And we love it!

Hello All!

We loved the response and appreciation we have got till now. But more is yet to come. Right from more than one product to be there at CES, to the recent patents we have filed, there are going to be more disclosures on the work we are doing. A special thanks to the open source community, nVidia and Pixel Qi, for supporting us and helping us make this into a reality. (Special thanks to slashgear for covering us.)

So, who are we? What do we do? When are we going to launch the product? I know you all have lots of questions.

We see ourselves as the usability firm, one which will always keep the user at the core and design everything. Right now the product which is to come at CES will showcase only Android. But was it not designed for smaller mobile phone? What about those full screen alert boxes? There are lots of issues for Android to be used on the big screen. We are going to fix it, but will not showcase in CES this time. There are going to be a lot of User Interface changes in the final product.

We believe that the ‘window’ concept is gone. The UI which we are using is some 4 decades old, but we are yet to get rid of the folders, hierarchy and drop down menus! All this is going to change. A lot of new user interface ideas are coming. One of the few one which we like are this and this. In fact, TIME’s project Manhattan is an early response to the same. The UI is going to change, because the needs have changed. Now we need our devices not only to browse internet, but also to read the books.

Some of the concept designs have made us smile in awe and in anger as well. Awe because they were able to solve a lot of problems, and anger, cos they were able to showcase it to the world before us. Yet, this new UI needs to evolve. And the community would play a very big role in the same. We are thinking of involving the community in a bigger way, where they get to choose which rules are to be adopted, what UI element makes a lot of sense and what compromises are to be made, if efficient usability is to be achieved.

iPod brought music to life, then videos as well. Soon internet and applications saw the surge. Amazon came out with Kindle. But what’s next? We believe its the media. Newspapers at go. Delivered every morning to your home screen.

We recently went to Taiwan. And to our understanding, and major ODM’s fear, we can definitely say, that Apple IS cooking up something. Even if one of the ODMs is their manufacturer, the fact that their other non-Apple group would suffer is a big burden for them. We talked to all. And we tried to explain them, that product is not going to win the next generation of computing device race. It’s the CONTENT. We tried our hard to make them realize, when Apple launches their product, they will have a very beautiful device, the best UI which a tablet can feature, and to support all that, one of the best content delivery systems (their recent acquisition are big hints). All this would again usher a big group of people making application for them. And then again the normal product manufacturers would be left.

We are not going to do to this mistake. That is why we have already made quite a few collaborations, and many more are in the pipeline. We would release our own SDK later next year for the bigger screen application development. We would help the open community as much as we can, so there is already lot of content there, before we hit the market. Designing on Android if way easier than on any other OSes.

We have a comments section on the website, would love to hear from you. And love to answer your queries. You can also mail us at info AT notionink.com

Cont – Ideas and Communication

This is the second part of the discussion. For first part go here

Cont>>

I don’t know what he told you. But this is what I told him. Our system is going to be a mix of GUI and LUI (language user interface) Now we don’t expect user to learn the language commands, so we want to introduce a tool which will help him either learn, or present “options” to do a task. Again here, the idea of ubiquity comes to my mind. Suppose I want to stop the wireless on my device and I have not given any physical key. The command user will think is simple “Stop Wireless” Ubiquity (now on we will call this system GEN) can take inputs in the form of text. So when we type Stop on Ubiquity (GEN) it suggests you with the available options. And as soon as we type W in the box, GEN (ubiquity) will suggest options starting with W and there we go.

Now GEN has to be intelligent enough to understand that if a user is going through the same process for a task for a number of times, the way of achieving that task should be made easier. Solution? What about wireless now coming on top of the ‘W’ list. Or what about giving it a finger gesture which user can choose? Now here comes what we discussed in the earlier box. Doing experiments (Quantitative analysis) to understand what suits the user (human psychology) better.

People have done a lot of research in figuring out better ways of visualizing the information. But none of the new platform is being accepted by the general mass.. and still we are stuck with the normal page views.

