“I have nothing against iPhone. It’s great,” says Manjit Singh, CIO at Chiquita Brands International Inc. “But we’re a BlackBerry shop, and I don’t think iPhone brings anything new to the table. It has a great user experience, but that’s all.”

I’m not sure what to say about that last bit except that is summarizes the frustrations that product and experience designers face. Features, ecosystem, support, UI and industrial design all add up to the experience that you’re producing.

To be fair, Singh seems to be implying that for their sales force, the Blackberry handles their needs better. But, his words have been echoed by others when comparing simple, focused products to those with lots of bells and whistles. This quantity over quality argument can keep products from having the focus they need to stand out, solve user needs and ultimately be successful.

Photo courtesy of William Hook. Licensed under Creative Commons.Article originally posted at Adaptive Path on June 6, 2008.

There was some press awhile back about this and I’ve read that some eInk proponents are not thrilled with Esquire’s implementation. I, for one, welcome our eInk cover overlords and thinks it’s pretty cool. I would have liked to see a full screen eInk display, but we’ll have to leave that to other devices for now.

I bought a couple and wanted to see what makes it tick. Below are some images.

Esquire’s cover with an eInk display

It’s a simple device – circuit board, batteries and two displays (the other display is used for an advertisement on the inside cover).

Once gutted, these are the components.

What I find really interesting is how they included a color overlay on top of the grayscale displays. By using the eInk white and black, they were able to “light up” the transparencies to make the color images appear to be a little more dynamic. This is a great example of taking limited technology, applying low tech solutions and coming out with an even better product. I only see two colors on this display (black and white) and the ghosting is pretty obvious. But, they were able to squeeze a lot of punch out of this effort. At $5.99, they clearly took a loss (or maybe the car ad on the inside cover paid for it). But it made me a happy geek for an afternoon.

Phillip Torrone over at Make has more information. I can’t wait to hack this.

Article originally posted at Adaptive Path on September 8, 2008.

Aim beyond what you think you can achieve.
Most of us are content to compete locally, with our neighbors. Change your scale of thinking and compete with the world’s best.

Energy.
It’s 75% of the job. If you haven’t got it, be nice.

Don’t look at the next opportunity, the one you have in hand is the one.

It’s all my fault.
Blame no-one, but your self, if you have touched something accept total responsibility for that piece of work. If you accept responsibility you are in the position to do something about it. If you are involved don’t blame others.

Don’t seek praise, seek criticism.
When you show somebody a piece of work, ask them what is wrong, not what is right. It might help improve it. Note how most people simply want praise, what good is that to the job?

Know your clients aims.
We are trained to think advertising is all about selling products. That is often not the case. The motivation may be quite different. Always find out what a client wants to advertise for.

Do not covert your ideas.
Give away everything and more will come back to you. They are not your ideas anyway they are God’s.

Do it first, don’t ask and be prepared to take the consequences.
A new idea, is either silly, unfamiliar or both. It cannot be judged by description, it cannot even be judged as a storyboard. It needs to be done to exist. No one will sanction the cost, therefore you have no choice but to do it whatever the cost.

Draw with different pen.
Magic markers and Pentels are not the only ways to make marks on paper. Change your tools, it may free your thinking.

Compose your ad from the weakest point.
If you know a logo or a pack have to big don’t hope it will fit in the corner somewhere unobtrusively, it won’t. Start your layouts knowing that is a problem to be solved as an integrated part of the idea. Remember God is in the details.

Suppliers are only as good as you are.
Don’t hand work over to a suppliers hoping they will provide the magic. They won’t. You are the magic.

Storyboard in detail.
Every cut, every action, every angle, every word. Once you have a base you know works, you are free to make clear decisions on further input from directors.

Attend to every single detail of a commercial.
Every edit, every recording session, every dub. Trust no one. You are the only person who knows what you want or should know.

Do not ask people to like you. Earn their respect.

Find out what the client means by creativity

Often I will see a body of work that I want to “borrow” from because I like the style or it’s already solved some of the design challenges I am facing. Truthfully, there are some design solutions out there that just work with simple adaptation.

But, what happens when you are challenged to come up with something totally new? Something that has not been done before because it’s a new product, or because the technology hadn’t existed or the interaction is original? What if you want to stay uninfluenced by past design decisions or familiar things that will force the user to recall “something else that looked like that”?

What do you do or where do you go that doesn’t remind you of anything?

How can you escape being influenced by something that has already been done? What if you don’t want your logo to look like every other Web 2.0 logo, or your interaction design to be just like the iPhone?

My immediate reaction is to look at other industries. Building architecture or landscape design can sometimes give insights to balance and structure. Fashion also provides a huge escape for me. Clothing designers find amazing solutions to everyday needs for a huge variety of consumers.

Other times, physically removing myself from my normal surroundings helps rid the influences of past experiences and projects. I love getting out to open sea whenever I can – there is nothing out there to remind me of anything. Other cities and cultures can provide a much needed cloak to things that you’re used to. I love places that can be just familiar enough so that you don’t get overwhelmed. Places like Tokyo and London, or even Las Vegas provide a different take on the reality that normally guides me.

But you don’t have to travel the world, or go shopping to escape. Sometimes, just getting up from your desk, moving your chair into the sunlight, or even outside, can provide a different view of your workspace. Find a nice, warm coffee shop, or a park bench.

