Alex Kelleher’s Blog

Who cares???

I wrote a while ago about the Palm Pre (now available in the UK) unifying messaging.   It makes sense – all your messages to me are as one.   

The thing is, I don’t care how your message arrives.  If I’m at my work PC, sure a Skype message is handy, it’s right there.  In a meeting?  Email is pretty good.  On a train with just my Blackberry – well, any mobile message works.   But really, whether to message me in LinkedIn, Twitter, email - it doesn’t matter, it just makes your and my life harder working out which one to use.  We’re supposed to be in a new bright era of unparalleled communications - but, it’s actually a mess. 

Twitter?  Handy when I have Tweetdeck open.  And crazy when I get alerted to new messages by email (talk about duplication).  Can I be bothered to install twitter clients on my Blackberry so I have yet another format of message to read?  Is a tweet any more useful than a Skype IM?  Do I remember whether you told me about some new great thing via MSN rather than email?  No, no and no!

Sure, there are different ways you might want to message – just to me, just to our group of friends/interest group, or to the world including me.   But that doesn’t need 10 different platforms, 10 different interfaces, 10 apps on my iPhone (disclaimer: I don’t  have an iPhone, this guy outlines the reasons why pretty well).   It just needs a simple setting connected to the message: like a “purpose” or “audience” label.

We’re running a real risk of losing out on the benefits of realtime communication by getting caught up in new brands that merely provide a way of sending messages (I’m looking at you, Twitter), rather than ways of getting that message to me in the most appropriate, useful, immediate way. 

It’s a little bit like providing gas to my house in pipes that are colourful, light up, have cute names, and make their journey via London’s top landmarks.  I don’t care – I just want the gas that comes out of the end, and feeds my boiler and oven.  Even more than that, I just want the heating it enables, and the food that comes out of the oven.  So, even if the gas itself is replaced by some new energy source, I’d be just as happy.

It’s the message that counts, not the medium.

admin Technology, Usability, Web

Flat screen not good enough for you?  Microsoft developsa sphere-shaped one, with uber-multitouch integrated.   Some applications (live omnidirectional camera, so you can spin it 360 degrees) seem to make some sense, others (pong) less so… But I’m all for innovation in HCI.  As is Pat Gelsinger (of Intel, creator of the 486 processor no less), when he says in conversation with David Fearon, PC Plus Magazine:

“[there will be] a resurgence of interest and invention around the user-interface experience… as we enable the UI to become interactive, immersive and intuitive.  We expect that to begin to occur as we move to terrascale computing.”

Though the whole reinvention of the obvious did make me think of the ad that’s showing on TV right now from a car company, asking how things would be if we could design them from scratch again.  They then showed a world with whackily designed lamp posts, water hydrants etc., and eventually their new car.  Thing is, if we designed things from scratch again – guess what, they’d look exactly like they do right now…  In any case, demo of sphere-touchscreen below:

admin UI, Usability