design

Jack Dorsey the Zen Master

November 11, 2011

I had a great day yesterday at the GigaOM Roadmap conference. The agenda had a number of great speakers including Brian Cheskey of AirBnB and Tony Fadell of Nest, the red hot company that is re-defining what a thermostat should look like. The thesis the conference explored is one that Om Malik (now my boss) has [...]

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Oblong and the g-speak UI

June 23, 2011

Remember the computer UI in Minority Report? Yeah, they can do that now.

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The $8,000 dumb phone

May 2, 2011

When you can afford a personal secretary to keep track of your every need, a mobile phone is basically a piece of jewelry, much like a wrist watch or pocket watch of by-gone days. These are single-purpose devices that are a fashion statement, more form than function. Taking this approach, focused on the voice aspects [...]

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Social Decay

March 10, 2011

The money shot from yesterday’s Yahoo Research’s Like Log study is the social activity graph below showing how this activity drops off a cliff after the first 24 hours. Looking at over 100,000 articles across 45 big media sites over the course of three months, Yahoo researcher Yury Lifshits found that a vast majority of [...]

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Re-Skinning Facebook

October 10, 2010

Stumbled across a quick and dirty side project that uses Facebook’s social graph api to pull your newsfeed and present an alternate display. Try it yourself at Facebook-me.com.

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Simple Solution – Nokia Bike Charger

June 3, 2010

Sometimes it’s the simple things. Why not a dual purpose phone charger, phone mount for your bicycle? Stay above 7.5 mph and you’ll charge your phone at the same rate as if you plugged it into the wall and you’ll be able to enjoy free turn-by-turn navigation. Launching first in Kenya where it’s really needed [...]

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docomo’s designer collection

June 1, 2010

My wife just got back from Japan and picked up the latest brochure from NTT Docomo. As a member of the very desirable young female demographic, she’s always been pestering me that Nokia should focus less on whiz-bang geek features and more on the phone as a fashion statement. I would agree and, in that vein [...]

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Evolution of Cell Phone Small

November 12, 2009

Designer Kyle Bean makes Russian matryoshka dolls out of cell phones. From the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X (1983) to the Apple iPhone (2007).

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Less Powerpoint, More Prototypes

October 14, 2009

I’m a big believer in hacking together a working prototype to demonstrate product ideas. Powerpoint mocks basically put a shiny gloss on a paper sketch and because it’s not real, generate endless debate where no one is really speaking on authority because the product doesn’t exist. Once you have a prototype the debate becomes substantive.  [...]

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iPhone UX Anti-Patterns

July 5, 2009

What follows are notes from a session I attended at the last Web 2.0 Expo. While a few months old, the notes here are still very relevant. As a Nokia employee, some may think it strange for me to blog about how to develop for the iPhone but I think not, the priciples I share [...]

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