There is something interesting here. Every patent has a life. We don’t own patents for long. In general all the patents which were there with big companies like MS, Adobe, Apple have been outdated. And there are better ways to implement same ideas. We patent the way of accomplishing that idea, not the ideas itself. Its like making the cure for AIDS. We cannot patent the idea that there can be a cure for AIDS. There are lot of open source application which without getting into the patent issues have come up with either same or better solution.. GIMP is a good Linux photo editing software example. Its available for windows as well now.

Open source wave is going to help us a lot. Nearly everything has (in some cases better) its clone in Linux which is completely open. But what we need to do here is focus in what should be given to user as minimal set (though rich) of features. And then force our programmers to enable them.

“bloatware???”

Bloatware is a software which is packed with excessive controls and consumes a lot of space.. Windows XP is a perfect example. You remember the ideal office I was talking about in my presentation.. that’s bloatware.. you have every control with you, but you don’t know what to do with it.

Do you really think the features which MS office or Excel provide needs special software? Think how is the text managed when you see title bars, task bars, when you get error screens, when you get notifications for updates. Everything is already built into the system. But. Not enabled. Just to sell one more software. Now if you keep doing that, you are increasing redundancy. Increased memory space (2-3 software for what is already built in OS), more time consuming (since now each software developer has to come up with never UI for his software, menus, ways of interacting with OS, etc).

What would the other system which we are designing would do? It would reduce the redundancy, reduce the memory space consumed, increase usability and reliability. Agreed?

I think we cannot do away with the menus. But for now, we can hide them. If you have downloaded and using Textflow software, they have a very cool alternative of menu bar. But yes they do have menu, its just different. Its only accessible when you need it. And that what I think is important.

The problem of adoption is the solution itself. If the solution we provide is in the end complex, and nonintuitive, people are not going to adopt. By separating ourselves from saying we are making computers, we take away the user’s expectancy of giving a windows XP as OS. Which EEE PC does. But does it really solve the problem of mobility?

What is mobility? For us mobility is being able to use it anywhere, and everywhere. For as long as we want. Our hardware gives us this feature. It can run for days, not hours. And we believe in the form-factor we are providing is a better solution for mobility clause. You cannot use laptops when you are standing. We want Adam to be used as  a notepad. As a book. You can read the novel, which you might have written. We don’t want you to go out to laptops and PC to do editing of that same novel. You might be travelling in metro reading and figuring out, oops.. there is an error, you edit it right there. If you wait till you go back home, half the ideas will be lost.

Its a huge challenge for the established players to bring changes for which they need to re-adjust. Re-adjusting is risky, costly and leads to unknown futures. Quite understandable. And if you prevent these changes, that’s called monopoly. This is what is going on since long time. How many players were there in 2005 for editing documents? MS Word, that’s it. Its changing. We are not the only one who is going to change it. There are others. But we don’t know who is destined to succeed in achieving. And hence yes it’s a risk, but a risk if gets paid off, there is quite a possibility that our discussions are mentioned in history.

May be Raskin is talking about us. If you search the internet, you wont find people working on this exact concept. Cos its difficult. Even we wont apply this concept to the fullest. There will be applications in our product. Raskin’s system is monopolistic. With which I don’t agree. Windows 7 is out and so is newer Mac OS X. Have you seen any soft of integration of applications with them? No. Why not? Same reason. It will take out the profit that are making using other applications like iworks.

For us what is more important is bring in the change. Telling people that what they were using since long wasn’t exactly the way they should have been. We will tell them that the concept of OS was flawed. But in our case, intuitiveness is the main solution for adoption. Intuitiveness is just the conformity from the user’s perspective that the device has more potential than what he thought before. Other word for intuitiveness would be assumptions. If users have right assumptions about our product, we will get what we are seeking.

