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A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She reduced altitude and spotted a man below. She descended a bit more and shouted, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."
The man below replied, "You're in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude."
"You must be an engineer," said the balloonist.
"I am," replied the man, "How did you know?"
"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I've no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help at all. If anything, you've delayed my trip."
The man below responded, "You must be in Management."
"I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?"
"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise which you've no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault."
From Arstechnica
"Users: I'm not gonna pay a lot for this muf^h^h^h mobile internet!
There is still a fair amount of interest in mobile broadband access, but much of that comes from corporate users, those who need high-speed Internet access at their fingertips no matter where they are. But most Internet users are content with having broadband at home and at the office; they don't need it on the go."
Large telco's have invested in 3G without similar input in to application innovation. It would seem that users in the US do not see mobile internet solving tasks for them.
Build an effing huge themepark without any rides, you wont sell tickets.
Article noted cultural difference with UK. Curious about this, I wonder has population density got anything to do with it?
If a great musician plays great music but no one hears it, is it any good?
The Washington Post ran a little experiment in which they took the world top most violin player on the world most expensive (and best) violin, put him in the role of a busker to see if anyone would notice.
They didnt.
If a good designer follows the theoretical rule book, runs all the tests and produces a great design, but puts in the wrong context. Did they waste their time: yes.
I think the pandora's box of multitouch interfaces opened a little further with this device. Its not hard to see this being applied to industrial process control, or even product development process management.
Lets say I'm a ui designer with X amount of available cycles that I feed in to the managment system. I could then be placed on to a react-table by mangement along with other project resources, the system would then interact my bandwidth and adjust the overall output. Would make a nice front end to a MS Project style app.
More information:
http://mtg.upf.edu/reactable
I believe the concept of simplicity is very much an engineering centric thought. It combines both the presentation layer and the underlying schema, whereas non-technical users evaluate the 'skin' alone.
I've concluded that a design, esp device design, with a low cognitive load is perceived as clean. You can bury a tonne of features in a clean design. So, I think a goal of 'simplicity' is a big red herring for designers.
This essentially boils everything back down to 'dont make me think'
As Bill DeRouchey of History of the Button responded on the IxDA list
" In insider terms, it's reducing cognitive load. In everyday terms, it's don't make me think.
Simplicity is clarity. "
Dan Saffer posted to the IxDA list about a site redesign
It would seem that the first rev of the site was design-engineering centric. That is, in the wild-west attitude of web2.0, there was an assumption made that their users were constantly leaning forward open to any new pattern that makes functional sense. That users were in a constant mode of explore, investigate, willingness to experiment. This is very much a design/engineering mindset.
Its all about the content, the news changes from day to day, the layout of your deadtree paper does not. Purely reading content is not a goal in itself, passing the time away is.
I would redress Mr Saffer's original subject line "Don't Be Too Innovative with Your UI..." with: dont be too unfamiliar with users who come to your site with no clear
goals, they'll move on.
Innovation and familiarity are not mutually exclusive.
