Tailoring graphical user interfaces for everyday life

When developing a graphical user interface for a product, it's easy to forget the outside world; the reality that your product will ultimately face.
 
It's tempting to downplay the importance of various everyday situations. Mundane, boring and even stupid situations, that have nothing to do with your amazing new product; yet everything to do with how much user attention they require. This common and critical mistake results in a struggle between the product and the environment it's being used in. Below is a simplified example of this conflict (click to enlarge).

The image shows how the environment affects our ability to focus and handle information. The more control we have over the environment we're in, the more demanding interfaces we can cope with.

Mobile and portable devices are widely adopeted because they conform to dynamic and unpredictable qualities of human life. We naturally have a lower barrier toward carrying small devices with us. Therefore a smartphone is more likely to be used inside a taxing situation than a desktop computer.

On the opposite ends of that scale, we can either be fully engaged with the environment, or with the graphical user interface. Even a familiar and simple interface will be problematic in a demanding situation. Like composing an email while outrunning a bear. Similarly, any smartwatch interface feels lethally boring and restrictive, while waiting for another meeting to end (you'd rather tussle a bear). For reference, see the following image (click to enlarge).

Our available time, at any given moment, affects what we consider important. When a situation requires any attention, completing another task will costs you situational control and awareness. The expense amount depending on both interface needs and the task complexity in question. In short, if you text and drive, you'll suck at both. Human multitasking in all its glory.

Therefore it's important for interfaces input requirements to scale accordingly. The problem is that many interfaces today, like Android, iOS and WP, are already beyond their capability to do so, forcing the user to give in. The reason is a devious one. Even if people don't like to carry around tower PCs, they still love the familiar interface logic derived from them. Even though many human interaction methods, that were developed for desktop computing, are far too demanding for the life outside those cubicles they were never meant to leave.

The smaller your product is, the more focused, effortless and fault tolerant the interface needs to be. I know that our work on Sailfish OS is not there yet either, but it's still easier to keep on building it on top of thoughts like these.

A mobile device that fits your life, is valuable. One preventing you from living yours to the fullest, is not.


Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

Does the software you use have multiple personalities?

If you paid for it, or got it after signing up for a "free" service, it's a 100% yes. Some just hide it better than others.

The thing splitting a one good personality into several ones, is called business requirements. These requirements serve the existence of the company maintaining the software, and are kept hidden from the end user.

Imagine these requirements as another user next to you (the real end user). This one is just invisible. Naturally, these two users never share the same goals or values, because they're inherently different. Another one is a real person, while another just a set of objectives. This means, that the product has at least two reasons to exist; two separate masters to serve. In the light of my ponderings about good and bad software, this is how business requirements tend to change development focus.

Somehow, we all can sense this. At times, software can feel very fluid, smooth and purposeful for us. For those cases, the invisible business aspect is not interested what you or the software does. But sometimes you feel like being thrown through unnecessary hoops for no good reason. That's due to business requirements being met. Things like mandatory registration, DRM, enforced internet connection etc.

If a lot of code is needed to meet defined business requirements, it will be hard for the company to open source such a software, because it exposes all these questionable things. Not to mention making it dead obvious that a similar value is achievable with much less code elsewhere.

Therefore many companies refrain from open development; convincing themselves into believing these undocumented capabilities are for the good of everyone.

We all want better experiences, but they honestly have to deliver on that promise. There might be temptations to harness software to serve alternative masters, but it only leaves everyone wondering why it's so damn hard to openly develop software.

And why their software still has multiple personalities.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

 

Too much design

www.wpsauce.com

A Windows phone design article by Paul Thurrot, summarizing a "ask-me-anything" thread in reddit, reminded me about something that easily goes wrong in design: the design itself becomes more important than the product or medium it's applied to. Meaning, that more work goes into sustaining design as an activity; instead of treating it as an integrated part of making a competitive product.

What kept popping up throughout the article, was the need to differentiate Windows phone from others, through Metro's unique visual and interaction design (mainly focusing on application side though). This resulted in design importance raising out of proportion, disturbing the actual product work (make a great product). The focus was on finding a striking and novel design (too much), instead of making a relevant alternative to iOS and Android.

Alternative can mean being different, but it doesn't have to. A product that's just different for the sake of being different, is bound to have a design overdose. The only way to deliver an industry-breaking products, is by not designing it for the industry (remember what Apple did when it entered the smartphone market). That alone requires you to focus on problems that the industry tries to hide. Too much design will just make things worse.

The mobile industry has a significant ability to resist changes. Look at any usability studies. They all basically state that Android and iOS have reached the pinnacle of touch screen interaction. To put that in some perspective: they say that majority of desktop interaction patterns (the way you use mouse and keyboard to do things) are just as usable on mobile devices, as they were 40 years ago. Nonsense.

Usability studies like that show how amazingly well people adapted to our messy past with computers. Studies can always help to spot problems in both design and implementation, but the they tell nothing about our potential, our hopes, dreams or what we'll do tomorrow.

So, at the end of the day, those studies tell that the industry doesn't want to be broken.

"To go against it (industry) you need to earn it. You need to be far, far better." Being different for the sake of difference, is not enough.

With Metro, Microsoft experienced the hard way what happens when you put in too much design, at the expense of end user value. It failed to be relevant.


Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

To evolve, or not to evolve?

That's not even a question.

Be it building shelters, gathering food or traveling long distances; people always had an innate desire to do things better and faster. It's been always possible to improve some part of an activity or a tool related to it. Even entire professions have been forgotten after becoming obsolete. Thanks to the increasing pace of technological advancements, our children won't anymore recognize objects their parents grew up with.

Except when it comes to user interfaces.

I grew up with computers around me, and my kids will grow up with even more computers around them. Over the years, they've gotten a lot smaller and immensely more powerful. What hasn't really changed, is the graphical user interface staring back at us. The desktop metaphor with windows, icons, menus and a pointer (WIMP) has stayed intact for over 40 years.

The first mobile devices had no touch screens, and had to be navigated with either directional keys or a scroll wheel. It was logical to use the same approach for such a miniaturized desktop, but when touch screens became more popular, user could directly interact with things. This made controlling a pointer redundant.

