Thursday 30 June 2011

Clouds Apps - Just Design and Build One Version

Apple came along and created  'apps'
And very good they are
Everybody loves apps and everybody wants apps
Thus every platform and device needs to have apps
And of course a suitable app store from where consumers can fill there device

But for Apple it was easy
They have one device with one OS and one screen resolution
Creating an app for multiple platforms is no fun
In fact, it is a nightmare (believe me I have lived that nightmare)

You begin with one platform - lets say android.
Android define three screen sizes; small, medium and large.
For an app with 10 key screens
You will need to design a total of 30 screens.

Now lets add Java touch (think Nokia).
Maybe just two key resolutions
Thats another 20 screens to design

Now add Java non-touch, Blackberry and Windows
Suddenly you are designing 80 screens for your simple app
thats 8 variations of each screen

This is not a lot of fun for anyone involved in the project
And a huge waste of time and money
(and that is not to mention all the time coding each of these different versions)


This is another great reason to be moving towards HTML 5 apps,
or Cloud Apps as a colleague called them the other day.

We keep the strict UI - this is great for users
We keep the tightly focused functionality - also great for users
We loose the constant updates

And we only design and build one version

Tuesday 14 June 2011

UX: Not just part of a design process

The last 18 months has seen User Experience become the trendy buzz word of the moment.
Its been around for years, but suddenly clients are asking:
'Do you do you UX?' or
'Who is the UX expert in your team?'.

This has led to the idea that UX is part of the digital design process.
Something you do between requirements gathering and visual design.
You bring a UX designer in.
They do some UX magic.
And the end user gets a fantastic experience.

What I'm realising is that in reality UX is not just part of the design process.
It is the process.

UX Design is a way of thinking.
A point of view or a design philosophy.
It informs every aspect of the design process.
From requirements gathering through to visual design and the final coding of the site.

If you fail to consider the users experience at anyone of these points you are not truly practicing UX design (or should that be user centred design).

Wednesday 8 June 2011

Books Ngram Viewer

I'm sure I'm pretty late to the party on this one, but what a great tool for researching social trends -  Google Ngram viewer.

Search occurrences of words in books published over the past 200 years. Although obviously it is only the books scanned by Googles Books Project (a pretty amazing thing in it self).

Even better you can compare occurrences of different words. To me this seems like a great way to search and understand social trends over an extend time frame (i.e. before the internet)

Here is my comparison of art vs design, (design in blue) interestingly since the late 70s design has begun to be mentioned more frequently - what does this mean?












It's also worth doing the same comparison on Google Trends and also Blog Pluse to get an idea of trends right now.