Interaction design

Regardless of your personal opinions on online dating, there’s little question it has emerged from the lonely shadows of the Web’s dark-side and become embedded in the mainstream’s consciousness.

As the barrage of Valentine’s Day-themed press releases show no sign of letting up, it’s certainly as good a time as any to take a look at the broader online dating sphere. And it seems people are keener than ever to meet their match on the Web.

Online dating: It can only get bigger

New data suggests that there has been a 57% increase in online dating revenues in the past year, and there’s plenty of room for growth too given that only one tenth of singles currently use online dating sites. Digital marketing and billing manager Vindicia has been tracking the global activity for its online dating clients, and says that it has seen first-hand how the sector is flourishing despite the state of the economy elsewhere.

Social networking, and in particular Facebook, is contributing to the growth. Vindicia client SNAP Interactive, for example, is the company behind AreYouInterested.com, a matchmaking site inside Facebook that works via mobile apps as well as through the Web.

“Innovations in technology are expediting growth in the dating business, whether this is via location-based mobile apps, or by tapping into large and growing communities such as Facebook,” said Sanjay Sarathy, Chief Marketing Officer of Vindicia. “There is boundless opportunity in this market.”

Sarathy added that Vindicia’s online dating clients attracted £3.4 million (US$5.4 million) in revenues in January alone this year, compared to the £2.2 million (US$3.5 million) spent in January 2011. Sales have increased steadily over the weekends leading up to Valentine’s Day too – with dating companies seeing individual spikes of up to 40%, and a combined global spike of 23% last weekend (February 3rd) against the previous weekend’s spend (January 27th).

These figures are global, and are taken from across all of Vindicia’s online dating clients, which include SNAPInteractive, SpeedDate.com, Online Buddies and AvidLife.

No stigma

I’d be more tempted to say that if there has been a spike in people using online dating sites in January, it’s more likely because people see the new year as a time to get their lives back on track, find partners and try to fulfill resolutions. But at any rate, if these figures are anything to go by, it seems more people are turning to the Internet to find love.

If you’re thinking that more money is being spent because rates are rising for Internet dating sites, Sarathy says this isn’t  the case. “Online dating isn’t costing more. Revenues are increasing because more singles are signing up,” he says. “Resistance to online dating has long been overcome, opening the floodgates to more and more sites catering to ever more tailored requirements in a mate. Vindicia’s clients have been clever enough to meet this demand and are reaping the rewards.”

What is certain, is the stigma of using online dating sites has long worn off. And it seems that the more people that use them, the more acceptable it becomes and thus perpetuates what is now a massive economy. The volume of business is so significant that last year, the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) began including dating agency fees in its ‘basket’ of household goods and services used to calculate UK inflation.

We’ve previously explored why people may wish to use online dating sites, whilst we’ve covered a number of dating-related startups including DuoDater, MyMatchmatchmaker and Tastebuds. There’s certainly growing interest and innovation in the dating space, and it seems clear that the industry will continue to grow – love is a fundamental human desire, after all.

As Sarathy notes, Facebook is an obvious avenue for driving the online dating revolution.

With almost 850m users freely plugging their personal information in to their profiles, Facebook can leverage this data and target accordingly. Have you ever changed your relationship status to ‘single’ on the social network? I’m not suggesting you should try it, but if you do, don’t be surprised if you’re suddenly inundated with ads for dating websites.

With Path coming in for some intense criticism last week for uploading a user’s entire contact list without their permission, it appears that Instagram has used its most recent update to safeguard itself and its users by introducing a new privacy prompt when matching friend lists.

Path’s friend search didn’t pose much of a security risk, it was simply obtaining a local copy of a user’s contacts to match against its user database. However, the fact it didn’t let the user know it was doing so was what frustrated many and until recently, something that Instagram was also doing.

Instagram didn’t come in for nearly as much criticism, but by then the outrage had been calmed by Path’s quick response.

When you launch Instagram after installing today’s update, you will be met with a lovely new interface, it’s clever new Lux feature and an additional filter. If you head into your profile and select ‘Find friends”, you will be met with the following prompt (placed side-by-side with Path’s own new message):

  

Clicking ‘Allow’ obviously gives Instagram permission to upload your contacts and match them to users — as it should do.

Instagram was able to sideload the new privacy feature without drawing too much attention to itself because it had a new fancy UI and added features (it doesn’t mention it in its ‘What’s New’ list). New users will not know the difference and those that haven’t used the contact search feature may assume the notification has been always been there.

The prompt is displayed regardless of whether you are updating or not and is will continue to display the warning each time you try to utilise the ‘From my contact list ‘ option.

It may have been accepted by developers as an industry standard (to match contacts silently by uploading to remote servers) but now users are aware of what is happening, app makers are slowly starting to ensure they notify users as to how their data is being processed.

Many other apps may not currently offer the same feature but if they have taken any notice of Path’s actions, they may well be working on incorporating something similar.

However, if you have a jailbroken phone, you can install ContactPrivacy to alert you each time an app tries to access your contact list on your iDevice.

If you’re one of the people who meet a certain set of criteria, you could get up to $4 in extra Facebook Credits for every $1 that you spend, according to a blog post from the company. The deals happen with special promotions, but they aren’t available to everyone.

There are two methods for getting the extra Credits that are running right now. In one method, you’ll need to be lucky enough to catch an ad that will extend the offer to you. In the other, you can redeem your $1 purchase for up to $5 (total, including Facebook’s “free” credits) for in-app currency, as pictured below:

Facebook’s disclaimer at the end of its post states that you’ll need to make the purchase via a credit card or PayPal account, and those to whom the offer is extended “may not have previously purchased on Facebook”. It would stand to reason then that your chances of seeing the extra Credit options would be higher if you’ve not purchased credits through the site before.

Whether the service has truly taken off yet or not isn’t well known. Even the company’s S-1, pre-IPO filing, didn’t have much to say about it. So while they might not have changed the world just yet, giving away free money is a quick way to attract new customers.

Spotify has been a monster success since launching in the US, and one of the best parts about paying for a subscription to the service is being able to listen to music on your mobile devices.

The Spotify app is available on “the big three” mobile platforms; iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. Up until today, you’ve had the option for two streaming qualities on the iOS version. Those were low and high. The high being 160 kbps and the low being 96 kbps. If you’re using earbuds, the higher setting probably sounds pretty good, but if you have a better set of headphones, it’s not so great.

The desktop version of Spotify has always streamed at 320 kbps, which is extremely high quality. Today, the iOS version makes the jump to that same quality.

Instead of just low and high as quality settings for streaming, you’re now presented with a third option called “Extreme”, which brings you the 320 kbps quality:

Along with being able to stream the higher quality version of songs, you’re also able to sync them as well. Once you flip the switch over to extreme you’ll be impressed by how great the music sounds, even through your iPhone’s speaker. Be careful when you’re in an area with not great cell signal, as the new highest quality stream probably won’t even start for you.

Along with this mega change, the app now supports one tap login via Facebook, which doesn’t seem to affect me as the app always logs me in automatically. For new users, this is a welcomed feature I’m sure.

➤ Spotify for iOS

Uber-popular photo sharing app Instagram has been updated with several nice new features and a greatly simplified UI. The new interface in version 2.1 is a good sight cleaner and more modern than the last version of the app.

