This week I did something that I hadn’t done for five months and 12 days: I went to Flickr on my laptop, accessed some photos on my hard drive, uploaded them, named them, tagged them, and organized them in a set.

The magic of the Internet happened before my eyes, and they joined the other rectangular images on the venerable photo-sharing site. And finally, for the first time in almost half a year, I had something beside square pics on my Flickr photostream.

Yahoo announced its massive revamp of the Flickr service with three missing Es, calling the updated site Biggr, Spectaculr, and Wherevr. But really, the update boils down to two massive changes: Dropping freemium and making an old and tired user interface awesome.

Since I was just wondering about reupping my Pro account, the first is really significant.

Yahoo’s giving each Flickr user a full terabyte of space for images for free, which essentially means you don’t need to be a Pro user anymore. You still can, for an ad-free account, or to add even more space … but I don’t mind a few ads, and I’m only using 0.8 percent of my freely available terabyte anyways.

But the best and most important is the incredible new look.

There’s varied response to the new look, to say the least, and the official forum thread on the new layout has a staggering 241 pages of user comments: 24,102 in total so far. The vast majority of them are negative, and most of those appear to be from long-time users who liked the site the way it was and are asking Flickr to change it back.

Good luck.

Flickr as it was was turning into a byway, a leftover, and an also-ran. Which is why most of the pics on my photostream and home page were square: They were exports, shares from Instagram photos. In other words, Flickr was changing from the place where you went to share photos from, to the place where you shared photos to. That may be a small change in the English language, but it’s a massive change in user engagement.

And it had huge effects on Flickr’s traffic, which dropped about 40 percent in the last year alone:

The new look is gorgeous and photo-centric, giving photos — the raison d’etre of Flickr — center stage.

Sure, it’s Pinterest-ic and Tumblr-y. But if you love images and imagery, the new Flickr displays photos immeasurably better that the previous iteration. In a funny modern way, your digital photostream now resembles an old-fashioned photography album, without any cheesy in-your-face design elements attempting to highlight the fact.

In addition, the new layout options gave Yahoo the option of displaying images with much more creativity while honoring the photographer’s shot selection — such as Flickr displaying panorama shots across the entire page:

I’m sold. Flickr, I’m back.

“I think Flickr is awesome again with these new announcements,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said. “Photos make the world go around. Flickr was awesome once. It languished. But now it’s awesome again.”

I agree. And so does one of the more famous photographers on Flickr, Thomas Hawk:

despite all of the naysayers about the new @flickr, my page has never had more engagement than it has there in the last 3 days.

— Thomas Hawk (@thomashawk) May 23, 2013

Image credits: John Koetsier

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple is widely expected to reveal a new iOS7 on June 10 at its Worldwide Developer Conference. And there are some big changes in store.

Scott Forstall and his love of user interface elements that mimic the “real world” is long gone. Jony Ive, the design genius behind the iMac, iPhone, iPad, and pretty much everything Apple in the last decade, was appointed to overhaul and comprehensively redo Apple’s most important crown jewel in October of last year.

Now, it appears, he’s close to complete.

Ive has been leading a thorough revamp of the iPhone UI in preparation for the upcoming iOS 7 release, and according to 9to5 Mac, he’s also most done. The changes are significant, described as “black, white, and flat all over.”

That’s a massive change from the original colorful, shiny, semi-transparent iOS development language, which tries hard to make virtual controls and objects look and feel and act like real controls and objects. You see that today in the drop shadows behind icons, the compass interface of Find My iPhone, and the physical button-like Apple toggle controls:

Source: John Koetsier

iPhone UI design

Forstall, the former iPhone chief who was cut from the Apple team after refusing to apologize for the Apple Maps disaster, was a big fan of skeuomorphic design: design that connects the new to the old with decorative but — some might say — unnecessary elements.

Those “some” would include Ive.

Apple’s Notes app is an example of skeuomorphic design, with faux leather at the top and the virtual remnants of virtual torn-off pages at the top. On iPhone, iBooks, Find My Friends, and Newstand are examples, with with fake bookshelves, fake stitching, fake leather, and fake shadows.

For a designer like Jony Ive, who has spent his life stripping away excess, simplifying relentlessly, there is something inherently dishonest about skeuomorphic design. It’s something of a lie … because there is no wood in your iPhone, no dead animal skin on the screen, and no paper to be torn off. And, he’s been quoted as saying that software designs built with physical metaphors do not stand the test of time.

There are design elements in the iPhone’s user interface language that are already trending away from the original color and connection to material controls.

Safari and Mail, for instance, have no parchment, no leather, no torn-off page remnants:

There are no images yet of iOS7, which will be one of Apple’s most closely-guarded secrets up to WWDC. Changes reportedly include dropping the textured, cloth-like background of Notifications Center in favor of a flat grey, and the shiny, transparent lock screen will lose its luster for a flatter, less evocative interface. You would have to think that a detail-oriented design-obsessed Ive will have comprehensively altered the appearance of almost everything in the iOS design language, but we’ll know more on June 10 when Apple reveals it.

In all this rush to get rid of skeuomorphic design, there’s one thing to remember.

Perhaps the iPhone was so transformative, so new, and so different, that skeuomorphism was a necessary first step in the evolution of its design language. And perhaps the virtual has now become so real … that now we don’t need it anymore.

photo credit: marcopako  via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

So much in mobile app development is so serious these days. Interfaces are often beautiful but seldom fun as the relentless drive to small-screen efficiency and usability crowds out creativity.

That’s not the problem with Tumblr’s new Android app, released today to mostly rave reviews.

Source: Tumblr

Tumblr’s new Android app is playful and simple.

Tumblr has completely redesigned the new app, and the best part is the post-anything screen that reinforces Tumblr’s reputation as the simplest place to post just about anything. It’s playful, popping out of the bottom-right corner with a cheeky animated reveal that offers options for posting video, images, text, links, quotes, or chatting.

