My aim was to present my work in straightforward and simple way without any chrome. It doesn’t look as good as on iPhone render, but I really like it for now. Let me know what do you think.

I received my new VOID watch today. Designed by Swedish designer David Erricson. In order to fulfill his “artistic” intention, he had to come up with a new solution for presentation of time.

In comparison with standard watch layout, his solution is less familiar, it has to be learned and it requires more effort to use it. Still, VOID watches are considered beautiful and well designed by many people including me. Simply because it is an absolute delight to look at them. Their smooth shapes and lines together with quality materials are more then a tradeoff to necessity of learning how to use them.

I think, that this applies to UI design too. We should not design just usable products, we should strive for delightful experience.

There are types of applications, which can’t go online or mobile (at least not in a foreseeable future):

• Applications focused on performance heavy tasks as graphic editors etc.
• Applications which has to be robust.
• Applications with need of high security.

These are not going to die on desktop.

Moreover, I expect even opposite trend. I think that there will be tendency of many web apps to be cloned for desktop again. Because of these reasons:

• People like native looking apps which doesn’t run in a browser. Lets face it, they are far more trustworthy than app in a browser. They have usually better performance, you are not distracted with all the browsers controls. It is more comfortable.
• Development for desktop is becoming easier. With new platforms as Adobe Air, Titanium etc., desktop development is becoming as easy as for web. With Java being properly supported on Mac,  multi-platform development is not a fairytale anymore.

What is going to change is online data storage. Cloud storage is very popular already. Synchronization among many devices (or desktops) is not being a problem anymore. Why would you use a web app, when you can use the same native app on different computers or platforms?

So don’t get caught up in a panic, desktop is not over yet.

Luckily, there are social networks with thousands of potential subjects. Our friends, colleagues, group members, all at our fingertips. These are people, you are usually at least vaguely familiar with, so you know their ethnographic information. They are practically just waiting to be asked nosy questions. (Well, you should try to be subtle, you don’t want to make everybody angry with your surveys)

So what networks are we talking about? For example Twitter. There is a big chance that you are using it. You have probably at least couple of hundres of followers. These people are likely to be people with similar interests so you already know something about them. Even if your followers does not fit into your desired focus group, there is a big chance that followers of one of yours friends will.

Twitter feeds

You can think that your followers doesn’t care about some surveys, everybody hates them afterall. This is wrong assumption. These people are following you, so to some extent they are interested in you. This makes them likely to help. You can utilize twitter for quick survey, or you can recruit subjects for interviews. In case of surveys, try to be considerate and keep in mind all the rules for surveys (small amount of questions etc.).

Linked.in groups

One more example: Groups at Linked.in are full of people willing to pitch in and help, if you ask nicely. And you doesn’t even have to ask about theirs demographic details,  because these are already included in their profiles.

Of course, you would want to double check your research in case of mission critical systems (Nuclear plant etc.), but for web applications and simple dekstop apps there is big potential. Both in reducing cost and time of your research.

What do you think?

]]> http://www.matcheck.cz/blog/2010/12/06/utilizing-social-networks-for-user-research/feed/ 0 http://www.matcheck.cz/blog/2010/11/27/easy-photo-download-with-the-dropbox-app-on-your-android/ http://www.matcheck.cz/blog/2010/11/27/easy-photo-download-with-the-dropbox-app-on-your-android/#comments Sat, 27 Nov 2010 12:18:06 +0000 matcheck http://www.matcheck.cz/blog/?p=146 I have been using Dropbox app on my Android phone to download photos to my desktop for some time. It is very handy because after I take a picture, I can just tap “Share”, select “Dropbox” and tap “Send to this folder”. On the desktop I am instantly notified about new picture in my Dropbox folder. I couldn’t find any easier way. It is as easy as it gets. Great example of well streamlined process.

Jon Hicks is describing the same process for iPhone at his blog The Hickensian.

Take a look at commented screenshot I did as a test. The process is beautifully streamlined and there is no obstacle in you way. Zurb used Bounce as clever way to try out new interactions and layout for their flagship Notable. However, there are situations when Bounce will do the work. It is free, looks great and works like a breeze. What else can anyone want.

They are basically two ways how to achieve design for both resolutions:

To design first for one of the resolutions and than redraw everything  for the other.

To design using vectors (path in Photoshop). Minor adjustments are still needed, but because of nice ratio of iPhone 3G and iPhone4 screens we can actually just multiple or divide by 2 while resizing. And everything stays sharp.  I advice you to design for iPhone 3 first. That way you don’t have to keep in mind that sizes have to be even numbers (you have to divide them by 2 later). However, you will have to redraw some textures that way.