The Windows Phone 7 Interface looks really nice in this video. FInally has done something right without copying anyone. I’m not sure if the experience is on par with that of the iPhone interface but it definitely scores high in aesthetics.
えん
I am Aen and I work for Foound as a designer of experiences
This is an image follow-up to my previous post ‘Ishi’.
I recently joined a internet company named “Foound” as the head of brand and design. I left my previous company which was a design agency I co-founded for Foound because of various reasons, including the opportunity to work on its flagship product with the same name, a nifty mobile application we thought up to “bring the world closer one hangout at a time”. And so begins my quest as a designer of mobile applications and their interfaces, starting with the iPhone.
Designing mobile applications has never been part of my experience, although I have in fact been worked on and since the first version of Foound six months before I became a full-time staff. I have to admit, I had no idea how I wanted Foound to come together. Starting with the Apple Human Interface Guidelines, I buried myself in literature trying to make sense of this new world. In time, I came to verify that like any kind of design, the sample principles applied to the design of mobile applications, underlying the nuances and sensitivities of a personal and handheld object. It is discovering and reconciling these sensitivities with the core principles that steepens the learning curve. In the half-year long process of making Foound, I have been enlightened in many ways and I want to share some of that enlightenment with you.
The iPhone is a masterpiece of art and engineering. It has been designed in such a way that because the screen occupies most of the front, when you turn it on, the entire front of the phone becomes the content. When you hold it in your hands, the phone with its minimal touch-enabled interface falls away silently and becomes the content. This nature of the iPhone gives application designers a huge first step in creating positive user experiences.
I like to think that a well-designed mobile application should be like a pebble, or ‘Ishi’ in Japanese. Not just any kind of pebble but the smooth rounded grey pebbles that fits nicely in the center of the palm, which are found in some rivers. Like a pebble, a mobile application should feel good to hold in the hands. That is the first step. When the application first gets turn on, it should feel like picking a pebble out of the water, which for a moment a refreshing sensation and curious emotion is felt, simple yet special. With further inspection, the application should gradually reveal layers of detail and information which stimulates the mind instead of irritating it. Like the random roundness of the pebble shaped by nature that makes it look and feel different from any angle, the application should delight users in its every facet with un-overwhelming richness. Even as a small, handheld object, a pebble’s humble but significant weight in the hands tells a story of a product timelessly crafted by nature. A mobile application should tell the story of its creator’s efforts and conviction in the same manner through a polished and crafted product.
The quality of a a mobile application is in its touch, emotions and the story it tells, don’t you think?
When I get my hands on an iPhone 4, I will get this “GelaSkin” featuring artwork by Audrey Kawasaki, an artist I have admired for many years.
It’s been a month since I started work in Foound. Over the past four weeks we have grown from a small mix of part-timers into what I’d call an A-team of eleven as we went about hiring people whom we could not have been able to afford before. Here’s a brief introduction of every member of the team from my perspective.
Danny
Foound began with Danny’s vision. As the founder and CEO, Danny is heavily involved in product development and handles the business and other formal stuff. He is not strictly a geek per se but has under the influence of the team become a pseudo-geek who is about to relinquish his IBM Thinkpad in favor of a Mac. He is extremely careful about spending money and has made every, sometimes annoying effort to cut down on expenses in a lot of ways. This is also the reason why we have been able to sustain Foound for quite a while before we obtained our latest round of funding. I think he has matured as a CEO and has developed the skills to make meetings productive.
Lichi
Lichi is from Taiwan and has worked in Google before joining Ad Mob as a business development guy. The reason he left Google is that he prefers some things small. When Google acquired Ad Mob, he left Ad Mob because he didn’t leave Google to join it again. Then he joined Foound. I guess he has found something he’s happy with. As Chief Evangelist, he is in charge of user acquisition and he is also super with Google Analytics. He does not eat human food, instead he seems to only consume strange strawberry-flavored protein compounds which smells like Hello Kitty snacks. He works out a lot and thus has really good physique and on top of that, he’s real good-looking. I’m sure he’s popular with women.