And yet, it’s still simple. And smart.

As UI expert Parham Aarabi says, the easiest place to reach on a mobile phone is the bottom right – where the icon starts. And notice the curve of icons, nicely approximating the sweep of your right thumb upscreen.

(Frankly, Tumblr should offer a left-handed option.)

The app, as previously, enables you to manage your Tumblr blogs, find and follow other blogs to read, read and respond to messages, and tweet out your latest updates.

Here’s a quick overview, in pictures, of the new Tumblr Android app, which is available on Google Play.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Parham Aarabi teaches a graduate course on Advanced Mobile User Interfaces and is the CEO of ModiFace.

When conceptualizing your mobile app’s user interface, there are a few things that you should keep in mind. Some of the basic things such as clarity of interface, consistency from one view to the next, and making sure that tapping on any button or UI element provides feedback to the user are fairly straightforward and are generally, though not universally, followed by most app designers.

There are a few things, however, that are often ignored which can equally impact the user experience.  Below are some of these often-ignored UI design elements:

1 – Expert vs. novice users – the tale of two audiences

Often, we think of our app users as a ubiquitous set of users with similar intentions and expertise.  However, there are often several distinct user groups with different intentions and levels of expertise.

Novice users, for example, tend to move slower throughout the application, are prone to making more touch errors, and are more uncertain about the functionality of each button. Expert users, on the other hand, tend to have the app elements memorized and move quickly and with intent throughout the app.

When creating your app’s user interface, you want to make it efficient enough for your expert users while being informative and simple enough for novice users.

2 – Ideal button size

This is a fairly obvious issue.

Button sizes are generally limited by the size of our fingers, and so if they are too small, users will be unable to touch them accurately.  Button widths below 1cm are harder (and slower) to touch.  Aside from the minimum size, there are some benefits to non-uniform button sizes (they give an indication to novice users as to which button is more important).

As a general rule of thumb, the size of a button should be proportional to the square root of the likelihood that an expert user would need to select it (there are more scientific reasons behind the size-proportional-to-root-probability rule, but that is a discussion for a different day).

3 – UI location

Usually, application UI elements are either placed at the bottom of the app (most common) or at the top.

However, the way most users hold their phone is by using their thumb as the primary finger for touching buttons. If the user is right-handed, the thumb will more easily reach the region at the bottom right of the screen (or, for left-handed users, the bottom left).  Reaching the top screen corner that is opposite to the thumb is much more difficult, and more intrusive with the application flow since the user has to reach over the screen.

Generally, it is best to keep the primary application buttons at the bottom of the screen, and ideally, to place the more important and often used buttons at the bottom-right corner of the screen.

4 – Accounting for motion

The location of buttons is not the only consideration related to how we hold our mobile devices.

We also need to keep in mind that the thumb generally has a specific flow direction.  For example, for a right-handed person, circular flows with a pivot point at the bottom right of the screen are much easier than linear flows (flowing out radially).

So if you have a user interface control that requires motion (i.e. a slider, a selection list, etc.), keep in mind how a user is holding the phone and that certain motions are generally more natural for the user.

5 – How much is too much

Some applications tend to pack quite a few buttons into each of the application views.

Now, even if the buttons are of a decent size so that a user can click on them, there is another issue that app designers should be aware of.  The more buttons presented to the user at one time, the more difficult it is for the user to choose one of them (this is especially true for novice users).  It is interesting to note that as an analogy, a touch screen device can be thought of as a communication channel where the goal is to minimize the entropy of the interface (i.e. require the least information from the users for each touch selection).

Generally, most user-friendly apps tend to have an interface entropy under 3.5 bits (the maximum entropy for an interface is approximately 5.5 bits on an iPhone 5, accounting for average finger size and screen size).  What this essentially means is that you should keep the total number of touchable UI elements to less than 10 per view.

There is a lot more involved in creating great mobile user interfaces.  But hopefully you will find some of the above suggestions of benefit.

Parham Aarabi is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, where he teaches a graduate course on Advanced Mobile User Interfaces and directs the Mobile Applications Lab.  He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and was twice selected as a Canada Research Chair.  He has been the recipient of MIT’s TR35 “Top Young Innovator” award and the IEEE Mac Van Valkenburg Award.  He is also the founder and CEO of ModiFace Inc., the leading provider of virtual face simulation and virtual try-on technology.

photo credit: Alexandre Van de Sande via photopin cc

The new-and-improved site includes better browsing and search features to make finding new things easier. Pinners can explore an entire board without leaving the page they are on, look through all pins from the same source, and see a “people who pinned this also pinned” screen.

Like anyone going through a style transformation, Pinterest is highlighting its best qualities while also going through a health regimen to firm and smooth the interface. Design changes include bigger pins and features new navigational capabilities. However, true makeovers are not only about the surface (Cher taught us that in Clueless.) Pinterest also rebuilt the backend foundation to make it more reliable and easier to improve.

“We also responded to some feedback from pinners who told us they hated losing their place while browsing,” said lead product designer Jason Wilson in a blog post. “Now, when you scroll through pins and click on something that interests you, the back button lands you right back where you were no matter how far you’ve gone.”

Many of the changes were in response to user feedback. Dedicated members are a significant part of Pinterest’s success. People love to pin, and companies, brands, and online retailers love it when they do. You can create boards of images on the site related to their interests. Visitor numbers recently surpassed 25 million, and last week, Pinterest launched Web Analytics to help brands and marketers see what Pinterest members are doing with their content.

A massive fan base is great, particularly if you can monetize on it. The impact of social media on consumer behavior is hotly debated in e-commerce, although cosmetics retailer Sephora said that its Pinterest users spend 15 times more than its Facebook fans. Pinterest Web Analytics is a big step toward making money off of its users. It will tell marketers how many people are repining, how many people see those pins, and how many visits to the original website those pins generate. It will also show ‘most pinned,’ ‘most clicked,’ and ‘most recent pins.’