After the mouse pointer was removed and touchable things made a bit bigger for suitable finger operation, everything was ready for profit-making. Nobody seemed to question, whether an interface paradigm originally designed to be operated with a keyboard and mouse (WIMP), was really applicable for a mobile touch screen use:

Unlike desktops, mobile devices

• are primarily used without a supporting surface (table or similar)
• are used in dynamic environments with disruptions
• can't assume user is constantly looking at the screen
• can't assume both hands are available for a basic operation
• can't assume equal amount of time is available to perform a task

Regardless, all mainstream mobile operating systems treat mobile use the same way as desktop use. The familiar button-based navigation model, dating back 40 years, does not really qualify for mobile use. It requires too much attention from it's user to be efficient. Too much precision to be comfortable. Too much time to be fast.

Replacing mouse and keyboard with touch alone, just decreases the speed user can control the system, making it actually worse than the desktop. It's been a wobbly decade of mobile user interface infancy. The only way it's gotten any better, is through nicer visuals and smoother transitions. But that's just surface - a better hardware clad in finer clothes.

At this rate, my grandchildren can still identify an Android phone, because baby steps were considered good enough. That's a valid strategy as long as everyone copies one another, and no alternatives exist: a family tree that looks like a ladder. It's an open invitation for smaller companies to deliver less inbred products, that are designed to adapt to your life, instead the other way around.

If you still think those archaic desktop conventions are enough to keep your massive software business afloat today, you're not the first one. The bad news is, that the only way a dinosaur could avoid extinction, was to stop being one, and evolve into something else.

Before it was too late.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

What if game controllers were designed like smartphones

Sometimes, we find products that are carefully designed with human body limitations in mind. And sometimes products go to market with utter disregard to how and where people use them.

I started wondering how would it look if, for example, a game controller would be designed without actually thinking how our hands interact with it. Here is an existing smartphone, next to a made-up game controller:

Click to enlarge

Obviously, that wouldn't really work out for any gamer, since your thumbs would be functioning on their movement range limits most of the time. It would be painful in two ways: one, your hands would be killing you even after a short session. Two, in an online game, everyone else would too. As a gamer, I'm glad we don't have such controllers, but sadly we have phones that are painful to use with one hand. And that's killing me.

Naturally, I'll just go ahead and flip that around. Here you can see the same focus to ergonomics that's applied to existing game controllers, going into a smartphone interface design. To most of you, it looks familiar:

Click to enlarge

Just like that, we can play games and use smartphones as much as we like without collateral thumb damage. And trust me when I say this, we clock in some impressive amounts per day on both. Something that smartphone interface designers in the past didn't take into consideration.

Or chose to ignore.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

Why do people get into fights with computers?

The internet is full of stories about the volatile relationship between people and computers. It's because by nature, both sides are completely foreign to each other, only separated by a thin layer called a user interface. It communicates the state the software is in, and provides methods for the user to control both software and hardware features of the computer.

To put the role and importance of user interface into a perspective, I'll compare it to an intergalactic interpreter. It's job is to prevent miscommunication and when possible, recover from situations caused by it. It works between two species that have nothing in common with each other. A misunderstanding between such parties can escalate quickly and have irreversible consequences. And naturally there are good and bad interfaces when it comes to doing interpreting. The former takes pride in focusing on efficiently getting the message across as authentic as possible, while the latter focuses on performing party tricks.

I personally value getting the message across. For example, we use a smartphone so many times throughout the day, that it's frustrating if an interpreter doesn't understand you, or treats your hand as something it's not. A good interpreter is in tune with you. It knows what you're about to do, understands differences in your tone of voice and body language. A bad one requires constant focus from you, because it doesn't fully understand you or isn't compatible with the way you function. That means neither side can really function efficiently, and mistakes are bound to happen.

And at the end of the day, when machines finally turn against us, I'm confident in pinning the blame for that on the interface between the two. The user didn't understand why the machine wasn't doing anything, and the machine didn't understand why user was anyway doing something. The interpreter was most likely putting on some lipstick when all of that happened, and the resulting nuclear winter allows our kids to make glow-in-the-dark snowmen all year around.

To delay the inevitable, let's focus on both prioritizing and improving the interpreter qualities of user interfaces we build to communicate with machines. These two species so alien to each other absolutely require it. Because with the current rate of technological advancements, the smartphone of tomorrow will be capable of horrors far beyond running a Facebook client.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

What comes after applications

Over the past few years, there's been a lot of discussion over mobile apps: should there be apps or not? Obviously the question itself is an opinion divider. One side has faith in apps, while the opposition doesn't. This piece by Paul Adams from Intercom, was the latest manifestation I enjoyed. A good read for anyone interested about mobile computing.

This phenomenon is a result of people getting tired of eating the same app pill for every issue they have. The five year old marketing punchline "There's an app for that" really explains the dominant mentality. And with enough repetition, it was rooted deep into our minds. The emerged "app evolution" debate is just an indication, that people have finally become aware of the indoctrination. This post is my contribution to the topic.

Naturally, there's a gray area in between both extremes of the debate. To me, an application is just one of many ways to solve a user problem. When smartphones really kicked off the mobile app business, everyone wanted a piece of that pie. As a result, it became difficult to jump out from the app bandwagon. In addition to the "me too" factor, what makes an app so attractive option, is the degrees of freedom it offers to both the user and developer. However, it comes with a price tag.

Mobile operating systems have grown a lot since those days. They offer much wider range of tools to build engaging experiences. The common mistake is to think you need to implement everything yourself. Below, is my rough categorization of different methods a user problem can be solved; and how "less control" can in some cases increase the value compared to "more control". It's a matter of identifying the problem before finding a fitting solution for it.

• A background process takes care of performing the task in behalf of the user. It makes the solution feel like magic because user didn't do anything. As this requires an intimate knowledge of the lower software layers and contextual awareness, it's not really trivial to do. Not to mention being forbidden in many systems.
  
• A notification uses existing mechanisms in an operating system to promote a functionality or a piece of information based on its relevancy. This can result in genius solutions, since the needed functionality can be conveniently offered regardless of the context user is in. Even if there's not much interface work involved, a reliable context engine is hard to get right.
  
• A system integration takes a frequently used functionality and makes it an integral part of the operating system. This makes interacting with such a features much faster compared to an application counterpart. The result is a smarter and more holistic experience. However, this either requires rooting or OS ownership to do, so it's not an option for many.
  
