Applied Design Group

Refinement

Posted in Inspiration, Latest - February 27, 2010 - tim

Our perception of refinement – a product or product category’s ability to incrementally improve – seems to be on some type of accelerated (if not exponential) curve like we’re used to with Moore’s Law in the tech world.

But some products seem to defy wholesale refinement on a fast track – and these objects tend to be what we often call “classics”.

Take the bike seat (or “saddle” as they were first called).  Weird I know, but stay with me.

I ordered a new bike recently to use as a commuter.  It’s somewhat special, and I’ll be writing about it after it comes in (it looks like it may be the first in Marin County, which is interesting given how bike-crazy this place is), but that’s not the focus here.  While waiting, I’ve been researching various components that might improve on the stock.  Typically with a commuter bike the pedals are crap, because most owners have very particular preferences and replace them immediately (as I will), and the seats aren’t much better, for the same reason.

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We have to learn another one?

Posted in Latest, News, Thoughts - February 21, 2010 - tim

Moore’s Law brings many blessings.

No one can say that the scarily consistent improvements in computing power – processor speed, storage density, screen resolution, etc. – don’t result in general improved user experiences over time.  But for the folks who make a living (or hobby) of crafting the so-called Human-Computer Interface, keeping up with what is possible, and arguably necessary, is tough.

And it’s about to get tougher.

Dimension 1- From Audible to Visible

I could argue that the first real UI “breakthrough” goes as far back as writing itself  - clay tablets or maybe more realistically the Gutenberg press.  Getting any form of consistent communication on any form of “media” was the first big 1.5 dimension challenge.  But in the context of those of us who deal with user interfaces in the interactive / computer world it really started with the screen (or terminal as we called them back then).

Sure, back when we fired up the screechy old 300 baud modems the text was crawling across two-dimensional space (the x-y space of the screen), but from a UI perspective the text moved from one point (top left) to another (bottom right).

This was all fine and good, and I (and many others) spent many late nights trolling strange BBS’s (long before the Internet) with our nose pressed to the screen watching the “crawl”.  We certainly considered at the time that it would be cool (and probably inevitable) that the screen would become “addressable” and thus 2-dimensional, but it was hard to see at the time what that would actually bring us.

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Wisdom

Posted in Inspiration, Latest - February 13, 2010 - tim

Just came across – and bought – this book by Andrew Zuckerman. The trailer for the book is worth watching.

Music to design stuff by …

Posted in Inspiration, Latest - February 8, 2010 - tim

Tinariwen at SFJazz Festival – c u there …

yes, we still do banners …

Posted in Latest, News - February 1, 2010 - tim

… since people keep asking. Amazing that these things still work.

Way back in 1996 Red Sky built what has been called the first interactive banner (the Pong Banner, built in Shockwave, before Flash, brainchild of Joel Hladecek). We thought at the time we were shepherding in the demise of the static banner, but these things refuse to die.

We don’t do any web banners anymore (mainly because we haven’t been asked), these are all mobile. But they’re still for the most part static. And they still, despite our efforts to obsolete them 14 years ago, work.

Humbling.

(More on the Pong banner here.)