Josh Clement

“Prompt”

‘A users understanding of your application improves over time.’

The more we use these apps, the better we get to know them. The app doesn’t become more efficient, we become more efficient at using it. We make up our own shortcuts, we prefer working full screen, or we style a unique layout of toolbars and actions to save as a preset. At my work, when all the creatives upgraded to Adobe CS5.5, there was a collective groan heard as we booted Photoshop out of the box. Back to sleeping in a hotel bed, everyone quickly got to work dirtying the sheets.

Elimination > Substitution

We love to personalize stuff, and for me that’s a process of elimanation rather than substitution. When I started my job I had a desk lamp, I never used it, so it got the boot. If I have an app on on my iphone that I haven’t used for a week, it’s off the home screen. If I don’t use it for a month, it’s gone. Call me a minimalist, but that’s just the easiest way to properly use stuff. Clearing away all the dead wood makes it easier to visualize the cabin you’re about to start building. 

A lot of apps understand the idea of doing one thing ultra focused: In Instapaper, the nav bar disappears after one scroll. Scrolling = reading. And reading means reading, not looking at icons for other functions.

In the writing arena, I’d argue that no one has iAWriter beat: “As soon as you type the title bar disappears and all you see is the clean typing sheet, distraction-free, ready for your ideas to take shape…(Creating a) noise free writing experience.”

If I have to write something, I need minimal distractions, and I count buttons and menus as distractions; a reason why I lean away from Microsoft Word and towards programs like text edit, tumblr and Google docs.

Start typing to begin…

Why can’t this design philosophy be used more freely across other basic tasks on the computer? With Google’s omnibox leading browser interactions, and browsers (starting to) lead OS interactions, we’d start from there.

• The user would begin by typing a simple task, and suggestions would instantly flood in: By simply typing the letters c,a,l would have “Call Mum” populate the field. Designspiration already employs this technique on their site.

Really nothing new here, as far as omni-box stuff goes. In fact, my current workflow, is command T to create a new tab in chrome, type out a shortened phrase that Google already understands eg. “gmail” (I’m happy to type 5 letters rather than wait for suggestions) and smash enter. Boom. Email. 

There’s something really liberating (as liberated as you can get when you’re simultaneosly glued to a screen and a chair), typing over the top of everything else, doing away with all the buttons, frames and containers that usually clutter our computer screen.

Many things we do on a computer all the time are slow, bloated and carry way to many features. Let’s take a look at email. When I launch gmail, 90% of the time I’m doing one of two things. Looking for bold text that tells me I have new mail “Inbox (3)” or I’m heading about 5 pixels north and clicking that red button. That’s it.

So how would a prompt based email message work? Once you’ve omniboxed your request, you’d see something like this (above). In this screen, the user has already locked into new mail mode. As soon as a task is completed the type falls back, lowers in opacity and generally gets out of the way. All that is important is the now, the current. Which is in white.

This really isn’t that left-field, Gmail now uses a simple pop up box to write new messages as of a few months ago. It sits in the corner or the browser window waiting to spring up, rather than stretch itself across the whole window.

And then?

It’s clear that this is the way speech-directed stuff is going  (eg. Google Glass) “Ok Glass, film this junkie on the tram.” “What did you say c*nt!!!”

In the meantime, and while we still have unobscured faces, we’ll be using those big computers on desks. And we’ll be needing them for simple, civillian tasks like adding, messaging and planning.

We’re all pretty good at typing stuff. And we like shortcuts. My brief stint at playing Memrise (I hot streaked 92 learnt things before i dropped it from my bookmark front bench), taught me that arrow keys, the return key and numbers 1-6 are actually quicker and more intuitive than clicking everything with a mouse. 

Apps stripped down to their bare necessities is a lean, mean and scary sight, and only a few less steps away from them “disappearing inside us completely.”

EDIT (31/3): This idea already exists in the form of the app Alfred. It’s free, and I’m downloading it as I type…

after I’ve had my afternoon coffee

thisadvertisinglife:

Good guy musicians

I’ll try and find some more examples of this kind of stuff. Very successful way of swinging earned media to ageing stars, who have big fanbase and are generally well liked, but may not have much fresh interest. Usually makes for a feel-good video, which is what we’re all after anyway right?

Omnipotent Design

When we talk about ‘design’, it’s hard to know what we’re actually talking about. I still don’t really know. But what I’ve come to learn over the past year or so, is that if you want your work to really mean something in the world, which I think is asking a lot for this profession (a lot would be happy to drink beers and pay the bills), you need to have a gorilla grip on the idea of omnipotent design. Design that sets new standards, new rules, and controls the whole experience of whatever people are interacting with or talking about. To take that many steps back and look at something with this macro-vision is obviously not easy. Off the top of my head I could name a few, including one dude who lead a design driven business almost obsessively. A business named Apple Inc, and a guy named Steve Jobs.

I’ll set the scene. A young designer working at Apple in the mid 80’s, is in a situation a lot of young creatives find themselves in. They’re smart, they’re fast, and talented. They churn ideas like Durant drills free throws. But, they don’t get paid much, and there’s a whole heap of wiser, angrier, creative people who could have them fired them at any moment. The only way to move up the food chain is through a process of creative reviews, wherein the creative director (the big dog who has to be across every scrap of work that leaves the agency doors) critiques, and finally, begrudgingly accepts your creative output. Steve Jobs was that guy. He was notoriously picky, and this designer found himself averaging 15,16 rounds of feedback. The ‘creative review’ was more like an adrenaline filled guessing game; What’s Steve thinking of today?

After three months, with a sweaty whiff of desperation, he brought in work by Milton Glaser, Woody Pirtle, Ivan Chermayeff (legends of modern graphic design). He called a meeting, and had Steve flick through the folios. “This is great design isn’t it?” Steve shook his head. “Nah.” He turned to him. “Why do you think this is good?” Questions like this were commonplace working under Steve; Even if you had just designed a masterpiece, you still had to sell it. You had to be surgically attached to your work, ready to die for it.

The designer quickly listed the quality of the work, craftmanship, insight: dot points that convert into awards at any decent AIGA judging panel. “Yeah, that’s good, but what I think is great design is… The Beatles.” (Jobs) paused and thought about. “It’s not the late Beatles, it’s the early Beatles. It’s the raw energy, the verve, the vibrancy of their music, that should be the characteristics and the expression of what the Mac is.“

At the time it just didn’t make sense. What was he talking about? The Beatles? It really just sounded like the usual egotistical creative director talk. But later, years later, long after he had left Apple, and that small computer company conquered a large part of the technology sector, he got it. For Steve, engineers and designers were artisans, and this business they were in was so young, and filled with promise that they could sculpt their ideas into products as beautiful, ugly or powerful as they wanted. Limitless. Or at least the limit was set in the design. Thinking about what other designers were doing at the time and whatever was on trend was like making a coffee with instant. You’ll get a cup of something, but it could be infinitely better if you tinkered around for a bit. The industry was rapidly changing, and design could add life to technology: the artform that truly excited Steve.

So what was good design? It’s something that’s relative to what you know. If you’re fast, ship and are early to the category, you get to set your own rules. Approach every brief this way. Can we reshape the conversation?. Can we reset something that has started to stagnate and slow down? Can we set new standards, new rules? Why not? Omnipotent design says: you “design the inside, the outside and everything around it. If you can, design what is being said about it.”

Quotes borrowed liberally from Clement Mok’s on Design Observer (worth a listen!)