Aung
Aung, our intern has a very long name which is a mix of Burmese and Chinese words which I doubt even his family members will bother to say in full. He has sort of progressed into a software engineer as he is studying that in college. He works closely with Michael on developing the Foound backend APIs and does some typical internly tasks but not much because unlike other companies around us, we believe bullying interns is uncool and they should be involved in real work for a meaningful internship. He’s always early in the office and is a reliable and handy guy one can count on.
Michael
Mike is one of our senior engineers and he is senior in almost every sense of the word. First of all he is experienced. As the president of the PHP Society in Singapore, he has spoken and instructed extensively and is a notable figure in the scene. Lastly, he is also the oldest member of the team. I’ve seen him using a Dell laptops, Netbooks and a MacBook Air and I don’t know how many computers does he use. He comes to work in boring shirts and slacks, which hardly fit into our culture of geekdom. We have made various verbal attempts in converting him away from the corporate evil and have so far been successful only twice.
Kumar
Kumar comes from Tamil Nadu in India and is our Chief Mobile Geek, which has been abbreviated into a nickname CMG1000. I gave him that weapon-like-sounding nickname because for we as a company making mobile software products, he is like a secret weapon. He is a god with the iPhone SDK, works on a Mac and uses an iPhone and an iPad. Talk about fanboyism. He works really closely with me in crafting the Foound iPhone app. I design the experience and he makes it happen, usually within minutes. He loves spicy food and complains about food that burn our tongues being bland. dislikes certain kins of food because they are “good for health”. He’s non-religious in a non-agnostic, non-atheist kind of way which I still have trouble coming to terms with.
Brenda
Bren is the only female and the youngest in the team. When it comes to goofiness she beats us combined, to the extent she sometimes work under the desk on the floor. She’s an in-between geek for the lack of a better label. She writes, blogs, shoots, draws and design stuff. I’m currently coaching her to become a HTML5 and CSS3 ninja although she is already better than many of the wannabes out there. She has good spirit, works hard and hardly complains about the difficult things I ask her to do. I think for someone young like her, having a spirit like that is definitely going to help her in future.
Najam
It’s funny how everyone jokes about him being a terrorist because he’s from Pakistan. It took him and his lawyer months to get his visa application approved so he can come to Singapore. He has in his computer pictures of him and his friends smiling and fooling around like we all do except they were doing it with AK-47s. He told me firearms are as easily available vegetables in Pakistan. Seriously that country needs to get its act together. Anyway Najam is not a terrorist but in fact an experienced geek who has experience with code and servers. He also worked on Assembla, which is a commercial web service I had used before. He a nice guy and is about to get married.
Tamas
Tamas rides his black foldable bicycle to work. He from Hungary and he is our hacker and server guy. He is also experienced with Ruby on Rails and stuff. When we were trying him out, we asked for the opinion of people like his previous employers and co-workers on Tamas and they all seem to share a common criticism. They told us Tamas has a strong ego and tends to be fixated on his own ways of doing things. I think it’s really just a matter of culture, personality and communication. My interaction with Tamas is that he’s really opinionated and really good at defending his point in a debate. On top of that he’s really skilled. I have these qualities too and my personal experience with the Singapore culture tells me that these qualities are not appreciated here as much as they should be. People here value approval more than debate, conformity over creativity and standardization over individuality. Although we are still getting used to his quirks, I believe he will be a formidable team member in Foound.
That is all for now. The rest of the team will be joining us later in the month and I will write a follow-up then.
Just placed an order for my new 17-inch MacBook Pro today. Customized it to be fast with a good chip, lots of memory and an SSD hard drive. Specs:
- 2.66GHz Intel Core i7
- 8GB 1066MHZ DDR3 SDRM - 2X4GB
- 256GB Solid State Drive
- SuperDrive 8X DL
- MBP 17” HR Glossy WS Display
Just finished reading Rework by 37signals in today in less than 5 hours. I got much more out of this book than any previous business book which would have taken me a week to read. Easy to read and understand, even for people who don’t have a habit for reading. Simple and powerful are the content and I think it will change a lot of people and the way they do business, which it already is doing.
I’m definitely getting one of these when I get an iPad and my new MacBook Pro.