Pinterest is valued at $2.5 billion and has raised $200 million to date. Despite its celebrity, the company knows that to stay in the limelight, it has to keep up appearances, stay chic, and remain beloved by its fans.

Photo Credit: Pinterest

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Finnish startup Rightware is finding more and more homes for its Kanzi user interface, a fancy 3D layer for websites and mobile devices. It is available with an improved version today.

The second generation of the Kanzi user-interface development platform is being adopted in a variety of products. That’s because people need a nifty, smooth, and eye-catching way to view the increasingly complex information displayed on their tablets, smartphones, and car dashboards. And the user interface has to move fast as people change screens or drill down on menus, said Tero Sarkkinen, the co-founder of Rightware, in an interview with VentureBeat.

“We’ve got a new generation of Kanzi coming, and it will be used in a new generation of devices,” said Sarkkinen. “The graphics will be fluid and fast. We’re becoming the gold standard in user interfaces.”

The flow of new customers for Kanzi version 2.6 is gaining momentum. Kanzi is being used for the in-dash infotainment systems in the whole fleet of cars made by Audi. Johnson Controls is using Kanzi to design the user-interface screens for car computers, such as instrument panels or navigation screens.

It is also available as an interface for apps on smartphones and tablets. One of those is the Nabi XD kids tablet computer from Fuhu. And Qualcomm has adopted Kanzi for its QRD reference platform for mobile devices. And RKS Design, an industrial design firm in Thousands Oaks, Calif., is using Kanzi for the design of tablets, smart TVs, and other embedded gadgets.

To make a user interface the right way, the creators have to craft the screen so it can be refreshed constantly, and pixels have to match precisely. App makers license the technology to do that from Rightware and use Kanzi to create custom user interfaces. Those interfaces can take advantage of high-end 3D graphics effects, but they run smoothly. That’s because Rightware optimized Kanzi for OpenGL ES, the open-source graphics standard technology. With OpenGL ES compatibility, Kanzi can tap the 3D graphics hardware in a device to draw its eye-catching imagery in a speedy way.

Espoo, Finland-based Rightware started as a part of graphics benchmarking firm Futuremark in 2004. Its goal was to create user interfaces for mobile computing. Sarkkinen left Futuremark in 2009 and immediately spun Rightware out of it. He raised $4.5 million, and on Jan. 3, he announced that he had recruited former Nokia executive Jonas Guest as chief executive. Sarkkinen, meanwhile, heads the company’s business in North America. Guest served as a member of Rightware’s board before taking the position, and he spent 15 years at Nokia.

Earlier, Rightware said its customers included Wikipad, a mobile tablet gaming company (interface pictured at bottom). Wikipad has licensed Kanzi so players can browse through a game library quickly. Asus uses it in its Transformer convertible tablet/laptop. Fantasy Dice uses Rightware as a gaming interface.

It has a small team that designs user interfaces for a fee, but for the most part, it supplies tools for developers to use themselves. The interface tool allows developers to see the changes they make to a design in real time. The tools are available for sale now for $10,999 at the high end. Rightware is also providing a version for app developers for $999.

Rightware has 52 employees in Finland and offices in the U.S. and China. Sarkkinen said the company plans to raise a new round of funding later this year.

Vivek Wadhwa is a vice president at Singularity University and a Washington Post columnist.

Last year I predicted that social media would lose its sizzle. Since then, the bubble has burst for companies such as Facebook, Zynga and Groupon. The tablet computer market, on the other hand, is booming, voice recognition is becoming a standard feature in new computing devices, and there have been, as I alluded to in 2012, notable cloud-computing failures andsecurity breaches in the past year.

I am glad to have been wrong about LinkedIn. It is a great company with a stellar management team. Also, tablet prices haven’t quite hit the $100 mark in the U.S., as I predicted they would. But I still anticipate they will, and likely very soon.

So, what else lies ahead for 2013? There is nothing as spectacular as the Facebook IPO, at least at this point, but expect gradual technology progressions of greater significance than have been seen in years past. The Post’s Hayley Tsukayama has outlined the trends in tech for the coming year — a year I believe will be one of transition for the sector.This year, expect tech innovators to set the stage to solve global problems, since technologies in fields such as medicine, robotics, artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, 3D printing, and nanomaterials are advancing exponentially. Like the processors in our computers, they are becoming increasingly powerful while their price drops precipitously. This will enable startups to take on problems in fields such as energy, health, education, and security that only government and big research labs previously could.

Most recently, the big rewards have gone to startups developing relatively simple social media platforms and applications. In the upcoming era of exponential technologies, expect the rewards to go to players that solve big, global problems.

Here are the big innovation trends that I believe will gain traction in 2013.

Tablet explosion to computing revolution

The entry price of tablet computers will almost surely drop to under $100 in 2013 — especially if the rumored $99 Acer tablet gains traction this year, as I believe it will, or if theIndia Aakash tablet finally lives up to its potential. I also anticipate that the tablet price tag will keep dropping until it reaches close to zero over a 2-to-3 year period. We will reach the point where it makes sense for companies to give tablets away just as mobile carriers give phones away in exchange for plan subscriptions. More broadly, we can expect to see tablet computers almost everywhere in this decade—our kitchens, bathrooms, cars, supermarkets, schools and elevators.

Apple currently owns the high end of the market, of course, and I don’t expect cheap tablets to put any dent in the company’s sales this year. But, if Apple fails to keep innovating, the company will surely feel the pain in 2014 and beyond as Samsung continues to nip at its heels. The PC laptop vendors — Dell, HP and Lenovo, among others — should worry since tablets will continue to cannibalize their higher-priced products.

