Archives for category: technology

Building a Crappier Sports Car (or Minivan)

May 19, 2011 //

Let’s say you and I set out to design a vehicle. I think it would be wise for us to choose what sort of vehicle we were designing and who we were designing it for. Are we serving young fathers just getting into their parenting years? Or maybe 55 year old balding men knee-deep in their mid-life crises. Those two groups would likely not want the same vehicle.

Let’s say we come up with a killer soft top sports car tailored to the 55 year old. It handles well, it’s a little easier to get into and out of than a typical low-slung sports jobbie, and it has a windscreen specifically designed to protect that combover at highway speeds.

Now, how would you feel about the following:

1. Weld on a hardtop, making sure to add about 10” more head room.
2. Soften the suspension.
3. Add another pair of rear doors.
4. Expand the rear to carry several unassembled items from Ikea along with a stroller and about 115pack of diapers - or two extra rows of removable seating.

How do you think that would affect our original design? Would the 55 year old be pleased with the result?

I’ve been hopeful that Ubuntu was heading down a design path where they were becoming more focused on who they wanted to design for. And make no mistake, I don’t think I’m in that group, but still I wanted them to stick to their guns, ignore the naysayers (even if I’m one of them) and plug on with their plan.

By the sounds of this post from Jono Bacon though, it sounds as though they’d like to hedge their bets. It sounds like:
Hey, we’re still designing the best dang product for group A, but hey all you guys in the entirely opposite Group B.. don’t go anywhere. We will add stuff for you guys too!

Now with Ubuntu I suppose the inverse of my initial analogy is more apt. They’re aiming to build the best damn vehicle for new fathers, but hey all you sports car drivers.. we’ll add alloy rims and a spoiler, stiffen the springs a bit and put in some oil pressure guages for you!

That results in a crappier minivan. And a crappier sports car.
I’m not sure how you could see it in any other way. But by all means, I’m completely open to enlightenment.

ps. I didn’t mention that it’s a significant conundrum when the Group B guys are supposed to be the guys actually building the product for Group A.

pps. I could be wrong about this whole idea:

Categories design, linux, technology

My Galaxy S Two Months On

April 5, 2011 //

I always wanted a Mongoose BMX bike. But Mongoose bikes were hard to come by - at least for a rural kid growing up in Southern Ontario. A Mongoose was relatively expensive. I couldn’t justify a Mongoose. Instead I rolled through my young life on CCMs and Supercycles (Sears store brand). Adequate and honest bikes to be sure, but Mongooses (Mongeese?) they were not. And by the time I grew old enough to actually have the money for a Mongoose, my mind had turned elsewhere (By then I was busy buying a Yamaha guitar instead of a Fender). Compromise has been a friend of mine for as long as I can remember. Buying the Nexus One phone was like finally buying my Mongoose bike.

But it was not meant to be. And so I lost my Mongoose and had to compromise once again. The day I lost it is the day I once again donned the chains and shackles, signed up with The Man, and walked out with the shiny black Samsung Galaxy S you see below.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. I’ve had the Samsung for about two months now. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster ride. The phone is both enticing and aggravating. There are times I miss the N1, and yet I’m not sure which phone I’d use if it reappeared on my doorstep tomorrow. I don’t necessarily have a detailed laundry list of items, but there are good and bad things which have stuck out more than others:

Quality and Heft

The N1 felt substantial. That slightly grippy finish around the back and curved shape gave it a bit of that polished river rock feel. The Galaxy S, while very shiny, doesn’t have the same heft. The plastics gleam but looking at them you know it can’t last. And the phone is thin and light. Thin to the point of feeling slightly fragile. Being a featherweight doesn’t do anything to fight off that feeling either. After about two weeks I decided to get a faux carbon fibre snap on case that covers the back and sides. It doesn’t cover any of the screen, and makes it much easier to grip. A nice side benefit of this is the added weight. The phone now feels much more substantial fully clothed.