Ideas and Communication

Features which are there in word, excel andpowerpointeditor are available everywhere.. So if you are writing me en email through safari, you can still send me rich formats.. you don’t need to open any application to write CV quality letters. And adding more features to the system is not installing application.. In other words, to add a different capability to the system, we don’t need to write a specialized application, with its specialized command structure, but rather leverage the commands that already exist and add any news ones that might be required. its just adding one more command to the system. Say for example, our computers don’t have application to keep windows on top.. either we can install some software to do that.. or what this guy is saying “OS is powerful enough to give this feature. Add this as a command and user will just press “Ctrl + Alt + T” to keep the windows on top.

Zooming will also be the inherent part of our system. The hardware and software will be capable of handling such features. What problem is highlighted in above paragraph is “understanding how can zooming be used for more than just viewing pictures! It’s a challenging question.. few solution can be making interface such that zooming takes you to certain areas which otherwise will not be accessible. But one thing we must realize.. zooming in and out is fun only for the first half and hour.. then it becomes cumbersome. So design should be such that system zooms in for more data.. not the user.

You might have seen “geek” who neverteldto use mouse.. specially those who are working withlinux.. for everything they will open theirconcoles.. and type in command there.. WhatJefis saying here is. Archy was designed to be addictive. It grows onto you. Especially when you realize that you are saving a lot of time and the system is giving you much higher degree of control.. In general Control means lot of commands, which would mean cluttered menu icons. Archy was language based. So if you remember the commands, you can take those icons away. But here comes the problem, how can I expect a normal user to remember those commands. Here we wish to solve this problem by giving the user minimal set of features through menus and icons and other set is either hidden oracceblethrough Ubiquity kind of system. To understand what I mean by Ubiquity, you need to go through this link http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/ I would suggest installing latestfirefoxand have a bit of understanding how it works

Here is an example.. a research found out that we all have a reading pattern of “F” We glance through the text from left to right and then quickly move down on the left edge to see what else is interesting. So, would that mean, if I keep interesting links on the left side of the page, there is a higher chance that user might actually go through it? The study suggested yes. Now this result came from the statistical analysis of movement of eyes of people while they are reading text. This is Quantitative analysis.

One more example would be to figure out what is the minimum dimension of icon which a user can click using his fingers. This is also experiment based. And a very important study for us. So, do you really think that those people who are developing applications foriphoneare actually doing these studies and experiment before they make anything? My guess would be, they are not. And this is whatAzais saying. People who are designing application are not figuring out human psychology and information theory to design user interfaces.

I don’t know what he told you. But this is what I told him. Our system is going to be a mix of GUI andLUI(language user interface) Now we don’t expect user to learn the language commands, so we want to introduce a tool which will help him either learn, or present “options” to do a task. Again here, the idea of ubiquity comes to my mind. Suppose I want to stop the wireless on my device and I have not given any physical key. The command user will think is simple “Stop Wireless” Ubiquity (now on we will call this system GEN) can take inputs in the form of text. So when we type Stop on Ubiquity (GEN) it suggests you with the available options. And as soon as we type W in the box, GEN (ubiquity) will suggest options starting with W and there we go.

Now GEN has to be intelligent enough to understand that if a user is going through the same process for a task for a number of times, the way of achieving that task should be made easier. Solution? What about wireless now coming on top of the ‘W’ list. Or what about giving it a finger gesture which user can choose? Now here comes what we discussed in the earlier box. Doing experiments (Quantitative analysis) to understand what suits the user (human psychology) better.

People have done a lot of research in figuring out better ways of visualizing the information. But none of the new platform is being accepted by the general mass.. and still we are stuck with the normal page views.

There is something interesting here. Every patent has a life. We don’t own patents for long. In general all the patents which were there with big companies like MS, Adobe, Apple have been outdated. And there are better ways to implement same ideas. We patent the way of accomplishing that idea, not the ideas itself. Its like making the cure for AIDS. We cannot patent the idea that there can be a cure for AIDS. There are lot of open source application which without getting into the patent issues have come up with either same or better solution.. GIMP is a goodlinuxphoto editing software example. Its available for windows as well now.