The biggest winner in this revolution will likely be Google, with its free Android operating system. Unsurprisingly, the loser will probably be Microsoft, which licenses its mobile operating system, Windows RT, for around $80 — more than the hardware will eventually cost. In the long term, expect the billions of new users that come online over the next few years to be doing Google searches and using Google’s applications.

The ‘quantified self’ goes mainstream and creates a new regulatory battlefield

We saw a trickle of sensor-based medical devices in 2012, but these were just the start of the “quantified self” movement. As sensors become smaller, more powerful, and cheaper, we will see many new types of devices that help us monitor our health. These will be embedded in our iPhone cases, bathroom scales, toothbrushes, and even in our jewelry.

In 2013, expect to be able to purchase sophisticated new devices like the AliveCor Heart Monitor, which I have been testing and the FDA has approved for use by licensed U.S. medical professionals. If I had a device like this 10 years ago, I may have been able to avoid the heart attack that I had.The device will cost $199 when prescribed by a physician. Today, we need physicians to analyze the data the device provides. But, given the rate at which technology is advancing, computers may be able to do a better job. Witness the way IBM’s Watson defeated Jeopardy champions. It had far more data available to it.

Eventually, I foresee cloud-based systems that have access to the latest medical knowledge and to data from hundreds of millions of people analyzing medical data. I would trust these systems more than I trust my cardiologist, and the app to access these will be available anytime and as often as I need it.Even before we reach this stage, consumers should be allowed to purchase these devices off the shelf to see and analyze their own medical data. This is where the battle lines will increasingly be drawn between technologists and regulators.

Users will begin to demand greater control of their own data and more ways to monitor it in order to improve their lives. That means, in the coming year, one should expect to see the regulatory battles over these types of technologies become more frequent and heated.

Pages: 1 2

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

I started my user experience education in a very different way than most.

Long before smartphones, apps, and mobile advertising, I worked for The Walt Disney Company … but not as a technologist. I was a costumed martial arts performer and my manner of ‘user-engagement’ was as Leonardo – the blue bandana-wearing, katana-wielding, pizza-eating member of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – who performed together with his turtle brothers on stage at the Disney MGM Studios in the early 90s.

As strange as it might sound, many of the lessons that I learned about Walt Disney’s philosophy for crafting a deep, engaging guest experience have inspired my core principles around breakthrough mobile user experience.

Now, more than ever, the mobile app landscape is seeing an increased focus on the importance of a deep, engaging user experience.  Not only must the app itself be handcrafted to surprise and delight the user, but integrated advertising units must do the same. Publishers and brands are both starting to appreciate the importance of crafting deep brand experiences, instead of just slapping a banner onto the bottom of the screen.

2012 made a half-step in this direction with the adoption of rich media advertising.  Rich media ad units are still typically screen-edge banners, but they offer more resolution, higher-quality animation, and more varied tap actions.  Although rich media was a much-needed upgrade to previous mobile banners, the next phase will be much more dramatic.

2013 is shaping-up to be the year of native mobile advertising, much to the benefit of publishers, brands, and users.

Native ads are different from conventional ads in three specific ways:

1. They are more organically integrated with the app itself (think beyond the banner)
2. They expose more of the phone’s internal features (photo roll, advanced social media, etc.)
3. They provide for much more engaging ad creatives and branded content

While the shift to create a native ad experience on mobile might seem revolutionary to some in the industry, it’s at the core of what I’ve been working on at Zumobi for years and reflects many of Walt Disney’s principles that I learned from my experiences as a Turtle. With this in mind, here are a few Ninja lessons that I see reflected across the dynamic landscape of mobile advertising and user experience…

We should all strive to surprise, delight and engage our guests

At Disney, you’re not an employee, you’re a Cast Member. You’re not at work, you’re On Stage.

With mobile advertising, we are challenged every day to move beyond the 320 x 50 cage, and truly express a client’s brand in a way that is native to their unique values. While banner advertising is an important aspect of advertising, it is not a style that surprises, delights, and engages the user. Tomorrow’s native app-within-an-app experiences will let users make purchases, share user-generated content photos and media, and engage deeply with social media.

As designers, we should strive to channel Walt’s philosophy to create tomorrow’s breakthrough native mobile experiences.

They can’t see your face; they CAN see your expression

When you’re in costume as a Ninja Turtle, people can’t see your face directly.

However, every emotion, smile, and expression is channeled through the character, and consequently felt by the guests.  I believe that the same metaphor applies to software, apps, and mobile brand experiences. While the user cannot see the designer, they can sense the expression that they wore when they handcrafted a given user experience.

In this way, it is always essential to remember that the passion seeps beyond the confines of an app or campaign, and directly drives engagement.

Zen and the art of mobile advertising

There is a yin and a yang to all things, including mobile advertising.  In the same way that soft-style kung fu blurs the lines between striking and blocking, good native advertising blurs the lines between content and sponsorship.  Have a lifestyle app targeted to mothers? Offer recipe content as part of your campaign. Want to reach potential auto buyers?  Offer compelling automotive content in mobile enthusiast sources.

This is an incredibly exciting time for apps, mobile, and advertising – the most dramatic opportunities are still untapped.

While the last five years has proven to be thrilling in the landscape of mobile, I foresee the next five years to be even more exciting.

John SanGiovanni is the Co-Founder and Vice President of Product Design at Zumobi where he coordinates the product design strategy and manages Zumobi’s in-house creative studio. A former Microsoft Technical Evangelist, John has more than 13 years of experience as a wireless strategist and mobile user interface designer and has authored or co-authored more than 12 patents in the areas of mobile advertising, hardware interfaces, and interaction techniques for next-generation mobile devices. John recently spoke at the Seattle Interactive Conference where he presented his case for the future of mobile advertising. View his complete session here: or the highlights here

photo credit: Jenn and Tony Bot via photopin cc

If you’re moving up to Windows 8 while both excited by the new possibilities and worried about the massive user interface changes, Thinix has a solution for you. Recently launched, the company’s RetroUI product gives you back your start menu and, if you choose, your standard Windows desktop.

