Sophie Dennis
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Predict the Sky: New UX & UI concepts, Oct 2012 from Sophie Dennis on Vimeo.
Another weekend Hackathon at The Met Office meant a chance to reconvene Team Predict The Sky. The story of building our prototype iOS and Android apps, which tell you when there is something cool happening in the night sky where you are, during the NASA Space Apps Challenge in April 2012, is told on the PredictTheSky GitHub Page.
You can see videos of my original paper prototype, and the prototype iOS and Android apps which we built over the original weekend.
I think this weekend was a bit of a hard lesson for some of the team in the large gap between a prototype and a finished product. Circumstances meant I was only able to join in remotely, so the team in Exeter did some corridor testing with the prototype Android app. This revealed a number of UI issues, especially with the rushed design implementation. We also hadn’t been touch-centric enough, with a lot of pressing buttons when people’s first instinct was to swipe. Plus I had an idea for a “date driven” UI approach which I wanted to try.
After a long conference call with the team, I spent the evening working on ideas for simplifying the existing concept, making things more swipe-y, and experimenting with the UX implications of switching to a date-driven model. Once I was happy with my basic sketches I made the video walkthrough* above to explain my ideas to the team, and help us explore the two very different user experiences they represented.
I find committing things to paper, even as very rough sketches, really helps clarify my thoughts. I’m liking these rectangular post-it notes for sketching mobile apps too. I know a lot of designers love their molekins, but I actually like using something that’s cheap. It encourages you to throw it away, which I think is important when you don’t want to get too wedded to a particular sketch or idea, and means you iterate rapidly.
As informal “UX Lead” my next task is to turn this into a slightly more robust prototype and talk to some real users about it. Meanwhile the technical team are going to pin down exactly what cool space events the app can tell you about.
(* Actually, using a pre-recorded video during a hackathon turned out to be a bad idea. While it was really quick to make, it took forever to upload and share, meaning the team didn’t get a chance to review it before the event was almost over. A video call would have been much better. A lesson for next time.)
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Beware web designers bearing solutions
The Law of the Instrument can be seen in every web discussion forum, on sites such as Forrst and on Twitter. Ask for a CMS, blog or framework recommendation and you’ll see people immediately leap in to declare their hammer the best, without any knowledge of the requirements at hand – sometimes even when the requirements really rule out that tool from the outset
You cannot recommend a solution until you’ve identified the problem. Yet the web is awash with people pushing their favourite one-size-fits-all answers to whatever question is posed, whether a particular CMS, a certain programming language, or the latest social media cure-all. They are focused on a solution: one which works for them, one in which they are competent. Their own personal comfort zone, recommended as much for their own benefit as anyone else’s. But Twitter is not a marketing strategy, nor WordPress the only answer to web publishing.
I’m much more interested in problems, burrowing down into what’s really holding a business or organisation back and seeking out those golden nuggets, the smart ideas which are the real solutions to people’s complex, real-world problems. When someone asks for a recommendation, your first answer should be a question: what are you trying to do, what is the problem you are having, tell me more…
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Two wise words on growth, making money, and funding startups
37 Signals’ David Heinemeier Hansson on his distaste for the “swing for the fences”, go bust or have lavish success, approach
I’d rather just have nice, steady, predictable growth. I believe in the beauty of compound interest. We might not be growing 2000%, but if we can just keep our nice, solid growth for a couple of years, that’ll compound to have quite an impact.
David Heinemeier Hansson, ‘The problem with the tech world’s “swing for the fences” approach’ | 37signalsand DHH’s business partner, Jason Fried, on Making Money
There’s a fundamental difference between a bootstrapped business and a funded business. It’s all about which side of the money you’re on. From Day One, a bootstrapped business has no choice but to make money. There’s no cushion in the bank and not much in the pockets. It’s make money or go home. To a bootstrapped business, money is air.
On the other hand, from Day One, a funded business is all about spending money. There’s a pile in the bank, and it’s not there to collect interest. Your investors want you to hire, invest, and buy. There’s less—and in some cases, no—pressure to make money. While that sounds comforting, I think it ultimately hurts…
Anyone can spend money. Making it is the hard part.
Jason Fried, ‘How to Get Good at Making Money’ | Inc.com0 Comments