There is a nice new featured called Lux, which is a one-touch image enhancement that uses sharpening and fill light tweaks to improve images, especially backlit or low contrast photos. It looks like an overall saturation bump is included as well. Here’s a quick ‘before and after Lux’ shot for you:

A new filter called Sierra, a muted ’70′s-style’ snapshot look, has also been added. More options are always welcome.

The real treat here, though, is a tweak of the UI to give it a much needed facelift. The tweaks are decidedly minimal in their look, and many things have been trimmed down to keep the picture taking and viewing experience in the forefront.

Notifications have also gotten a tweak, and when you tap on a notification sent in iOS, you’re brought directly to the comment, user or photo that is being referenced.

We’ve been playing around with the update for a few minutes and it seems like the interface overall feels quicker, but there appears to be a bit of extra lag when completing an image capture, before the filter application segment of the process. We’ll try a restart of our device to see if the problem persists.

Some observations on the UI include the fact that Instagram has done away with the labels on the tab bar, apparently assuming that people are familiar enough with the workings of the app by now to let that go. They’ve also trimmed down the camera button to stay within the confines of the bar, a personal peeve of mine from the old version of the app. The name bar above the image still moves downward when you scroll upwards, which I wish would go away, but that’s just a personal tast thing I suppose.

The new design is partly the work of Tim Van Damme, who we mentioned was joining the Instagram team back in December. It looks like a pretty great update and should be a welcome upgrade for any Instagram user.

➤Instagram

Uber-popular photo sharing app Instagram has been updated with several nice new features and a greatly simplified UI. The new interface in version 2.1 is a good sight cleaner and more modern than the last version of the app.

There is a nice new featured called Lux, which is a one-touch image enhancement that uses sharpening and fill light tweaks to improve images, especially backlit or low contrast photos. It looks like an overall saturation bump is included as well. Here’s a quick ‘before and after Lux’ shot for you:

A new filter called Sierra, a muted ’70′s-style’ snapshot look, has also been added. More options are always welcome.

The real treat here, though, is a tweak of the UI to give it a much needed facelift. The tweaks are decidedly minimal in their look, and many things have been trimmed down to keep the picture taking and viewing experience in the forefront.

Notifications have also gotten a tweak, and when you tap on a notification sent in iOS, you’re brought directly to the comment, user or photo that is being referenced.

We’ve been playing around with the update for a few minutes and it seems like the interface overall feels quicker, but there appears to be a bit of extra lag when completing an image capture, before the filter application segment of the process. We’ll try a restart of our device to see if the problem persists.

The new design is partly the work of Tim Van Damme, who we mentioned was joining the Instagram team back in December. It looks like a pretty great update and should be a welcome upgrade for any Instagram user.

➤Instagram

Gideon Yu has had quite an illustrious career in technology, having been the former CFO at Facebook and before that, YouTube. Yu led the negotiations for the $1.65B sale of the latter company to Google. Last year, he decided to take the leap to sports and joined the San Franisco 49ers as the Chief Strategy Officer.

In less than a year, Yu has gotten a promotion and it’s a big one. Today, the 49ers announced that Gideon Yu is now the President and Co-Owner of the team.

Here’s what Niners CEO Jed York had to say about Yu’s promotion:

Gideon brings us a truly unique set of experiences and talents, and he will be a guiding force in our drive to continue the winning tradition of this franchise. He’s both a visionary and the ‘go-to’ guy who can lead us through the enormous opportunities ahead such as, the stadium construction, expansion of our brand and its businesses, and positioning the franchise for the future. We have more to do now than ever before, and Gideon is the right person to get the job done.

The San Francisco 49ers became the toast of Silicon Valley again after a stellar year that saw its head coach Jim Harbaugh win NFL’s “Coach of the Year” award in his first season at the helm.

Unfortunately for those of us in downtown San Francisco, Yu is working hard on a Santa Clara stadium project, taking the 49ers further away from its core fanbase.

Gideon Yu has had quite an illustrious career in technology, having been the former CFO at Facebook and before that, YouTube. Yu led the negotiations for the $1.65B sale of the latter company to Google. Last year, he decided to take the leap to sports and joined the San Franisco 49ers as the Chief Strategy Officer.

In less than a year, Yu has gotten a promotion and it’s a big one. Today, the 49ers announced that Gideon Yu is now the President and Co-Owner of the team.

Here’s what Niners CEO Jed York had to say about Yu’s promotion:

Gideon brings us a truly unique set of experiences and talents, and he will be a guiding force in our drive to continue the winning tradition of this franchise. He’s both a visionary and the ‘go-to’ guy who can lead us through the enormous opportunities ahead such as, the stadium construction, expansion of our brand and its businesses, and positioning the franchise for the future. We have more to do now than ever before, and Gideon is the right person to get the job done.

The San Francisco 49ers became the toast of Silicon Valley again after a stellar year that saw its head coach Jim Harbaugh win NFL’s “Coach of the Year” award in his first season at the helm.

Unfortunately for those of us in downtown San Francisco, Yu is working hard on a Santa Clara stadium project, taking the 49ers further away from its core fanbase.

In what I can only describe as perhaps the most impressive application of openFrameworks I have ever seen, Petros Vrellis‘s interactive animation of Starry Night will surely blow your mind. Just when I thought that everything has been done, something like this pops up and knocks me off my pessimistic high-horse.

As you can see in the video below, the painting is beautifully brought to life in a subtle animation, but the real magic happens when you interact with the piece, as if you were painting the work of art yourself.

This is just one example of the magic locked inside code and projects like openFrameworks. WordPress is right. Code is poetry, and art is what happens when brilliant minds learn how to bend it to their will.

The details:

• About 80.000 particles move around with a fluid-like algorithm and are drawn as small opengl minimaps.
• The velocity field was not computed automatically, I had to set it manually myself. It was quite difficult to get it right…
• I get about 30fps at 1920×1080, with an intel i5-2500K, and a geforce GTX560.
• Multitouch tracking is made with ofxKinect and ofxOpenCV.
• The music is the result of much experimentation and luck.

Creative Application’s Joshua Noble articulates exactly why this experimental app is so impressive:

A fluid simulation gently creates a flowing fabric from Van Goghs impressionist portrait of the Milky Way and night sky over Saint-Rémy in France using the thick paint daubs as the particles within the fluid.

A touch interface allows a viewer to deform the image, altering both the flow of the particles and the synthesized sound, and then watch it slowly return to its original state. The sound itself is created using a MIDI interface to create a soft ambient tone out of the movement of the fluid that underscores the soft movement. Beauty through simplicity at its finest and most playful.

Check out all of TNW’s favorite experimental projects and apps here.

When creating for the iPhone and iPad, the best thing most designers have at their fingertips is a realistic mockup in Photoshop. Developers have the ability to quickly update their app and test it right on the device, but what about us designers?

Skala Preview, created by the awesome team at Bjango, is exactly what iOS designers have always needed. It works separately with a Mac app and an iOS app, syncing the two together. All you need to do is drag an image into the app, and it will instantly show up in full resolution (pixel perfect, colour perfect and uncompressed) on your iPhone or iPad. No more emailing images. No more relying on mockups alone.

Once the image is on your iOS device, you can use multiple gestures to view it at every scale. Two taps with one finger sets the image to 100%, two taps with two fingers sets it to 200%, and so on all the way up to ten.

