Developers writing software for tablets and phones are still finding new idioms and experimenting to find the best use of gestures. Some apps like Paper use subtle gestures that take a few moments to get your head around, then become pretty comfortable. Some patterns are emerging, becoming new, easily discovered interactions that are missed when [...]
Thinking further about new the MacBook Pro and the discussion around its unserviceability there is a big difference between the commodity PC manufactures and the great product innovators like Ford, Sony and Apple. These companies derive value for their customers using the pattern of break-through new product followed by years of incremental improvements and production [...]
This week Apple launched its next generation laptop, the MacBook Pro with Retina Display. A few days later, Kyle Wiens wrote a piece for Wired that examined the internals after a teardown. The article and its conclusion, widely circulated among the technocrats, has created a bit of a stir. The Retina MacBook is the least [...]
Great design is defined not by how nice something looks, but by how well it works. My favourite things, those contraptions where the design is beautiful, have an intrinsic elegance based on how they perform when used. The elegance of the single speed, fixed wheel bicycles I restore – the bare minimum required to make [...]
Oh dear. More like regressing. What were Microsoft thinking?
This week, a number of high-traffic sites had security breaches, including LinkedIn. Over 6 million accounts were compromised. Their customers’ login info showing up on hacker download sites. A high profile asset like LinkedIn is bound to be a target. The fact the bad guys got in is not that extraordinary. Given a high-enough reward, [...]
Wow! The Agile Australia conference in Melbourne last week demonstrated just how broad the uptake of “sensible” software delivery has been in this country. I spoke to people from all types of enterprises, people at all levels of the company. Startups to (previously?) lumbering corporations, CIOs to testers. For those who enjoyed “Design Eye for [...]
Many people stopped me at the conference this week and I’ve been asked a few times to make these available, so here they are. Even though they’re a few years old now, the concepts, especially the EQ Matrix have stood the test of time. I’m working on a followup and how it applies in the [...]