I like doing what I do, that’s why I do it. I currently work for Nokia as UX Director and Product Owner. I and am busy defining and developing the UX framework to deliver the next-generation of contextually driven services for mobile devices. Recently I have been working with Deutsche Telekom in their newly formed Product Design Center and prior to that I was the founder of Berlin startup ShopWindoz a social commerce platform. Previously I worked for Yahoo!, where I was Director of Product Development for Europe. I sometimes contribute to academic institutions, industry events and publications on topics including mobile apps, social media, e-commerce, agile product development and design. If you would like to see more info take a look at my CV or some selected case studies.
As I spend most of my time recently thinking about SDK’s, UX patterns and interoperability, modularity is top of mind again and so are the words of Tim Berners-Lee in 1998…see below. It’s hard to get teams thinking about modularity for some reason.
When you design a system, or a language, then if the features can be broken into relatively loosely bound groups of relatively closely bound features, then that division is a good thing to be made a part of the design. This is just good engineering. It means that when you want to change the system, you can with luck in the future change only one part, which will only require you to understand (and test) that part. This will allow other people to independently change other parts at the same time. This is just classic good software design and books have been written about it. The corollary, the TOII is less frequently met.
Modular design hinges on the simplicity and abstract nature of the interface definition between the modules. A design in which the insides of each module need to know all about each other is not a modular design but an arbitrary partitioning of the bits.
Its is not only necessary to make sure your own system is designed to be made of modular parts. It is also necessary to realize that your own system, no matter how big and wonderful it seems now, should always be designed to be a part of another larger system.
This is often much more difficult than modularity.
Had great fun doing a session yesterday at ProductCamp Berlin – seemed to go down quite well, got some good responses and comments on the content. If you would like a copy (.pdf) download here.
Layar the mobile augmented reality browser for Android, is moving fast. Barely three weeks after launching its application to much fanfare, it is opening up its platform by handing out keys for its just launched API to a select number of developers. Interested parties will need to fill out a request form, and the company will subsequently handpick 50 developers and provide them with the necessary documentation, tools and a test environment for third-party layers.
Saw this a while back and got quite excited, especially the social aspect where you can add your own data/tag to real world objects. And it’s an iPhone app! Check their site http://www.tonchidot.com/blog.html (Japanese) which is also cool.
This video shows a nice idea and the potential of AR (superimposing superimposing of computer-generated images or text on an image of the real world, as taken by the camera of a mobile phone). Expect to see a ton of innovation around this in coming months and no doubt marketing campaigns. Bladerunner here we come…
After perusing recently a book on Braun design I realise how iconic some of their design pieces are. I once had the clock below (AB 1 clock) which is a very good example of their 10 principles. In 1971 Braun introduced the AB1 Alarm Clock, designed to do what is required — keep accurate time and wake you up in the morning — no more no less. By adhering to design principles, Dieter Rams and Dietrich Lubs, created an icon of modern design. I bought this clock when I was a student, it cost a few pounds no more and I used it every day for many years. I found it a very pleasant way to wake up, easy to use even when half asleep, non-intrusive and something I grew to love.
This got me laughing. A real world mashup – a book about micro blogging available in e-reader format…that’s a strange and wonderful paradox which somehow defines the current state of ‘Content’. In terms of the standard definition even wikipedia struggles to define it…this description is obviously out of date but still left me cold and confused. Clearly I think there is a need to try and clear things up and redefine the term a bit and thankfully a number of people have tried – Content even got it’s own 2.0 moniker in recent years which (although irritating) is quite useful in bringing things at least up to date. Econtentmag puts it so…”As with its Web 2.0 counterpart, Content 2.0 includes structuring content with adherence to openly developed standards, collaboration, and mashups—all delivered in highly visual ways.” This is OK but does not help clearly define it. O’Reilly.com blog has had a go in defining Content 2.0 (see table below) …which is all well and good but doesn’t cover the contextual aspect in terms of the ‘Who, What, When and especially Where’. Content 2.0 is all about being mobile – location aware content is here to stay.
