Pomme::TAB

If you’re not sure what’s the difference between a controlled vocabulary, a taxonomy and a thesaurus, this blog article is quite good at clarifying the above concepts and more.

What’s not covered are tags and folksonomy.

It looks like it’s time to ditch my pie charts as there is a new trend in town: square blocks of colours

I was looking for the Macintosh Human Interface Guideline on Amazon and found this gem (Newton Interface Guidelines)

Though it’s not available anymore, I’d be curious to know how valid it is when developing applications for nowadays PDAs.

Maybe one of the reason the iPhone will be closed to third parties it’s because Apple prefer to have enough experience in developing their own software, before writing an application design guide and open the handheld to external developers.

I think the environment in which the iPhone will evolve is so different than Newton’s.

Now, everything is connected, worms, malware and phishing also spread on mobile devices, on IM. PDA are now expected to be multimedia player while connectivity comes into multiple wireless flavours, all eager to drain the battery’s life (it was an excellent idea to put 2 batteries in the iPhone)

Also cautious users want snappy interface and the shortest time to completion for whatever they want to do because each second spent messing with the UI is another second of exposure to thieves in public transports.

That’s a challenge.

I think it’s a wise decision for the iPhone to starts its life closed to third parties software.

Interesting article about software design methodology: design for one or two typical users, don’t try to satisfy all users.

It makes sense to me it’s a better to make one user happy than discontent everyone.
The trick I suppose is to correctly profile this one typical user.

I think it does apply to any product, not only software.

I wonder how Apple do identify THE user and what is their typical user’s profile (called ‘persona’ in the article linked above). I ask that because I like so much some of their product I feel like they were designed for me alone
Although I like technology It very rarely translates into an acquisition: I still don’t have a portable media player.

It’s only when I need it enough and like it a lot both inside and outside and feel like it was made for me that I may consider a purchase action (that can take weeks or months).

One of the Nokia E-series smart-phone is about to land in the purchase action and the Nintendo Wii has left the parkway for the runway, but I don’t how long is the flight

The other interesting thing is there seems to be a relationship between money earned by product sold and a user’s satisfaction.
It might sound like stating the obvious but not to all company seem to get it.
Apple and Nintendo are making huge amount of money for each product they sell compared to their respective competitor (Sony loses money for each console sold, PC market is sluggish with a industry’s growth far below Apple’s)

Why?

I bet they are a lot of users of Apple and Nintendo who feel like their acquisition was designed for them. It makes them happy and make them in better disposition to invest more into the product (service and software, new versions).

(an interesting comparative read is the “after the honeymoon” reviews for the Wii and for the PS3 at Ars Technica: guess which one of the review feels more positive and transpire reviewer’s happiness at using the product?)

Typically when designing for a subset of the users population, you’ll reach a smaller number of people.
I think that’s called a niche market, but who cares as long as both side of the transaction are happy: Product maker earns money (typically the margin are higher) and the user (notice, I didn’t say consumer) is happy, a perfect virtuous circle.

Now that’s obviously not true for the iPod whose market share cannot really be called a niche.

I think, in addition of an excellent user profiling, I suspect there is the fashion effect. At least here in the UK, I’m sure most people who buy an iPod do so because it’s fashionable, not because they studied what media players are available and selected the iPod because it’s the ONE (by the way, this is how I bought my first mac in 1996, after months of study of what’s in offer by the computer industry at that time).

That said, some of them will find the iPod is not what they wanted, while other will really like it and makes them happy of their purchase. They will explore the possibly of iTunes (software) , buy more songs on iTunes Store (service) and possibly look into other Apple products: the Halo effect.

Transforming a normally niche (i.e: small market share, high margin) product into a mass-consumption product is probably the dream of any company.

Apple has now made it, Nintendo’s got the idea and works on it and Nokia made it long time ago.

The others?

Just too busy milking as many as possible uninformed or misinformed consumers (notice, I didn’t say users) ’till the last drop while trying to destroy each other.

I’m not saying the mentioned brands don’t do that, I’m saying that’s it’s not their main focus and they don’t get carried away by the necessity of a capitalist world.

Disclaimer: I’ve mentioned Apple, Nintendo and Nokia because they made products that I’m happy with, I fully understand that people can be happy with product from other make, we are all different after all It just turns out that, in my opinion, these three are coincidentally particularly good at designing product with specific profile of user in mind, which explains why they excel in their niche(s).

One last message to gadget makers:
If you are desperate to get me buy your product, read my mind (but don’t listen to me) and design it just for ME, then may be I will.

Tom Coates has written a surprisingly interesting piece (design-wise and meaning-wise) about the US states flag.

Similarly (is it the flag season?) Gail Orenstein, a flickr contact has recently posted an article about the origin of the British flag (Union Jack).

Finally, here is a link to aphotograph of the Catalan and spanish flags. You’ll notice (although it’s not easy to spot on the photo) that part of the catalan flag is identical to England’s flag.
The reason is that both Catalunya and England share the same Saint protector: Saint George, symbolised by the red cross on white background.

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flag, design, geopolitics, usa, origin, unionjack, catalunya, unitedkingdom, spain, saintgeorge