Display

This is one area in which there is very little argument to be made. The Samsung display is significantly brighter, sharper and easier to read than the Nexus One. Nevermind the fact that it’s slightly larger too. And don’t get me wrong, I loved the N1 screen, but this Amoled thing is significantly better.

Storage

If there’s one thing that always nagged at me with the N1, it had to be the alotted storage for applications. There was never enough. I was constantly weighing options on what app “had to go” whenever I wanted to try something new. The Samsung came with 16GB of onboard storage as well as a slot for a microSD card (I have a little 4 GB card in there right now). I’m now the kid in the candy store when it comes to trying out apps.

Speed and Stability

The Samsung is noticeably faster than the Nexus One. But it’s also been significantly less stable. I probably restarted the Nexus One four or five times due to problems while I had it. I’ve pulled the battery out of the Samsung at least 4 times to cold boot it, force restarted it probably 10 times and it’s even restarted a couple of times on its own. Now I’m not sure if this is all due to using Launcher Pro as my launcher of choice (I used it on my Nexus One as well). But it’ll sure take more than the odd stability problem to force me into using Samsung’s TouchWiz UI. The video playback is great. I’ve seen no jitters or stutters and my daughter quite likes using it for watching videos in the car.

TouchWiz - aka Insta-hate

I probably gave the standard TouchWiz UI about 10 minutes before I downloaded and installed Launcher Pro. Maybe 10 is generous - probably more like 6 or 7. I found it horrible. Compared to Launcher Pro on the N1, this was like getting out of a Lotus Elise and into a Ford Tempo. And of course as I’ve previously speculated, maybe LPro is the cause of some of my stability issues. But I can’t bear to use the stock UI long enough to really tell. I’m willing to suffer on.

Swype

I’m a big Swype fan. I got in on the beta when I had the Nexus One and always preferred it to anything else including the stock keyboard. I did however go searching for alternatives at one point when they hadn’t put the microphone key on the board and Google had launched it’s Voice Actions. But shortly after the little mike appeared and all was good. Moving to the Samsung, I was happy knowing that Swype came pre-installed. However the microphone isn’t there. And I don’t think it will be in the near future. As some comfort, I keep the Google widget - which has the microphone button - close at hand.

Bluetooth

This is a biggie. The N1’s bluetooth was solid. I got in my car, paired it once and enjoyed bliss thereafter. It played all my podcasts over the stereo without issue and handled calls flawlessly. I do a lot of driving (about 60-70,000 km a year). My commute is my solace. Having to wrestle with Bluetooth is something I don’t want to do. Initially, the Samsung paired without issue. But keeping it paired and playing podcasts and music via bluetooth was problematic. One thing that helped was changing my contacts display settings to only show “My Contacts”. For some reason the Samsung’s default setup included my entire Google contact list including anybody who had ever emailed me (including mailing list addresses etc.). This pared it down from roughly 1200 to about 200. I think this sped up the address book transfer and significantly smoothed things out. It’s still not perfect and every once in a while I have to restart the bluetooth on the phone. Not a deal breaker now, but a significant downgrade from the N1 for sure.

Updates

Well, it took me about a week before I gathered the gumption to upgrade the OS from 2.1 (which it came with) to 2.2. I had been spoiled with the N1, and expecting to get any sort of OTA upgrade from Samsung for this phone sounds like a pipe dream. So I wimped out and ran the upgrade on my Windows machine at work. It was not simple. It took several attempts to get the phone recognized by their software. A typical windows proprietary software mess. Not unexpected in hindsight but definitely a disappointment over the nice OTA upgrade to Froyo I had with the Nexus One. And let’s not forget that technically speaking the N1 *should* get further upgrades before many other phones. The Samsung Galaxy? Umm. Nope.

