Khal Weir

I’ve heard User Experience design referred to as the most prestigious and pretentious job title in the industry or even plain bullshit, but really I think its the least understood. The problem, for me starts with the title. As Edward Tufte famously said “only two industries that refer to their customers as ‘users’”. The term ‘users’ dehumanizes’ the audience, so lets call them what they are - customers or even better use personas. By asking “what would Bob do here and what would Alice expect?” vs “what is a user going to do here?” immediately you are thinking differently and your product will be better for it. So let’s lose ‘user’, ok? When great rock acts like KISS play live shows they aim to excite, delight and exceed the expectations of their fans; in other words they craft an experience. When I’m working on a project I have similar goals, I don’t want an interface to be merely usable I want to do inspire, engage and trigger an emotional response with the audience.  Restauranteurs, car manufacturers, hoteliers, interior designers, film directors and more share these ambitions. Just like the projects I work on, their products are all experiences;  so I feel ‘experience’ is redundant from my job title too.

I strongly believe I work in what is currently the most exciting field in the industry, but its so poorly understood I sometimes fear that it isn’t taken as seriously as it should be. Perhaps I’m right and its in the name; my work involves research, analysis, prototyping, testing, information architecture, interface design, copywriting and more - yet the ultimate goal is designing the best product possible.  I am not then, a product designer?

Humans are unable to effectively multitask, yet we are constantly attempting to. At work, while walking and driving, at leisure and at home. Although it may feel like we are, when we multitask we aren’t being more productive, we are actually just doing multiple things a fraction as well. With today’s culture, technology and lifestyles its hard not to; with smartphones, competitive workplaces and social networks the desire to stay connected is stronger than ever. I’ve found myself putting off watching subtitled films, because I’d be unable to catch up on Facebook, twitter, RSS or Instapaper and follow the narrative at the same time. More and more of us are interacting with a second screen while watching TV (see LukeW.com for figures). This might be fine for certain content, something as vapid as Made in Chelsea or rewatching Firefly for the tenth time, but can really hamper your enjoyment of new or interesting content. Yet, some see this as the future of TV and are exploring ways to capitalise on our use of these devices and social interactions.

ABC’s social TV iPad app

As a music fan, I’ll nearly always have headphones on at work. I find blocking out background noise helps me to focus, but I’m conscious that my choice of music can affect my work. I try to stick with really familiar albums or playlists of ambient instrumental tracks that are less distracting. A side effect of this however, is that I rarely just listen to music anymore. I lament that music is becoming something in the background while I do two or three other things and intend to remedy this by buying a turntable and building up a record collection. I feel that the manual process of playing vinyl and the fact that I’ve tracked down a favourite album on this antique format will encourage me to spend more time actively listening and increase my enjoyment of the music. I really enjoy seeing films at the cinema, largely because I’m forced to singletask. I’m there to watch a film, my phone stays in my pocket and unless the film is poor I’m focused on watching. This experience is especially good at the IMAX, as the screen fills your vision and people exit via the rear so there are no distractions. Mountain biking, rock climbing and cooking enforce the singletask mindset too; if you let your mind wander you can screw up but even if you manage not to fall or burn your dinner you’ve lessened your enjoyment of the activity. I love the concept of apps like IA Writer, stripped to the bear essentials, it’s minimal and task oriented interface encourage focus and care; more software should be like this. Singletasking enables us to get work done faster and better, relax more effectively and enjoy our leisure time - those kittens will still be on YouTube later.

I’m not going to apologise for not posting anything here for a while (I hate it when bloggers do that), my readership is low and the lack of posts will have had minimal impact on their lives. The truth is, I got distracted by tumblr (check out khalweir.tumblr.com if you like charts, graphic design, animated gifs, dinosaurs and bikes as much as I do), moving across London and to a new job. I’m now a citizen of Croydonia and working as a UX Designer at dotDigital Group. I’ve had fun furnishing my new flat, meeting new people and working on great new projects. I’ve got a few ideas for posts I’d like to write, so I’ll hopefully be updating more frequently from now on but don’t hold me to it…  

Wow, 2010 is almost done! Its getting cold and my friends in the North are reporting epic snowfall.

:)

Rodrigo y Gabriela

I was lucky enough to get tickets to see the first of their 5 London shows, I’m still amazed by their extraordinary skill and the sound they can create from just two acoustic guitars.

Holiday!

I took a quick break and managed to visit 3 countries over a few days (Gibraltar, Spain and Morocco). I enjoyed good weather, good people, good food and some new experiences all the while cursing my terrible language skills.

