RolandGoodBits

QUOTE from http://bit.ly/13IBiTr

UI implementation has an almost natural tendency to diverge from its intended design. Those beautiful pixel-perfect design comps go through the brutal reality of software development in the form of deadlines, roadmap changes, miscommunication, platform limitations, and bugs, lots of bugs. The final product is very often not quite what you originally envisioned.

This is what I call the Gap.

Pixel imperfection, inconsistent behaviour, unexpected user flow, responsiveness issues, visual glitches, janky animations. You name it. The Gap is on all these unintended UI bits that end up in the release.

Unfortunately, the Gap is not something you can avoid entirely. Software development is no simple business, there is always something you let slip or have to compromise when you’re building anything non-trivial.

There are a number of factors in the development process that affect the Gap—for better and worse. Design process is definitely one of them.

Generally speaking, the larger the distance between the design and engineering teams, the worse the Gap tends to be. The way design is approached in the development process has a great influence on how well designers and UI engineers interact.

The larger the distance between the design and engineering teams, the worse the Gap tends to be.

For example, many companies adopt a waterfall design process—especially large corporations where there is a sharper split of roles between teams. Designers spend a long time working on their specs, detailing every single aspect of the product or feature and UI engineers only start working on it once the specs are “done”.

The danger with the waterfall design process is that it might create a disconnection between design and engineering teams due to the focus on deliverables and specs instead of the much-needed fluid communication between the teams.

Why is it so important to have designers and engineers working very closely? First, there are a number of issues that you only spot once you actually try the design ideas. If designers don’t engage with engineers, the product will likely stick with broken and/or unintended design.

Furthermore, design issues are tricky in that they have this qualitative side that tends to be invisible to untrained eyes. Design problems will not necessarily be caught by even the most competent QA team or the most solid UI tests—because both are usually focused on the functional correctness of the product. Designers are naturally the ones who tend to be more sensitive to these design-level issues. This is why their engagement with the engineering team is so vital.

Design issues are tricky in that they have this qualitative side that tends to be invisible to untrained eyes.

With that said, the design team rarely has the bandwidth to do design QA work, especially on large and complex projects. This is why having design-minded engineers can make a massive difference because they can set much higher bar for the UI quality right from the initial implementation and beyond—instead of relying solely on the designers to do so.

The bottom line is that the design process does not end with the specs, no matter how complete they look. In fact, design specs are just the beginning.

Iterative design processes that engage designers and engineers very early tend to result in higher UI quality because it provides the necessary flexibility and agility to steer ideas as they are implemented. Sounds obvious but this is much easier said than done. Just see how rare is to find products with outstanding user interfaces.

A substantial part of the UI engineer’s work is about fighting the Gap by implementing user interfaces that are as close as possible to their intended design. After all, the best user interfaces are the ones that feel intentional even on the smallest details.

So, mind the Gap.

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QUOTE from http://bit.ly/11bIqfd

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QUOTE from http://4e5.r2.ly/

Yesterday someone at Hacker News thought to point to my piece about Marissa Mayer. It was a story I wrote in about 15 minutes. The point was at the end of the piece. As a preamble, I told a couple of stories from my personal experience. I figured it would get a few comments, maybe a couple of thousand reads, and that would be that. But the torrent of abuse on Hacker News was something that I haven’t seen in a long time.

One of the main reasons it doesn’t work is that people don’t ask questions to clarify. They jump to conclusions, some of which are very wrong. For example, they assumed I was the only person who was concerned about the BlogThis! button. Not true.

They assumed that I was being “egotistical” for thinking that Google ever cared what I thought, and arrogant that I think they should care what I think now. It’s a fact that at one point, early-on, Google did care. Their chief PR person was from Apple, Cindy McCaffrey, a class act in every way. She would routinely send emails to me and Doc Searls asking our opinions. Whether anyone else there cared, I don’t know. But I was invited to a meeting with engineers to talk about blogging, RSS and XML-RPC at one point. I can’t imagine why they would ask me to tell them what I think if they didn’t care. I suppose it might have been a big conspiracy, like Mission Impossible. Hey I wouldn’t put it past some of the trolls on Hacker News to argue that. :-)

On the other hand, I don’t take it personally that Google doesn’t care what I think these days, partially because I don’t think they care what anyone thinks. That’s a long story all by itself.