Now, the only problem left is having to constantly export your images and drag them over manually. But if you’re working in Photoshop CS5, Skala Preview has made it so you never even have to leave the app. Just set up a remote connection, and then every single change you make to your design will update instantly. It’s iOS design as it was always meant to be.

From the creators:

Skala View is the companion app to Skala Preview for Mac — the fastest way to send pixel perfect, colour perfect design previews from your Mac to your iPhone or iPad.

Previewing your design in situ lets you test tap sizes, text sizes, colour, contrast and ergonomics, all at a time where changes can be easily made — during the design process. It closes the loop, meaning you can iterate faster to a better final design.

As you can tell, TNW is impressed. The app is simple and a complete joy to use. The few interface elements that are there are quite elegant, and I’ve had no connectivity issues so far. All you need to do is download the two apps via the links below and you’re on your way. If you have any questions, visit the getting started page.

➤  Skala Preview for iOS (free) and the Mac ($4.99)

I’ve never been a big fan of “branded” devices. More often than not, they’re overpriced and you’re paying a lot for a name without he quality to back up the price. But there are exceptions. Soul headphones, by Ludacris, were notable ones and the Ferrari branding has been another that seems to insist on quality before its brand gets involved. The Logic3 Scuderia Ferrari R200 noise-cancelling headphones are a prime example.

We’ll call these cans the R200 for short, because Logic3 Scuderia Ferrari R200 is approaching the ridiculous. But picking the name apart will show you the method behind the madness. Logic3 is an accessories company that makes some of the best stuff in the business. Lately, the company’s focus on high-end audio products has led it to a partnership with Ferrari. The R200 is one of a few products within the Scuderia branding; a line that crosses in-ear headphones and into hardcore desktop audio docks.

We didn’t get much time to play with the R200 while on the floor at CES, but we did get to give them a listen. They’re an active noise canceling pair of headphones, including a supremely-comfortable set of ear cups and a wide, cushioned headband. Honestly, they’re some of the most comfortable on-ear headphones I’ve ever worn, but that’s bearing in mind that I wasn’t able to test them for extended periods.

The only fault that I immediately found with the R200s is that they can’t operate in passive mode. That means that if you’re on a flight and you run out of battery life, you run out of headphones too. TNW’s Matthew Panzarino got the impression that this was the fault of the headphones being prototypes, but neither of us remember specifically if they said that they’d be able to once they’re in production. If not, it’s a high price to pay, but not uncommon among active noise canceling headsets on the market today.

The R200s are available now for pre-order, if you’re the gutsy sort. With a price tag of $249 they’re not the cheapest on the market, but they’re also far from the most expensive. We’ll do a complete review when we can land a pair into our hands for a few days, but for now just know that they’re sexy, they sound great and we’re looking forward to hearing more from the company.

➤ Scuderia Ferrari R200

From a distance, Dubai seems to have all the ingredients needed to become the region’s innovation hub.

It has more than enough capital, except during the economic crisis of 2008, when dramatic consequences were avoided due in large part to the country’s most austere neighbor, Abu Dhabi. It has a desire to free itself from the power of petroleum, which nowadays represents less than 5% of the country’s revenue. And a sizable amount of global talent has moved to Dubai, attracted by its comfortable conditions, good salaries and the lack of taxes.

One of the United Arab Emirates’ seven member states, Dubai is, according to The Economist, “fundamentally a tax-free zone with access to the Indian subcontinent’s low-cost labor.” Only 17% of the population is from there originally, and nearly three-fourths of immigrants are of Asian origin. Half are from India.

The desire to transform itself into a magnet city is seen notably in the creation of Internet City, a space benefiting from favorable economic and infrastructural conditions that make it attractive for large companies. In the same vein, you find, among others, a Media City, a Knowledge Village, a City of Healthcare and the International Financial Center.

Internet City in Dubai

“The goal has been met,” said IBM employee Joël Demay. “Dubai is where the major players prefer to build their regional headquarters: Dell, Oracle, IBM, HP, SAP, Nokia…everyone.”

This is confirmed by Alfonso De Gaetano, Google regional director, who says that the area “plays a key role as the seat of major global companies, as well as for local businesses who hope to become global.”

Without a doubt, the most powerful is Emirates Airline, which plays an essential role in creating infrastructure. It has allowed Dubai to position itself as a hub for east-west travel. The third largest in the world, the airport grows 20% per year, and aviation represents 28% of the country’s GDP, according to The Economist.

Yet all this effort is not necessarily favorable to innovation. Take for example online commerce. According to several interviewees, consumers are ahead of merchants, who still largely prefer driving customer traffic to malls. As important places for family entertainment, these are sometimes linked with local tradition by being given the name of ‘souks.’ Every community has its own. DragonMart, for example, built in the shape of a dragon and containing 4,000 stores, is one of the largest Chinese shopping centers in the world.

DragonMart

 

The absence of e-commerce is a huge opportunity that is starting to attract the attention of astute entrepreneurs, as illustrated by Julie Leblan and Maurine Lombart, two French women who recently created the first multi-store gift-list company. But launching a company is much more difficult than you’d imagine in a place with a reputation for being favorable to businesses. Leblan and Lombart note that “the tiniest administrative detail is complicated.” That’s not even mentioning the headache of dealing with banks…

Indian businessman and investor Prashant “PK” Gulati confirms that Dubai “is too expensive for startups. Without counting the fact that starting a business is a big risk, and 100% of the risk belong to the entrepreneur.” There is a sort of strange paradox at work here: a country that has no taxes is certainly attractive to large companies, but is a barrier to the emergence of new companies, as the State generates revenue by making administrative transactions very expensive… and this includes business creation.

Dubai’s government has done a lot to attract entrepreneurs, and Jordanians, Egyptians and Libyans are gladly answering the call. But the only two local companies that are really well-known in the Arab world are Dubbizle.com, a sort of eBay, and Bayt.com, a job-search site.

There’s obviously something missing. For PK Gulati, innovation comes from small businesses, and it’s not a question of money. “It’s not that it’s expensive; it’s a question of state-of-mind. Certain countries have understood that you need to reduce barriers to creating small business: India, Kenya, South Africa, for example, are places where people can really create a business in one day, or at least try.”

This is where he’s disappointed. “All the funds on Sand Hill Road have money from Gulf. But there’s no money available here for experimentation. We can’t, in conditions like this, position ourselves as the ‘cradle of innovation.’”

So if you think you’ve seen a green plant in the desert, it’s a mirage. But the conditions are there – it’s just a matter of time, add both Demay and Gulati.

Read all of Francis Pisani’s posts here on The Next Web.

Loskutnikov via shutterstock

Since Twitter launched in 2006, there have been tons of unique uses of the platform, including fundraising, live tweeting the State of the Union, and now thanks to Penguin, a book club.

I’ve seen some corners of Twitter take to using hashtags to create a conversation on the platform. While it can be difficult to follow a conversation on the service, especially in real-time, Penguin thinks that the time-shifted hobby of reading books is a perfect way to bring people together.

The publisher will be picking a book each month, and suggests that its followers tweet their thoughts about it using the hashtag #readpenguin. At the end of the month, Penguin will hold a Twitter chat with the book’s author as its guest. The publisher has asked that its followers not to tweet spoilers for the book, which is ongoing Twitter issue I personally deal with, especially when it comes to TV.