Open source wave is going to help us a lot. Nearly everything has (in some cases better) its clone in Linux which is completely open. But what we need to do here is focus in what should be given to user as minimal set (though rich) of features. And then force our programmers to enable them.

“bloatware???”

Bloatware is a software which is packed with excessive controls and consumes a lot of space.. WindowsXPis a perfect example. You remember the ideal office I was talking about in my presentation.. that’sbloadware.. you have every control with you, but you don’t know what to do with it.

Do you really think the features which MS office or Excel provide needs special software? Think how is the text managed when you see title bars, task bars, when you get error screens, when you get notifications for updates. Everything is already built into the system. But. Not enabled. Just to sell one more software. Now if you keep doing that, you are increasing redundancy. Increased memory space (2-3softwaresfor what is already built in OS), more time consuming (since now each software developer has to come up with neverUIfor his software, menus, ways of interacting with OS, etc).

What would the other system which we are designing would do? It would reduce the redundancy, reduce the memory space consumed, increase usability and reliability. Agreed?

I think we cannot do away with the menus. But for now, we can hide them. If you have downloaded and usingTextFlowsoftware, they have a very cool alternative of menu bar. But yes they do have menu, its just different. Its only accessible when you need it. And that what I think is important.

The problem of adoption is the solution itself. If the solution we provide is in the endcomples, andun-intuitive, people are not going to adopt. By separating ourselves from saying we are making computers, we take away the user’s expectancy of giving a windowsXPas OS. WhichEEEPC does. But does it really solve the problem of mobility?

What is mobility? For us mobility is being able to use it anywhere, and everywhere. For as long as we want. Our hardware gives us this feature. It can run for days, not hours. And we believe in the form-factor we are providing is a better solution for mobility clause. You cannot use laptops when you are standing. We want Adam to be used as a notepad. As a book. You can read the novel, which you might have written. We don’t want you to go out to laptops and PC to do editing of that same novel. You might be travelling in metro reading and figuring out, oops.. there is an error, you edit it right there. If you wait till you go back home, half the ideas will be lost.

Its a huge challenge for the established players to bring changes for which they need to re-adjust. Re-adjusting is risky, costly and leads to unknown futures. Quite understandable. And if you prevent these changes, that’s called monopoly. This is what is going on since long time. How many players were there in 2005 for editing documents? MS Word, that’s it. Its changing. We are not the only one who is going to change it. There are others. But we don’t know who is destined to succeed in achieving. And hence yes it’s a risk, but a risk if gets paid off, there is quite a possibility that our discussions are mentioned in history.

May beRaskinis talking about us. If you search theinternet, you wont find people working on this exact concept. Cos its difficult. Even we wont apply this concept to the fullest. There will be applications on ADAM. Raskin’s system is monopolistic. With which I don’t agree. Windows 7 is out and so is newer Mac OS X. Have you seen any soft of integration of applications with them? No. Why not? Same reason. It will take out the profit that are making using other applications likeiworks.

For us what is more important is bring in the change. Telling people that what they were using since long wasn’t exactly the way they should have been. We will tell them that the concept of OS was flawed. But in our case, intuitiveness is the main solution for adoption. Intuitiveness is just the conformity from the user’s perspective that the device has more potential than what he thought before. Other word for intuitiveness would be assumptions. If users have right assumptions for ADAM, we will get what we are seeking.

Following is the conversation between 2 of our friends while doing some research on Interface.

It’s a conversation, and parts of it, so expect break in flow of ideas and unexpected topics being discussed.