Christmas

If the Trainline have managed to sort out my tickets, I’ll be going home to Durham for almost 2 weeks. I’m really looking forward to it, as well as catching up with my family and walking the dogs every day; I’m couriering my bike up so I can rip up the trails that I rode as a kid.

:(

Christmas

I am by no means a religious person, but the commercialisation of Christmas freaks me out. I have a low tolerance to real world shopping as it is, but the streets and shopping centres are just unbearable at this time of year. Not to mention the terrifying the amount of money people seem willing to part with during the festive period as advertising persuades them to buy everything from new clothing to sofas and cars on top of presents and food.

Its a been a busy month - I prepared a presentation for C21 Media’s Ipad Entertainment Summit, where the always excellent Stephen Fry gave an entertaining talk, learned a bunch from some of the smartest people in my industry at the Future of Web Apps and was asked to write about user testing for ‘probably the best digital marketing blog in the world’

:)

Boxee

Following from last month when I got all excited about the new Apple TV, I became gradually deflated as I realised there are no TV rentals or Netflix (or Lovefilm) streaming in the UK . Even though it is a very attractive device it simply doesn’t do enough to justify its very modest price tag. I downloaded Boxee to see how the project had matured and to see if one of the upcoming Boxee boxes would be a viable alternative. I am impressed, the interface is fast, easy to use (especially with the neat iPhone app) and there is an impressive amount of free content available. My mind was made up, I would pre-order a Boxee box as soon as possible, but then I read about Google TV… Tumblr So, I started a tumblr blog. I guess its for those things I like, but aren’t worth a blog post, tweet or a share on Facebook …. Scottish Beer Update! I’ve found Innis & Gunn in a bar in Camden and in Waitrose (they even had the Rum Cask - yum!) New stuff from Apple The new Macbook Air is interesting, I would have thought the iPad would really limit the market for a netbook like Mac and its apparently starting trends that we’ll see in future Macbooks, SSD as standard, no optical media and no Flash player installed. Its logical that Facetime and the App store would transition from iOS to Mac and we’d see an iLife refresh. The successor to Snow Leopard, Lion is scheduled for a summer release - lions are regarded as kings of the big cats, right? Will Lion be the last incarnation of OSX?

:(

Seasick Steve

Somehow, I totally missed that Seasick Steve was playing at the Blues Kitchen this month until after he’d sold out. Time to sign up for Songkick! Punctures Cycling to work is great until your stupid skinny tyres get a flat and you are forced to face the horror of hour long 3 mile bus journeys.

As I’m an avid fan of Apple products, some people assume I’m anti-Microsoft… that’s not true, I just dislike using crappy products. Anyone can make a crappy product; Apple’s Mighty Mouse and iPad Case suck, Google Wave was a flawed experiment and there is something very wrong with the way Diet Cherry Coke tastes. Microsoft have done some great work, their recent updates to Bing maps are very impressive and XBOX live is a great platform for online gamers and indie developers. I’m genuinely intrigued by Windows Mobile 7’s interface and was excited by the Courier concept video, but generally Microsoft aren’t major players any more. The problems, as I see it are :

Microsoft have become a huge multi-headed monster.

Without direction and too large to act upon new trends or technology quickly, Microsoft lumbers around playing catchup with the smaller companies in each market it attempts to play in (Zune vs iPod, MSN/Live/Bing vs Google search, Hotmail vs Gmail). Microsoft failed to embrace the web early on and ignored non-enterprise smartphone usage allowing Android and iPhone to dominate that sector. Its evident that Microsoft are so large and have so many divisions that none of then talk to each other, take a look at a Windows PC during a typical work day and count the number of apps sharing the same ‘look and feel’. The Office suite has the hateful ‘ribbon’ UI, which I haven’t seen in any other application, yet there are still traditional toolbars, popup menus and tabbed interfaces. Even when they do have something cool, like Surface or Courier - they move too slowly to get it out into the hands of the public. Surface has revealed in 2007, yet remains an expensive toy for a select few retailers and hotels. In the meantime, cheaper and more sophisticated tech is being developed by competitors. The Courier concept video, was by far, the coolest thing to come out of Redmond in years. A potential iPad challenger, the project was scrapped and apparently lead to J Allard (Chief Experience Officer) leaving Microsoft in frustration.