The book club has kicked off for February with its first title, “The Weird Sisters”. At the end of the month, Eleanor Brown, its author, will talk to fans of the book about what they thought and answer any questions that they have. It’s like a virtual book-signing, without the signing part.

As brands look for new ways to engage its customers, it’s nice to see Penguin marry the old-school notion of a book club with the new-school tradition of tweeting your thoughts as they come to you.

➤ Penguin Book Club on Twitter

We all know how popular musician Lady Gaga is, but regardless of the popularity of her music she’s done something that not many other artists can say. She has built a sustainable and massive community around herself. She even gave her fans a name, “Little Monsters”, which they’ve embraced rabidly.

At the moment, Lady Gaga has the most numbers of followers on Twitter with 19,049,716 and an astounding 47,725,846 likes on Facebook. The quick math says that’s over 66M separate accounts between the two services that want to interact with all things Gaga. Other than Justin Bieber, we’ve never seen that type of engagement surrounding anyone on any platform.

Is Gaga outgrowing existing social networks? While Twitter has a 140 character restraint on messages and Facebook pages only let you do so much, it appears that one company has decided to create a site that is all Gaga all the time.

The company is called Backplane and one of its co-founders happens to be Lady Gaga’s manager, Troy Carter. Rather than sitting back and finding ways to draw attention to Lady Gaga’s accounts on social networks, the company has released her own, aptly named “Little Monsters“, which is a cross between Facebook, Pinterest, and yes, even MySpace.

Exclusivity and star power

The site is in beta right now and is invite-only now. To say the least, it’s the hottest ticket on the web for Lady Gaga fans and if I considered myself a “Little Monster” I’d probably be super excited to be included. While I’m not a huge Lady Gaga fan, I can recognize the trend that Backplane may be starting with this site. Why generate traffic, interest, and interaction on other platforms if you have the star power to have your own?

While musicians have had official websites for some time now, they haven’t had a place to intimately interact with their biggest fans. By building on that intimate exchange, you can keep fans at bay while you’re working on a new album, and use your platform to break sales records just by controlling all of the outreach and interaction.

For example, one user on the Little Monsters site decided to get a tattoo with the name of the site on her wrist. Of course, Lady Gaga herself “liked” the post, which caused the comment section to go berzerk:

What we’re seeing is a new breed of marketing supported by emerging technology. Can you imagine how successful a platform based around say, Michael Jackson or even Madonna would have been? With the artists themselves reaching out to its fanbase with videos, posts, and comments, they’re taking the idea of a “fan” to a whole new level. For those that adore Lady Gaga, being on Little Monsters is like getting an invitation to hang out at her house.

Do artists need Twitter and Facebook anymore?

While it’s unknown who Backplane will roll this type of site out for next, focusing on the technology behind the scenes and retrofitting the platform for the actual stars who are using it is a brilliant business model. You don’t have to worry about Twitter going down or Facebook rolling out a new feature that everyone doesn’t like, the artist is in control.

Twitter and Facebook are a great place to cultivate a fanbase, and without question the virality of shared content won’t have artists jumping ship just yet, but I imagine that in a few years, these artists will be hosting platforms of their own, like Little Monsters, and pushing content to these big social networks.

The company will be holding what it’s calling the “Managers Hack” at SXSW this year, which is inviting hackers to come out and build cool things to further music distribution. The company has the team, and the backing to turn the music industry on its ear, and it all goes back to building a fantastic community.

If you have only consumed our coverage of Windows Phone in the past few weeks, you might have come to the conclusion that we live in a strictly Nokia world. Not a bit of that, options abound, as it turns out.

One of those other choices comes from LG, a company that has been involved with the Windows Phone project since it began. The firm is working on a new handset, which is either called the Fantasy or the Miracle. We suspect that those code names will be washed, eventually.

Anyway, the skinny is that the phone keeps leaking pictures. Here are the most recent:

It’s a handsome enough phone, if not as head turning as Nokia’s Lumia line of phones. According to the good people at WPCentral, the phone likely contains the following: “a 4″ WVGA NOVA display, 1ghz second gen CPU, 8gb of internal storage, plus a 1.3mp front/5mp rear set of cameras.” When might we see this phone in action? Well, the Mobile World Congress is just around the corner, so we bet pretty soon.

If the phone is announced at the MWC, it will cap off a rather packed event. Microsoft is planning on using the date to show off Windows 8, and we suspect, Windows Phone 8. You can find all our Windows Phone coverage here.

Apple has sued the Motorola Mobility in U.S. courts over a licensing agreement for wireless patents with Qualcomm, reports Reuters. The lawsuit was filed today, February 10th, in a southern California District Court. Motorola Mobility, a company that is soon to be acquired by Google, is said to be in breach of a licensing agreement with chip-maker Qualcomm.

The document references U.S. Patent No. 6,359,898, which is a wireless transmission patent held by Motorola. Late last month, Motorola sued Apple for infringement in Germany over European Patent No 1 010 336, which is the same patent as the US-filed ’898.

Apple says that because Motorola has a licensing agreement with Qualcomm for that patent, as does Apple, Motorola is in breach of its contract with Qualcomm:

Motorola’s German lawsuit is in direct breach of a Patent Licensing Agreement between Motorola and Qualcomm. As a Qualcomm customer, Apple is a third-party beneficiary of that contract.

This breach, Apple claims, means that Motorola’s rights to the patent, both in Europe and the U.S., are exhausted, and it wants the courts to make Motorola drop its claims against Apple for violation of patents in Germany.

The patent specifically relates to the Qualcomm MDM6610 baseband chip that Apple uses in the CDMA-compatible versions of its iPhone 4S. Apple is stating that it has a purchase agreement with the maker and that Qualcomm has already paid Motorola off for the licensing of patents to do with the chip.

This is a fairly standard arrangement with component makers who build a product for use in telecommunications. The terms of the original purchase agreement between Apple and Qualcomm likely specified that part of the deal was that all patented techniques used were ‘covered’ by a previous agreement.

An additional FRAND argument

There is an additional segment to the argument that points out, rather testily, that Motorola preached to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute that the ’898 patent is ‘essential’ to the organization’s GSM standards. Motorola also committed to license its patent on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms.

This is also a common procedure when patents are deemed essential parts of infrastructure like cell networks. Since Motorola argued that you basically shouldn’t be able to do GSM properly without the use of this patent, it has a responsibility to offer competitors a fair licensing agreement.

This is done in order to prevent the stunting of technological progress due to companies witholding essential patents from their competitors.

Apple goes on to state its long-standing record of supporting FRAND licensing agreements and says that Motorola should be held to the same standards. It goes on to use Motorola’s own argument that the ’898 (or ’336 in Europe) patent is essential to standards to argue that it should be more open to licensing it fairly.

It also makes the point that Motorola did not name the iPhone 4S, the only device in which Apple currently uses the offending MDM6610 chip, in an earlier case it filed against the Cupertino-based company in Mannheim, Germany.

Motorola Mobility is in the process of being acquired by Google and, as such, has become the focal point of efforts by Google to combat Apple in the mobile space with patents. Apple recently appealed to the ETSI about abuse of the FRAND system and was open in its criticism of the current state of the telecom industry.

Design Flashback is a new series that takes a break from web and mobile projects to dig up some amazing retro/vintage inspiration. Looking beyond the web brings entirely new ideas to the table, and besides, graphic design repeats itself; just like fashion.