• An application is the last step in the scale. Almost everything is possible here. It's very powerful and can be tailored to fit very specific tasks. Using an application as a solution easily adds more steps to achieving a desired result. Repeating these steps frequently to do something feels dumb. Due to the amount freedom it gives, and the amount of work is needed, the application experience is the most vulnerable to mistakes. Everyone can make an app, and it shows.

At the end of the day, it's about thoughtfully choosing and combining methods available to you. It's the next step in building mobile experiences. All these methods have their places in our daily throughput of tasks. So, even if apps are important, sticking with just them is a sure way to forfeit the experience game. Same goes for denying the application as a viable solution. Having a meaningful combination of variety is the key.

Because people are not binary by nature, so therefore solutions we use to respond to their needs must reflect that. There's no silver bullet, or a size that fits all. Using interaction variety in your user experience will make it more natural and approachable. Transitioning from app-focused model to user-focused model will give a reliable foothold in the market strongly profiled by features, hardware specifications and price competition. Finding other ways to create value is essential to differentiate and stay competitive.

The more you understand the platform you're designing for, the easier it is to deliver more natural and smarter experiences for its users.

Apps alone will definitely not be enough.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

Just asking - a new image series launched

Just asked myself,

Why not to squeeze some of the points I make in this blog, into images that are.. say.. more approachable? I thought it would be a good idea. So I ran along with it and made a few over the weekend.

These two (just added 2 more) are just the beginning of a wider series of images, that either ask a simple question or challenge something in the current state of the smartphone industry. I really want to do this just to see if it's something worth continuing.

As always, the goal is to increase the awareness of more natural user interfaces, through the work we've already done for Sailfish OS at Jolla.

Here's the link in case the Picasa flash plugin crashed and burned.

Anyway, let me know how these work out for you. Any comments or image ideas are also very welcomed, so I can crank out more - or stop immediately. If you already haven't, this is the perfect time to visit the comment section.

Fantastic. Let's do this, since we don't try in Finland.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

Responsible product development. Family style.

When creating something, you sign a responsibility pact.

By respecting that pact, your creation has all the potential in the world. Just like a child has.

The same parenting guideline applies equally for new products. You have already developed a deep understanding between your child, and it's your responsibility to make everyone understand and respect that. A small child cannot yet communicate that. Neither can a new product.

It doesn't matter how many of you there are, you're all mutual parents. The whole company is.

You all have valuable information related to the well-being and success of your child. If you share that information with new people becoming involved in your child's life, everyone greatly benefits from that. Especially your child.

The challenging part is, that most of the time, it's people you don't see. People in meetings you never attend. People in cities you never visit. People in companies you've never heard off. They all have expectations for that potential you've been meticulously nurturing.

Therefore it's important that everyone of you understands their role as a parent. All of those new external expectations can be perfect opportunities for your child.

Just remember to ask and also listen if your child wants to play hockey or piano. Break down those expectations to see how they fit the personality and traits of your child. Don't just blindly decide and demand something.

Because that breaks children, instead of helping them to grow. Don't expect opportunities to create a perfect child for you. That's just horribly wrong.

Treat those expectations as goals. Because they'll help your child to grow; to become stronger by overcoming challenges. However, it works only as long as it's the child who's overcoming them. Everyone else around is just a safety net, allowing graceful failing, and encouraging to retry. It's about honesty toward your child and ones potential.

If you solve a puzzle for your child, it's you who did it. No matter how hard you claim otherwise.

So don't make dishonest promises to anyone. Those just end up hurting both the growth of your child, and your role as a parent. Don't ask your child to skip elementary school in favor of dreaming about university.

People will understand if you openly explain your family values to them. What makes your child behave like one does. Also, if your child suffers from a permanent illness, it's only good if people involved are aware of it.

In the same way, every product has their shortcomings and weaknesses. Be open about them to others, and avoid planning the future on those weaknesses. A lifetime of failure will break children as well.

So remember to listen to your children.

Don't force them into being something they're not. Nobody benefits from that.

Because if you do, I sincerely hope that the responsibility pact in question was not signed in blood.

Our children deserve better.

Both in family life and product development.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

What's wrong with multiple home screens

Quite a bit. Hold on to something.

If thinking critically, what does multiple home screens really add? Aside from multiple screens off course. Is there any explanation for their existence?

I hear this even in my sleep already: "Everyone thinks they're amazing / Everyone is used to them." But, that's just repeating an opinion. It doesn't explain why do people need them?

Another common one is: "Statistics tell us that people like products with multiple home screens in them." With that logic, you can say that statistically people also like seats with feces in them, because they use bathrooms several times a day. Sorry, people would be happier without the poo being involved if it would be possible.

This as well: "We have done extensive consumer studies to prove it's a must feature to have." Sigh. On paper, you can make people like poo just by asking them the right questions.

This comes up every now and then: "It's for everyone to personalize their devices." I'm pretty sure the device is already a personal one, and what user does with it, will make it even more so. Also, there's countless other ways to make the interface a personal one.

But the winner is: "What is this heresy I hear! From the beginning of time as we know it, home screen content has always been arranged in horizontal pages!" From the beginning of 2007. But then why is pretty much every other content browsed in vertical direction? Web pages, content streams, call histories, messages and gallery grids. All vertically arranged.

So really. Why does a smartphone need multiple horizontally arranged home screens? How do they make a smartphone smarter? What is the user need they fulfill?

Anyone?

I think it's actually the other way around. A smartphone would be smarter if it didn't have multiple home screens. The main issue is in the thinking that adding more, automatically equals a better product. And as usual, people are blind to the opposite.

It's a better product, that equals more. Let's try it out.

You give a user seven home screens, instead of five. Did it make a single home screen any better? Is it easier to move or find things between seven home screens? Are seven screens easier to decorate with widgets? Is it easier to find nice widgets that don't look horrible? Is it more personal solution? Did the product become smarter than before? Does it free system resources for actual user tasks?

Nope.

Then try removing all but one home screen. Make that single remaining home screen better. Make it smarter. So that it adapts better to what user is actually doing with the device, removing the need to juggle between multiple home screens. Because everything you did and worked on, is found from the same home screen, everything becomes much faster. You launched a music player, and suddenly the controls are also there. You arrived at work and your email account summary is greeting you on your home screen. Suddenly the behavior feels more helpful and smarter, since you can do more by actually doing less.

Do you spot a pattern? Better, equals more.