You can even combine the best of both worlds with very Windows 8 desktop tiles, and a more Windows 7 start menu and taskbar.

Source: Thinix

RetroUI’s start menu

RetroUI’s start menu is not exactly what you’ll remember from Windows 7, but it does allow you to quickly access directories and apps in two clicks, pin shortcuts, and quickly access shutdown options.

In addition, the Windows 8 skin allows users to run new Windows Store apps in a window, instead of full-screen, which gives you access to your taskbar and start menu … which means your simple multi-tasking is back.

Thinix also put a few extras into RetroUI, including a “TabletView” mode that the company says bridges the gap between desktop and mobile. Essentially, it’s similar to Mac OS X’s Launchpad, showing all available apps in a clickable full-screen array.

Pricing starts at $4.95 — there is a free trial — and the product is available immediately by download.

Source: Thinkix

RetroUI’s tablet view

Image credits: Thinix

It all has to do with skeuomorphic design.

I’m guessing most of us didn’t have a clue what that was yesterday, but very likely many of us have encountered it and wondered about it in Apple products.

Skeuomorphic design is design that connects the new to the old with decorative but unnecessary elements. An example is Apple’s iCal app, which includes a faux-leather header with vestiges of ripped-off paper immediately below, as if we were all ripping paper pages off our computer monitors:

A similar example is Apple’s Notes app, with a little less leather but a little more rip:

One problem with skeuomorphic design is that it doesn’t fit Apple’s design aesthetic in so many other apps. For instance, Safari or Mail don’t have any leather or ripped off pages. For Safari, that could be understood, as there are no pre-technological antecedents: no-one had a web browser before the personal computer became ubiquitous. But mail had been invented … and yet Apple’s Mail app showed no design cues of parchment or inkwells and the like.

The overall experience led to a strange dichotomy of design, where sleek, functional apps such as Safari and QuickTime were matched side-by-side with frankly old-fashioned-looking apps. That was confusing from Apple, supposedly the high priest of design.

iPhoto, for instance, bears no resemblance to a old-fashioned photo album:

The other, more philosophical, and arguably bigger issue is that skeuomorphic design is inherently distasteful to many designers. It is decorative, not functional. It is excess, bigger in size and heavier in cognitive load than a user interface that is slimmed down to its bare essentials. And yes, if that sounds like a certain Apple design guru, Jony Ive hated it.

Of course, Scott Forstall didn’t oversee all design at Apple. However, he was in charge of iOS, and iOS is by far Apple’s most popular operating system, and the operating system of its cash cow (OS X is found in products accounting for under 20 percent of Apple’s revenue). Forstall was a fan of skeuomorphic design — as, it must be admitted, was Steve Jobs to a degree — and the results can be found in Apple apps.

iBooks, Find My Friends, and Newstand are only a few of the examples. Wood and leather show up in copious quantities on the high-res glass screen of one of the most modern digital artifacts ever created:

Again, the effect is inconsistent with other Apple apps such as Mail and is oddly jarring as the user is taken from a super-modern, clean, simple user interface into one with a lot of extra weight, detail, and effect.

To a designer like Jony Ive, who has spent his life and career removing excess, trimming away unneeded detail, and simplifying, there is something inherently dishonest about skeuomorphic design. It’s something of a lie … there is no wood in your iPhone, no dead animal skin, and there’s no paper on your laptop screen to be torn off.

As such, we can expect big visual changes in the next versions of Apple apps in iOS and OS X. And, if all goes well, we can thank Scott Forstall’s departure for the simplification or, perhaps, consolidation of Apple’s design language.

Image credits: Top, Wikipedia, all others, John Koetsier

Cool user interfaces have been a requirement for consumer electronics devices, smartphones, tablets, and games ever since Apple launched the iPhone in 2007. But they’re not easy to design.

Rightware, a Finnish startup that specializes in tools to create user interfaces, hopes to lift that burden from in-house software developers.

“Our mission is to beautify every pixel on a screen,” said Tero Sarkkinen, the chief executive of Rightware.

A user interface is often critical to an app or a game, and it can take 25 percent of the budget for a project when handled in-house. Billions are spent on user interfaces by companies that create them from scratch.

Rightware was founded in Espoo, Finland, as a part of Futuremark in 2004, with the goal of focusing on mobile computing user interfaces. Sarkkinen left Futuremark in 2009 and immediately spun Rightware out of it. He raised $4.5 million.

“We had started a user interface software tool company but didn’t know what platforms it would be for,” Sarkkinen said.

Rightware licenses its Kanzi tools for building user interfaces for computing platforms that have to be simplified for consumers as they try to navigate through menus on smartphones, tablets, and even cars. It works for two-dimensional or three-dimensional user interfaces.

“We enable you to author your apps and user interfaces in record time,” Sarkkinen said. “It can take as little as a couple of weeks.”

Rightware’s interfaces are speedy compared to Adobe’s Flash software and web technologies such as HTML5. The Rightware software does not require a download, since it is only 400 kilobytes, and comes within an app download.

Now a variety of companies are tapping Rightware for user interfaces that implement fast-scrolling touch screen menus. Wikipad, a mobile tablet gaming company, has licensed it so players can browse through a game library quickly. Asus uses it in its Transformer convertible tablet/laptop. Fantasy Dice uses Rightware as a gaming interface.

“Our goal is to be something like the next Autodesk, building tools for the next-generation interfaces,” said Sarkkinen.

Rightware supports any platform, including Android, iOS, Windows and anything else that runs OpenGL ES. Sarkkinen said the company will launch a developer edition of its tool at the International CES show in Las Vegas in January. Rightware has a small team that designs user interfaces for a fee, but for the most part, it supplies tools for developers to use themselves. The interface tool allows developers to see changes they make to a design in real-time. The tools are available for sale now.

