Design Category Archive
There are 23 entries in this category.
iPod Touch is Missing an E-mail App
Wednesday, September 5, 2007 15 comments (latest by anon)
After Steve Jobs finished his big speech introducing the iPod Touch, there was some talk around Six Apart Headquarters about it lacking in storage (my three year old iPod stores 40GB) capacity, bluetooth, phone capability, etc.
Not to say it isn't still cool, that iPhone screen is beautiful and in just the few months since then, they have crafted a new dock with visual depth, clearer text and icons which are so much more distinct. And then there is the fact you can browse the web because it has both wi-fi and Safari built right in. How cool is that?
Well, that is cool and all, but when you think of the iPod Touch as a PDA or a mobile internet device, with access to the web, your address book, and calendar, one of the four pillars of the internets becomes noticeable for the fact it isn't there. Yep, e-mail.
Since it uses wi-fi it won't always be connected to the internet, but reading and composing e-mail off line isn't exactly a foreign concept. If any company can make the outbox as invisible as possible it would be Apple.
iPod Touch could probably be the killer PDA, and not just a killer iPod, if Apple adds a mail application. For now though, I think I'm going to hang onto my black and white, 40GB iPod for a while yet.
The Interface is the Feature
Friday, June 8, 2007 Post comment
I hadn't seen the iPhone commercials when I skimmed past Gruber's take on them, pointing out it's just a product demo showing off the interface.
I've had a chance to watch them now and I'm trying to remember another commercial selling me on the interface instead of how much fun it is to use or some cutting edge, must have, feature I'll never use.
Even Apple left the eleven-step wizard out of the "3 steps to the internet" iMac G3 commercial. Though at the time, that was a damned good wizard.
Designing Transit Maps for the Rider
Sunday, May 6, 2007 4 comments (latest by Sal)
Last week (via 37 Signals) I found I came across this story of designer Eddie Jabbour who created his own simplified version of the NYC Subway map.
Hundreds of millions of dollars get poured into transit projects, building complex systems like the New York subway. A lot of money is spent studying transportation needs, engineering the best way to get between Point A and Point B. Yet next to nothing is spent once the transit infrastructure is built on explaining to the people it's built for how to actually use it.
It's like buying a Lego set and not getting the instructions.
If the signs don't make sense and people can't read the map, that shiny and expensive subway is going to be useless. Jabber designed a map which doesn't just have colored lines to show the subway routes, he designed a map which represents how the subway works in a way humans can understand.
He designed something his mother could use and even had a chance to present it to the MTA:
[When] he showed up at the agency’s Midtown offices with copies of his work, they were quick to find fault with it. According to Christopher Boylan, the transportation authority’s executive director of corporate and community affairs, who recalled the meeting, the main criticism was that Mr. Jabbour’s map [...] was artistic but geographically inaccurate.
While our own subway map was recently redesigned, it's not any better than before and I wonder what a designer could do with the Muni map.