Camera

This Samsung is called the “Fascinate” by Telus. But apparently this is actually the “Captivate” on Verizon - or something like that. In any case, this phone does NOT have a flash. Now I’m not big on LED flashes, but there are times when it was useful for work peering into some relatively low light situation and reappearing with a usable photo. Not having the flash seems like a big tradeoff. I pondered it for about 10 minutes when buying the phone. In the end I figured that if I had taken any keepers with the N1, they were almost always naturally lit shots anyway. The Samsung camera app is more feature filled than the Nexus One app. It also has tap-to-focus which helps. Overall photo quality? I haven’t done any detailed comparisons, but I’d likely say the N1 camera shots are slightly nicer than the Galaxy S shots. There seems to be slightly less artifacting and they seem slightly sharper. But they’re camera phones. I have a Canon 7D if I want higher quality shots.

Miscellany

A small but not unimportant point. I was never a huge fan of the Nexus One trackball. I used it, but never found it to be a glorious experience. But Joni Mitchell was dead right. I miss that little round thing. The froyo upgrade (I think) brought the light blue editing cursor, but it’s fiddly. Sure the ball was fiddly too, but an order of magnitude less fiddly.
The Galaxy S also has a nice TV out feature. I had a cable that came with my Kodak Zi8 camera (1/8th plug to RGB) that I plugged into the headphone jack of the phone and into my TV. With the TV-Out display option checked I get a nice mirrored display right on the TV. We used this to watch movies on the hotel TV on more than one occasion. Definitely a nice little perk.

And There You Have It

No final scores, no rating. Just my thoughts. Would I take the Nexus One back if it magically reappeared? I’m not sure. Had I not got the bluetooth issues largely sorted, I’d say definitely yes. But after two months it’s significantly less annoying. Tallying up the speed and storage increase along with the improved display and I’d be hard pressed to choose the Nexus One.

So I’d actually take the CCM over the Mongoose. The compromise has been worth it I guess (aside from the 3 year lock-in with The Man). But then again, if I was offered a Kuwahara or a GT it might be a completely different story.

Note: My age grants me the luxury and license to quote or mis-quote BMX bike brands from the 80’s.

Categories blogging, technology

A Lesson in Bad Karma (or rather Showcase of My Stupidity)

February 7, 2011 //

Let me be clear. The purpose of this post is to bitch and moan. Well, that and to wallow in my own stupidity and bad karma. It’s a brief story, at least I intend it to be.

Last Friday was as good or bad as any other. I had planned on doing some hard drive partition juggling on my laptop in advance of getting the new 1 TB eSata/usb/firewire drive I had ordered mid-week. In fact, to my surprise it arrived in my office Friday afternoon. Being the cheeky monkey I am, I decided to boot up my laptop, fire up a GParted live CD and let it do its magic while I worked away the afternoon.

This is when things went horribly wrong.

You see, it’s always best to make sure your laptop is running on AC power when you do anything important that will run for any significant length of time. You’d have to be a few bricks short of a full load to do anything different. So when I heard the laptop on the desk behind me shut off with nary a warning beep, my heart sank. Or more accurately, it drove off a cliff.

Luckily I had backed up my laptop’s home directory a couple of nights earlier in preparation for the partitioning re-org. I did however lose my aptly named ‘/creative’ partition where I temporarily stored most of my photos and videos between periodic backups to my older USB2.0 drive. They were scattered to the wind.

However, my poor organizational habits came to my rescue in one way. I still had 25GB of photos and videos on my Canon 7D’s CF card that spanned back to just before Christmas. So I managed to pay very little for my stupidity.

Until Saturday that is.

My daughter and I pulled into the Best Buy parking lot early Saturday afternoon. I needed to see if they had a PCI or AGP video card for my Dad’s desktop (he had recently bought a 22” monitor and his existing card didn’t support the native resolution). My daughter was watching videos on my Nexus One when we parked. So I told her to shut it off and stick it in her pocket while we went in. (Why didn’t I take the phone from her?? I have no idea - this is the way stupidity works people!).

We went in, didn’t find anything other than PCI-E cards (slots which his 5 yr old PC doesn’t have) and then spent about 5 or 10 minutes looking at the DSI-XL, and various other tech toys. So 10 minutes later we’re driving out of the parking lot and I ask her for the phone. WE CAN’T FIND IT.

