The Design of Everyday Things

The Design of Everyday Things comes highly recommended on Coding Horror's recommended reading list as well as many other software developers. After giving it a read, I thought it was good, relevant today, but slightly dated with their examples.



After reading the book, I am reminded of the light switch to my bathroom in my current apartment in Los Angeles. See below.



It's such a horrible design! The left-most button, which is red, is for off. And then there are three switch combination to turn lights on. Three. It's just, awful.

Anyway, I got the book as an ebook from Amazon for my Kindle Fire. The book has some good examples of common design issues in today's world, but some of them are a bit dated. An example would be the hardline telephone. I haven't used one of those in such a long time since we currently live in an age of smartphones.

Some of my favorite quotes from the book:

"... websites are often unusable, cellular telephones grow ever more complex, and automobile dashboards look like airplane cockpits. The new products impose themselves upon us in the bedroom, in the automobile, while walking down the street. As each new technology emerges, the companies forget the lessons of the past and let engineers build their fanciful creations, driven by marketing insistence on a proliferation of features. As a result, confusion and distraction increase."

"Technology may change rapidly, but people change slowly. The principles, the examples, and lessons of The Design of Everyday Things come from an understanding of people. They remain true forever."

"But what good is technology if it is too complex to use?"

"The same technology that simplifies life by providing more functions in each device also complicates life by making the device harder to learn, harder to use. This is the paradox of technology."

"But human thought-- and its close relatives, problem solving and planning-- seem more rooted in past experience than in logical deduction. Mental life is not neat and orderly. It does not proceed smoothly and gracefully in neat, logical form. Instead, it hops, skips, and jumps its way from idea to idea, tying together; forming new creative leaps, new insights, and concepts. Human thought is not like logic; it is fundamentally different in kind and in spirit. The difference is neither worse nor better. But it is the difference that leads to creative discovery and to great robustness of behavior."

I recommend the book for designers and developers, but not as an ebook format. It doesn't translate well from paper to digital for my Kindle. A lot of examples and pictures did not fit well on the screen and really was a distraction in the reading and flow of things. As for the content, I think developers should have some idea how things are designed with the user in mind, thus I agree with many high-profile developers that recommend this book.

LA Photowalk with Trey Ratcliff and Tom Anderson

Over this past weekend, on Sunday, the evening of the NBA All-Star game and Academy Awards, I went to check out a Google+  LA Photowalk in Santa Monica hosted by Trey Ratcliff and Tom Anderson (aka mySpace Tom).

I had a great time seeing and learning how other photography enthusiasts and professionals see things. I brought my Canon 60D, Canon 16-35mm L lens, and tripod. I regret not bringing another lens with me for some more flexibility. A wide-angle is definitely the one to use.

Some Google Engineers were there too. I did get a nifty Google+ Photography sticker.

Check out this nice group shot photo by Paul R. Giunta.

You can follow more photos, people, and conversations about this on Google+, searching for the #LAPhotowalk hashtag.

My full set of photos take can be found in my web album.

Photography enthusiasts gather at Santa Monica Pier at 4:00pm.

Trey and Tom both arrive, a little late.

Trey and mySpace Tom meet and greet quite a few people. I actually shook Trey's hand (no photo of that though).

Trey giving tips to doing HDR 

Below are my first attempts at HDR photography. I've known about it for a while, but never attempted it. For bracketing, I was supposed to stay in AP mode, but I did it in manual because I forgot.

I used Photomatix Pro to generate the HDR photos below. I used Trey's coupon code "STUCKINCUSTOMS" to get 15% off at checkout. I lifted the coupon from Trey's site StuckInCustoms.com.

I am a Meetup Junkie

I've become a Meetup Junkie. Every month I attend several meetups related to technology and food. I can't seem to get enough of following these interests with other like-minded individuals, in the real world.


The picture above is from Fight Club.


I primarily use Meetup to find interesting groups by city. I've used it in Chicago, Bangkok, San Francisco, and now Los Angeles. It's fantastic and addicting!