The next generation of smart content services (well in fact they are all ready here) will take full advantage of the rich metadata and services available (geotags, microformats, API’s, etc.) to provide a richer and more engaging content experience. These experiences go way beyond the simple paradigms of creation and consumption and enable us to look at and participate in content in new ways. Imagine for example being able to wander through a city listening to a playlist constructed of songs that are currently popular with the locals or bars that automatically compile playlists based on the tastes of people present. I am anticipating some really cool content related apps with the next wave of location savvy phones and expect the major the players to be focusing on this in 2009.
I can say I have had the privilege of spending some time with him whilst I was at Yahoo!, extremely sharp and charismatic…
Super Techies: Larry Tesler–the trail from Xerox PARC to Yahoo by ZDNet‘s Dan Farber — We’ve started a new video program, Super Techies, where I interview some of the people who are major impact on the past and future of computing. First up is Larry Tesler, currently Yahoo’s vice president of user experience and design. Tesler’s career is a roadmap of innovation in user interface design, from the early days of [...]
More and more I wonder why apple chose to not ship the iPhone safari with a flash player support, seems crazy to me considering the multimedia capabilities of the phone and the fact a LOT of websites depend on it (I couldn’t access the lego online shop on my iPhone recently) . One excuse I heard from Apple is that the touch interface would not work with most Flash media but I don’t buy this. Steve Jobs has been critical of Flash for the iPhone in the past, suggesting that the mobile version of Flash isn’t powerful enough for the iPhone, and that the Mac version is too bloated for mobile gadgets – I don’t buy this either…Nokia have a version of the Flash player running on their handsets fine. From the Adobe camp we hear “We have a version that’s working on the emulation. This is still on the computer and you know, we have to continue to move it from a test environment onto the device and continue to make it work. So we are pleased with the internal progress that we’ve made to date.” This is bollocks too…mainly because this should have been sorted out a long time ago before even the 3G shipped. On top of this and to my amusement I saw on the BBC today a story about how Apple’s latest iPhone ad is misleading because it does not offer ‘The full Internet” on the phone, the ASA has received complaints from consumers claiming that lack of support for Flash and Java means that not all parts of the internet are available on the iPhone. Well if the rumours and press statements are correct we can expect a Flash player for the iPhone soon, but I am not so confident due to Steve Jobs arrogance and bad relationship with Adobe. Shame because this would improve the iPhone browsing experience considerably for us (the people who pay handsomely for the device and app content), maybe another recent example of Apple not caring too much about their customers and product quality?
Matt Harding, the round-the-world dancing guy, was flown out to Yahoo to provide a morale booster for the beleaguered troops — and CEO Jerry Yang put on quite the show in a video broadcast to all employees. As Monty Python put it “Always look on the bright side of life”!
The eagle has landed…well we have a new promotional tool for sellers actually. I think it’s great and hope to see it being adopted by our sellers real soon.
Last Monday our latest release went live with (amongst other things) English text…hooray I can read the site now.? I get a feeling we will need to include translated product descriptions to encourage buyers from outside of Germany. Still it’s a good step in terms of extending our seller reach and gaining more visibility internationally.
Well it’s been set out it’s cage…shopwindoz.com is the first product I have initiated in a while and one I’m that I’m quite proud of. Coming to Berlin it struck me that someone should put all the cool, unique boutiques online – and that’s exactly what me and a small team at tsoosayLabs has done. The products we feature are representative of what makes Berlin cool, quirky and unique…hoping that the concept scales and we get to enable creatives in other cities.
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After perusing recently a book on Braun design I realise how iconic some of their design pieces are. I once had the clock below (AB 1 clock) which is a very good example of their 10 principles. In 1971 Braun introduced the AB1 Alarm Clock, designed to do what is required — keep accurate time and wake you up in the morning — no more no less. By adhering to design principles, Dieter Rams and Dietrich Lubs, created an icon of modern design. I bought this clock when I was a student, it cost a few pounds no more and I used it every day for many years. I found it a very pleasant way to wake up, easy to use even when half asleep, non-intrusive and something I grew to love.