We did all the usual things. Searched our pockets five times over. Searched the car five times over. Looked in the store. Searched the parking lot. Re-traced our steps. Talked to the store rep who called the number while my daughter and I ran around trying to listen for a ringtone. Nada (he said it went straight to voicemail).

My daughter in tears, swimming in guilt. Me, biting back my anger, telling her (and knowing inside) it was Daddy’s stupidity. Walking back to the car in disbelief, eyes desperately darting everywhere looking for a little black neoprene case in a snowy slushy parking lot full of moving cars, the sinking realization hitting home that my beloved Nexus One was gone. Worse still, taking with it a surprising amount of photos and videos that I had only backed up about 3 months ago when I upgraded from a 4GB to an 8GB microSD card.

After getting back home, changing my gmail password, and making some fumbling attempts at figuring out how to locate it, I finally resigned myself to its loss, wishing hopefully that it had been crushed under the weight of a car tire and not in the hands of someone else. After some short deliberation, I headed back out to bite the bullet and get a new phone.

I ended up getting a Samsung Galaxy S. I’ll probably have more posts on how I’m liking (or not liking) the new phone. I’ll save those for another time. But I will leave you with a heavily abbreviated list of things I came to learn this weekend:

I am stupid.
Backup your stuff. You don’t need some streamlined system. Just backup your stuff. Somewhere.
Bell mobility staff (at least in the Aurora store I went to) is heavily undertrained on what they’re selling.
Telus mobility staff are somewhat better trained, but still surprisingly clueless about what they’re selling.
Think past your rage and avoid blaming a nine-year old for the stupidity of her 42 year old father.
Keeping most all of my graphic design work in Dropbox was about the only smart thing I’ve done through all this.
The Nexus One was an even more beautiful phone than I thought it was. If you have one, keep it. Cherish it. AKA you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.
Plug in your laptop when you’re doing any important system work.
Web sync’d apps of any kind are a godsend.
BACK. UP. YOUR. STUFF. SOMEWHERE. ANYWHERE.
I am stupid.

Categories life, linux, stupidity, technology

Trading Up the Tripod this Christmas

December 31, 2010 //

One of the things on my relatively short list to Santa this year was a new tripod. The one he brought me a few years back finally gave up the ghost when the plasticky knob thingy that tightens the plasticky pan head from rotating on its plasticky stem tore loose from its plasticky housing leaving a plasticky hole.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love Santa. And I used that tripod (though not nearly as often as I should have), but it was an entry level tripod not really suited for DSLR use. It was clearly more happy carrying a Flip camera or something of that ilk. Add to that its mid-level support braces and it just didn’t cut it for me. And bless his jolly old heart when he once again bought me a light-duty attractively priced store-brand tripod steeped in mid-level braced plasticky goodness. Clearly I just had to bite the bullet and exchange it.

So off I headed to the local camera shop on the day after Boxing Day determined to improve my situation. Initially, trying to be as price-conscious as possible, I was eyeing a slick little Manfrotto 785b travel tripod with a super-nifty looking pistol-grip head. Picking a display unit up and handling it, I quickly realized that its nifty pistol grip and skimpy legs felt a little too wobbly for my Canon 7D. So I decided to talk to a sales guy about my conundrum. I wasn’t about to exchange my sub-100 store-brand tripod for an 800 dollar Gitzo, but I wondered aloud if there was something a little more realistic for my situation.

Surprisingly, he told me there was. He picked out a relatively sturdy looking Dynatran AT-A102T carbon fibre tripod base and demonstrated it for me. Biting my lip, I asked him about the price. I told him I had wanted a ball-head for it, but he pointed me away from that solely on price. His logic being that he could pick out something that would work well with a 7D sort of weight and keep me at a reasonable price if I went with a 3-way pan head. Going to a ball head that would do a good job of supporting this sort of weight would be significantly pricier and it was something I could always upgrade to later. So he picked out a Dynatran ATH-04H aluminum pan head. He told me he could put that tripod and head together for $180.00. I was sold.