Legacy

66% of Windows users are running XP, an OS that is approaching its tenth birthday. Ten years in the tech industry is forever and when a large number of you customers haven’t bought something from you in almost a decade, you have a huge problem. This can be attributed to Vista being a disaster, users feeling an update doesn’t offer any real benefits or in some cases software critical to their business doesn’t work on newer versions. With Snow Leopard onwards Apple have dropped support for legacy hardware, they switched to Intel architecture in 2006 so to have the latest OS you need a relatively new computer. This may seem mean, but it allows for rapid progress. Supporting legacy software, convincing and transitioning users from a system they could have been using for over 10 years is probably the biggest challenge facing Microsoft.

Developers, Developers, Developers!

It seems like Microsoft, like Google, focus on the technology than the usability of their products. This shows through the interfaces they produce; Android for example, can achieve great things but the UI is (in my opinion) ugly, awkward to use and lacks the polish of iOS. Without an emphasis on user experience, even a technically great consumer product is likely to suffer. Ask a switcher (PC to Mac) why they switched and most will answer that OSX is easier to use, simply I work faster on a Mac than I do a PC due to great interface design and software. Windows users have long suffered the ‘Start’ menu and ‘Explorer’, which despite improvements made in 7 are still cumbersome and slow to use; these are the kind of interfaces designed by programers, they simply work but aren’t easy to use or well designed. So what should Microsoft do? I don’t care.. I’m a Mac user :) Um, seriously I think competition is good and it would be a shame to see the company that helped bring PCs to the masses fade away. I say they should narrow their focus or divide into smaller companies, hire more UX designers and be bolder. They should replace Steve Ballmer, the guy is a sweaty lunatic not the spokesperson for a multi-billion dollar company; they need to either bring Bill Gates back or find someone with the showmanship of Steve Jobs that can define a culture for the Microsoft of the future.

:)

Apple TV  I briefly owned the previous Apple TV (it didn’t fit my needs at the time) but I love the simplicity of this new one. I’m done with the hassle of downloading media, the pain of codecs and formats and trailing cables from my laptop to my TV. I’ll be buying one of these or the Boxee device very soon.

New iPods The new line up is great, the Shuffle proves Apple knows when they have screwed up and listen to their customers by bringing back buttons. I’m pleased a lot from the iPhone 4 filtered down to the Touch - particularly Facetime, although I feel this needs a desktop client before its truly going to useful. As for the Nano, wow - I’m really looking forward to playing with one.

Working on my first iPad project I’ve had this idea since we first got an iPad at work, but only recently have we had resources available to work on it. Check out the progress at http://theduckpad.tumblr.com/.

New Grinderman album oh boy. Spotify >

Twitter Redesign The new page looks great, I mostly use the iPhone app or Tweetie but I might start visiting twitter.com more often once this rolls out.

Google Instant Search 3.5Billion seconds saved a day - amazing!

:(

No Innis & Gunn in London?  

One of the things I miss most about Edinburgh, I can’t find any bars serving my favourite beer.

Ping

This is so weak I’m unwilling to dedicate many pixels to it, I only hope Apple have plans to drastically improve it soon.

Still no iTunes in the cloud

Its 2010 and iTunes is in its tenth incarnation and still we aren’t storing our media in the cloud? I was really hoping that we’d be seeing a huge leap forwards with iTunes 10 rather than an interface tweak. I want to be able to buy music on my laptop and have it instantly available on my iPhone (without fishing around for a cable), be able to log into my iTunes account and listen to my library at work and generally not to worry about my GBs of media stored on external drives.

I still haven’t got my GetGlue stickers

Where are they, dammit? Don’t know what I’m taking about? Glue is a new kind of social network where you check-in to stuff instead of places and earn real stickers : http://getglue.com/khal_weir

For various reasons, I’ve moved a lot in the past few years and with each move I’ve reduced my possessions. After reading recent articles such as this BBC one, I begun to think about minimising even further.

Its not even like I have that much stuff - a TV, a 5.1 surround system, MacBook Pro, iPhone, a drawer of assorted computery bits, a bunch of clothes, a collection of Vans skate shoes, a signed Faith no More poster, some bike stuff, back issues of Little White Lies, Dirt and Wired and a small box of my remaining books and CDs which I’ve yet to open since my last move.

But how much of that do I actually need? As much as Shepard Fairey designed George Orwell novels and the WWF cookbook are nice things to own - in truth I may never read them again. Keeping back issues of magazines is crazy too, as a majority of their content is more accessible online.

With the exception of the Apple goodies (ok.. and Mike Patton’s scribble), I’m not terribly attached to any of this stuff, the only problem items are my 3 bikes… yup, I’m a bike nerd and am currently trying to figure out a solution.