There's even the age-old saying about quality trumping quantity. Well, marketing was clearly invented as an counter-argument. Because smart is hard to do. Just adding more is easy. A hammer with three heads instead of a single good one: a great idea everyone can boldly stand behind of. And with a good marketing campaign, nobody notices it's heavy as hell and unbalanced beyond practical. The rendering looks amazing, though.

So compared to doing smart and meaningful things, marketing is dirt cheap. Guess which path big manufacturers favor?

So let's try one more time: Does adding more home screens make a product easier to sell?

Hell yes it does!

If I buy a hammer, I want a better hammer than I had before. One that allows me to work faster, more efficiently and comfortably, not to forget improved safety. I don't want to buy an inferior hammer, just because it's easier to sell to other people; who at the end of the day, would also prefer a better hammer with a single good head, instead of having the option for multiple ones.

That means the product was intentionally made to perform poorly, just to make it sell more. Since the modular-wonder-hammer has the option to add more heads to it, the potential to develop a single good head is lost for the sake of a nonsense feature.

If Sailfish OS would have multiple home screens next to each other, it wouldn't be possible to have cover actions as explained in my previous post. It would mean that the ability for user to interact with tasks would be reduced.

For the sake of having a modular-wonder-hammer, that's heavy as hell and unbalanced beyond practical.

To be honest with all of you. Making a better product is really hard and painful. It's because the industry around you keeps repeating how more equals better. Especially when the rendering looks awesome.

The dumbest thing I've heard.

In the smartphone industry.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

Multi-touch and bigger screens

Brace for disclaimer!

Note that this has nothing to do with Jolla. People have been asking me about how could Sailfish OS work on larger touch screens, so here it is folks. Some theoretical design thoughts about Sailfish OS user experience, on a bigger size. This is important for the sake of understanding a mobile operating system design and the effects different touch screen sizes have on it.

Fantastic, let's move on.

Multi-touch makes an excellent parallel subject, when talking about larger touch interfaces. I've personally grown to dislike majority of multi-touch implementations because they seem to be driven by technical capability to track, rather than supporting the way we use our hands.

So what should multi-touch be then?

Let's use another tool example to dig deeper. I like comparing things to tools because of their simple, efficient and purposeful interfaces.

Think about a hammer and a nail. The task is to hammer a nail into a piece of wood. Your other hand holds the nail while the other one hammers it in. When breaking that down, we can recognize multiple smaller operations inside that task. Pinching a nail while holding it perpendicular to the target surface, is one. Whacking it in with a hammer in your other hand, is another. This is a simple multi-touch use case from the real life. With two types of multi-touch.

Huh?

Yes, I think there's two kinds of multi-touch. The first type is related to the task itself. You need to use both hands simultaneously for the same task to succeed. Hold the nail and use the hammer. The second type is related to individual hand operations inside that task. Pinching a nail with at least two fingers, and gripping a hammer with up to five. The latter is the most common use of multi-touch to implement a pinch/spread-to-zoom for example.

Ok, two types of multi-touch. Two-handed task type and multi-fingered operation type. There is no need to discuss about how many fingers you need to do something, because then you're focusing on wrong things. And I feel many existing interfaces are limited to only the operation type, because they're not focused on user tasks, but in something completely different. Not to mention forgetting totally what our hands are capable of.

So, I ended up with this definition because there wasn't really anything tangible behind existing multi-touch interfaces, in the mobile OS space. At least I haven't ran into anything that made sense. What I've found abundantly, though, is a lot of complexity that multi-touch can help to add. It's very easy by introducing more and more fingers on the screen, and mapping that to do yet another thing in the software. The amount of needed fingers has lately gotten kind of out of hand. Pun intended.

If you need more than 1 finger to move around in your OS, you should seriously look at the interface architecture and feature priorities.

"But with multi-touch , I could have an OS feature to directly alter orbits of celestial objects and.."

No. Stop it. You'd be still browsing, watching videos and gaming. And the only celestial object you know is Starbucks. Stop looking at increasing OS features, and pay more attention to enhancing user potential.

Alright, apologies for the slow intro. This is where some illustrations comes into play, and hopefully make more sense of the multitasking stuff above.

Sailfish OS was designed to be less dependent on display sizes than other mobile operating systems. This is because the most common user interactions are not depending on the user handedness, hand size or thumb reach, so the gesture based interface naturally allowed one-handed use of a smartphone sized devices.

"Hah, you can't really use a huge device comfortably with one hand, so your one-handed use benefit is lost then?"

Yes and no. The same way that Sailfish OS made a small interface fit into a single hand, it makes any larger interfaces fit two. This opens new ways to interact with larger devices due to the analog nature of touch gestures.

We should also understand that people are very liberal in how they use and hold devices in real life environments. In commute, at home or during a holiday trip. Most of the time, it's resting against something, and simply hold in place with one hand.

This a two hands grip, while using a full-screen application. This is a precondition to completing a task. My tool comparison is holding a nail in the other hand and a hammer in another.

The left (or right, it doesn't matter) hand performs the Peek gesture to expose the Home screen. The hand with the nail is placing it against the wood surface.

While keeping finger on the screen, user is able to see what three other applications are doing in Home screen. The nail is ready to be hammered in.

Without releasing the left thumb, user performs a cover action to play/pause/skip a song with the right hand as an example. Releasing left thumb after interacting with any active cover, would keep user in the application 1 (first image). That's a fast way to look into Home (just like on the phone), perform an action (enabled by the larger screen) and get back to the app. All without even really leaving it.

Alternatively, if user would tap another application cover, or trigger a cover action that requires a full-screen state, the screen real-estate would be divided between the two. The nail has been hammered in, and user is back to default state that precedes the next task.

This behavior is a natural progression of Sailfish OS Peek gesture and how application windows are handled. Only the support for the other hand and screen division was added. Both hands performed an individual operation that alone, completed a single task (pinch a nail and hold/carry a hammer). When they're performed together, a different task is completed (a piece of wood is attached to another). Just like we do so many things with in our physical environment. I wanted to focus on illustrating the task type, because there are countless examples about the single hand multi-touch, the operation type.

The value in all of this, is that the entire interaction sequence is built into the same application usage behavior, without any additional windowing modes or mechanisms that need to be separately activated and used. It supports the way we work and enhances our natural potential. After all, you don't turn your hand into a separate mode when you're driving nails into planks of wood. No, it's the same hand, all the time.