Now this may not be a pro-quality Manfrotto or Gitzo setup, but compared to what I walked in with, this was a huge step up. I may be way off base with this (and time will tell of course) but it seems to me that a carbon fibre tripod with a 17.5 lb load rating (the one I walked in with had a measly 6.6 lbs capacity) and a semi-decent aluminum pan head for 180 bucks is an alright deal.

I may do a proper review once I actually put this thing to use, but for now, here are a few photos of the new rig:

NB: The photos are in a superdy-duperdy lightbox display so if you’re reading via RSS you’ll likely have to hit the post directly to see them properly - ugh.

Dynatran AT-A102T Tripod

Top of the Tripod

ATH-04H 3-way Pan Head

Twist Leg Locks

Bag hook for added weight and stability.

Compass and Level

Categories photography, technology

Soccer Girl and DSLR Viewfinder Loupes

August 12, 2010 //

Very proud of the way my daughter is playing soccer these days. No lack of effort for sure. I shot a couple of clips the other night with my Canon 7D using my 75-300 lens and edited them up quickly using Blender 2.5. The original was shot at 1280x720 at 60fps in manual mode with an aperture setting of 1/60 (thanks to Troy for that bit of advice) and then slowed down to 24fps on output from Blender.

I’m really thinking about getting a viewfinder loupe for my camera. I always forget my reading glasses when shooting and even with that nice 3” LCD screen, focus is clearly guesswork. It wasn’t too bad on most of these shots, but it can be frustrating. I’ve been thinking about the Zacuto Z-Finder, Lcdvf or Hoodman products to help solve this problem (note: Hoodman’s site is well.. extremely jarring in terms of design. Think Geocities meets Schoolbus. You’ve been warned. ).

If anybody has experience with these things and how they perform, let me know.

No Lack of Hustle from Richard Querin on Vimeo.

Categories blender, family, life, photography, technology, video, web

Bitter Designers and Where We Need To Go

August 4, 2010 //

The recent Smashing Magazine post “Designers, ‘Hacks’ and Professionalism: Are We Our Own Worst Enemy?” is an interesting one. I urge you to read it. It brings up several different issues but one that struck a chord with me was the whole feeling about the commoditization of design.

With sites like 99designs.com which leverage design contests and with logos coming to istockphoto.com the apparent cheapening of the graphic design profession is unrelenting. On one hand I understand the ‘world going to hell in a handbasket’ sort of view, but the pragmatist in me tries to step back and see how this is not unique and not at all unexpected.

There is the sentiment that any fool with some graphics software and half a brain can hang his shingle out as a “designer”. Whether they will be successful or not is another matter entirely. There is also the view that design work becomes undervalued and commoditized when clients see that they can get an acceptable logo for $50.00 instead of the $1000.00 the top grade designer may want to charge. Do you want to buy your shoes at Payless or head over to Gucci? Well if the buyer can’t tell the difference (which is the designer’s job to describe), then hell yes I’d expect him to head over to Payless. This is not ideal, but completely expected.

It can be a difficult rationalization. Why should graphic design escape the same sort of trend as desktop publishing, journalism, writing or photography for that matter? What makes graphic designers so unique?

We have seen photography flourish as of late and yet there are still great photographers - in fact I’d say many more of them. Is the photography business as lucrative as it once was? I’d think not. Photographers have to work harder, be more creative and up their quality to survive. I find it great that so many more people are interested in photography - if I was a professional photographer I think I’d probably hate it.

And so it is with graphic design. I love the fact that design concepts start to enter the mainstream. It is no longer a black art. Sure, it would be more romantic if it was, but it’s not. Is it hurting things for professional graphic designers? Sure. But again, I value the proliferation of skills over the health of an industry.

Granted I am not a professional graphic designer nor am I a professional photographer. It’s easy for me to hold these views. And since I’m a shit programmer by any measure, I could just as easily say the same thing for programmers as well (and writers and desktop publishers). Progress and technology lower the bar. That enables more people to participate. I think that’s a good thing, but that dilutes the market for those who’ve been in the pool the longest. I feel bad for them. Sincerely I do.