Rightware has 50 employees in Finland and offices in the U.S. and China.

---

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

---

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — It’s a sad paradox that we mostly browse through video clips by means of still images. Whether you’re on YouTube, Vimeo, or another video site, most of what you see are stills — at least, until you click on something.

Gnzo has an alternative: What if you could see up to 30 live videos at once, simultaneously?

Gnzo is essentially a new, more animated way of displaying and browsing videos, and it’s optimized for touchscreens. Instead of square stills, it displays a mosaic of animated videos, each one a 6-second clip from the video behind it.

You can browse through the interface by swiping left and right, or you can zoom in on a specific video by circling it with your finger. At least, that’s how it works in Gnzo’s obviously mocked-up demonstration video below.

The company, which is based in Kanagawa, Japan, and which was formerly known as Gunzoo, showed off its technology today onstage at DEMO Fall 2012.

Founder and chief executive Toshikazu Shinohara (“Shino”) encountered video technology as a university student and subsequently spend 15 years in U.I./U.X. (user interface/user experience) design.

It’s not just a U.I. tweak, however. The company’s “proprietary multivideo compression and streaming technology is what makes the multiple-video playback possible,” according to Gnzo consultant Yuichiro “Woody” Deguchi.

While explaining his company to the audience at DEMO, Shino drew analogies with not one, not two, but three of the major social media channels. He said Gnzo’s goal is to make browsing videos as immediate and accessible as browsing photos is on Instagram, with the ability to see lots of visual content at once like Pinterest, and the immediacy of Twitter.

The challenge for this young company will be finding partners to deliver its elegant U.I. Perhaps it will attract the attention of Google (YouTube’s parent) as an alternative to YouTube’s current, quite horrible interface.

Gnzo has raised $1.5 million to date and is actively seeking its next round of capital.

Gnzo is one of more than 75 companies 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.

Just two weeks after closing more than $200 million in new funding, mobile payments startup Square announced the acquisition of New York design firm 80/20. It did not disclose terms of the deal.

“Square acquires 80/20, one of the best design agencies in the world, and with it, an office in SoHo. We believe in NYC,” CEO and founder Jack Dorsey tweeted Monday morning.

80/20 is a 4-year-old firm that specializes in interface design. The company’s leadership team includes design veterans from Apple and Adobe. The firm’s portfolio of work features projects for Warner Bros., Motorola, Vodafone, Second Life, and Sony and reflects the agency’s expertise in constructing elegant dashboard experiences for web and mobile.

“The natural next step for 80/20 is to commit our focus to one company, and Square is a perfect fit,” the firm said in a note posted on its website today. “Square shares our passion for using technology and design to improve people’s lives. Together, we will reimagine and redesign how people communicate through commerce every day, all around the world.”

The buy seems well aligned with Dorsey’s personal predilection for polished design. The entire 80/20 team of roughly 12 people will join Square and remain in New York, where they’ll help the growing startup build a stronger presence.

An all-new header photo — somewhat reminiscent of Facebook’s cover photo — now helps your Twitter profile stand out better. Rather than just a few pixels for a headshot or a logo, the new header photo can display much more: multiple images, a portrait in a setting, or whatever your creativity allows within the limits of about 520-by-260 pixels.

It also, not incidentally, creates a clear differentiation between Twitter controls, menus, and space on the left, and your personal photo, tweets, and account information on the right.

Here’s a simple visual overview:

According to Twitter, the same profile photo will appear on Twitter.com, iPad, iPhone, and Android.

In addition, Twitter updated its mobile apps to create a more visual experience, introducing “photo streams” thataggregate photos uploaded in tweets over time in one location within the Twitter application. It’s a swipable element — simply scroll forward and back in time by swiping from side to side.

On iPad, the photo stream looks like this:

New Twitter photo stream on iPad

Tapping on a photo will bring it up fullscreen, much like this image of a T-shirt someone gave me at a conference:

Full-screen images on Twitter for iPad.

In addition to the new profile and photo-display opportunities, Twitter users still may upload a custom background, which displays on the web but not mobile platforms. Conversely, the photo stream doesn’t show up on the web.

The goal, according to Twitter, is to “get to know people better through their pictures” and announced the updates with a blog post titled “because you have more to show.”

I’m not sure what the pic above says about me, and I’m not sure there’s much more that I want to show.

But I do know I now have some work to do to update my Twitter profile. …

photo credit: [phil h] via photo pin cc

Microsoft upset more than a few Windows users when it announced that it was removing the Start menu from Windows 8.

But Samsung has its own plans. The company aims to fill the void left by the Start menu with the S Launcher, a Windows 8 widget the mimics the functionality of the now-defunct Windows feature.

Mashable reports that the S Launcher widget will make its first appearance in Samsung’s all-in-one PCs and will allow for easy access to both applications and settings.

But will anyone use it? If Microsoft’s user behavior monitoring was correct, the Start menu simply fell out of favor with most, which suggests that something like the S Launcher widget won’t get much traction either. Let’s just hope Samsung makes it easy to turn off.

The appearance of the S Launcher also comes a month after the rumors that Microsoft wanted to rid Windows 8 of widget support as well. The existence of the S Launcher might indicate that those rumors were false ones.

We’ve reached out to Microsoft to get to the bottom of this and will update when the company responds.

S Launcher Photo: Mashabale 

“We have one of the worst-looking sites on the planet,” Huh admitted.

But, he argued, the best-selling cars are not Ferraris or Bugattis. Instead, the best-selling cars are Ford Focuses (Foci?) and Honda Civics.

And that applies to the web as well, Huh said. Just look at Craigslist, eBay, Amazon, and even early versions of Facebook. Ugly sites, all, but the ugly doesn’t impede the real design goal: converting visitors into users and traffic into money.

“We confuse good design with good product,” says Huh.

But good product isn’t pretty: Good product is product that works for users and works for the company.