Similarly, when you need to reach something from a tool drawer, you will not physically enter the drawer yourself. You wouldn't fit. Instead, you stand next to it, open the desired drawer and pick up the tool you needed, before closing it again. The Sailfish OS peek gesture is doing exactly the same on larger screens because of multi-touch. Exposing another location (Home/events = drawer) with the other hand, to see what's there and perform a task (trigger an action = take a tool) with another. All without actually going to that location.

That's what multi-touch should be.

Something that focuses on enhancing our potential, instead of enhancing features we are required to use.

Button based tablet operating systems (excluding Win 8 etc) are not going to do something like that any time soon. Not only because they treat active applications in a different way (as second class citizens), but it would be challenging to implement the behavior into the way how buttons work. Also the button locations do not support ergonomic use of individual hands when gripping the device from the bezel. On the other hand, the sliding gesture over the screen edge is very natural to perform, because it happens where your thumb is most comfortable any given time.

This conventional button approach, that many Android devices use, exhibit another problem in enforcing a hand preference in controlling the device. As you can see from the image above, the left hand is not able to reach notifications on the right, and similarly the right hand struggles in reaching Home, back and task switcher buttons on the left.

It's not about changing the interface between a phone and a tablet. Tasks are anyway the same. It's how the two-handed use is enhancing our potential through the increased touch screen area.

Don't try fitting an existing multi-touch solution into your interface, but think how an interface can handle both one- and two-handed use.

Then, the rest will find their own places naturally.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

Together tomorrow

Dear Jolla users and enthusiasts, Jolla Ltd and its partners.

Who I am, or where I work, means nothing for what I’m about to say. On the other hand, what I believe in and what I choose to do, means everything.

I believe in this community and I'm asking it to act.

If someone can shape the smartphone industry, it’s all of us. We have already begun. Big things have happened thanks to all of you.

Let’s forget about Jolla for a moment. This is not about Jolla. Jolla is a small company with limited resources. I’m tired of both hearing and repeating it. It’s going to stop today.

It doesn't change the fact, that our community enabled the possibility we have today. And together, we either make or break that opportunity to give this stagnated industry a run for its money.

I see desperation in the smartphone industry. Same things are repeated and recycled. Over and over again. Big manufacturers are locked in an eternal patent war. A game of sudden death. Each focusing on getting better hardware cheaper. What it actually means, is selling compromised hardware for the user, with the same software experience as last time. A lot of corners are cut in that process. Only rivaled by the ridiculous amount of marketing that goes into covering it all up. Operators and retailers are trying to somehow come by.

Meanwhile, the end user is looking from the sidelines. Everything is badly derailed. It’s not sustainable. It’s not what tomorrow should be.

And we've known it for a long time. We all challenged that.

I'd like to point out that it's very rare for a community of this size, to have two real products shipping in several regions. A phone and an operating system.

Unfortunately, that is playing by the wrong rules.

It's the exceptional bunch of people behind it what matters. They all had real courage to do new things. They all bravely stood behind new ideas and promoted them. And their message was:

"We want to buy tools that fit what we do, not what the industry wants us to do."

It's essential to understand how this industry works. What are the rules it plays by. Because those rules aren't for people. They’re rules for business. Rules how to make profit for companies. The smartphone industry has long since stopped being user driven. Why else would you have to buy a new phone every six months.

Therefore our own style of play has to focus on user values. There is only one rope to pull. And only a single direction to pull it. We need to get noticed as individuals with different things we need a smartphone for, not a distraction from them.

Whatever the reasons was for all of you to get involved in this movement, I bet it was much more personal than any hardware specification. Every manufacturer is focused on how to distract users from the fact, that a smartphone should be useful in your everyday lives, instead of use up our lives.

A phone is an important tool that should comfortably fit to the center of our daily chores, instead of being your daily chore.

Stand tall. There's nothing to apologize. Be proud of what we've achieved together. Be open about how you feel in this community and help others to clear out common misunderstandings. Many simply don't know what this community is about. They don't have any idea what Sailfish OS even is? Why does it exist in the first place? What was the story behind its creation?

Nearly all of you know it very well, and can pass it on. Please do. Even if it's all work in progress. Our community, OS and available hardware; are all glimpses of what tomorrow could be.

The choice is ours. What do we all choose to do.

Smartphone manufacturers will not magically become aware of our values. We need to do something about it. That includes everyone.

Everyone can affect what Sailfish OS will be tomorrow. Because when working with the smartphone industry, we all need to be very clear about one thing.

Sailfish OS exists to serve user needs.

User has the control of what happens on their devices. If we don't make that clear, the OS will surely, as others before it, slowly turn into an industry tool, instead of being your tool. It will gradually stop fitting to the center of your daily chores by turning into your daily chore. For the same old stubborn game to continue. That is the inevitable effect that the industry has on undefended products.

It's caused by the way this industry plays. It's gotten blind to alternatives. Forcing everything it comes in contact with to submit to its rules. It needs help in finding other ways to play. Other ways to create value and also profit from it.

You're all a living proof that it can be done.

What this industry needs is a wake-up call. Nobody else will do it on your behalf. Either we keep doing what we do also tomorrow, or we don't.

Simple as that.

If you agree, grab that rope and give it a good pull.

#PhoneIndustryWakeup

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

Keep moving forward

When launching a new product, you have already analyzed existing products and planned the best place to operate from. Due to customer base size, you compensate the overall offering by focusing hard on areas other products fail to excel in.

This justifies your claim to the land for now. Other manufacturers have to work much harder to offset your offering in these neglected areas.

But they most likely have already started to plan their move. Their problem is your strength in area, so you've got some time. But the last thing you want to be doing is to sit down and admire the scenery.

First and foremost, you need to move forward.

If you're not moving forward, you're staying still; but since the competition will be always moving forward, it makes the time spent on sitting still, look like moving backwards from the consumer perspective.

What causes a company to stay still? Most of the time it's caused by obscure company targets, but the biggest threat usually comes from within. We're all sources of potential disaster. Everybody might know that there's a need to sustain the movement.

But instead, somebody gets an idea.

Most of the time, ideas are harmless, abundant and pop up everywhere. Everyone has them and there's always good ones in the lot. The problem with ideas is usually in both what affected to the idea creation and how we treat that idea.

How an idea is processed.