But for those who haven't used such a service, it may be somewhat scary-- especially if you are an introvert. What it initially amounts to is walking into a place and/or crowd, not knowing anyone or what kind of event it could be. I mean, yes, there will probably be a kind of theme/topic such as Ruby or Startups. But if you are walking in by yourself, without a friend or co-worker, you probably won't know anyone. And that can be a little intimidating. I still find it a little intimidating.

However, the lovely thing about meetups, is that a lot of people are walking in like that. Many want to be social. Many are passionate about the topic at hand, and want to talk about it. That's really the upshot of it. Of course that doesn't mean everyone is friendly and talkative. In fact there are meetups I've been meaning to remove off my schedule just because it didn't meet my expectation or it's simply not for me.



A collage of some of technology-based meetups I've attended from 2010 to present.

I've been using services such as Meetup and Eventbrite since 2009/2010, give or take a few months. I find these services fills a gap that exists between social networks and the real world. It's interesting how social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and G+ allow us to be "social" in the virtual sense, but rarely connect people in the real world. Evite had their chance at this and blew it.

Meetup.com stands above the rest. It doesn't have an entry-point where users need to have a social network to start using their service. Example-- Facebook requires you to have several friends to make the site useful. And even then, your connections may not have the same interests as you do, say about photography. Which leaves a gap between you, your interests, and the real world. Same things can be said about Twitter.

Anyhoo, if you do happen to see me at a meetup in your respective city, please do say hello!

LA MongoDB February Meetup

Last night I went to my first MongoDB meetup. They have a twitter account: @lamongodb. The meetup was hosted at Factual Inc.

Anand "Kumi" Nandakumar (@kumi360) presented MongoDB + Node.js design decisions for Jumpspoon. Nuri Halperin presented MongoDB vs. RDBMS.

Overall a good group. I look forward to attend future meetups and learn more about how mongodb is being used.

You can find the pictures I took at meetups in 2012 in this album. Here are some of the pictures I took:







Joe Devon (@joedevon)
 

Anand

Nuri

Twitter Lists

This blog post has two sections.

For the past two days, I've been slowly reorganizing and curating my Twitter lists. After completing the task, I sent out a tweet as follows:

Twitter needs a better UI for managing lists. The click and checkbox list is just horrible.
— Steven S. (@sunpech) February 20, 2012

What I was tweeting about how there is a dropbox-like feature that makes organizing (add/remove) twitter accounts to various lists very cumbersome. The screenshot below only shows the first step of several just to get the process started for EACH TWITTER ACCOUNT I want to edit. It's a real pain in the butt.



It almost makes me not want to keep lists even. It's certainly not a feature I use myself since I use Tweetdeck and have a small-ish number of people I follow (less than 500)-- everyone is in a single scrolling column.

End of section 1. Point: Twitter List UI/UX* sucks.

Onto section 2....

Soon after my tweet, a twitter follower pointed me to Zach Holman's blog post, Don't Give Your Users Shit Work. I agree with many of the points Zach points out, that social web software shouldn't make it a pain to maintain circles/lists/groups-- the shit work. The software needs to be smart in making default common groups, and being able to decide where friends/contacts go-- smart work.

I disagree in the following situations:

1. When there isn't enough good meta info of a contact to place in a proper lists.
2. When the list isn't for private use. It's for public use.

The first point, when there isn't great meta info for the software, the list needs further human curation. The software may not be able to decide the best list to place the contact.

For example, you've connected with someone on Facebook that's not connected to your network, school, work, or any group. You are close friends, but there are no initial indications that says otherwise. You would need to manually add them to your "Close Friends" group.

The second point is the most important, when the lists being maintained isn't even for your personal use, but rather for public consumption. The lists that I've generated I do not use whatsoever. They're purely for others to view and follow if they feel that it would be of interest to them. 

For example: Chicago entities. I selected user-groups/meetups/entities in Chicago that I like and put them in a list. Twitter doesn't know that is the purpose of the list I just created. It's not a list I personally use since all my tweets are in a single column in Tweetdeck. The list is for someone who possibly thinks I know something or that I have good taste, and would like to follow what I think are good Chicago tweeple.

My point is that it's not shit work nor smart work. It's just work that needs human thought and time to accomplish. Maybe my work is all for nothing, that no one finds it useful. I can live with that.

* = UI is User Interface. UX is User Experience.

Interest in Pinterest?