Outside inspiration is particularly important if you’re self-taught, since it’s more than likely that you zeroed in on the Internet (as you rightly should), while completely ignoring the greats in every other industry.

Typography exploded during the 1950′s, leading to some of today’s most notable and common typefaces. And as with most exemplary type designs, many fonts from this decade aged particularly well and continue to have an massive impact on design today. Take a sec to be inspired — here’s a list of 10 Iconic typefaces born in the 1950′s:

Helvetica

So much has been said about Helvetica that there’s not much left to say. It’s a classic, incredibly well designed typeface that was designed in 1957 in conjunction with Eduard Hoffmann for the Haas Type Foundry.

Egyptienne

Egyptienne was designed in 1956 by Adrian Frutiger for the Deberny & Peignot Foundry and was the first new text face created for the process of photocomposition.

Meridien

Undertaken in 1957 for Deberny & Peignot, Adrian Frutiger’s Meridien develops the Latin form into a classical text face of brilliant texture.

Univers

Univers is a realist sans-serif typeface designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1954.

Palatino

Palatino is a large font family that began as an old style serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf in 1948 (okay, 2 years early) by the Linotype foundry.

Optima

Optima is a humanist, sans-serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf between 1952 and 1955 for the D. Stempel AG foundry, Frankfurt, Germany.

Futura (Light, Light Oblique, Extra Bold, Extra Bold Italic)

Futura is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed in 1927 by Paul Renner. As you can see, it wasn’t designed in the 50′s, but grew substantially at this time with the addition of Light, Light Oblique, Extra Bold, Extra Bold italic.

Courier

Courier is a monospaced slab serif typeface designed to resemble the output from a strike-on typewriter.

Microgramma

Microgramma is a sans serif font designed by Aldo Novarese and Alessandro Butti for the Nebiolo Type Foundry in 1952.

Sistina

Sistina Regular was designed by Hermann Zapf in 1950.

Remember, great design transcends the medium. It doesn’t matter if it’s industrial, packaging, print, automotive, Web or anything else. Get inspired every day by people who don’t create anything the way you would. Get inspired by people who aren’t anything like you — then go back to your screen and make something beautiful.

For more Design Flashbacks check out this list of 13 Delicious Posters from the 1970s!

If you think Singularity University‘s activities don’t go beyond Silicon Valley and NASA Ames, think again. The American university is partnering for the second time with the Brazilian educational institution FIAP to organize an Executive Program in Sao Paulo.

This isn’t the first time FIAP has opened its doors to events and encouraged innovation; besides its partnership with Singularity University (SU), it has recently promoted a TEDx, TEDxFIAP, which focused on “Entrepreneurs of the Future.”

As for SU, there’s no doubt that is a magnet for brilliant minds interested in thinking our future – no matter whether or not you believe the singularity is near.

Besides its high-calibre line-up, the transdisciplinarity of its approach is one of the key factors of its success, and its Executive Program in Brazil won’t be any different.

Scheduled to take place on March 16th and 17th, the intensive course will welcome multihyphenate speakers such as the university’s global ambassador Salim Ismail, its Biotechnology and Bioinformatics co-chair Andrew Hessel, the professor and academic Vivek Wadhwa, the cyber crime specialist Marc Goodman, the former NASA astronaut Dan Barry and the stem cell expert Daniel Kraft.

The program’s tagline, ‘Are you ready for the future?’ gives a good idea of its agenda. From security to healthcare and robotics, keynotes will give the small audience some serious food for thought. Yet, participants won’t remain passive listeners, and are encouraged to engage with the content and exchange with the speakers.

As a matter of fact, FIAP’s team expects the course’s 200 participants to be fairly qualified. The program is targeted at CEOs, CIOs, entrepreneurs, government executives and other decision makers, FIAP says. Hence its hefty fee, up to US$3,200 for two days, which the IT university prefers to call an ‘investment’ – after all, understanding the future has no price.

A Call to Innovation

Yet, the impact of FIAP’s partnership with SU will go beyond the course’s lucky attendees. Indeed, both universities are partnering to launch a nationwide contest called Call to Innovation. To participate, Brazilians will have to submit tech-based ideas that could positively impact 1 million of their fellow citizens.

It’s worth mentioning that Brazil isn’t the only country where SU launched this contest; besides Mexico, Israel and Holland, the program will launch in ten additional countries by the end of March.

In each country, a winner will be picked, and receive a full scholarship to attend Singularity University’s ten-week Graduate Studies Program in California.

In Brazil, the winner will be announced in mid-April. Besides the SU scholarship and a round-trip ticket to the US, they will also receive a full scholarship for one of FIAP’s MBA programs. Says FIAP’s Innovation Director Nathalie Trutmann:

“Our ambition is to foster social entrepreneurship and help Brazil, so that the knowledge acquired during Singularity University’s course can be used to put in practice the tech innovation proposal that can transform and add value to the life of one million Brazilians over the next years.”

Have you already attended Singularity University or participated in one of the events it promotes? Let us know in the comments.

[ Transcript Available ]

Mobile is greatly influencing the user experience community. It’s challenging traditional approaches to design, but also bringing with it a host of new opportunities. Being a user experience practitioner in this changing environment is a bit scary. Yet coupling existing skill sets with the constraints of designing in the mobile space makes for an exciting world full of possibility.

The transition from designing for the desktop to designing for mobile can be a daunting one. Rachel Hinman of Nokia had her own experience with this challenge back in 2005 when the mobile world truly was a scary place to live in. Back then, the mobile web was little more than an afterthought. The experience of using the web on a mobile device was painful. With advancing technology and the advent of the iPhone and Android devices, mobile is becoming easier for users. Rachel considers that personal feeling and concreteness to be one of the exciting things about working in the mobile space.

The very nature of mobile offers opportunities that the desktop doesn’t, but also brings with it problems you don’t encounter on the desktop. Rachel thinks that it takes some “unlearning” to position yourself in the mobile context. Embracing the constraints of mobile and taking full advantage of capabilities such as voice and built in cameras are key. This allows you to leave the desktop mindset and design for the context.

Rachel will be presenting a full-day workshop at UX Immersion 2012 in Portland, OR April 23-25. Find out more details about the UX Immersion conference.

As always we want to know what you’re thinking. Share your thoughts in our comments section.

Recorded: January, 2012
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Full Transcript.

Jared Spool: Welcome everyone to another episode of the SpoolCast. I’m Jared Spool and I am your host for today.

We have with us Rachel Hinman, who is going to be speaking at our upcoming UX Immersion Conference, which is going to be April 23-25 in Portland, Oregon.

And Rachel is going to be doing a fabulous workshop that will help everyone, who is just getting into mobile design understand exactly what they need to do and how they need to approach the problem of designing great experiences for mobile devices. Rachel comes to us from Nokia and we have her here today.

Hi, Rachel!

Rachel Hinman: Hello!

Jared: Hello! You’ve been working in mobile now for a really long time, right? You were one of the first to really start designing in this space that I knew about.

Rachel: Yeah, I started my career in mobile in 2005. I had just gotten a job at Yahoo and, at the time, Yahoo was really interested in figuring out how to get Internet content on mobile devices. This was way before the iPhone was around or Android phones or Windows Mobile phones, so getting Internet content on a mobile device was a pretty difficult experience, difficult user experience. I was hired to help them figure that out and help them make that a better experience for their users.

