Maybe one of the best definitions of “applied design” that I’ve seen: The Museum of Modern Art in New York opens a show titled “Applied Design” in March, and the show description is great.

“There are still people who think that design is just about making things, people, and places pretty. In truth, design has spread to almost every facet of human activity, from science and education to politics and policymaking, for a simple reason: one of design’s most fundamental tasks is to help people respond to change. A designer today can choose to focus on interactions, interfaces, the Internet, visualizations, socially minded infrastructures and products, 5-D spaces, bioengineering, sustainability, video games, critical scenarios, and yes, even furniture. Several outstanding examples of this vitality and diversity are presented in this installation, ranging from a mine detonator by young Afghani designer Massoud … Read More »

If you’re a Berkeley Haas School of Business alumnus and aren’t aware that the holiday party is back this year, here is the invite: HAN SF Holiday Party.

December 12, 2012 (12/12/12) at The University Club on Nob Hill, San Francisco (entire 3rd floor – great views).

At least two of us from ADG will be attending. Hope to see you there!

Attending Asymconf, IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, January 30, 2013. Will also be attending the Storyteller Workshop day before. If you’re interested in the “state, history and future of innovation as seen from a California perspective,” as presented by ex-Nokia analyst, Harvard MBA Horace Dediu, consider. Should be a great conference. Dediu is a compelling interpreter of data and trends – especially relating to the mobile industry and Apple in particular.

Asymco website is here.

Conference website is here.

Horace Dediu’s excellent Podcast, The Critical Path, can be heard here.

As mentioned throughout this site, and specifically here, we will often take the time to put together 2D motion visualizations (in video) in order to “look ahead” to what a product might look and feel like – long before the actual (and drawn-out) pain of detailed wireframing, design and coding.

For the recent Verizon Apps store project, we wanted to provide Verizon management with a preview of how the interface might look in both a smartphone format as well as a tablet format. We also wanted to preview enhanced media types (e.g. video) in the interface long before the development schedule would get to that advanced version of the application.

This is our “Shoot for the Moon, Land on the Roof” motto in practice.

In this short motion comp, an early design version of the Apps store opens on a smartphone showing … Read More »

After a year of design and development, the new Verizon Apps store has launched to about 4 million devices, and will roll out to a total of around 22 million devices by the end of July, 2012.

The store is a ground-up redesign of the storefront application pre-loaded to the majority of Verizon Android devices. ADG was hired in January of 2011 to conduct a tactical redesign of Verizon’s prior store, and then a wholesale redesign of the store – for both smartphones and tablets – to be launched in 2012.

Key Features
Monochromatic framework to present highly flexible merchandising options
Simple UI controls with clear catalog navigation cues
Dramatically improved merchandising options for developers
“Responsive” mobile GUI to handle screen sizes resolution from wrist-top devices up to – potentially – tv screen size devices.
Full-screen dynamic wallpaper backgrounds, changing the face of the store daily
Support … Read More »

In a surprise move, our (great) neighbor George Lucas has evidently donated a large corner building in our downtown San Anselmo with plans to raze the building and build a new park.

My wife and I walked by the other evening to take a look at the rendering in a window. Per the Patch article here, rumor has it that part of the agreement includes a couple of statues of famous Lucas characters in the park.

Maybe it’s wishful thinking on my part, but is that Indiana Jones, with whip in hand, and – oh please – Yoda? See the close-up shot. Also a copy of the letter to Lucas from the Chamber of Commerce, which does mention “statues of the characters you created”.

Lucas Park

Lucas Letter

Lucas Park

Indiana Jones & Yoda?

Lumin makes Macworld’s “The Week in iOS Apps”.

Here’s what they wrote:

You’ve heard of “augmented reality?” Well the $2 Lumin app for iPhone offers something different—“magnfied reality.” That is, it actually turns your iOS device into a magnifying glass, letting you lock onto a detail with the camera and showing that detail at ten times its actual size, a feature that can be used for everything from getting a close look at fine print on contracts to checking your makeup without a mirror. The newest update to the app lets users share closeup images to Facebook or Instagram, or save them automatically to Dropbox. Finally: An app that brings 21st century technology to the task of examining your zits.

I have to say though that we didn’t actually have “zits” in mind when we designed this app …

Article is here.

Macworld product page … Read More »

We’ve submitted V2.0 of Lumin to the App Store for review and hoping for a general release soon. In the meantime, here are a few sneak preview screen shots.

We’re pretty excited about this release as it incorporates a few new features we wanted to include in V1.0, as well as great recommendations from the growing, and enthusiastic, Lumen user base.

We’ll post a full list of new features as soon as the app is available on the App Store, but the screens here should give you a few clues about what’s coming.

Cheers!

UPDATE: Lumin 2.0 is live in the app store!

Take Me ThereLumin V2.0, in the iTunes app store

Image history palette

Saved image

Zoomed image

Test image

Test image detail

Congrats to our friends at Chomp – Ben Keighran and Cathy Edwards – for the acquisition of their company Chomp by Apple. We worked with Chomp to integrate their search functionality into the new Verizon Apps Store, designed by ADG, and wish them the best of luck at their new digs in Cupertino. Can’t wait to see what influence they have over the iTunes store.

Techcrunch broke the story yesterday.

It’s hard to describe how excited I am about Apple’s announcement this morning regarding iBooks Author and their effort to replace printed textbooks with iPads. As an Apple shareholder, and heavy Apple user as a professional, I think it’s important (hopefully more successful long-term than iAd has been so far), but this announcement resonates on a much deeper level for me.

Almost 20 years ago I wrote a short essay called Allison’s Book which described a young girl going to school with only a tablet in her backpack – not 40 pounds of textbooks – just a small portable device that contained all her textbooks and was networked for things like updates and tests. This was before the Internet, before the iPad. Pretty much before i-Anything. In fact, the media in the essay is basically something akin … Read More »