Now, we could have had an interesting discussion on HN if people would have asked questions for clarification instead of just piling on the abuse based on their impressions. That’s taking them at face-value, assuming they really want an informative discussion. Probably the trolls in the thread, and their upvoters, wanted nothing like that.

There were some other ludicrous statements. Did any of them know that I started a new company in December, and we shipped our first two products in March and April? They said I thought JavaScript was a bad language. How funny, because I’m writing almost all my code these days in JavaScript. They say I’m old and out of date. Funny. They’re the ones who are out of date! :-)

And if you say someone’s old as a way of hurting them, the joke will eventually come back to hurt you. As one of the characters of Citizen Kane, Bernstein, said so eloquently, old age is the one disease you don’t look forward to being cured of. It comes to everyone. I was young once. Now I’m middle-aged. Truth. And the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. I don’t see what it has to do with the point of my blog post.

Now I think there’s a solution to letting the assholes control the conversation…

As discourse has moved to Twitter, its big contribution has been to push aside the abuse that’s common with discussion boards and mail lists. A very simple feature in Twitter, the block command, enforces decorum, by empowering the listener to turn you off if they find you offensive. People learn that if they say abusive things, they don’t have to listen. The only people I listen to on Twitter are those who can make a point without getting personal. I learn from disagreement, but I can’t stand people who use their freedom to speak as a way of hurting others.

Then I wondered — if it works so well for Twitter — why can’t sites block Hacker News if the abuse gets too heavy? After yesterday’s experience I probably would do it. I like the flow they deliver, but I hate the abuse.

So I have a suggestion for Paul Graham, the guy who runs Hacker News. Give sites the option of blocking links from Hacker News. I honestly don’t care what the HN trolls, and the people who upvote them, supposedly “think” about me. None of it is based on anything real. A lot of it is anonymous. Sometimes people create accounts just for the purpose of dropping a big smelly turd in the middle of a discussion.

Let’s learn a trick from Twitter, and cut off the trolls at the source.

PS: I subscribe to the Hacker News feed, which does not include comments. It’s very useful stuff. So the links themselves are good.

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QUOTE from http://bit.ly/13IedAu

Let’s say tomorrow I had to start my business from scratch. No existing clients, no existing following. How would I build an audience? How would I attract customers?

We’ll suppose all of this, because lots of people start businesses every day without an existing group of people eager to work with them. They know how to do something well (their craft), but might not have customers at the start.

So let’s say that’s where I’m currently at—starting out, great at a craft but no one to provide it to. What would I do? And we’ll use web design in the example, since that’s what I know.

I’d start by listening to people who were looking to hire web designers or who had already hired web designers. How were they conducting their search to find one and where? What questions did they have about the process? If their experience with web designers was bad, why? What did they wish they knew before starting a web design project?

And then I’d offer to help. Did they have questions? Did they want a second set of eyes to look at anything? Did they want to brainstorm what to do next? Did they want a second opinion? Was there anything they wanted to know about the industry? And I would help them without offering my own services or charging them. More importantly, I wouldn’t be pushy about it, I’d just look for folks who had questions I had answers to.

This help wouldn’t be a month of work or redesigning their whole website. Instead it’d take the form of emails, chats or talking things out on the phone/Skype. Basically: a free consult.

This would start with a single person. Then another. Then another. I’d talk to as many people as possible, until I started to notice definite trends in where people were having issues or not understanding things. Their pain points in the process. And I’d do all of this without pitching or selling myself once. I’d simply offer help or advice to anyone who wanted it.

Talking to these people would do two things. First, it’d be an opportunity to share my knowledge with the type of people I wanted to work with (without asking anything in return). Second, I’d learn what my future audience was looking for, where they were getting hung up on in projects in my field and how I could effectively communicate with them to help solve those problems.

Long before I’d start selling anyone anything, I’d be building a relationship with the people I had helped in some way. I wouldn’t build this following so I could “promote at” or sell to them later. I’d build and foster relationships with these people so I could continue learning from them. It’d be a mutually beneficial relationship, since they’d receive my help and I’d receive their knowledge.

From there the path could diverge. I’d either write publicly about what I learned on a blog, eventually compiling it into a free book—full of insight into common client issues and how they could be resolved. Or I’d use that knowledge to create my own services, since I’d know where my potential audience needed the most help. I’d probably do both things. And I have a feeling that group of people I’d been helping would promote what I came up with, without me having to constantly promote/sell at them. And this is the key—they’d help me because I had helped them (although I would never expect it of them).