Jared: And so back then, it must have been hugely challenging to do this. The browsers weren’t on every phone and the phones that had them, the browsers were really crippled in what they could and couldn’t do, right?

Rachel: There were a lot of sort of pain points for users at that time. There was definitely issues around the browsers and there was also this really big chasm between smartphone users and sort of basic phone users. And there was also sort of, people knew the Internet access was potentially a feature for their phone, but they weren’t even sure if their phone was capable of doing that because that language really wasn’t in people’s sort of mindset at that point.

I think another big problem that we saw, was that data plans was something that was a huge issue for people back then, as well. So even people who did understand and “get it” that they could get Internet content on their phone and were interested in it, then they would get these horrible bills because there really wasn’t a lot of clarity around how much it would cost and what the pricing was, what was driving the pricing. There were a lot of really significant user experience hurdles for folks in those days. My, how times have changed!

Jared: Yeah! Yeah, I remember back then having this little LG flip phone. We had a Verizon business account and they gave us six months free of a data plan, just so we’d get hooked on it.

I remember trying to use it and it felt so impossible because it wasn’t a smartphone. I had to do everything through typing in the letters with the number pad, so if I wanted a “C” I hit the “1″ key three times. Just typing in a website was like this major, major effort.

Rachel: Yeah, I have this great video clip that I remember from one of the research studies that we did where we asked the participant to… She had mentioned how one of the things she had done is that she would look up movies at blockbuster.com to see if a new title was available at the rental store and I asked her, “Could you demonstrate to me how you did it?” It was seriously like a four minute video clip of her typing in on T9, www.blockbuster.com and then, waiting for the page to fully render in the browser. It was a great clip because it really communicated just how something so simple that we take for granted on a PC, is so very challenging in the mobile world.

Jared: So it must’ve been, you know, here you are, hired into Yahoo and you’re tasked with making a great experience in those conditions. That must have been really scary because nobody knew how to do that back then, right?

Rachel: Yeah, I was really terrified, I would say, for the first three to five months of my time there. Because my experience before Yahoo had really been in the web — when I say web, at that time it was more the PC web — and I felt really comfortable in that space. I felt comfortable designing websites that were really for the PC context.

I had gone to graduate school at the Institute of Design and learned about user research and all that stuff, but I really didn’t have a lot of specific knowledge around mobile. In fact, a lot of people at that point didn’t. I think that I had done a project or two in my graduate program that involved mobile devices and I think that is why I got the job. But the first three to give months of that job, I was just really terrified by the fact that I didn’t really know a whole lot about mobile. I really didn’t know how to — I guess I would say — engage with it, if that makes sense.

Jared: Yeah, I mean at that point, it was really a different thing. So it took you a good long time, at that time, to sort of get comfortable. What were some of the things that stand out that were like “Aha!” moments for you back then?

Rachel: Well I think even knowing how to design for a small screen like, what are the design constraints? What are the typical design constraints? What’s the screen size? You know, I think with a website, you have a sense of how browsers work, and how page loads work, and sort of how to create a web page that, you know, it was of the medium of HTML and it would work. You know, it wouldn’t really choke the browser or be really difficult for a user to download or be really difficult to construct and build.

I think I didn’t really know a lot about that stuff and I got really caught up in sort of the technical parts of it. I think that that was probably for me, one of the things that really terrified me the most. Yeah, I would say that was the thing that probably terrified me the most. [laughs]

Jared: As you started to work in it, how did you start to get so you weren’t as scared of it and terrified any more? What sort of happened to get you there?

Rachel: I think, for me, one of the things that really kind of kicked me into it and really got me excited about it was doing user research because I was seeing firsthand how people were experiencing the stuff that was currently being built for mobile. I saw how poor it was. I just realized — here I am — I’m almost paralyzed in terms of my design skills, or being able to sketch out ideas and start to be able to put them together and build them.

And I’m seeing what other people have done and how really horrible it is for other people and I’m like, “I can’t do any worse.”

That was what caused me to just realize that I have these skills. I can empathize with users. I can draw and sketch. The technical skills that I don’t have, there are plenty of people within my group that I can look to, to help me with that. I realized after going out into the world and talking to people and seeing some of the broken experiences that they were having, that it was [inaudible] of me not to just jump in.

I found that to be just really something that made me just get beyond my fear.

Jared: It’s interesting that you said that the things that got you beyond your fear are basically, proven time-tested usability and user research techniques — just you know, sitting and actually watching people, seeing how bad the status quo experience was, realizing that you could sketch out your ideas and put them in front of folks and see if you could incrementally improve that experience over what was out there. I mean, that’s not new. That’s not new to mobile. There’s nothing mobile-specific about those things, right?

Rachel: Right, exactly. I felt like it was also interesting because going out into the world and talking to people, observing them and observing how they were using their mobile devices was something that was surprising that more people in the organization hadn’t already done that. There were some really significant issues that they were trying to solve and they were struggling with, and were trying to find good solutions to, but going out and actually watching people, and sort of understanding how they understood their mobile devices, was not something a lot of people felt comfortable doing.

I think from a user experience perspective, that ability to empathize with the user and observe that and sort of be able to come up with design solutions based on those observations and those insights, is something that like you said, it’s a tried and true, proven skill that sort of applies to a lot of things.

Jared: Let’s fast forward to today. Now, you’re working at Nokia. You’re sort of neck-deep in mobile experiences all the time, right?

Rachel: Yes.

Jared: We have the iPhone has come along and the iPhone 2, and the iPhone 3GS, and now the iPhone 4. We’ve got Android phones, and last I heard, Nokia has some awesome new phones running Windows Mobile 7. And so there’s all sorts of new experiences today. Does all this stuff make it harder or easier, than what you were dealing with way back in 2005, you think, for people who are just getting started?

Rachel: Well, I think it’s a kind of a combination of both. I think it’s easier because I think, you know, mobile’s not this sort of side thing, side interesting thing, it’s really something that’s I think become front and center, both in the user experience world, as well as the business world, technology world and it’s something that people are a lot more aware of.

That’s definitely a big change. I think that awareness and excitement around it — you’re not the mobile team of maybe three or four people kind of cobbling something together that not very many people use — there’s a lot more people now doing pretty sophisticated things with their mobile devices.

There’s a visibility now, and I think, a user group now, just in the general public that’s a lot greater than it was seven years ago.

But I think in some ways there’s kind of a… I don’t want to say that there’s a dark side to that. But I think one of the things that makes that challenging is, there’s a lot of noise. I mean I think that an image that comes to mind is — I use it in my book — was this image of the Oklahoma Land Rush. You know it’s like all of those horses running! There’s a sort of fervor around it. I think that energy can be not always the most productive for people.

I mean, some people work really well in that kind of a space, around that kind of energy, but not everyone does. I think in that some ways that can kind of get folks into trouble.

Jared: Say a little bit more about this “land rush” thing that’s happening.

Rachel: Well, I think people just feel like mobile is really hot right now and it’s just kind of like the Land Rush. They want to figure out their place in it. They want to get their piece of that opportunity. I think people are just sort of rushing in and trying to figure that out.

And I think, you know like I said, the positive side of that is that sort of optimism and sense that anything is possible is there. I guess I try to embrace that positive part of it. Like, “Anything’s possible! Infinity and beyond! Hooray!” It’s a nice thing to be around.