I am lucky in a way that in my own profession (structural engineering) there is greater liability. When I design a structure I am legally responsible for that design and its performance over the life of the building. This affords us signficantly more protection against the democratization of structural engineering (ha - now there’s a far-fetched idea). This sort of liability is rarely there for software designers, and probably even more rare for graphic designers. I don’t see that changing.

So where is the positive in all of this for our little FOSS corner over here? We already have a community built around voluntary contribution and knowledge sharing. We can take this time to weep about passing industries and shrinking job markets, or we can take a bunch of people who are already part of the Libre Software community and who are passionate and eager about design and teach ourselves great things so we can create even better things.

I think the first step is to admit we have a lot to learn. And perhaps we should just take that statement as fact since we may be the worst people to judge our own skill levels (as John Cleese put so well). Many would also say quite rightly that as far as design goes, Libre-land has nowhere to go but up. So let’s start climbing.

Some things to chew on in no specific order:

We need to learn to provide quality criticism, how to accept it and how to use it. No more ‘put up or shut up’ nonsense. Listen to criticism, evaluate it, discuss it, elevate it.

We need to stop thinking we know everything about design when we clearly don’t. We are smart. We can learn these things.

We need to encourage designers**, but hammer on basic design concepts. Audience, goals, colour, flow, etc.

We need to treat design seriously right from the start of our projects and stop treating it as a suit of clothes.

We need to look at the ‘why’ of good design going on outside of FOSS land. Why is something good? What is the concept at work? Not copying, not being unique for the sake of uniqueness. Let’s try to understand the ‘why’ of good design and apply that.

** I am conflicted about design contests. I understand the problems with them - if you don’t, I highly recommend reading this post. But I still think there needs to be a viable way for those eager to build their design skills to work on meaningful things. If you have ideas in this regard, let’s hear them and get a proper discussion going.

Tags librescope

Categories blogging, design, graphics, linux, technology, Uncategorized

The Showstopper To Your Showstoppers

June 15, 2010 //

Usability testing seems to be the new black in Libre Software Land these days. And while I won’t discount its importance one bit, I am a bit frustrated reading this recent post titled “When users first encounter Ubuntu: six showstoppers” over on the Canonical Design blog.

Why am I frustrated? There is no real information about the testing itself (perhaps it’s published somewhere else?). Who are the ‘users’? How many were part of the test? Are they part of the Ubuntu’s target audience? (Who is that anyway?). What age are the people? What are their backgrounds like? Where are they from? Were they female or male? There are a million questions (and perhaps even some answers) that I think should go along with any report about usability testing. The post gives some typical remarks and a summary of what are apparently major problems, but without context these seem just like the myriad of assumptions we make about “users” all the time anyway. These results would be much more meaningful with context and focus. And like I said, all that info may be recorded and published somewhere else. Why not provide it?

Now a few comments (not necessarily answers) about some of the “showstoppers”:

1. File compatibility

I would think this is largely an OpenOffice concern, at least in the context of Office documents. I’m not sure if this will ever be solved without moving to an open format anyway. At work I have dealt with several people who can’t open docx files in their version of Office. File compatibility is a concern even for MS-Office users on Windows.

2. Lack of feedback on system behaviour

This is one of those areas that we could do a lot better than our non-free OS competitors. There is nothing holding us back from providing something that solves the problem creatively and uniquely.

3. Use of jargon

This problem is rampant all over FOSS-land. Thoughtful consideration of every menu and dialog is required, at application and OS level. Again, this would be so much easier with a defined audience.

4. Getting flash

Rather than addressing the problem, I have to take issue with the summary of this point. “Most didn’t know what to do at that point.” Most of who? How many tried? Are we talking about 3 people or 30? And if most didn’t, does that mean 2 or 16, or 29? This is where context would be so helpful. And maybe the more pressing question is: If ‘most’ people didn’t know what to do, then at least ‘some’ actually did. And if they did, why is it that none of them were able to download it? I don’t get it.

5. Software centre

I think a good chunk of this point relates directly back to 2. and 3.

