December, 2009

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21
Dec 09

Week 466/467

Last weeks note didn’t get done, too busy, bad pod. Must make time for the weeknote. So this will be a double issue, much like the TV Times you get for the holidays, but with less classic movies.
My clickable flash ‘thing’ has gone over well, so I’ve gone into detailed wireframes around clever login mechanisms. Clever in that we’re trying to be frictionless so we have to work a bit harder on our end, utilising Facebook connect as our first choice, falling back to openID and ‘classic’ email/passwords.
I’d used FB as a login feature on Tioti.com (2007) when it was still a neat, new way of handling that. We used a FB app, but the process remains similar – it’s seamless and secure for the user (we don’t hold a password) while we can use their social graph to improve the experience.
I’ve been working up much prettier user interface elements now that features are settling down too,
so things are starting to pick up a bit of gloss, which is painstaking but always enjoyable.
This sub-project will be live Jan 24th, and my portion is almost over. The next chunk technically should have been first, it being the “lofty grand vision” but release schedules have to be navigated.  Plus, jumping in and doing a semi-skimmed implementation has been instructive both to the parameters of the wider project as well as the realities within the business.
It’ll be a busy, but exciting new year I think.

Last weeks note didn’t get done, too busy, bad pod. Must make time for the weeknote. So this will be a double issue, much like the TV Times you get for the holidays, but with less classic movies.

My clickable flash ‘thing’ has gone over well, so I’ve gone into detailed wireframes around clever login mechanisms. Clever in that we’re trying to be frictionless so we have to work a bit harder on our end, utilising Facebook connect as our first choice, falling back to openID and ‘classic’ email/passwords.

I’d used FB as a login feature on Tioti.com (2007) when it was still a neat, new way of handling that. We used a FB app, but the process remains similar – it’s seamless and secure for the user (we don’t hold a password) while we can use their social graph to improve the experience.

I’ve been working up much prettier user interface elements now that features are settling down too, so things are starting to pick up a bit of gloss, which is painstaking but always enjoyable.

This sub-project will be live Jan 24th, and my portion is almost over. The next chunk technically should have been first, it being the “lofty grand vision” but product release schedules have to be navigated.  Plus, jumping in and doing a semi-skimmed implementation has been instructive both to the parameters of the wider project as well as the realities within the business.

It’ll be a busy, but very exciting new year I think.

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11
Dec 09

Week 465

(Sitting here typing in my 10 year old Razorfish – Las Vegas ‘99 T-shirt, my how little things have changed)

Pummeling possible interfaces into life is the fun part. The end of last week and most of this I’ve been imagining a couple of directions to explore that lets us accommodate all sorts of content possibilities for premium music products. Awesome you might think, but fiddlier than you’d expect.

When the basics are understood, I like to sketch up things really roughly on screen – scanned scribbles, generic iconography and the odd touch to give things life. For experiences that are inherently interactive (rather than, say presentational or informational) It often makes sense to throw these together into something clickable in flash, just to get the feel of the piece. It’s a bit of a straw-man in many respects – the trick is to keep everything extremely disposable, so no one gets attached to any execution at this stage.

There should be a roughly skinned straw-prototype to click around by the end of this week for the first product. I expect it full of holes and glue, but ideal to rip up and refine, rinse and repeat.

Also this week, I finally got round to trying the iPhone scrabble Words With Friends. It is good, the ‘barely playing’ pacing (if you want) is very interesting. It is also very good fun. Recommended.

Pummeling possibile interfaces into life is the fun part. The end of last week and most of this I’ve been imagining a couple of directions to explore that lets us accommodate all sorts of content possibilities for premium music products. Awesome you might think, but fiddlier than you’d expect.
When the basics are understood, I like to sketch up things really roughly on screen – scanned scribbles, generic iconography and the odd touch to give things life. For experiences that are inherently interactive (rather than, say presentational or informational) It often makes sense to throw these together into something clickable in flash, just to get the feel of the piece. It’s a bit of a straw-man in many respects – the trick is to keep everything extremely disposable, so no one gets attached to any execution at this stage.
There should be a roughly skinned straw-prototype to click around by the end of this week for the first product. I expect it full of holes and glue, but ideal to rip up and refine, rinse and repeat.
Also this week, I finally got round to trying the iPhone scrabble Words With Friends. It is good, the ‘barely playing’ pacing (if you want) is very interesting. It is also very good fun. Recommended.

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4
Dec 09

Week 464

Good start to the week, PlinkArt won the Education/Reference category in the Android Developer Competition, with a well deserved $100,000 prize! Nice work chaps!
The app is now available outside of the weird restrictions of the competition now – grab it off the Android Marketplace for free. I understand it will be available for other mobile platforms at some point too.
This week I started Project Tuneful too which I think I can safely (ie. vaguely) describe as a hybrid media/service/UX design job for a record company. After getting immersed in the brief it’s now becoming clear it is going to be quite hard. That’s good, time for a bit of a stretch I reckon.
Most importantly, it’s going to be very real. Actual product on the shelves, early next year. Slightly terrifying. One other thing, a startup I did a little design for in May and STILL hasn’t paid is also integrated into the project – should be an interesting meeting.

Good start to the week, PlinkArt won the Education/Reference category in the Android Developer Competition, with a well deserved $100,000 prize! Nice work chaps!

The app is now available outside of the weird restrictions of the competition now – grab it off the Android Marketplace for free. I understand it will be available for other mobile platforms at some point too.

This week I started Project Tuneful too which I think I can safely (ie. vaguely) describe as a hybrid media/service/UX design job for a record company. After getting immersed in the brief it’s now becoming clear it is going to be quite hard. That’s good, time for a bit of a stretch I reckon.

Most importantly, it’s going to be very real. Actual product on the shelves, early next year. Slightly terrifying. One other thing, a startup I did a little design for in May and STILL hasn’t paid is also integrated into the project – should be an interesting meeting.

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