"What is the spiritual meaning of design?"

- Stewart Walker's paper at IDATER 99, "How the other half lives -
product design, sustainability and the human spirit".
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/cd/research/idater/downloads99/walker99.pdf
- Stewart himself, http://www.ucalgary.ca/evds/walker
- Fraser Speirs on the iPad, http://speirs.org/blog/2010/1/29/future-shock.html
- And this Drucker quote, http://krmmalik.posterous.com/drucker-on-apple

Not necessarily related ;-)

Why bother someone asked? Because I think we are witnessing an
important inflection in the development of computing. It's also fun to
measure ourselves against Apple's brilliance; how surprised are we by
the result, how good are our predictions? Here are mine:

I think the most important consequence of this device will be an extra
boost to the process of application redesign that has been ongoing
since the introduction of the iPhone multitouch screen.

Specifically I think it's the direct interaction (think FlightControl)
which is important about these devices rather than multitouch.

The hardware has been discussed a lot, so let's have a think about the
interface.

Beefier, faster device so we perhaps application multitasking of a
handful of applications. That means there needs to be some visual
device for switching between apps. Or perhaps a button and an exposé
like affair.

Managing windows is a pain, so I expect all apps to be full screen.
Some areas like the switcher, the status indicator and in most apps
nav bars will be walled-off by convention as before.

There will be a new larger content area and this will have the most
long term impact. This screen will have enough space to be useful for
practical tasks as well as casual gaming and media consumption.

What apps will we see? I don't know, but I'm sure the community will
have a good go at everything in time as they have with the iPhone and
this device will make a wider gammut possible too. I think it unlikely
that Apple with go with an iWork like suite early on, but there may be
a few little surprises. Photos will be expanded to the point where it
could usher in a nascent iLife suite.

As I walked the length of a train the other day I saw what people were
doing with their laptops. A good amount of media, some document
review; wordprocessing and spreadsheets. Email of course. A few people
were using sophisticated creation apps like logic, flash or an IDE.

It's instructive to ponder how any of these applications might be
redesigned for the hour long journey on the train where one is mostly
reading, reviewing, marking-up and editing. Spreadsheets needn't
involve a lot a great deal of text entry.

Once the door is open I expect a great deal of experimentation within
the envelope of the device; let's say 140 characters is about the
limit of text one can be bothered to type on it ;-)

API wise we can be sure we'll see the same Darwin/CocoaTouch layers as
before, simply a new shell.

Also the Application model still be in place. There's no other
prevalent model for building software and Apple is going great guns
with the AppStore

A few words about the hardware. We can assume the focus of the device
will be media, video, music with apps coming in second and books as an
interesting new avenue.

However I expect Apple to go with a fast bright screen suitable for
flicking and browsing rather than a long-life highly-reflective eInk
style screen. It might however adopt something like Pixel-Qi's hybrid
screen. These screens tend to be a bit dull (though practical) and
don't play so well at the point of pickup in a store, Apple's forte.
You wanted it before you walked in the store, picking it up just seals
the deal. So I expect the screen to major on 'gorgeousness' and less
on energy efficiency and reading practicality.

Concluding, this device will be much more interesting than we might
guess at. I expect it to usher in an era of application redesign to a
more intimate and direct experience than the desktop. This will also
be orthogonal to the local/gears/browser/cloud transition that is
going on.

http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/toys-tools/micro-machines-and-opto-electronics-contact-lense

O.K. So how does one make a virtual image at a distance from the
viewer with this? Right now, the LEDs sit on the surface of the
contact and would just appear as a bright blob. Microlenses within the
contact? Even today's smallest pixels would be huge. I'm trying to
think where I've seen this before...

Oh here we go, http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/common/papers.php?idx=1.
From the Human Interface Technology Lab at UW.

I wonder how far out the multispectral deformable dynamic
micro-lensing technology we need for this is out - 50 years perhaps?

Now this is interesting, and I'll riff off of it in more detail elsewhere, but I wonder whether Paul's rear-view mirror has a rosy tint: Apple has always had a difficult, off-on, love-you/ignore-you relationship with its developers. Back in the day when Develop! magazine would come in the airmail people were complaining about Apple's treatment of devs. Keeping them "close", but being super-secret all the same, mercurial one might say. Wonder where they get that from ;-)

Approaching the main point of the mobile platform I note or postulate

• It's a platform and platform is still important. The cabal of web browsers is one. Mobile is another. 

• For there to be change there either has to be a moral movement inside Apple (unlikely) or an adequate competitor. 

• Devs deserting Apple's working platform in any meaningful number is unlikely

• Palm or another getting a web-style, or open development process in place is also unlikely. 

• In a fair fight between Apple & Google over consumer electronics, Apple would prevail. 

• Google's offering will never be homogenous enough to offer a great experience and hence adequate competitor. 

Yes, devs may be hacked-off, but that's not enough to materially change the landscape. We've been here before, and analogous to the
illusory era before the current financial calamity, the world has not changed that much.

 

From the Mosman Lib: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mosmanlibrary/2779083555/

Danny @yandle proposed a Big Geek Lunch other day. At least I think that’s the root of the trail!

This is an opportunity for us to meetup, hang out and chat during the *daytime*. Yes, grab a sneaky lunch with your co-conspirators in
Brighton.

We decided when to meet with a doodle poll and the result was 12PM Tues, 10th March. 

Hope to see you there

 

So I’m embarking on building my second multitouch table. Here’s a
picture of the first one. Compared to that this one will be larger
(screen size) and taller (the last one gave me backache!).

