Greek Complexity

Sixth Sense

This is by far, the most innovative interface I've ever seen and am likely to see for the next few years at least. And yet, it's conceptually so simple (execution is everything) that it's really not particularly expensive, far cheaper than what it cost them to put together those simulated scenes in The Minority Report. Plus it could be extended to several several applications (yes, that's two severals) using Internet-based plumbing that already exists today.

View the video and be wowed. And I thought the bit where he walks up to his friend was just hilarious.

Video from here.

And the Facebook debate continues

I read the title of one of Mike Arrington's recent posts and thought he was being sarcastic. Glory be, he's serious!

Mike relates user complaints about Facebook's interface changes to design by committee. That's wrong. Design by committee is before the fact, user feedback is after. I don't think any user is saying they can do a better job at designing the Facebook interface; they're just saying what they hate about what Facebook themselves have done.

So the broad ideas, vision, back-end architecture and all that is very much Facebook's job. This is NOT what users should be doing, ie users aren't involved in core design. Users don't design either Porsches or iPhones; expert designers do. What users can in turn do (generally speaking) is provide the market reaction. Give feedback on specific hitches and glitches that affect them. What Robert Scoble calls taking "splinters out of the experience".

Someone else comments on the same page:

Ignoring your users much of the time is the path to oblivion for a company. The examples cited about Porsche and the iPhone are examples of survivor bias. There’s probably 100 or 1000 examples for each of those where the idea and/or the company bit the dust.

How true. Case studies are one thing but can we look at the universe please?

MobileLeap

So since I complained about the lack of mobile-ready websites out there, it was just a matter of time before I discovered MobileLeap.

To understand how terrifically amazingly absolutely fantastically good this service is, first open your mobile phone browser and type in www.economist.com. Curse. Then try navigating the garbage layout that the The Economist inflicts upon mobile phone users. Curse again.

Then go to MobileLeap on your mobile phone browser and type in www.economist.com. Experience utter bliss as you now get a mobile-ready website generated on the fly.

Doesn't sound like much? Well, you're not following instructions then. Remember, open your mobile phone browser, Economist, curse, MobileLeap, happy sigh.

I've tried this with the BBC website too (another horror) and it works just as well.

Hat tip, ironically enough, to Kate Russell at BBC's Click.