The most common type of an idea is a borrowed one. And the cheapest too, in many ways. It's easy to take something that already exist and swallow it as a whole. Hope that nobody notices. However, if everything is copied from existing products, there's no way they fit together and form an enjoyable product to use. At least don't market it as such.

To make it easy for you in a long term, take the idea apart, see what's inside that makes the idea valuable (how does the idea create value with the end user). Grab that, and move on.

From an idea, salvage only what you can carry. Don't carry a car wreck if you only need a spare fuse.

By doing that, the idea is easier to fit to everything around it, so that you don't fit your product into the new idea you had/found/borrowed. That's insane amount of work. You don't want to do that when you need to advance.

Treat all ideas as means to expand towards a new areas, not to move your whole camp. Remember to strip ideas down, so you don't have to deal with any of that dead weight. Then, look at those areas (cloud storage as an example) and see how you can replicate the end result and value that competing products create, but do it from your direction. Do it with your tools and ways.

It's much easier for you, and it will reinforce and harden your existing product. The idea will work together with other ideas.

This is what moving forward means. Moving without risking your foothold. Because the direction you approach an area, is on the opposite side from the competition perspective, and it will be difficult for them to come knocking hard on your doorstep. Creating value is not patented. Creating it with their way usually is.

Having your own direction to look at things, solve problems and empower user, builds on top of your existing strength. You appear moving without leaving the place you struck down your flag. And the longer you keep doing this, the deeper to the ground the pole goes.

But

Sometimes things don't work out like planned. An idea slips past. It doesn't get properly dissected and analyzed. If you end up integrating the unprocessed idea into your product, you'll be adding all that dead weight of the car wreck as well.

Even if you just needed that spare fuse.

It can sometimes be intentional. It can be driven by someone who thinks the car wreck plays an important role in the user experience. Or that the user experience is not relevant, and the wreck is welcomed to stay. Horrible things are set in motion. It usually starts with these words.

"Taking just what you need is not enough"

It's no joke folks. Fear it like the Plague. When you hear those words, things are about to take an irreversible turn to the fiery purgatory. A new entry will be written in the book of atrocities, under the Eternal torment chapter.

The idea has become more important than reaching the value it represents.

And the idea, at the end, will consume you, your product and everyone else working with it. I tried to make as accurate image as I could, of an unprocessed idea gone bad, so you can avoid it when you see it.

Behold.

Still, hyperbole aside. Process your ideas, treat them as ways to enter new areas from your direction and stop integrating dead weight.

Carrying dead weight is stupid.

What makes things unsustainable is the complexity and unnecessary amount of code it introduces. It will be there forever and you just have to deal with it. Maintain it, fix it and love it.

Unconditionally. Look at the previous picture. Make piece with it and give it a kiss.

If you're a developer working with that idea, or next to it, be afraid. Be very very afraid. You're not going to be moving anytime soon.

And when you finally nudge into motion, with all that weight you've picked up and maintained over the years, your product will be extremely complicated. It had to overcome unnecessary software complexity, horrible legacy, and also bypass and re-route countless user flows to hide it all. For what?

Good luck quickly entering any new areas or responding to business opportunities. Even a team of seasoned software exorcists will not be able to mop up that stuff anymore.

Finally, after a hard lifetime of slowly pushing a software behemoth like that forward, you'll probably ask yourself, and your thousands of in-house brethren: Why didn't we just take what we needed?

Something as simple as a spare fuse, can make a difference between moving forward or staying still.

Make sure that everybody in your company understands that.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

Let's talk about multitasking as a feature

And immediately stop before doing any more damage. Look at any recent smartphone or tablet advertisements about multitasking. They're awful.

"You know what, we glued this clunky multitasking mode on the side of an already kind of lost operating system. Are you excited? We surely are, because it super easy for you to multitask when you're in the mood for multitasking."

Seriously. Multitasking is not a feature and you shouldn't talk about it as one. Ever.

An operating system either is or is not designed for handling multiple tasks simultaneously. It's the behavior how the OS treats applications and their windows. Whether it's giving its user a desktop pedigree control over them or not.

Without doing a serious overhaul to your operating system, you cannot change those things. Adding another feature to the side will definitely not do that. It just makes you look funny.

Unless you make stuff up of course. And that's exactly what happens in those advertisements. That will make you look even worse than funny.

Now, the main purpose of a mobile operating system is to allow user tasks to be done on the go. To enable whatever user wishes to do. Be it business, pleasure or both at the same time. The user is in control and the operating system responds to that call without questioning it.

For the experience to be responsive and smooth, the OS needs to be lean and unobtrusive. After all, the OS will always be secondary to what user wishes to do with the device. Complex operating systems require more memory and processing power than simple ones, eating away system resources from user tasks like gaming, browsing or watching movies.

However, implementing multiple home screens, truckload of widgets, separate app drawers or dedicated places user needs to go, to do different things, is just an amusement ride. Disguised usually as personalization. Yet another dishonest word used to cram in features.

Do these features give more visibility or priority to user tasks? Do they free system resources for those applications user wishes to keep ready to be used? Do they improve how application windows can be controlled?

No. They do not.

Not a single one of them had anything to do with improving how the operating system handles applications or makes them perform any better. Neither do they make it any more personal. Personal is not about giving you more things to manage. Personal is about you, how a device fits to your needs.

But what they do contribute towards is increased operating system complexity, increased hardware requirements and development effort. The resulting software is slower to load, slower to learn, slower to develop, maintain and fix. Most unfortunately, it's also slower to use since user tasks aren second class citizens.

Why do people buy that stuff then?

Most of the time they have too much faith in technology. It's easy to show a potential buyer how to flick between home screens or play around decorating them, changing sizes of things and managing bits and pieces. Just an illusion of power or relevance. Merely additional things you need to do since it's there and you bought it.

When buying a hammer, the sales person will not tell you how easy that specific product is to keep on a table, or how well does it match with your favorite novel or coffee brand. You will not hear how pets in general think about that hammer.

Anyone buying a hammer would walk straight out, unless sticking around out of mad curiosity, to maybe get a glimpse of where the sales department ends and the padded cells begin.

But when it comes to phones and tablets, people just blindly trust the technology and ignore all the insanity. They trust that these devises with their operating systems and applications give user needs the highest priority.

Sadly the mainstream crop of smart-devices fail miserably in that. The operating system has become more important. Both the manufacturer brand and the OS are treated as celebrities. User tasks on the other hand can be stopped to save system resources.

