Posted by Fabien on Jan 9, 2011 in
Mac,
ux 
A couple of days ago, Apple launched the Mac App Store, a new way to find, buy, install and update applications for your Mac. It aims to replicate the success of the iPhone and iPad app stores. I believe it will be incredibly successful, breathing new life into the Mac software market by widely increasing the number of users installing (and paying for!) applications on their machine.
The reason is simple: the application purchase and installation process just got a million times easier, which for the first time brings it within reach of many users.
Read more…
Posted by Fabien on Nov 21, 2010 in
ux Today I took part in an new kind of event, called Design Jam.
As Johanna Kollmann (one of the organizers) has already done an excellent job providing an explanation of the concept and a summary of the day on johnnyholland.org, I’ll simply advise you go ahead and read her post first if you did not attend the event.
Leisa Reichelt, one of the roaming mentors of the days, provided her own review of the day’s efforts, kindly phrased as constructive advice. I was going to simply drop a comment on her post, but since I kept rambling and did not want to hijack her post, I’m writing my own thoughts here.
Read more…
Tags: designjam, djl1
Posted by Fabien on Sep 8, 2010 in
Uncategorized While some have noticed that the new iTunes 10 could now play music directly from connected iDevices without having to activate the special “Manually manage music and video” mode, the other interesting related, but much more interesting new feature was missed.
Previously, iTunes media transfert was either a full sync, meaning you had first to put songs in a playlist then tell iTunes to sync it with the phone, or a full manual process, where you could drag and drop files, but would loose the power of using the sync options defined.
It is now possible to simply drag and drop songs from the iTunes list to the iPhone icon, which which prompt iTunes to immediately transfer these songs to your device.
iTunes 10 will list those songs under a new “Manually Added Songs” group in the “Music” tab of its iPhone settings.
This new feature allow the best of both modes: full sync while still allowing immediate media transfer on demand. Sweet.
See it the new iPhone sync music settings screen on this screenshot.
PS. I discovered this by chance, and I can’t understand why Apples doesn’t announce such new features somewhere in their release notes.
Tags: iphone, itunes
Posted by Fabien on Jun 24, 2010 in
ui,
ux What is the main task I have to accomplish while reading an article on the web? The answer is obvious: the task is to read the article.
Yet looking at most websites, only a small part of the webpage actually supports this task. Safari Reader is the latest attempt to help users take matters into their hands.
Read the full post A reading mode for the web? on Flow Interactive’s Think blog
Posted by Fabien on Apr 25, 2010 in
ipad,
iphone,
ui Here are the slightly updated slides from my presentation at UXCampLondon 1.5.
This is an in-depth look at the iPad user interface with guidelines and examples: what’s new, and what lessons were learned from theTablet PC concept and the iPhone’s user interface.
If you think the iPad is just a bigger iPod, this presentation is for you.
View the slides on Slidshare (and make sure you read the notes!): Why the iPad UI matters, and how it differs from the Tablet PC, but also from the iPhone.
Tags: design, HIG, ipad, iphone, mobile, tablet, ui, ux, uxcamplondon
Posted by Fabien on Mar 28, 2010 in
ipad,
iphone,
ui Apple’s iPad will be released next week in the US, and a bit later in the rest of the world, so now is the perfect time to share why I think it will be a massive success, and deserves the attention of anyone who care about User eXperience.
Read more…
Posted by Fabien on Oct 15, 2009 in
iphone,
ui This post is my reply to Jude Rattle’s own post, titled “I don’t love my iPhone”.
I actually agree with many of Jude’s points:
1, 2 & 5) Typing is in some ways harder than it used to be when you were used to physical keys and T9 text-prediction.
3) The switch between portrait and landscape mode can be annoying, especially when lying down. There should at least be a preference to disable for in each app.
4) When the iPhone is off, it is off, and will not start itself up on time to wake yourself up as an alarm clock. Which also means it is totally off, not in some standby mode.
7) The battery life is not great: my iPhone 3GS last little more than a day in normal use, years ago I had a Nokia 3210 that lasted 4-5 days.
So the iPhone is not a great mobile phone, I would actually agree with that.
Many users who only need a simple basic mobile phone, would be better served by cheaper and less fragile devices, such as my old Nokia 3210.
But what surprised me in that post was that it was not mentioning what makes an iPhone so much more than a mobile phone.
Read more…
Tags: iphone, ui, ux
Posted by Fabien on Sep 26, 2009 in
Uncategorized The culmination of the Over the Air 09 conference is a developer competition. Over the 24h of the conference, developers are invited to code some application, with many prizes setup up by the organizers and the sponsors.
Sponsored categories ask for example how to provide a demonstration on how a sponsor’s product / API can be used. For example “Best BBC. com hack”, or “Best Lonely planet hack”. There are also general categories “Best use of WebApp/widget”, “Best hardware hack”, and the weirdly phrased “Best User Experience / Service Design”.
Sounds cool? Yeah, kind of. But to me such competitions, hackday or hackathon tend to encourage the worse of the typical developer mindset, which is often antinomic to delivering a good UX.
Read more…
Tags: #ota09, developers, hackaton, ucd, ux
Posted by Fabien on Sep 26, 2009 in
Uncategorized I attended the first day of the Over The Air conference yesterday, which proved very interesting for two reasons. First, I heard about some of the new and upcoming developments in mobile tech (widget, widget, widget, it seems…). Second, this was a Developers conference, and very much so. So this doubled as a field trip in developer land, ethnographic style.
If there was any doubt about the audience being developers, just counting the number of ladies would remove it. I estimate the ratio to be close to 1 woman for 15 guys, a very far cry from the approximate gender parity of UX crowds.
The session were mainly technical, full of info about APIs, (in-)compatibilities, standards etc. Some UX session were also present, but I have to say I was a bit disappointed by them. It’s not that they were not good, far from it actually, special props to Bryan Rieger with his incredibly clean, beautiful, and effective slides. It’s just that given my background in UX and the MSc I just finished, none of this was really news to me: I was simply not the intended audience.
Like any good event, #ota09 got me thinking on a couple of points, that will be the basis of a few blog post.
First up: Hackathons, developer’s conceptions, and how it negatively affect good UX
Tags: #ota09
Posted by Fabien on Sep 18, 2009 in
ui The new Zune HD is out (still US only), and the reviews are out.
Zune are an interesting breed. The first one was just fugly (remember brown as *#&* and lime green?). The second one looked better, and I have to say I quite like the hardware design of the Zune HD. FINALLY some device with its own design personality, not another iPhone cheap look alike.
Reading the review, and watching the videos of the UI, it seems Microsoft’s team produced a beautiful UI, full of eye candy and animation. However, it presents a really glaring flaw.
Read more…
Tags: ui, zune