6. Adding a printer

I don’t remember encountering any of this. I opened the printing dialog from the Administration menu, clicked ‘New Printer’ and chose my model and driver. While not perfect, I don’t remember having to list anything about device URI’s etc. Were these people installing an unsupported printer model? Maybe a network printer? There is not enough in the description to tell. It sounds like the printing dialog is horribly broken for everyone and I just don’t think that is the case (again - publish the data and let’s see).

Well, I guess it’s good that there is some usability testing. But how good is the question. And without more information about the testing itself there is no answer to that.

Tags librescope

Categories design, linux, technology

Ubuntu’s Visual Identity Guide

April 30, 2010 //

Did you know that there is a visual identity guide for Ubuntu? I didn’t. But perhaps I never looked.

It’s currently at revision one, and you can find it here. It’s nice to see this aspect of the design taken seriously. I wonder how many other Linux distributions have one.

There are a few things of note on the second page of the guide. It’s a decent attempt at being inspirational and higher-minded, and those are not bad things in my book. Imagine that, trying to get your product to generate emotions, who-da-thunk it.

With all this whining I’ve been doing lately about audience and goal, I almost chuckled aloud at the last line of the first paragraph,

“We stand for the very best operating system in the world, created by the expert few for the global many.”

I think the ‘global many’ is about as nebulous as you can get in terms of audience. And just try and tell me that ‘the expert few’ remark isn’t going to make a large contingent of the Ubuntu ‘community’ howl that this is further evidence that it isn’t being valued - When was the vote held on the content of this style guide anyway? Let’s hope it wasn’t.

Hmm.. reading along some more… what’s this? Apparently the guide is meant to help people create a consistent identity that will communicate Ubuntu values. And as of revision one these values are: FREEDOM, COLLABORATIVE, PRECISE, and RELIABLE.

I’m no linguistics expert but maybe it should be Freedom, Collaboration, Precision and Reliability. And no mention of Light, or Lightness at all. The previously described concept of light doesn’t seem to fit inside any of the above four. Maybe that’s a value for the wordmark and logo, but not for Ubuntu itself - my head hurts.

But let’s remember - revision One.

I went through the rest of it and a lot of it is spelled out quite nicely for a starting point document. I do wonder how strictly it will be followed by those outside of Ubuntu proper. There are a boatload of people out there who like to create Ubuntu-related visuals. I think a guide like this only helps them. But the “Free-means-I-can-do-whatever-the-hell-I-want” community contingent will likely spin this one off as too restrictive without thinking about the greater benefits of consistency and the potential for real, tangible forward progress.

I’m happy to see this document. With a little more focus and a well-defined [cough] audience [cough], that page Two could be a real zinger - almost dare I say it, a rallying point. Let’s hope they push this out into the community - not onto.. but into. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Let it languish and it’s wasted effort.

Tags librescope

Categories design, graphics, linux, technology

Pretending to “Design” and A Few Questions

April 24, 2010 //

Two parts to this, not nearly as tied together as I’d like, but heck, it’s been a month. First it’s pretend time, then a few things to ponder.

Okay, pretend time. Let’s pretend that you and I are designing a new Linux-based distro. So being good designers means that we’re going to immediately try to hone in on a definition of audience and goal (right?).

Let’s skip through the twenty coffee-laden, late night IRC meetings and pretend that we decided that the target audience of our distribution consists of 22-32 year old female stay-at-home moms who use laptop and desktop computers. The goal for our distribution is to provide an engaging, stable, virus-free platform which is exceptionally good at social networking and creative endeavours such as writing, photography and video editing for our target audience. (Whether that audience and goal are focused enough or well-defined enough is another matter entirely - and if you don’t think it is, let’s hear your ideas).

At this point, no matter how much fun it might be, we fight the urge to simply run off and design a pink logo for our new distro.

Now, you may not know me. But you’ll have to simply take my word on it that I am not in fact female and nowhere near the 22-32 year old age bracket. So while I could in fact design this mythical OS myself, I would have no idea whether the design was progressing toward its goal. I would need to either get a broad cross section of the target audience working for me, or perhaps more practically, seriously research the hell out of it.