The OS race is currently about coming up with desperate distractions. A race that rewards competitor with increased OS complexity, increased hardware requirements and increased development effort. A race funded by its spectators.

Everybody needs to stop supporting this unsustainable competition. Your local school will at least thank you for your donation.

Stop believing blindly in technology because it's so easy to get wrong.

Imagine a mobile operating system as a modern version of a workbench. Only, that this virtual counterpart travels in your pocket. A workbench that has apps instead of tools, to let you do different things. A workbench that runs on your smartphone or a tablet.

It's important that this virtual workbench is designed to support your intentions and the tools you need to fulfill them. Tools that enhance and augment your abilities. Anything outside that is not helping.

One key function of a workbench is to keep all your tools neatly arranged and easily found. When you have plugged in and properly adjusted several tools, it's important that there's plenty of room on your bench for them to avoid repeating unnecessary steps in preparing them for use.

It's how naturally you're able to switch from using a single tool to another one, that defines how good of a workbench you've gotten yourself. It's how much the "generator" inside the bench can provide power to your tools in relation to using it for the bench itself. How many tools it can support simultaneously, without you having to turn off some of the ones you need.  It's how long can you go without having to top up the generator tank.

It's how the overall experience works for you, and for the tools you use.
Multitasking is not a feature. It will never be.

The next time when a sales person tells you how easy it's to flick between home screens, or how well does a widget or a tile match with your favorite novel or coffee brand, or how newly added features are approved by pets, and how all that will make you more efficient; walk out and buy a workbench.

At least you know it doesn't try to cheat or distract you from the purpose it's intended for.

That is an honest product. People. Demand the same from your smart-devices.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

Thoughts about doing the impossible

Happened on a beautiful autumn day at Kangasala, near Tampere.

We were having a get-together with our friends. Kids were nicely playing outside, when my friend and I were tasked to lure them back in.

And out we went.

While persuading the loud lot to seize their sandbox adventure, in favor of sitting around the table inside, the topic of something being impossible somehow popped up.

Saying that something is impossible is very easy.

People default to impossible all the time when they don't care to think about it. When Jolla first came out with the news of continuing from where MeeGo had previously fallen off the grid, many reached out for the default reaction.

To build a new operating system, with a smaller crew than what Samsung has people for making coffee, was treated as nothing short of hilarious.

It was a good laugh. People from all over the technology industry stood up for a chuckle. Important people. Powerful people.

Impossible was contagious. Once someone said it, it was easy to agree on. All you had to do, is repeat it.

We got told it's impossible without 100M€ investment and serious commitments from industry partners. The emphasis was on impossible.

When repeated enough times, it turned into a truth. It was now officially as impossible as it was hilarious.

I don't like the word impossible.

Improbable is much better. Because that's how it usually is. Things have varying degrees of probability.

When you think about the word impossible, it's a stop sign for your thoughts. You're not allowed to proceed. It really is impossible. However, if you replace the impossible with improbable and think again, you're allowed to take a closer look.

I like to take things apart. In my opinion, many things are more beautiful on the inside. For me as a kid, it meant great fun.

For my parents, property damage.

Taking thins apart is a good way to judge probability? Up-close, you can identify things that increase or decrease the probability.

For Jolla, the improbability factor was in the insane ratio between the amount of work and the amount of people working on it. Since we couldn't really help the people part, only the workload remained.

Let's summarize it.

It was considered improbable for a small start-up company to be able to build an operating system by themselves.

Now, that's already pretty well defined. Then all you need to do, is to increase the probability of building it. And that happens by focusing on what you're going to build.

What counts as an operating system?

Do we automatically imagine Android or Windows, both of which have accumulated an unhealthy amount of complexity over the years. Building something like that might be very improbable for Jolla. So, can you leave something out to increase the probability. To design something that counts as an operating system, that can be still built with the few people we had available.

All of a sudden you're talking about what is important, in what order and who does what.

A huge step from impossible.

When the news started to flow in, about global operators and retail chains signing partnerships with Jolla, the chuckling suddenly stopped. People from all over the technology industry stood up to look at each other. Important people. Powerful people.

With a question on everyone's lips: who said it was impossible?

Not to mention shipping also a phone running that operating system.

Only 10 days late of reported schedule.

With less than 100 people.

With around 30M€ of total investment, instead of estimated 100M€.

Be careful what you label as impossible. Because if you do, someone is bound to prove otherwise. What you deem impossible today, will most likely be only improbable tomorrow. And when that happens, it doesn't matter how important or powerful you are. It doesn't change the fact that you're mistaken.

So, every time you wish to dismiss something as impossible. Don't.

Just replace the word impossible with the word improbable, and think. Work your way with increasing its probability. Wonderful things can be achieved with an open mind and a positive approach. And if it's not probable enough today, pursue it tomorrow.

At the end of the day, negotiating kids to stop all the fun and go inside to wash their hands, wasn't impossible.

Just improbable.

And that we could already work with.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

Solving a problem before defining it is a bad idea

A big part of design is solving problems.

A big part of solving problems is defining the problem. A big part of defining the problem is identifying individual parts in that event sequence where the problem occurs.

Solving problems properly not only helps to really solve the problem, but can also expose other potential issues in that area, or even the system as a whole, resulting in better design.

Don't do it backwards.

Finding a user problem that fits an existing solution is problematic. The actual manifestation of the problem, in relation to user interactions, becomes easily abstracted or very difficult to spot.

In other words, you might know the user problem or need, but how it occurs as a part of a natural user activity remains unclear.

If you observe the problem where and when it occurs, you can spot the root cause and find a proper technology or solution for it. Without understanding the root cause, you might be treating a symptom instead of the problem itself.

Let's use an example. A button based navigation model on a smartphone. It's design done backwards (or intentionally screwing it up). It's also easy to illustrate and familiar to everyone.

Back and Home (and a possible third) buttons are the pinnacle of modern smartphone interface development, so surely they can withstand some criticism. Below, is an illustration of a hand, holding a generic smartphone that has a button based navigation, represented by three circles.

First, observe the thumb. Look at its position.

That’s what a relaxed thumb position looks like. Now, grab your own phone and, with one hand, scroll through a list of contacts. Then flick between some images.

What location did your thumb return each time after relaxing?

