Archive for April 2009
GPS should make people feel better of themselves, so as other softwares.
Yesterday at Hugh Dubberly’s class, Chris, Paul, Phil, Kyle and I were studying some UX theories.
For some reason Chris began to complain how much he hated his Garmin GPS: It apparently gives him sort of connivence and freedom of exploring a city, but at the same time it makes him lose the ability of way-finding, as he said he wouldn’t be able to make anywhere without his GPS in Pittsburgh, where he already spent two years in his life. As he begins to be dependent upon a tool, his life choices are restricted to a certain level, and the original good feeling diminishes – Well, I have the same feeling about my iPhone before I abandoned it.
People talked about GPS like this all the time. However, it makes us think, what is the criteria of a good software?
I think a good software needs to “perform” two fundamental functions:
A. Functions as a tool to help people accomplish tasks in its most convenient and considerate way.
B. Empowers people to feel better of themselves. Let people have a better control of their life, meaning, a GPS has the responsibility to make people feel they are a good driver, not some stupid followers that obey a machine.
A good and successful software = A + B
One thing I don’t like User centered design is that users are given too much meaningless burden, either for concept generation or usability testing, however, in real life users adapt to what they already have, and its’ interaction designers’ responsibility to make the software more humane. I appreciate brave designers impose their own bold visions onto a product, which is a more artistic way of designing softwares – make the users your audience to enjoy the performances, at the same time, give their the authority to twist the product better.
Luxurious software
Sounds intriguing, I know. Software as a luxury. I had a hard time propose and market this idea to my peers. It indeed comes from my terribly artistic psyche, but that’s also a buzzword hidden in all the things we talk about today, User-centered design, web 3.0, SNS, etc., I have been thinking about this for a while, and I define the thesis work I have been working on as a cutting-edge luxurious software for collectors to express themselves, manage their collections, and fundamentally, turn their mundane everyday life into a scared, ritual journey. (You may see this work in the next CHI conference).
I want to start with the term luxury. Luxury is the state of great comfort and extravagant living, it is an inessential, desirable item that is expensive or difficult to obtain. This sounds like so contradictory to the definition of a software, which is, traditionally, viewed as a tool that suppose to help people to accomplish a certain task, instead of fulfilling some extravagant emotionally needs. I also assume “luxury software”’s core concept will not be associated to luxurious price, but luxurious experiences.
There’re a lot of existing softwares deal with luxurious experiences, the popular ones are facebook and twitter, perceived generally as social softwares, but essentially contain a large part of luxurious component.
As the concept of luxurious experience comes to the digital domain, we do need a deep study of what existing conventions in the physical world should be borrowed, and which conventions should be abandoned to achieve a better luxurious experience in virtual world. The transition of old-form software(productive product, desktop apps) to new-form software(experience product, web apps) is phenomenal. I tried to avoid the concept of “software as an art form” but “software as an luxurious product”, however, I do see a lot of opportunities for traditional artists, filmmakers, composers and product designers to participate into the process of user-centered design, helping interaction designers to impose better pitches for the creative leap.
UX + Branding case: a Chinese web 2.0 beauty website that expands fantasy.
Recently I’m attending CHI at Boston. I got a chance to hang out with my high school friends who happen to attend harvard and MIT here. I’m happy to find my best friends are way more successful than I do – I’m impressed that they(who used to be my crappy highschool mates)becomes the leader of Chinese industries. Leo Guo(Founder of tongxue.com) recommends me this website that I began to fall in love with: Moko.cc. It’s a Chinese website that gathers the prettiest girls, uses can rate them online based on their judgement of “beauty”. This idea is bold, I expect to see a similar web service in US soon.
Obviously they have a very good user experience designer, the website looks consistant, energetic and bold. Here’s a screenshot of their website:
I know, a beauty industry 2.0.
The most impressive thing is, I’m amazed by their advanced user experience ideo, they integrate the user experience and branding rightly, and creates a very user-friendly look and feel. It proves the moto:”User-centered design’s biggest failure is, users only adapts to what they have, and real cool experience emerges from talent design.”
Here’s a list of cute icons.
1.Fashion model. 2. Magzine model. 3. Car model.
1. Fashion photography. 2. Advertising photography. 3. Personal photography.
1. Makeup artist. 2. Hair stylist. 3. Nail artist.
1.Producer. 2. TV/Movie director. 3. TV/Movie supervisor.
1. 3D designer. 2. Visual effect designer. 3. Visual Designer.
1. Fashion designer. 2. Architect. 3. Interior designer.
1.Industrial designer. 2. Interaction designer. 3. Game designer.
1. Painter/Illustrator. 2. Writer. 3. Dancer.
1. Drama performer. 2. planner/Coordinator. 3. Caligrapher.
1. Visual artist. 2. Behavior artist. 3. Collector.
1. Sculptor. 2. Drama director. 3. Talk show artist/Acrobatics artist.
1. President. 2. VP. 3. CEO
1. Actor. 2. Scriptwriter. 3. Photographer/Camera people.
1. Agent. 2. Lawyer. 3. Nurse.
1. TV photographer. 2. MC. 3. Post production producer
1. Visual effect director. 2. Movie/TV producer. 3. Body Model
1. Music producer. 2. Singer. 3. Music player.
1. Landscape photographer. 2. Post-production artist. 3. Fashion stylist/consultant.
1. Graphic designer. 2. Interaction designer. 3. Illustrator.
1. Flight attendants. 2. Pilot. 3. Programmer.
1. Drum player. 2. DJ. 3. Scriptwriter/ Composer.
1. Recorder. 2. Music post-poduction producer. 3. Music related people
I love those icons and think they are very innovational. It’s a good branding + user experience stragtigy as well.
Bonus:
the moko man
MOKO: cannot find the user.
The future web trends talk
I gave a talk about future web trends the other day, here’s a link for the original Vimeo video:
Design or Die – Innovation, UCD, Web and Life (Mozilla Labs Design Challenge: Spring 09) from Mozilla Labs – Concept Series on Vimeo.
I listed four themes for the future web, they are:
1. Data. Open, linked data and Metadata.
- Semantic web
- Human computation
2. Self. Self representation.
- Personalization
- Self extension
3. World. A connected world.
- Tangible interaction
- Contextual awareness
4. Life. A digitalized life.
- Virtual reality
- Service web
I also raised about the topics of:
1. What is design?
2. Designer’s multiple roles
3. Where indeed does innovation come from?
4. Custimazable user centered design process.