My new business would be based on helping others first. Not because I frown on capitalism and want to sit around a Skype video call singing kumbaya. I’d do this because I know that’s how you can build a loyal client-base and following. And because I truly like helping others.

For many people, the above idea might seem like advice for how to build a charity or what you do for close friends—it couldn’t possibly be applied to a business that makes enough money to put clothes on children, food on a table or pay rent. But this is how I’ve built my current business, which has a 4-5 month waiting list. It’s how I’ve released books that have sold 1000s of copies. It’s how I’ve approached my entrepreneurial work for the last 15 years. I’ve simply helped others, using my skills, because I enjoy doing it.

Too often people make the mistake of trying to build an audience for their business by thinking about themselves first. By thinking about making money first. By thinking about what’s in it for them above anyone else. By thinking about how they can reach “X” number of followers to stroke their ego. This attitude comes across in how they interact with others, use social media and how they promote what they’re selling. People see through this type of behaviour.

Motives are transparent (even if we wish they weren’t). So it would be transparent if your business focus was helping others first.

If you approach work as helping others instead of how you can make money off them, everything fundamentally changes. People are drawn to you. They are willing to invest in you, because you’re invested in helping them.

The best thing about having a business that’s genuinely geared towards helping others is that it can cost nothing to get started. No investors or investment on your part, no hardware/software, no secret tactics or even strategies. Nothing but being a decent human being, sharing what you know with people who’ll listen, which should come naturally to everyone. And then what you do will sell itself.

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QUOTE from http://bit.ly/13IegfD

Ken Case on OmniPresence, which ships tomorrow:

“OmniPresence is designed to work well with any Mac app which supports OS X’s Auto Save and Versions. Using the same underlying document coordination as Versions, OmniPresence lets your app know when a document has been changed on another device, and double-checks to make sure it always syncs a current and complete copy of any documents currently being edited.”

…

“We believe in building solutions that will stand the test of time, and we believe that your data should be yours to control—whether you’re syncing your personal files or your company’s confidential information. So rather than use a proprietary syncing service which might not be available in five or ten years, OmniPresence is built on top of open web server technologies.”

OmniPresence is a new syncing tech from the Omni Group, and it ships tomorrow. You know it’s going to be solid because … well, it’s written by the F’n OmniGroup and that’s what they do.

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QUOTE from http://4e9.r2.ly/

Our users love icons.

I guess most users do, but people who write in outliners need a little more graphic relief because our work is totally text and structure. Adding a bit of graphics is like adding spice to a sauce. And they’re fun!

We’re lucky because Font Awesome is such a great collection of icons. And it keeps getting better. If you’re developing web apps, you’re nuts if you aren’t using Font Awesome. Seriously.

Anyway, until Fargo 0.65 it was a lot of work to add an icon to an outline. What changed is that we created an icon chooser dialog that makes it easy and fun.

If you’re using Fargo, you can try it out with the Icon Chooser command in the Outliner menu.

If you’re not using Fargo, here’s a little demo app you can try. It doesn’t do much but allow you to browse the icons. When you click on one, an alert pops up saying which icon you chose.

If you’re a programmer, the code is free to use under the GPL. That means any improvements you make must also be licensed under the GPL. And it would be nice if you said where you got it. :-)

http://bit.ly/13IedAf

Enjoy!

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QUOTE from http://bit.ly/11bIpYH

 

 

TV lets xBox One down but it is not Microsoft’s fault.

