Description: Startups, design, and the UX of life
While most of us have spent the week researching ways to circumvent NBC's Olympics time delay and worrying about earthquake weather in LA , Apple and Samsung have been duking it out in court over a $2.5B patent dispute with grave implications for technological innovation in this country. From my understanding (read: I'm a product guy, not a lawyer), Apple is attempting to enforce a patent on rounded rectangles , and hence, the design of the iPhone, which Samsung (and countless others) have since emulated. T
Why? Because executives removed from the craft of product design could pop their heads in at any time, and say “Oh, that pocket knife works really well as a pocket knife, but what would really be cool is if that pocket knife also worked as a spoon. Oh, and a fork. Also a compass. And also it should be more fun to use.” They would fail because producing a product with a user experience as elegant and polished as the iPhone requires a level of discipline and integrity that most companies simply cannot muster.
Great user experiences are transparent. They enable users to work through them while focusing on what they want to do, how they want to do it, not how the designer of the device thought they should. When you use the phone or e-mail on the iPhone, you're not "using the phone app", or "using the mail app", you're simply making a call or checking your email. You don't have to think about the tool, only the task at hand. Such experiences require tremendous courage and discipline in order to pare down an experi