At the cusp of an important decision about how to move forward with the architecture and design of our mobile application, the team was deadlocked. Tech was looking for a design solution to mitigate architectural issues that were causing instability. Design, while equally concerned about app performance, wasn’t interested in making a quick fix—potentially adding superfluous UI elements—for the sake of expediency.
There is no doubt that Apple is a brilliant company—especially over the past decade. The ecosystem that was developed initially around music via the iTunes store and the iPod which evolved by adding film & television, enhanced video capabilities of the iPod, finally culminating with the App Store and iPhone/iPad was a masterful strategy.
Opinions are like assholes—everyone has one, and they all stink.
In addition to thousands of apps, the Google Play and iTunes App Stores are full of opinions. Those opinions constitute reviews. And those reviews can be very important to the businesses that invest millions of dollars in the design and development of mobile and desktop applications.
In a couple weeks I’ll be jetting to Columbus, OH to do a talk at the M3 Conference on prototyping techniques for mobile interface designers. In addition to a quick overview on why prototyping is essential for interaction designers, I’ll also do some hands-on demos of some of my favorite prototyping techniques and tools.
A couple days ago—as I’ve done nearly every day for the past several years—I flipped open my laptop and took a look at my homepage. Only this time was a little different. There was a small notice at the top of the screen alerting me to what appears to be the impending end of my daily source of inspiration and information: iGoogle.
I try to be a pretty “Zen” kinda guy. You know, live in the moment, and all that. But when it comes to technology, my mind tends to wander into the future. After reading this article in Forbes about the inevitable demise of web titans like Google and Facebook, I began to wonder… What’s next?