When making design changes, Huh said, Cheezburger looks at four things: desired outcome (business outcomes, not warm and fuzzies), intended user, data on the existing condition, and data on the new condition when the company retests for validity.

“What we’ve built at Cheezburger is to create a team of people whose sole focus is to get data,” says Huh. “We’ve built a company that is driven by data.”

And that is why, he says, you don’t need great design to have a successful design.

Image credit: John Koetsier

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

---

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.

---

Of all the confounding changes made in the latest Windows 8 consumer preview, few upset people quite as much as the removal of the Start button.

But what hasn’t been clear is why Microsoft removed the feature, which has been a central pillar of Windows for over a 15 years.

The answer might be obvious: People weren’t using it. In an interview with PCPro, Microsoft program manager Chaitanya Sareen said that as users began pinning more applications to the taskbar, start button usage took a major hit. Instead of going to Start menu to access applications, users were just clicking shortcuts. The taskbar was just too fast and convenient.

To get this user information, Microsoft used telemetry, technology that allows designers to monitor how users interact with their software. User behavior has played a major role in the development of highly controversial features like the Ribbon in Office 2007. Now, it’s being used to remove the start button.

Microsoft, then, was at a crossroads: How could it make the Start menu useful again? The idea behind the feature has always been to provide a simple and central launching point for applications and tasks. Any change to it would have to retain that capacity.

So Microsoft Metro-fied it.  Now, with Windows 8, users are given the Start Screen, a customizable home screen that allows easy access to users’ most oft-used applications. This, naturally, is something that many users will initially hate,  but, as with most controversial user interface decisions, it’s also something that most users will eventually get used to.

In November 2010 Skype updated its Mac client and Skype went from a messaging tool that took up a corner of your screen to a communications juggernaut that demanded virtually your entire monitor. To be sure, I was not just feeling sentimental, I recently re-downloaded Skype 2.8 from Old Apps. Installing this two-year old software was a liberating experience.

Here was Skype 2.8 for Mac

Notice how slim the Skype window was when the user was not actively Skyping? Having Skype active and visible on the desktop was not a hardship — in fact, it was common. And when you were actively Skyping, the drawer at right kept all your chats well organized and accessible. If you only had one chat going, you could hide the drawer.

The point? Skype 2.8 was a very Mac-like application that respected your screenspace.

Skype 5 changed all of that.

In January of 2011, Skype released a new version that was intended to bring the Mac client into feature parity with the Windows version. One of the causalities in that endeavour was any semblance of sensibility with reference to software version numbers. The other was the user’s desktop real estate.

Here was Skype 5 for Mac

Godzilla on an LCD screen it may not have been, but it was LARGE. And suddenly, everything was joined together in one big window that could not be resized.

Mac users who tried the beta versions told the company about the problems, but when the final 5.o version was actually released and had no significant size reductions, they went ballistic. Almost 400 people commented on the Skype blog post announcing the new version, and they were not gentle:

The GUI is completely unusable

…

So great, instead of 500% now the window and contacts are just 450% too large.

…

I’m staying with 2.8, thank you very much …

…

The interface is still hideously bloated and unusable.

…

The smallest window size takes up more than 33% of my screen real estate. Version 2.8 takes up a fraction of the screen and is much more intuitive to use.

Through a few more minor updates the user interface remained largely unchanged. Until Skype 5.8, released yesterday, which the company’s blog post indicates was aimed at these very complaints, saying “your contact list just got slimmer,” and “you’ve been very vocal about the revamped full-screen user interface which we introduced in Skype 5.0.”

Well, 5.8 brings back a few things that Mac users have been longing for two long years.

Here’s Skype 5.8 for Mac

Two things are immediately apparent.

One, you can separate the contacts monitor from the main Skype window, and two, you can make the main Skype window considerably smaller than in the previous version. Both are major steps back towards the user interface that Mac Skype users knew and loved in version 2.8.

Some might argue (OK, I would argue) that the Skype user interface circa 2012 still doesn’t come close to approximating the elegance and simplicity of a two-year-old version. But there’s no denying that it’s gotten better. And, that the people have won.

All hail democracy.

Image credits: Disruptive Telephony, ShutterStock

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

After watching their demo video (below), you’ll believe it too.

Briefly, what (T)ether does is allow individuals and groups to interact with virtual objects in real-time, simultaneously, creating a shared virtual space in which to build, create, and edit objects. Sounds simple? The implications are profound.

The (T)ether user interface enables manipulation of virtual objects spatially, with gestures, rather than through actual physical contact with a display device. It’s easier to show than to tell:

That difference is critical, because it enables both interaction with large objects or collections of objects …

… and easy collaboration with other connected devices and users:

And it’s this collaborative aspect that’s most exciting. As the group, composed of Matthew Blackshaw, Dávid Lakatos, Hiroshi Ishii, and Ken Perlin, post on their project page, “multiple people can edit the same virtual environment.”

As you can see around the four-minute mark in the video below, this enables powerful collaboration. Here’s a screen capture of the video showing two of the team members building and editing a virtual architecture together:

Currently the team is using iPads as their windows on the virtual world. However, imagine a Google Glass version, which seamlessly overlays the virtual onto the real via smart glasses, eliminating the need to physically hold up a device.

Go a step farther and envision increased fidelity, resolution, and processing power, and you have a solution that would enable an aircraft mechanic to virtually disassemble an ailing jet engine. Or enable an automotive engineer to visually create a model of how a new engine should fit together. The possibilities are endless.

Here’s the project video in its entirety:

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/2012/04/05/pinterest-customize-board-covers/ http://venturebeat.com/2012/04/05/pinterest-customize-board-covers/#comments Thu, 05 Apr 2012 18:30:57 +0000 Jennifer Van Grove http://venturebeat.com/?p=412810

Bored with your boards?