Last week I signed up for Pinterest. I've used it a bit, but haven't been that enthusiastic about it. I think it's interesting, but I definitely have some concerns if I could be a good user of their service.



For those of you unfamiliar with what I would call a new social-thing-sharing-service, from their website:

Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows you to organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.
People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and share their favorite recipes.

Just from their own description, they used the terms: beautiful things, weddings, home decorations, and recipes. None of this really applies to me! I mean, yes, I do like beautiful things, designs, art-- such as t-shirts, men's fashion, photography, artwork, and various tech gears, but I find myself wondering how much I would really want to share.

Let me explain.

I like what I like, it's my style or culture and whatnot. I'm unsure if I would want others to try to copy my style. I already don't like it for the rare occurrences when I meet anyone who has the exact same t-shirt I do.

Don't get me wrong, I love sharing knowledge such as interesting links, videos, articles, blogs, pictures, etc with my various social networks. But these aren't intimate in this real world such as personal fashion and style. Imagine if a friend decked out their living room to be so similar to yours because they saw some of the things you just pinned up. Or worse, they decked it out better than you did.

I know this is unlikely to happen. Or is it? Already, maybe once a year I see someone wearing the exact same t-shirt I have. It's certainly not the end of the world, but it does make me glad that I didn't wear that exact t-shirt out that day.

So I ask, what incentive do I have to share what I consider to be something of personal taste that can be copied widely by others in my social circles?

Maybe I have it wrong. I love reading and sharing reviews on Amazon products I love. I also do reviews on my very own blog. That helps a person make a decision in buying the item if they come across it on Amazon or even my own site. But I suppose a slight advantage to doing that is because I'm an Amazon Affiliate, where any clicks-thru purchases helps put money in my pocket.

Maybe my real issue is that it's very much tied to what would be a very real social network. And because there is a specialized social network, it can be effectively used for specific interests. I wonder if my Amazon Affiliate link, when pinned to my board will be stripped my affiliate identification, and replaced with Pinterest's?

Anyway, I'm not saying this service is horrible or anything. I actually think it's very good. But I'm just not feeling it after one week of using it.

Microsoft's New Windows 8 Logo

Microsoft has a new logo design for their operating system (OS), Windows. I've been reading a few tech bloggers/writers reactions to it lately, and I felt I just had to add my two bits in.

The last time I did a blog post on logo design, was on Tropicana's new logo design.

MG Siegler's recent blog post on Microsoft's new logo evolution was the first ones I read. Other writers have also written how the new logo is no longer wavy and flag-like. Here is an excerpt of from Siegler's post:

It’s true that the Windows logo has long looked like a waving flag, which makes absolutely no sense.

What?!

I have no qualms with anyone calling the Windows logo a flag. It is like a flag. A waving flag.

I take issue with the criticism of it not making sense. Since when do logos need to look like the name of the product?

Let's look at the history of Microsoft Windows logos:









Here is the new Windows 8 logo:


I think the new logo is better and more simple, and has influence from Windows Metro design. Yes, it definitely resembles a window. But where else can we see this kind of logo design? Any other product, maybe from Microsoft that has four boxes with colors?

Microsoft Office.



Does the Office logo resemble an office? Not really... but I guess with a stretch of the imagination it could look like office cubicles.

The point being, Microsoft's line of product logos are similar. They are inter-related. Office and Windows are the brands and flagship products from Microsoft. That's right, I used the word flag. The four boxes are iconic of the original windows in their OS. I see no reason why they would need to change this.

If anyone has a problem with Microsoft's product naming conventions, then maybe they need to do something how Lily Robinson wrote to Sainsbury's, which resulted in them changing Tiger bread to Giraffe bread.

Small Business Web Guide Meetup

Last night I went to a Designer's Hub meetup at Kleverdog. The topic was Kicking Web Butt: Small Business Web Guide. The presenter was Ed Wu (@edwu) from THINKademic.

The room was primarily designers, which is a nice change for me, as I generally go to developer-centric meetups and events. I hope to be more of a dev-signer (developer/designer).

Here are some of the pictures I took. As usual, you can find the album where I dump all my meetups pictures for this year here.



















Ed Wu presenting