Features which are there in word, excel and powerpoint editor are available everywhere.. So if you are writing me an email through safari, you can still send me rich formats.. you don’t need to open any application to write CV quality letters. And adding more features to the system is not installing application.. In other words, to add a different capability to the system, we don’t need to write a specialized application, with its specialized command structure, but rather leverage the commands that already exist and add any news ones that might be required.  its just adding one more command to the system. Say for example, our computers don’t have application to keep windows on top.. either we can install some software to do that.. or what this guy is saying “OS is powerful enough to give this feature. Add this as a command and user will just press “Ctrl + Alt + T” to keep the windows on top.

Zooming will also be the inherent part of our system. The hardware and software will be capable of handling such features. What problem is highlighted here is “understanding how can zooming be used for more than just viewing pictures! It’s a challenging question.. few solution can be, making interface such that zooming takes you to certain areas which otherwise will not be accessible. But one thing we must realize.. zooming in and out is fun only for the first half and hour.. then it becomes cumbersome. So design should be such that system zooms in for more data.. not the user.

You might have seen “geek”  who never use mouse.. specially those who are working with linux.. for everything they will open their consoles.. and type in command there.. What Jef is saying here is. Archy was designed to be addictive. It grows onto you. Especially when you realize that you are saving a lot of time and the system is giving you much higher degree of control.. In general Control means lot of commands, which would mean cluttered menu icons. Archy was language based. So if you remember the commands, you can take those icons away. But here comes the problem, how can I expect a normal user to remember those commands. Here we wish to solve this problem by giving the user minimal set of features through menus and icons and other set is either hidden or accessible through Ubiquity kind of system. To understand what I mean by Ubiquity, you need to go through this link http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/ I would suggest installing latest firefoxand have a bit of understanding how it works

Here is an example.. a research found out that we all have a reading pattern of “F” We glance through the text from left to right and then quickly move down on the left edge to see what else is interesting. So, would that mean, if I keep interesting links on the left side of the page, there is a higher chance that user might actually go through it? The study suggested yes.  Now this result came from the statistical analysis of movement of eyes of people while they are reading text. This is Quantitative analysis.

One more example would be to figure out what is the minimum dimension of icon which a user can click using his fingers. This is also experiment based. And a very important study for us. So, do you really think that those people who are developing applications for iPhone are actually doing these studies and experiment before they make anything? My guess would be, they are not. And this is what Aza is saying. People who are designing application are not figuring out human psychology and information theory to design user interfaces.

Cont>>

User eXperience Design

Today I gave a presentation at User Experience Design Meet

held at Microsoft’s Bangalore Campus

Here are the details in text. Alternatively you can view the whole presentation here.

Design for the Next Generation

Contents:

Design philosophies need to change, Why?

There is a new device segment coming up

New kind of input methods

Change in the form factors

Use of Procedural Content and Context Free Art

User interface Controls

About Notion Ink

Design Philosophies need to change, why?

There is a new segment of devices coming up. And soon there will be 600 million of them worldwide. They will have different needs and expectations. They will have different resources at their disposal. But there can be not be any sacrifices in the quality of our designs. Cos if we don’t find way of doing it, someone else will. And these “new” users aren’t loyal. (How can they be if they are new?)

The new segment we are talking about is of MIDs, Net books and Internet enabled Mobile phones. When we mean different needs we mean quick access to controls, but with huge amount of encapsulation. They need easier ways to accomplish tasks. Right from file sharing, to entering text (think of a keyboard-less device!).

And for the first time, OS doesn’t matter to them if it does what they want and looks like “what they have seen before”. They want more from OS. “We will cover it in last part”

They have different resources. They are like Scooty (online application). Not Hummers or SUV (Photoshop, matlab, Maya). Think about it. You need to travel 10 mile on a city road. Which will take you faster, at lower cost and easily? Unfortunately the interfaces which we see, and the solutions which are coming up are not helping these Scootys.