• The xBox One has been revealed with great fanfare and while it’s a winner in many areas, it falls over when it comes to the integration of TV.
• To be fair to Microsoft, I suspect that this is not its fault and that the intransigence and desperation of the broadcast industry is to blame.
• The specifications of the device look pretty much in line with expectations with an 8 core CPU, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD, Gigabit Ethernet and so on.
• Kinect has been integrated into the console and offers voice as well as gesture recognition for issuing commands.
• The included webcam is 720p so how Skype will be provided at 1080p is a mystery.
• The controller has been updated to make it more user friendly and with more haptic feedback.
• The real action is on the software and here things have changed substantially.
• A thin virtualisation layer sits on top of the hardware and this allows two other operating systems to run simultaneously and for the user to switch back and forth between the two.
• One OS is the xBox OS for the games and the other is a optimised version of Windows for all of the other functions.
• This is exactly the right choice to keep the gamers and developers happy and at the same time bring in the new functionality in a seamless way.
• These have been stitched together and optimised so that the user will not really notice that there are two.
• The idea here is to deliver all aspects of Digital Life to the user in one place in a way that’s fun and easy to use.
• Against that criteria, the xBox One delivers in the demos but real life is not going to be quite as good.
• The biggest problem is the integration of television.
• From the user perspective, it would have been great to see the tuner, programming guide and DVR functionality integrated into xBox One but this has not happened.
• What the user is left with is the ability to connect certain set top boxes to the device via HDMI which brings in audio-visual and sometimes the ability to change channel.
• The vast majority of users are likely to find that they are reduced to controlling the TV set top box via an IR blaster.
• This is not integration. 
• It is just sticking the xBox One on top of the cable TV which has been already tried many times. It fails every time because the user experience is awful.
• I am sure that Microsoft is more than aware of this problem and would have fixed it if it could.
• I suspect that has done the rounds of all the major cable companies to inquire about integration and been shown the door every time.
• I am pretty certain that Google suffered the same treatment when it was developing Google TV. 
• Integrating TV functionality into the xBox One is one step closer to the doomsday scenario where all content is delivered over the internet and broadcast is completely cut out.
• Hence, TV is very unlikely to be integrated into the over-the-top devices for many years to come.
• xBox One has done a poor job of integrating TV but the good news is that no one else is going to fare any better.
• Microsoft is not going to suffer by being hamstrung by the TV broadcast industry as everyone is in the same boat.
• Hence, Xbox One looks to be the right device to continue Microsoft’s leadership in the console market and as a base to begin its conquest of the living room. 

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QUOTE from http://bit.ly/11bIonH

The Verge has learned that several key HTC employees have left the company. Kouji Kodera, the company’s Chief Product Officer, left last week. Jason Gordon, Vice President of Global Communications, is gone; as is Rebecca Rowland, Head of Global Retail; John Starkweather, Head of Digital Marketing; and Eric Lin, Product Strategy Manager.

To all my friends still at @htc – just quit. leave now. it’s tough to do, but you’ll be so much happier, I swear.

— eric L (@ericlin) May 20, 2013

This is obviously terrible news. The Verge claims HTC developed the First, the Facebook phone, under the assumption that Facebook Home would be released at a later date. Unfortunately, Facebook launched Facebook Home on the same day as the HTC First hit the market. The site also claims that people told HTC’s CEO, Peter Chou, that the HTC One would be difficult to manufacture and might face delays several months before the device was actually announced. That seems rather prophetic given the One’s current situation.

Can HTC turn things around? Earlier this year I would’ve said “maybe”. Now I’m just going to say no.

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QUOTE from http://bit.ly/11bIpYx
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Dean Groom, Playable ~ The Weblog of Dean Groom, May 22, 2013

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Looking at the new xBox release (I saw an ad for it on the morning news) Dean Groom writes, “while games are scapegoated as causing all manner of social ills, they are the media-platform which is most able and likely to significantly change who own’ s the content gateway. It will be game-networks which decide which social-network, which movie, which news-channel and music will be presented to the family.” The new xBox is Microsoft’s play to become the network that leverages access to that attention, and hence, can derive revenue from the advertising and promotion thereby enabled. “What is important is that as a game-media-network they want a direct line to consumers in the attention economy – and that is what it will deliver. It will leverage its games capital to achieve it.” [Link] [Comment]

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QUOTE from http://bit.ly/13IedjG

Google did something insane at I/O earlier this month. They announced that they would start selling Samsung’s Galaxy S4 running stock Android in the United States in June. It’s going to cost you $649, which falls in line with what a high end smartphone should cost, but the first immediate question after that thing was announced was when will it be sold in another country?

According to C|Net UK, it looks like us foreigners are going to have to hit the grey market. Google didn’t exactly say they’d never sell the GS4 outside the U.S, they just said there’s nothing to say at the present time.

The best case scenario is Samsung gets overloaded with orders for the stock GS4 and realizes that there’s a huge market for Samsung phones running stock Google software. They then make another SKU of the GS4, call it GT-i9506 or something, and sell that to people for a premium price. Trust me when I say you’ll find no shortage of geeks willing to pay an extra 50 EUR or even an extra 100 EUR to get a “Nexus” version of Samsung’s hottest smartphone.

Maybe I’m crazy, but what I’d love to see happen is for Samsung to release an application for the PC and Mac that literally has just one button: “transform to stock”. Since it’s a Samsung app, you can’t screw things up, and the whole thing takes less than a few minutes to work its magic.

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