive Media, discusses the thought process behind building a Skype app for couch potatoes instead of tech geeks and professionals.

The Skype Xfinity TV service offers a stripped down version of the popular voice, video and instant messaging application used on a desktop computer. The service will run through HDTV set-top boxes and require a special remote control provided to subscribers for free. It’s unknown if/how much Comcast will charge to add access to Skype.

As shown in the video clip (embedded below), the TV-version of Skype has a clean, minimalistic design. Graphical elements and animated effects are noticeably absent, which helps new users focus on the functions of accessing contacts and conducting video chats, according to Hall.

“We didn’t want to decorate the screen with elements that weren’t relevant,” Oppelt said.

The partnership between Comcast and Skype, which the cable giant announced last month at a trade show event, benefits both companies.

Since most current Skype users likely prefer using desktop and mobile versions by default, it makes sense for Comcast to concentrate on building an application for a new market of television watchers. If its current subscribers find the addition of Skype useful, it enhances Comcast’s overall value.

For Skype, a TV app allows the company’s over 600 million current users to access the broad demographic of people already subscribing to Comcast’s services. And the more people Skype’s users have access to, the greater its chance of becoming a more dominant communication service.

Via Gigaom

Judging from what we’re seeing in the new Calendar today, I’m excited to see what Google comes up with for other services, especially Gmail. Now that Calendar’s refresh is rolling out, we can expect other Google services to be coming out soon.

In addition to an overall visual change, Google streamlined other aspects of Calendar’s interface. Among the changes, calendar lists on the left side of the screen are now collapsed by default (which just looks neater), visual indicator icons only appear when you hover over calendar events, and the Print and Refresh buttons are now icons instead of links.

Google offers the ability to jump back to the classic Calendar look — but why would you want to?

The company says the design changes were made with its three new design principles in mind: focus, elasticity, and effortlessness. Google announced its new design imitative on Tuesday following Google+’s launch. Basically, the company is now focusing on making its interfaces less cluttered, easily transitioned from desktop and mobile devices, and combining power with simplicity. The latter may not sound too different from the minimalist Google interfaces that we’ve grown used to, but judging from the visual flourishes in Google+ and the eye-pleasing changes in Calendar, it seems like Google is finally paying more attention to aesthetics rather than being completely pragmatic in its designs.

Microsoft is apparently using some recent design innovations from Windows Phone 7 and Office in early test versions of Windows 8, including aspects of its mobile Metro user interface and Office’s Ribbon.

The news comes from a series of leaked screenshots that have hit the Web over the past few days from the Windows news power duo Paul Thurrott and Rafael Rivera.

The early design changes tell us that Microsoft will likely be looking for further inspiration for Windows 8 from its mobile and office software — and perhaps elsewhere. Windows 7, for the most part, looks like a more polished version of the much reviled Vista. Now it seems Microsoft may be aiming for a fresh start in Windows 8.

On Friday, Thurrott and Rivera showed off an early version of Windows 8′s login screen (above), which looks like it was lifted directly from Windows Phone 7′s lock screen. It features the same font and overall style as its mobile counterpart. The pair also hinted at potential tablet functionality in the lock screen: you’ll be able to login using a pattern, just like on Android phones at the moment.

The Windows 8 login screen admittedly may not mean much for the rest of the OS, but it signifies that we may see other elements of Windows Phone’s user interface elsewhere. It also buoys rumors that Microsoft would include some of its mobile interface for tablets on Windows 8.

On Saturday, Thurrott and Rivera revealed that Microsoft is currently testing Office’s Ribbon menu system in Windows Explorer (below). Just like in Office, the Ribbon appears to fully replace any previous menus and toolbars in Explorer. It’s not a huge surprise to see Microsoft trying to bring the Ribbon to Windows proper — it has already made its way to Wordpad and Microsoft’s Live Essentials programs.

To be clear: Microsoft is currently testing Windows 8 in a pre-alpha testing state, meaning the OS is at an incredibly early stage of development. What we’re seeing today in Windows 8 may not make its way to the final version of the OS — but it’s certainly interesting to see what Microsoft is thinking of including.

In the film Blade Runner, a replicant was a biorobotic being which was virtually identical to a human but lacked emotion and empathy. I talked to Jakobsson about the future of interfaces and how they should use “the human APIs”.

“We see people and machines interacting in a very dumbed down way” he says. Jakobsson complains that 90 percent of the status updates in his Facebook stream are from Foursquare, Runkeeper or Gowalla.”The interface through which we are talking to each other is GPS coordinates, how many kilometers I have been running and songs shared on Spotify. We are using the APIs of a machine instead of the human APIs like voice and feelings and movement”.

Jakobsson sees a possible future in which our lives become cluttered with ever-fancier screens (see TAT’s future of screens video below), augmented reality and other machine-driven interfaces. “It’s not augmented reality, it’s dumbed down reality” he comments. “We come from an era where everything is clickable. Now we are saying, everything that is clickable in real life, let’s put a red tag on it, which is talking technology language. You are forcing people to become robots.” His alternative is to make interfaces more human and he sees designers as crucial to that process. “How do we create people to machine to people interfaces which make that interaction natural?”

Jakobsson is Swedish and he uses the analogy of cross-country skiing to explain the role of the designer. There is a huge difference between the effort required to ski on virgin snow and on a pre-defined track. The traditional role of the user interface designer was to make tracks that users can follow. While one of the designer’s jobs should still be “to create highway tracks”, Jakobsson would also like to see a process where users are allowed to ski around on a metaphorical open field and the tracks they create can be used by others. He describes this a more heuristic way to create a user interface.

Just as importantly, Jakobsson thinks that the designers role is not just to make a product pretty, something he regards as “lipstick on a pig” design. “Designers should be in the depth of engineering and even before engineering.” A large part of the designer’s task is to identify the specific niches or use cases which a product should address. “The question is really ‘Should we build a church or a monastery?’ Right now we are building holy places.” he explains. In other words, most technology products, and mobile phones in particular, address too broad an audience and set of uses.

“I think we will see much more of people having text and talk phones, in a sense. Simplifying but not dumbing down.” he says. “The problem today is that there are really just two phone categories: a smartphone with bells and whistles and no battery life or an old phone like a Nokia series 40″.

Every handset manufacturer is finding it hard to escape the trap of building an iPhone copy. Jakobsson cites INQ mobile as an exception to this trend. INQ makes phones designed for specific niches like social networking. “Let’s build this phone which has built-in Spotify and built-in Facebook. It doesn’t even look like an iPhone. I think INQ is going to be really successful” he says.

I asked Jakobsson for some examples of user interface technologies he likes. “I like gesture interfaces because that’s a very human approach. Gestures are very much more tactile.” But he also thinks that more natural interfaces introduce new problems. “The minute you do direct manipulation, for example using touch, it needs to be perfectly responsive. We are getting into the concept of the uncanny valley (when robots look and act almost, but not quite, like humans and actual humans are repulsed) for interfaces when you add physics engines, gestures, etc. because we are manipulating human to human interactions. When they are ten percent off, it’s just going to feel weird.”

He’s also not a big fan of haptics. ”Haptics for me is like voice recognition. It’s the best idea in the world but it just doesn’t work. In 5 to 10 years they will both work.” The ideal for Jakobsson is that technology starts to disappear. “The device you are holding in your hand will become thinner and thinner, not physically necessarily, but conceptually. You are going to think that you are not even holding a device.”