Jared: It is! What’s really fun for me is, I see clients who get really excited about the possibilities of mobile and start to say, “Oh, and we can give them status updates on where things are. We can let them check the progress of their deliveries. We can skip things in the user experience. They don’t have to check in with us anymore. They can now just do it on their phone and go straight to the gate or just take off.” Those things become simpler to imagine because they have so many experiences to compare to.

Whereas back in 2005, I think it was hard to imagine all the things you could do with your phone. It was much more “sci-fi-ish” back then.

Rachel: Yeah, I think that’s one of the things that has been really exciting about the last I would say two to three years of being involved in mobile. Is, I think, like you were saying, with the release of things like the iPhone and the Android phones and touchscreen devices, as well as tablets, I mean I feel like there were a lot of conferences and academics and people in research labs, who were talking about ubiquitous computing, but it’s almost like these devices and tablets have really become an almost gateway drug to what’s possible. Right?

It’s not something that’s this sort of wonky, abstract thing that people can’t relate to any more. The ability to access information from anywhere, from almost any context, it’s really sort of allowing people to experience that firsthand and make that type of experience concrete and more tangible.

And so it’s exciting because it’s no longer this kind of weird, abstract thing that most people can’t relate to, it’s something that is a lot more near and dear to them. They can experience it. They can get glimpses of that future.

Jared: Yeah, I mean if you’d asked me in 2005, what would be some of the neater apps, I wouldn’t have said,”Well, I’ll just point my camera at my W-2 form and Intuit’s tax product will read the form and fill out my income tax 1040 based on what’s right there.” But that’s done now. Then once you realize, “Oh, if we can do it that,” then Walgreen’s realizes that, “OK, well, I could just point the camera at a prescription bottle and make it a refill request.” All of a sudden, all this stuff just happens. It’s like, “Oh, that’s easy.”

So it’s almost like the palette of colors we have to paint with has just gotten hugely bigger.

Rachel: Yeah. That’s a great way to put it. It really is this sort of green field. I think that it’s almost like this golden age now, where these sort of wonky things that we thought would be so impossible, it’s like, “Wow, it’s really not.” It’s not impossible anymore.

Jared: So, given that, and all these cool things are there, there are still some challenges that people today deal with on a regular basis. What are some of the challenges that you’re seeing when you talk to folks who are trying to design for mobile today?

Rachel: Well it’s interesting, because I think a lot of times when I talk to people, a lot of the fears that people have are the same fears that I had when I first started, which was, I got really caught up in the fact that I didn’t have any experience in mobile. I got really caught up in the sort of technical aspects of it that I didn’t completely understand.

I know that those are valid fears. I’ve experienced them myself, but I also have experienced firsthand I can move up and out of that. Because most people, if they’re involved in user experience and have some sort of user-experience projects under their belt, they have developed some skills that will serve them very well in designing mobile stuff, mobile applications, mobile websites and whatnot.

It’s really around sort of recognizing that and having confidence in the skills that you have, and the contribution that that can make to whatever mobile projects you’re working on and for your team. I think that confidence issue is definitely one challenge that I see a lot of people having.

And the technical stuff, I think that that’s becomes a weird thing too, because when people ask, “Oh, should I make a native application, or a web-based application? Should I make a mobile website? Should I make an Android application? Should I make an iPhone application?”

To me, those are important questions to ask, but I think it’s really more of a timing question. I see people asking that question right away, like at the very beginning of their design process. I just feel like that’s not really the right time to be asking that question.

The right time to be asking that question is further along, after you’ve allowed yourself to explore and see what might be possible, and just let yourself explore what could be possible, explore what mobile experiences might make sense for your users, and then make your decisions, your sort of execution decisions, based on those ideas.

Jared: All this technical stuff, it sounds to me like, while it’s really important, what I hear you saying is that a lot of the issues that come up when you’re designing, there’s a way to do it most of the time, and if not, you’ll find it out pretty quick. So don’t worry about it too much. Chances are you have a group of people around you who are going to be able to guide you through the, “Oh, that’s easy” or “Wow, that’s going to be really hard.”

But the things that make a really good experience typically are not things that are technically difficult to do. Is that true?

Rachel: One of the things that I think is really important to remember with mobile is that even a beautifully executed bad idea is still a bad idea. Right? Execution is important, but it’s really around what your idea is.

I think one of the things that’s super exciting about mobile is the fact there’s still so much about it that we don’t know, and we don’t understand. And that’s why I really encourage people to allow themselves to explore that preliminary blue sky idea space, and give themselves a generous amount of time to do that, because there’s really a lot of room in mobile user experience to innovate.

I think it’s important for everyone to allow themselves to just take that time to come up with a bunch of crazy ideas, and really save the execution decision making part of the project for a little bit later in the process. Because who knows who’s going to come up with the next new interesting idea, right?

Jared: Yeah. Some of the coolest stuff in mobile has been really out of folks that you wouldn’t think of as a particularly innovative organization or group. I mean, take the prescription bottle thing from Walgreen’s. I think before that, if you had asked me, “Who are the top technology innovators in the world?” Walgreen’s wouldn’t have come to mind.

Same with the folks over at Bank of America. I think it was Bank of America. Who was it who made it so you can take a picture of your check and deposit it without having to be at an ATM?

Rachel: I think it was B of A, but I think actually, I want to say it may have been something government oriented, because I thought that the first people who were doing that, it was designed for folks in the military.

Jared: Oh, yeah. I think I might have heard that, too. But even so, neither of those organizations you would put at the top end of technology innovation. It’s not like they had some special incubator, or some think tank that was coming up with this stuff. It was just a bunch of guys that, “Hey! What if we took a picture of it? What could we do with that picture?”

So it’s sort of that playfulness that I think really makes mobile stuff really, really interesting.

I’m curious. You spend a lot of time helping people, and you’re writing this book for Rosenfeld Media called “The Mobile Frontier.” What are some of the traps that you see folks running into when they start, that it’s like, “Oh! Dude! You should be reading my book! You should come to my workshop, because you would so not have done that.”

Rachel: I almost think of it more as unlearning. But I think one of the things I see a lot happening with people is that it’s very difficult to recognize and be conscious of the fact that a lot of how we think about computing experiences and technology today is really based on the PC experience and the context of the PC.

So a lot of ideas, and even solutions that people come up with are very much sort of entrenched and tied to that legacy.

And I think it takes some unlearning to recognize that mobile is just a very different context to design for. There’s limitations to that that can be somewhat frustrating for designers, but there’s also a lot to it that’s kind of, like you were saying, taking a photograph of something and using that as a way to trigger an interaction. That’s something that you really don’t see a lot of with the PC.

Voice is another one, another input that has been explored somewhat on the PC, but mobile’s really taking that baton and running with it. I think also just playing around with information, information access in a different context. What does that mean? How do you depict information? How do you convey it in a way that is glanceable, is not annoying, is valuable to a user in a variety of different contexts?

Those are things that become interesting design questions for mobile, that I just don’t think the PC has ever really explored. I think that it’s that unlearning of the PC, and really allowing yourself to kind of cast off that anchor and explore a different way of doing things that really becomes a challenge for people.

Jared: This getting away from the PC. Are there tricks that you’ve been teaching people, to sort of divorce themselves of that thinking?