Pinterest, the visual-bookmarking site and social-network, introduced a new feature Thursday that allows for more self-expression. The site, where millions of people “pin” products to collections called “boards,” has introduced board covers.

“One of the most …

Bored with your boards?

Pinterest, the visual-bookmarking site and social-network, introduced a new feature Thursday that allows for more self-expression. The site, where millions of people “pin” products to collections called “boards,” has introduced board covers.

“One of the most requested features was the ability to choose a pin to be the cover for each board,” Pinterest said in a blog post on the update. “Today, you’ll be able to do just that.”

Boards. Pins. Covers. Say what? If these things are foreign concepts to you, then you’ve missed out on the most mind-blowing social-networking craze to hit the web in years. Pinterest, first launched in 2010, ballooned to 17.8 million unique visitors in February and could already be worth as much as $500 million. It’s particularly loved by arts, crafts, and food enthusiasts, with everyone from Reese Witherspoon to President Obama using it.

The new feature, live now, is as simple as they come. As members mouse over boards, they’re greeted with an “Edit board cover” button, which they click to highlight a favorite pin. The board-cover option also enables users to drag images around for optimal placement.

The board-cover feature, a relatively minor update to the overall Pinterest experience, replaces the former default look in which the most recent pin served as the board cover. It ties in nicely with the recently enhanced profile pages by adding a pinch more overall panache.

Filed under: Business, Social ]]>

Hulu rolled out a huge update to its website user interface today, increasing the size of its video player by 55 percent.

The updated look makes a lot of sense since Hulu’s number one draw is current season TV shows from major broadcast networks like ABC, NBC, Fox, and the CW. The company seems to understand that plugging other videos and shows isn’t going to get people to watch more videos on Hulu, which is why you only see the “related videos” links at the end of a program.

In addition to the larger size player, the site also implemented a number of design changes to emphasize the content. All the details — like the name of the show, episode title, running time, etc. — have been moved underneath the video player. It seems odd at first but I’m guessing the majority of people won’t even notice once their show starts playing. Also, the background surrounding the video player is much darker.

Hulu has apparently removed some viewing features with its refreshed UI design. Users can no longer “dim the lights”, which basically made everything on the screen darken except for the player. Initially, I thought Hulu had also removed the ability to pop out the video player into its own window, but it’s actually just been moved to the “more” button (next to the sharing options).

One thing I did notice about the new player is that the video picture was getting cut off on the right and left side when I tried to watch Community via Firefox. Not only that but some of the control buttons also get cut off.  Apparently I’m not the only one, as a handful of other people commented about the problem in Hulu’s official blog post. The problem didn’t happen when I switched to Google’s Chrome browser.

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.

---

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.

---

I’ve come to the conclusion that my Android phone hates me.

It probably hates you, too.

The breaking point came today when I tried to use my phone to Google the word “Edsel.” Instead of delivering the answer, my phone — a cheap LG model from Virgin Mobile — spontaneously rebooted itself.

I wasn’t exactly surprised, since my phone has a tendency to reboot without warning at least once a day. The irony didn’t escape me, however. The Edsel was Ford’s “experimental” car, introduced in 1957 after two years of development. While it had tons of features, such as oil level warning lights and an innovative “Teletouch” shift system, the Edsel was poorly marketed, didn’t have a clear target customer, and was too expensive. It also suffered from reliability problems.

Android phones aren’t exactly Edsels (they don’t have a big front grille that looks like, well, lady parts). But they are similar in a couple ways: Packed with features but also saddled with a dismaying lack of reliability and a lot of stray details that reveal just how little its designers care about you. It’s the ultimate triumph of the lame “good enough” philosophy.

Again and again, I run into little annoying details in the Android interface that reveal how I’m really just an afterthought to Google’s engineers.

Some examples:

• The built-in onscreen keyboard is so half-assed that there’s a thriving subclass of apps designed to replace it, including Swype and Swiftkey. Fortunately, thanks to Android’s openness, this is actually possible.
• When you’re adjusting a time or date setting, the finger that you use to adjust the numbers upward obscures your view of the actual number.
• In the Gmail app, to switch out of your Inbox to a different folder, you press the button labeled “inbox.” This is a perversity comparable to pressing the Start button to shut down your computer.
• Some apps can be moved to SD card storage. Others, such as the rather large Google Maps app, cannot. It’s not clear why not. It’s also not clear why those apps stuck in the phone’s main storage need to keep updating themselves, so they get larger and larger.
• When you’re scrolling through a screen, sometimes it jumps halfway down (up?) without warning, leaving you bewildered about where in the page you are.
• Music playback is constantly getting interrupted by new mail alerts and other sonic warnings. Switching your phone to silent mode helps, but only slightly: The bleeps become tiny quarter-second blips of silence interrupting the music instead.
• Every single account that I’ve ever added to the phone for syncing information is now requesting to update various apps.
• Sometimes the search button doesn’t work. (Calendar app, I’m looking at you.)
• Sometimes the back button takes you to the previous application, and sometimes it takes you to the previous screen in the current app, and it doesn’t seem to matter what you were actually doing before.
• You still can’t copy and paste text from email messages. Seriously?

Now, I am not using the most recent version of Android. I am using Android 2.2.1 (“Froyo”) on a crummy phone that I bought for $150 at Target because I could get it without a contract, and Virgin Mobile offers unlimited data and all the voice minutes I need for $40 per month.

The fact that this crummy phone exists at all is Android’s great advantage, but it is also its fatal flaw. Unlike more restrictive mobile operating systems, Android offers you the freedom to buy a crap phone that barely works.

That’s why Android is now the most popular smartphone operating system. And, yes, I am grateful for the opportunity to have a cheap phone. I just wish its design didn’t betray such obvious indifference to the people who try to use it.

Photo: Robert Occhialini/Flickr

NOTE: Subscribe to my newsletter and you can read these columns a whole day before they appear on our website.