Can you spot a pattern in how your thumb is backtracking to the same location after each interaction?

Almost all content interactions are somehow connected to this thumb position. From that position, it’s very comfortable to draw a small circle, flick up, down, left or right.

It’s the place to be for easy content interactions.

Then, whose idea was it to place the most commonly used actions (Home, back...) related to content interactions, as far away as physically possible?

Reaching those controls from your relaxed thumb location requires both high thumb mobility and accuracy.

Or using your new “modern” smartphone with two hands. It doesn't help the matter if the access to your notifications is through the opposite end of the device.

"What, are you a left handed person? Oh, we didn't think it mattered (or you existed). Placing the back button to the bottom left was the right thing to do"

And this design accidentally worked when it was validated with much smaller touch screens over ten years ago. Except it didn't work even then for the left handed folks that well.

What happened?

A solution existed before the problem was defined as a part of a natural user activity.

All previous navigation schemes (let's all give a big hand to desktop interfaces) used to have a back button, so one had to be introduced here as well. Coupled with a Home button and whatnot. User thumb location, in that specific moment when the need arose to go back, was irrelevant.

A back button could not simply be in the middle of the screen.

Everyone knew that much.

The technology was driving the user experience. A solution (button) existed before the problem definition.

Small display sizes at that time helped to mask the issue. Everybody was thrilled to be able to directly poke at a screen to do stuff.

It was magical.

Today, over ten years later, everybody is still thrilled to be able to directly poke the screen to do stuff. A generation of users exist who haven't experienced a phone you can use with a one hand. They have no idea what they're missing out. For them it's normal.

For our hands it's a disgrace. As it is for the development of mobile user interfaces in general.

Mobile devices are intended to be used in a mobile context, where our hands naturally interact with the environment as well. For that reason, a mobile device interface should be unobtrusive and empowering.

However, if two hands are required to navigate the interface by default, it’s clearly anything but.

If you wish to get your other hand back, so that you don't have to drop everything else when you need to use your "smartphone", you need to fight for it.

Manufacturers will not just waltz in to your doorstep to give it to you.

Do you want an alternative mobile interface to exist? Good, you're not alone.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.

How to judge a smartphone interface

Well, it's about time.

First, a huge thanks to Jolla Pioneer Fans and everyone in the amazing Jolla, Mer & Nemo communities, for the wonderful support and encouragement <3

For a long time now, I've wanted to do a set of posts that walk you through some of the less visible parts, both directly and indirectly related to Sailfish OS user interface design. This first post is a bit of a wall of text as I need to lay some groundwork, but if you stick with me the story gets better.

Also, this is important. I want you to focus. There's going to be pretty pictures, but not in this post. I hope you don't mind.

Lovely. So how do you judge whether a smartphone interface has a good or bad design?

Start by raising your hand. Make it dance and look at it for a while. Combined with the human ingenuity, it’s the ability to use our hands in a variety of fields and in a variety of ways, that has carried us this far. Our hands are highly adaptable, sensitive, efficient and amazing. Every single day.

I’m not the first one to point this out to you, and will not certainly be the last. Unless the smartphone industry suddenly stops being silly.

But trust me on this, it will not.

Old habits die hard and it’s easier to work with things you can measure. Emotions and how things work together will not fit into an excel sheet. Hardware specifications and feature lists on the other hand feel right at home. And the end result sticks out like a sore thumb.

Regardless of that pain, our hands continue to be amazing - and will not run out of amazing any time soon.

That’s one of the biggest reason why many current smartphone interfaces are considered acceptable. It’s because we, as users, bend over. Or it's our hands that do the bending.

What makes it kind of sad, is how the acceptance has been created through a clever indoctrination. The handiwork of a ruthless media machinery, feeding constantly new needs into our minds from all directions and channels imaginable.

A recently released smart phone claims to be "Bigger than bigger". Right, let's think about what that mea..

It. Doesn't. Matter.

Seeing past that pay-grade of bluff is hard. But when you do, you can judge the product and its interface clearly without any smoke and mirrors.

Now, focus.

For a product to feel natural and effortless, it should allow you to use it naturally by supporting the way your hands work. It either works with you or against you.

Working against you doesn't mean preventing you from completing something, but just slowing you down or making you feel cumbersome. Like, having to reserve two perfectly awesome hands for a small device, kind of cumbersome.

The exact opposite of how I earlier described the human hand.

This is apparent with many existing products. You’re wasting your potential. Dumbing down your hand to a level of a pointing device. Every time I think about it, a question arises: why are these interfaces then designed to fit the technology instead of our hands?

That's a simple one. It’s cheaper.

Ah, the great motivator. Why waste money on improving how things work, if our amazing hands can adapt! Just add another layer of features and do some marketing.

That’s the problem. Smartphone manufacturers believe their existing interfaces require only cosmetic updates. That adding features on top of an already shaky foundation will make it a good product. Our hands disagree, but nobody seems to care. All eyes are on the next shiny thing on the horizon. Same poop, different pile.

Still, it's us who have authorized this kind of model. A moderate product is better than no product, and if enough people have a moderate product, any shortcomings are negated.You adapt and forget.

Let's slow down. Stop for a moment even. Think about what our hands have accomplished in the long history of hands accomplishing things.

Once more, raise your hand. Make it dance and look at it for a moment. Do you want to restrain that potential? Look at the silly smartphone industry. It has dropped the ball completely. It needs to keep selling to sustain itself.

At your expense.

What little time is left between introductions of new models, goes into coating the previous version a bit differently. That cycle is so viciously fast that there's just no room to really think why we even have such amazing hands since a lot less would suffice. And the thing just keeps repeating.

As long as we allow it to.

Back to here and now. It doesn't matter whether you think you can or cannot make a difference, you're absolutely right. Always remember that.

Keep focusing on how it all works together, with your hand, enhancing or limiting our natural potential, while doing something you want to do. Does an interface allow you to fly or force you to walk?

That's how you judge an interface.

Finally, what did I mean by making ones hand dance? It's another fantastic ability of ours. We can imagine any series of movements, take dancing for an example and our hand can perform it perfectly.

Your hands ability to dance is therefore depending on your ability to imagine a hand dance. For pretty much anything, you have to imagine it first, for your hands to start creating it.

Never stop imagining.

Thanks for reading and see you in the next post. In the meantime, agree or disagree, debate or shout. Bring it on and spread the word.