Rachel: One of the exercises that I tried kind of early on in my career and I was just so surprised at how excited people got as a result of that exercise, was… You know, a lot of times at the beginning of any project, you’ll have a brainstorming exercise. I think there’s a typical scenario for that brainstorming exercise, and that is, your team sits together in a conference room, maybe have a bunch of hash sheets, and you come up and you start brainstorming ideas. That’s the sort of scenario.

I was working on a project, and we were thinking, “Hey, instead of sitting around this conference room, let’s actually get out into the world and start coming up with ideas that way.” And it was actually sort of, we could have termed in “brainstorming in the wild,” but people going out into a variety of different mobile contexts, and using that as sort of fodder and inspiration for their ideas.

And I think what the result of that is is that your ideas can actually have a kind of empathy and sensitivity to some of the contextual issues that you encounter when you’re designing for mobile.

Even some of those challenges just become this sort of inspirational fodder for a kind of clever and interesting way to solve a problem that someone might have, or just think about access to information in a completely different way.

So I think that it’s that idea of getting out of the static context, is one really great way to kind of shake yourself out of, “Wow, I’m not designing for this sort of, I’m sitting at a computer with a keyboard.” Put yourself in a typical user’s environment and try to come up with some ideas.

Jared: Are there other traps that people run into too?

Rachel: I’d say that I’ve really found that prototyping is… I think for any user experience activity has been evangelized as really important to prototype, but I think in mobile, it’s like, three or four times more important to really give yourself the time and the space to prototype your ideas. I think for the PC, it’s really considered a luxury, but I think for mobile, it’s just, it’s essential to really just bust out and really get your ideas on paper, and find a way to really test out your ideas early and often.

Jared: What is it about mobile that sort of forces your hand on the prototyping thing?

Rachel: I always think of the design process you think about it in sort of four phases, like discover. You’re sort of in that big idea space and come up with lots of ideas. Then there’s that define, which is the second phase. It’s where you say, “OK, this is what we’re going to make, this idea.” Then you develop that idea, and you fine tune the design. Then you deliver. That’s sort of the fourth phase. So it’s discover, define, develop, and deliver are the four phases of design process.

I find that the place where things really fall off the rails for a lot of folk when they’re new to mobile is it’s really in that develop phase, where you’ve actually taken a couple of design ideas, or one design idea, and you start to develop it. It’s really because people lack the skills to make really good, educated decisions, because they’re new to the design space.

Something that maybe sounded really good in their head, or maybe like there was an interesting drawing, or a few rough prototypes of it, once you really start to develop it, you start to see some of the flaws. Then it just becomes like a pain parade till the end of the process, because you just really didn’t have a great idea that you could develop and deliver on.

If you start to prototype those ideas at the very first stages of that design process, in the discover and define phase of a design process, I just really prototype the heck out of all of your ideas. I find that it helps you make those decisions better. You’re not just relying on an idea in your head, or a really rough idea that you maybe lightly sketched out, or made a really rough prototype of. It’s like, if you vigorously kind of pursue that idea, and embodying that idea in a prototype, it helps you make better design decisions.

Jared: Well this has been really interesting. I’m really excited to see your workshop at the UX Immersion Conference, and the book, “The Mobile Frontier,” is coming out, and I know you’re going to be doing one of our Next Step Virtual Seminars with us, that we do in conjunction with Rosenfeld Media, that sort of celebrates the book and talk. We’re going to be talking to you a lot.

Rachel: Will be exciting, yeah. It’s going to be a fun spring, that’s for sure. 2012 is going to be a good year.

Jared: It is, it is. And it’s just in time, because I think this mobile thing is finally about to take off.

[laughter]

Rachel: I’d say.

[laughter]

Jared: Yeah. I predict all sorts of people will be using their phones. [laughs]

Rachel: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know, I’ve talked to a lot of people lately, and I’m super excited for the future and what’s happening, because I think there’s just so much possibility, and so much space for innovation and invention. It’s like I said, I’ve been in this industry for seven years, and I’m still excited by the possibilities of it.

I just see a lot of designers who are intrigued by mobile, but I can also sense that sort of hesitation and fear that they have. I hope that people just are able to move beyond that sort of hesitation and fear, and just jump in, because it’s a fun place to be. It’s where the action is.

Jared: Well, at the UX Immersion Conference in Portland in April, you’re going to be helping people get over their fear, with your full day workshop. I think people are going to really love it.

Rachel: Yeah, I do, too. I promise there will be no trust falls.

Jared: No trust falls. OK. Excellent. Well, Rachel, thanks for spending the time with us.

Rachel: My pleasure. Thank you.

Jared: And if you want to see Rachel, you’ll want to come to Portland, to the UX Immersion Conference. Again, that will be April 23-25. You’ll also want to be checking out her book that’s going to be coming out from Rosenfeld Media later this year, called, “The Mobile Frontier.”

That would be an awesome way to get a great introduction into how to design for mobile. I want to thank everybody for listening, and as always, thank you for encouraging our behavior. We’ll see you next time.

Chalk this one up to the “no surprise if it’s true” section: AppleInsider is saying that Apple is planning to completely revamp the MacBook Pro line by the end of 2012. Let’s break down the claims, as well as what we here at TNW would believe to be their validity:

1. MacBook Pros would take on an Air-like form factor – Probably (hopefully) true
2. The refresh would start with the 15-inch version – Very likely true
3. New Pros would take on the Ivy Bridge CPUs – Almost definitely true
4. No more optical drives - Very likely true
5. Non-replacable SSD in Air - Possibly true

Nothing here is especially ground-breaking, as it’s been the conventional wisdom that Apple’s aging MBP line would be getting physical refresh sometime soon. What’s probably most interesting here is AppleInsider’s lack of use of the word rumor anywhere in the piece referring to the Pro. If the site’s sources are correct, the differences between the Air and Pro lines will come down to flexibility.

It’s long been rumored that if Apple decided to take the Air form factor for the Pro line then a lot of the heavy lifting would fall onto external Thunderbolt components. While there aren’t many on the market just yet, we’ve seen accessories that would allow heavy graphics processing and massive storage for a moderate amount of cash.

What AI posits is that the difference between a 13-inch Air and 13-inch Pro would come down to faster memory and a soldered SSD in the Air versus replaceable in the Pro. It would seem to make sense, from a pricing perspective, as Apple certainly sells a hefty amount of 13-inch Pros, even now that the 13-inch Air is on the market. The question is whether or not Apple would be interested in forcing the hands of those Air buyers into becoming Pro buyers for just a hard drive and faster RAM.

There’s also a matter of increasing prices for older components. If Apple drops down to a slower RAM for a newer-generation chip, this is a problem that it will eventually face. For a while, that slower RAM will be cheaper than whatever speed is optimal for the newest chip. But that only lasts so long. Perhaps Apple’s reasonably quick iteration with the Air line will avoid this problem, but it’s worth mentioning.

I think there’s a pretty good chance that what AI is claiming will happen, but I think that there are still some differentiating factors that are missing here. The present Air has two USB ports, as well as a single Thunderbolt port. For the Pro line, I think buyers are going to want 2 of each. I’d also love to see the company keep the ability to do a standard 2.5-inch drive in the Pro line, simply for the sake of capacity for content makers. While Thunderbolt is a great option, it confines you to a desk. That defeats the purpose of a laptop for many of us.

The changes would also open the door for that 15-inch Air that we’ve heard so much about. So sound off in the comments. Is AppleInsider off its rocker or does this all sound plausible for the next generation of MacBook Pro?