I’ve already made a decision to stop buying music, movies and games on physical media - I got burned in the HD format wars and am sick of storing and lugging around shiny discs. I’ve been streaming music from Spotify, buying from iTunes or erm.. acquiring it from other sources for years and can’t remember the last time I bought a DVD.

Basically, I’ve come to the conclusion that I can reduce my processions further still, I’ll begin a clearout session this week and at some point will buy an iPad as a replacement for printed media. An iPad, in fact, could serve as a replacement for my MacBook for a large proportion of what I’m currently using it for. However, annoyingly I would have to keep the MacBook around to upgrade and manage the media on my iProducts, but thats a separate issue that I like to call ‘where the hell is iTunes in the cloud?’.

Having less stuff is important to me, it feels good not to be burdened with an overwhelming amount of objects. It wasn’t long ago that I had 100s of CDs and DVDs, a collection of Star Wars memorabilia and almost every major games console released in the last 20 years. Nowadays, it seems ridiculous that I considered any of that important and I’m pleased to be free of it.

Often hailed as the next big thing in Social Networking, location based applications are increasing in popularity  as smartphones become more mainstream.  Facebook and Twitter have proven that people love to share their thoughts with anyone that will listen, so sharing your location is an obvious next step. The giants in this relatively new market are Foursquare and Gowalla, both use the GPS which is now commonplace in phones to allow users to create and check-in at a variety of locations such as shops, pubs, parks and museums. Achievements (e.g. Gowalla’s ‘Cup o’ Joe’ for visiting 10 different coffee shops) encourage users to explore

I’ve been using Gowalla for around a year now (over 320 check-ins), but after a couple of friends started using Foursquare I thought I’d give it a try too. Initially there doesn’t seem to be much difference between the two apps, they share a lot of common functionality such as posting your check-ins to Facebook and Twitter, but its where they differ that is interesting.

Gowalla allows users to upload photos at their check-ins and to add comments which only their Gowalla using friends can see. The application makes use of attractive graphics and a traveller metaphor - users have a passport, collect stamps and pins and add items to their backpack. Occasionally when checking-in to a location, you will find an item thats been left by another user and when creating a new location you can drop an item to become a founder. As well as adding locations, users can string together a collection of locations to create a trip, such as sight seeing or a pub crawl.

Foursquare is a little more popular and as such has more locations, most of the high street near my work is covered by Foursquare, with only a handful of check-ins available in Gowalla. One of the differences between Gowalla and Foursquare is that user comments are public, users can leave tips such as ‘try the steak!’ which you can mark as done or add to a to-do list. Check-ins in Foursquare are awarded points, although I don’t yet understand the criteria used or what the idea of the points is, also in Foursquare you can become a mayor of a location from repeated check-ins.

Personally, I prefer Gowalla - mainly because its more fun its in appearance and ‘gameplay’, I do like the tips idea from  Foursquare and a number of retailers have started recognising the power of this new phenomenon by offering specials e.g. Domino’s will give the mayor of each branch a free pizza every Wednesday.

I follow over a hundred different blogs and twitter accounts, most of them tech related so I can keep up-to-date with the latest trends and topics in my industry; however I always take time to relax and read about my other interests. The following blogs are among my favourites and most often visited; they all have great designs and some amazing content, I hope you enjoy them too.

kitsunenoir.com

How can you not love a blog that features ‘Space Suit of the Week’ ? KN has varied content covering fashion, music, culture and art, with frequent free mixcasts, downloadable ‘mixtapes’ based on themes and some fantastic wallpapers by guest artists.

topleftpixel.com 

I first came across this photoblog while reseaching for a holiday in Toronto a few years back and have been following it since. I love Sam’s photography and the simple concept of uploading a photo every day, the site reminds me of my time in a fantastic city and the alt text included on every image detailing the equipment used even influenced my last camera purchase.

locallemons.com 

I’m into food and enjoy cooking; Local Lemons is probably my favourite recipe site. The photography is beautiful, dominating the page and detailing all the ingredients and stages required. Its clear that the author has a real passion for food - check out her ‘Fast Food Slow: Big Mac’.

boutiquecycles.com 

Bikes are another passion of mine, I recently added a third to my stable. Boutique Cycles is a simple site for proud owners to show of their custom bikes. There is a subculture of riders that make building up bikes an art form, sourcing just the right parts and dreaming up colour schemes.

littlewhitelies.co.uk

This one is actually an independent film magazine; the site features interviews and articles as well written review and encourages community feedback. Every copy of the magazine is viewable online, but I’d really like to own some of the printed versions if only for the amazing artwork.