But why suddenly a change from Hummers (Pentium dual core with 4MB of cash, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD) to Scooty (Atom or ARM Processor, 512 MB Mobile RAM, 32 GB SSD)? Interesting. But have you heard of KB of RAMS? So, let’s ask a general question; as the system progresses, shouldn’t it become efficient in terms of space as well? Are we deviating from the topic? The main point here is, since the systems are not Hummers; let’s not design applications and interfaces which consume lot of diesel.

The new input systems

Most of the devices in the future will have touch screens. Most of the mobiles already have. It’s a completely different play ground. The accuracy of the user has reduced, which asks for designs which are designed for error corrections. They demand to bigger icons, large pixel space between links, hiding menus which users won’t need access to often, new ways of selecting text and scrolling (unintended clicking a link), content which is “F’ in shape. We are working on newer concepts of text editing. How should the new sliders be designed? Now think about the importance of scroll bars. Are the websites you are designing or the interfaces ready for these kinds of controls?

Change in form factors

What is the size of the screens in the future devices? With the advent of this new segment, the standard size will change to 9inch. Is it enough for the application we have right now? Take example of office 2007. Smaller screens will be preferred as it defines the “True Mobility”. And they will be wide. So, how much space is left to view the content online which is majorly horizontal. Can’t the content be designed in smaller pieces and stitched on a vertical line. Think books! Another major concern is going to be the fonts. Smaller screen doesn’t necessarily mean higher DPP.

User Interface controls.

Let’s design an ideal office. Ideal would mean complete control of everything. So, I should have controls for the Internet connections, phone connections, electricity connections, water pipelines, paint and plasters (just in case), nails and a hammer, stock of Chair wheel-rollers etc. Oh and of course office furniture!

This is how current interfaces look like. We should not be designing systems for geeks who know how to figure out what they want to do. Instead design systems where we have done research understanding what are the major tasks user needs and just give that much. Of course if there is any electricity problem you can go to the ground floor and replace the burnt out fuse.

I have few questions. How often do you use file menu there on the top. And do you really need a title bar? What should the ideal controls available to the users? Does it make sense to design the system for the 1% geeks when the economics depend on those 99% who seeks enablers and not tool box! Think text flow around an image? How complicate is that to understand, that user needs it.

A good application solving such problems is Adobe Buzzword.

Solution is in the Context Sensitive Designs.

Have you seen the main menu bar every changing in any websites? (Well there are few designs now) Websites remind me of one thing. How many words are there in 1MB of data? How many words are there in 1MB of website? Doesn’t that show you the power of RSS? Can’t RSS updates be mailed to people who wish to know more? Nearly every website which is there on the Internet, the user first has to register. Get a confirmation email in response. Then start using it. How many websites are there in the world? How much time do you think user has for everyone of them? He would only stick to one if it engages him, not asks him to wait.

Let’s change to the other topic.

Use of Procedural Content, Context Free Art

There was a time when 3D video games used to come in Floppy Discs. Floppy Discs (smaller). Few of them incorporated Procedural Animation in them. A procedural animation is a type of computer animation, used to automatically generate animation in real-time to allow for a more diverse series of actions than could otherwise be created using predefined animations.

It is smaller in size. What can we do with this smaller size? How much can one download within 5 secs on Internet? An online 3D game? What about the newer animation for “Motion Typography”? What about the animation in the PPTs we show? How small? Look at this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YWMGuh15nE

Context Art.

Statuary Warning: It’s so addictive that those who are introduced at least try it once. And then once again.

These are the backgrounds which our eyes like. These are the kinds of tools we need for kids. For those old people who are kids.

Notion !nk

“But we still think the ultra-portable computing market is going to be led by a well-designed, all-purpose gadget that’s good at Web, reading, multimedia, and some games. Bigger than the iPod touch, a bit smaller than the Kindle DX, and not as cramped as a net book. And we haven’t seen that yet.” One of the online business news portal.

Sorry if things seems a bit out of order or confusing. You can go through the whole presentation here.