In most parts of Libre Culture land I venture to say we don’t do either very well for our creative endeavours. I know that I personally don’t (at least not nearly enough - though by reading, learning and writing about it I’m trying to change that.).

Perhaps even more telling is the fact that as a 42 year old male, for me to say things like “I think this distro rocks!” or “I think this distro sucks!” really means a heck of a lot less than I might think or hope it does.

So let’s bring this back around to our Free Software community. Can we pay attention to the standard design practice of knowing audience and goal? After we choose an audience can we stop pretending that “we” are the audience and research the hell out of the actual audience?

Second, and perhaps more powerfully, a few questions.

It’s great that so much Libre Software was built by people “Scratching Their Own Itch”. It has been the driving force in building such a large army of so many smart and generous people developing so much great software.

What worries me is this: Can we rally groups of these smart people to design for an audience they are not a part of? Can we get Free Software culture to really scratch someone else’s itch? If not, are we destined to results that ultimately cater, even subconsciously to the traits and desires of the developers themselves?

Tags librescope

Categories blogging, design, linux, technology

What Ubuntu’s Design Team Needs to Do

March 19, 2010 //

Here I go probably oversimplifying again.

There are two big problems with the design of Ubuntu (and probably most other big Linux distributions): the lack of a clear audience definition and the assumption that somehow we know what that audience wants and needs.

Clearly it’s a bit silly sounding to attempt the second without knowing the first, but the danger is that we assume the first in order to do the second.

I refuse to accept “everyone” as an audience (on the grounds that it’s impossible), so I’d have to say that Ubuntu lacks a publicly defined audience (please OH PLEASE prove me wrong here). I’ve heard many people say that Ubuntu is aimed at the person who is “new to computers”. I’ve also heard many people say that it’s aimed at “grandma”, or even better, that it’s aimed at the “average user” - whatever the hell that means. I’ve even been given a pointer to an irc log (here) that kinda sorta indicates that it’s aimed at “young professionals” who are “web-saavy”.. er.. but also everyone.

Even if we were to have a well-defined audience, I think we techie-Linux folks tend to make the mistake of assuming we know what that audience wants and needs. Worse still, we confuse it with what we want and need. This is all great if the target audience are techie-Linux folks. But if it’s not, I fear all of our best intentions will still end up with a product aimed at ourselves. And unless that is the audience, it’s a failure.

I don’t doubt that there are many creatively talented people working on Ubuntu. But for the design team I think there are a few important things that need to happen:

1. Define the audience - publicly and succinctly. It ain’t easy. You will alienate people. If you don’t you’re not defining it well enough. Don’t you think BMW, Nintendo or Apple piss people off with their design work.. even within their own ranks? Aim high. Let’s build a sports car or a minivan or a pickup truck. Pick one, but don’t aim at designing a Porsche that can seat 8 and haul sheets of plywood. It doesn’t work. It’s been proven. It weakens the result when you practice scattershot design. Focus.

2. Define the goal. What are you going to accomplish for that audience? Again, document it - publicly. This gives your design team direction. It cuts down on goose chases and keeps things moving in a single (and hopefully correct) direction.

3. Be strong in your design goals, but be transparent. Please never let it be design-by-committee or consensus. You already have talented people. Do 1. and 2. and you will make those people much more efficient. But explain what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Document the process in minute detail. This is the internet - it’s built for this sort of thing. Don’t do a complete identity rework and then have your head of design spend one single blog post defending it. This should have been explained to death. If you’re proud of your design, the designers should be bursting at the seams to explain their work and convince everybody that will listen as to why it’s great.

The last point requires relatively little risk and is easily accomplished however I don’t expect the first two, as important as they are, to be accomplished. There is this silly notion of having to aim Ubuntu at everyone - such a fear of pissing someone off, that I don’t think 1. and 2. are attainable.

I hope I’m wrong.

Tags librescope

Categories design, linux, technology, web