you want to start something?

Mike Cane is perfectly lucid when he says:

If you’re sitting around applying for jobs and waiting for Something To Happen, you’ll be on the street before long.

If you have some manual skills, start thinking about making stands for the iPad. Especially if you have a woodworking shop.

You can sell them on etsy and even auction them off on eBay.

I think there’s a real opportunity for people who are good with their ‘hands’.

I’m bollocks with things like that. Well. I never studied ‘craft’ in school and I’ve more or less avoided being ‘handy’. It comes as no surprise that Arlene is delighted when I have a screwdriver or a drill in my hand – it’s infrequent enough to be a novelty.

But I’m interested in drawing something and it’s related to Mike’s recent lucidity (which has been a habit of late). I’m interested in drawing my ideal iPad case. And then maybe finding someone who can make it. It’s a new experience for me.

Tags: design by mj
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I just read this brief blog post from BrainStore which is designed to help people visualise thinking about the future. They say to let them:

invent “Headlines of the Future” for the industry or topic you are working on? It puts them in the shoes of a different group (journalists) and generally produces great insights that people can relate to better because they are more familiar to them.

The example they give is:

This is a process that beings by eschewing assumptions. For example: lots of people have a concrete preconception of what makes a personal computer. They have severe difficulties in accepting notions which are outside of their paradigm. And it’s not just in computing. By challenging assumptions which are supposedly fundamental to the current stream of thought, we can find new ways to innovate.

Some of these (such as “No More Keyboards” are easy to envisage with the adoption of touch-screens and some of the brain-activity work going on in our local universities – keyboards could already be a thing of the past. But what about screens? We’ve seen a concept computer from DELL which doesn’t have a screen, it has a projector by default. Or how about a wearable computer which feeds data directly to a video headset. What about non-visible user interfaces like on the iPod shuffle? Or one which uses aural or haptic clues?

It isn’t quite as easy as just taking each statement and looking at the inverse – but rather to examine it for fragile assumptions.

Tags: Commentary, Do Something Now, design by mj
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From the IBM DeveloperWorks Architectural Manifesto

While screen size is perhaps the most tangible hardware consideration impacting user interface design for mobile applications, it isn’t the only one. Available memory, CPU, and bandwidth capacity impact the performance and functionality of your mobile application, which in turn impacts the design of its user interface.

The article is a few years old but probably never more valid.

Tags: Commentary, design by mj
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One of the beautiful things about having your own blog is the ability to talk about whatever you want. During the run-up to the IBA’09, I was nominated in the ‘tech’ category which automatically put me up against some of the biggest heavyweights in the Irish tech community. And my argument was, and still is, I’m not really a tech blogger. I write about what interests me – what makes me tick and sometimes what makes me tock.

My current interest is user interface design, especially focussed on small devices. That means I’ll be talking and ranting a bit about that.

Now – I’m not a designer other than I know what I like, I have reasons for it, I’ve read a good bit about user interfaces and I studied HCI in University (the standard single module squeezed in between Knowledge Based Systems and Information Systems Analysis and Design. I’m not an artist (though I have drawn ‘life’ incredibly accurately – in my dissection classes – which means I can effectively draw anything that I’ve killed or dismembered. So, I’m not an artist.

But Design is something you can learn. There’s a quality of art about it but most of it is science. I’m constantly reminded that in every object that is manufactured, in every piece of software that is build, the size, shape, the curve of things, the straight lines, the position of inputs and outputs, every pixel of a user interface – all of it was designed. It may have been designed well or it may have been designed badly, but it was designed.

So, I’m going to be ranting a bit about user interface design. Not web design. Not web standards. User interface design – focussing on small screens.

Tags: Commentary, design by mj
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