And here’s me checking the geometry of the new one:

There’s a debate on innovation taking place tonight. I thought I’d jot down a few of my immediate thoughts right here. As ever mine will be a technical approach, but take a look at the comments on ‘cultural moment’ and platforms.

How can we explain the causes of the crisis: Financial system failure?
Greed? Lack of productive locations for investment?

Too much free, imaginary and unproductive capital looking for a productive surface with a limited amount of effort from people to find it, i.e. like pensioners (my folks).

 

To what extent is the crisis a product of lack of innovation?

One could argue that there is insufficient (network-local?) diversity in wealth creation. The symptom is the madness of crowds phenomena. i.e. how would my folks find something to invest in, and a strategy to be safe, other than the norm of investment funds (and houses)? Why should capital be expected to generate wealth without effort. Human energy is the key resource and much of that is directed to short-term and vacuous gain. 

 

Where and how is value created today?

The technical seam still provides a mass of value. It *is* the ‘cultural moment’ and is still evolving. In Britain we mistake this for a side-show, or are blind to it completely.

What role can government play in facilitating innovation and value creation (or getting out of the way)?

Random allocation strategy? If skill is a problem (in the allocation of resources), and has proved inadequate in the past, remove the skill aspect.

 

Does fundamental research need to be championed? 

Not in it’s current form. That’s also an old a broken model. Many areas of research aren’t particularly productive (think interactive computing research in the UK - largely irrelevant) and the idea of the channel is repellent. People at the ivory tower end don’t have an idea of the world at the other and vice versa. Productive focus is much harder to achieve and isn’t possible in most institutions, e.g. NESTA, PhDs, industry development and innovation forums.

 

Where do ordinary people’s interests fit into debates about the future?

Only thinking about getting to the next sandwich is part of the problem. Baa. But seriously, mass unemployment is a great concern. Is the crisis a basis for taking on more ambitious challenges? Yes, all are, but look at some of our grand challenge initiatives and see how tedious they are. An unwillingness to dream distorts the challenges, limiting them to that which institutions think they can achieve with their funding partners.

 

Are networked tools a key to dealing with the recession?

*A* tool. But that’s all. Human attention is they key factor and most of these networks just diffuse it. They’re not that useful for finding productive partners.

 

What are the contemporary barriers to innovation?

Sufficient, sufficiently technical founders. We don’t just need to talk about it, we need to do it, and in a clueful manner. Compared to Silicon Valley the UK’s pool isn’t as deep, is poorly connected and has little free energy to redirect.

 

Is there untapped potential in the design and creative industries?

Yes, but that’s a very leading question. These industries are too shallow to develop what we really need. Also we’ve become conditioned
to thinking that media activity on the web equals innovation. We need to be innovating at the platform level, think: windows/linux (the OS),
browsers (the modern platform), facebook (yup a platform), iphone (another platform) the internet/broadband Britian, exchanges (from LSE
to EBay), elance like sites (skills for money).

A few ideas

Future platforms: smart energy internet for local power generation and distribution. Hive mind for incremental development of digital stuff. A challenge: Low cost personal software. What if you could get any piece of software, any function made cheaply in a few days. How would
that impact your life?

@angryamoeba: Development tools are for shortcutting repetitive work,
not cutting out the need to learn. You have to do it the hard way at
least once.
@atobe: I have never calculated pi using a series expansion by hand - am I dumb?
@yandle: @angryamoeba Yeah, I read about this recently in ‘The Law of
Leaky Abstractions’: http://icanhaz.com/leakyabstractions
[So just to be clear, I wanted to riff off some of these tweets rather
than contradict them (as might appear with my first twitter
response).]
Some abstractions leak more than others - i.e. it behoves you to know
more about how they actually work. Other abstractions - let’s call
them “tools”, do a better job than others. And let me peg the range
here- for me a tool may be a co-designed language *and* GUI - designed
to work well together and *not leak*. IMHO we’ve barely started on
this kind of co-design activity.
In today’s world for the vast majority of purposes calculations
involving PI just work, but that wasn’t always the case. Once it was
difficult, unstable knowledge with unclear methods of application.
Compared to calculations with pi a code generator is much more likely
to be a messy, incomplete affair where understanding what it does, and
how, is an absolute must to get any benefit from it.
Both these endpoints are debatable, but the point is to establish that
there is a spectrum.
Now the Greeks were probably obsessed by methods of calculating
PI-like systems because it meant a great deal to the work that they
were doing at the time - they were close to the method. They would
have, and did use basic ratios before embarking upon worrisome
irrational series that we have now.
We are somewhat beyond this moment now, it’s not something we have to
worry about, and is established in our culture and tools. The point
being that leakier abstractions can be replaced by better ones that
perform the same task, and in the same area, given time and with an
effort to seek better abstractions.
To my point: The quality of abstractions is a matter of *design* and
we should actively seek out better ones. Rails was a great example of
this, but has now plateaued. What’s next?
Humans have a limited amount of intellectual energy to spend during a
lifetime. Using good abstractions we can stand on the shoulders (and
efforts) of giants to reach further. We _do_ need to understand what
we are doing, and to some degree how, but not always (knowledge of
electronics to make a phone call?)
It is possible to take a school-marmish attitude to people who barely
seem to understand their tools, but I find this often leads to a
blindness amongst the more skilled as to the things that we take for
granted (pi) and that we might also benefit from being less clever,
less technically knowledgeable, i.e. we might benefit from systems
that are kinder to us (Rails vs its predecessors).
To be somewhat controversial: I want computers/software to improve to
the point that I can be more stupid in future, not less. This is an
independent axis, closely related to ease of use, which does not
impact on my desire for knowledge, skill, self-improvement,
actualisation or just plain geeky pleasure in knowing how something
works.