Shaking things up from time to time can give you just enough different perspective so that your designs continue to be unique, continue to challenge convention and continue to provide you with the creative freedom that you need.

Photo courtesy of Al Ianni. Licensed under Creative Commons. Article originally posted at Adaptive Path on August 28, 2006.

It got me thinking about how airlines use their communications systems to convey different types of information to their customers. Traditionally, the kiosks, signs and monitors are in place to convey one-way information about flight status or departure information. The gates will tell you you’re in the right place and that you may as well sit down because your flight is delayed.

But what happens in a situation where the need for information dramatically shifts beyond the normal flight status? In the case of Heathrow (or any airport in an emergency situation), the needs of the passengers grew dramatically and there lacked sufficient resources to explain, educate and reassure.

Here is an opportunity for companies to have plans or infrastructure to immediately shift the use of their existing communications systems for a completely different purpose.

Imagine if the airlines were able to turn on new templates and new information feeds to their website, rather than just a simple “Emergency Travel Information Update” page? What if their booking engine transformed into a tool that helped existing passengers re-route their travel? What if the kiosks and monitors at the terminals changed into live updates and alternate travel option information instead of just “Flight 280 is Delayed/Ontime”? What if the airline had an RSS feed that could find it’s way into people’s laptops or mobile devices that gave them instructions on what to do (or don’t do) next.

This issue goes beyond a website design, beyond customer service policies. It speaks to the heart of service design and how having a holistic approach to communicating to your audience has a greater impact than one or two good tools.

The companies that get service design already do a good job of uniform communication across all their channels. The interesting challenge for some companies is understanding that they may need to have multiple sets of service design policies to communicate with their customers even more effectively.

Photo courtesy of dirtymouse. Licensed under Creative Commons. Article originally posted at Adaptive Path on August 28, 2006.

In the years that people have been building parking lots and structures, we seem to have perfected the art of painting lines marking the location for our cars. We have small spaces for compacts, largers spaces for SUVs, loading zones – all of which were born out of the needs of the vehicles and their purposes. Recently, garages began expanding their technology to include services for indicating the number of empty spaces on a given floor and pay kiosks for speedy exits. All of these things are aimed at improving the experience of driving or parking the car.

What’s often ignored are the needs of people once they leave the shelter of their steel cages. Remember that a person’s destination is rarely the garage itself – they need to go somewhere after they’ve parked their car. Little emphasis is placed on designing for that exit strategy (pun intended). Sure, there are the occasional signs marking the elevators and exits, but some garages are so large that this signage is spaced out causing people to search for the information they need. Moreover, people end up walking in the roadways to get to these exits, placing them in competition for space with oncoming traffic.

I would like to see parking garages designed for the end use in mind. Let’s develop walkways for individuals and families to get to the elevator safely. Let’s improve the recognition of what floor you left your car on by having the elevator remind you when you step into it. Let’s imagine ways to improve wayfinding and reduce confusion in these gigantic cement structures.

Balancing the needs of the garage owner who wants to preserve as much space for the maximum amount of cars, I think we can implement some lightweight changes that are cost effective and do not affect the structure of the building. Simple efforts like improving the design of the signage or using painted lines to mark out walkways. Office buildings, malls and other public spaces have become more aware of the human experience. In time, I suspect we’ll see improvement in the typical utilitarian buildings, too. Until then, be safe and look both ways before crossing the road.

The next step is to set up Gmail to send using these various email accounts. Otherwise, any time you respond to an email (from any of your accounts), it will appear from “yourgmailname@gmail.com”.

1. In Gmail, click the Settings button. Then navigate to the Accounts tab. The first section is called “Send mail as:”. Click “Add another email address.” and follow the instructions. The wizard will ask you information about your email account and send an authorization email to that account. This is to make sure you are the actual owner of that account. Once you get that email, you can click on the verification link or copy the verification code and paste it back into the wizard that you were just working with.

2. Be sure to mark the button in the section labeled “When receiving a message:” as “Reply from the same address the message was sent to” This makes Gmail behave more like a typical desktop application.

For help, see Gmail’s help section on this topic.

Note that when you are composing an email, you will have the option of choosing which account to send from. Just click the “change” button next to your “from” email address.

Now, you’ve set up Gmail to send and receive email from all your email accounts. If you want to interact with your email online only, you can stop here. But for those who still want to use a desktop application in conjunction with Gmail, read on. This is where it starts to get a little more complicated, but for those web workers who need the flexibility, it’s worth it.

Photo courtesy of quadmod. Licensed under Creative Commons.

The email accounts I currently use (Adaptive Path, Gmail, Me.com) all have web interfaces. But I did not want to have to go to each website to check mail constantly. And, frankly, Adaptive Path’s webmail client is so slow that it’s just not worth it.

My best bet was to find a webmail client that would support all my mail accounts, work quick enough in Firefox and allow me to respond from those accounts. The first app that came to mind was Gmail. It’s fast, searching is excellent and its filtering capabilities are top notch.

This decision started me on a month-long experiment with Gmail’s various settings, features and pitfalls. The result ended with a single Gmail account pulling in all my email accounts, sorting and distributing messages to my desktop clients, iPhone and multiple computers. All of this is seamless to me and the people to whom I send email.

The Workflow
This is essentially what happens:

1. People send me email to my various email accounts. (my work, my own domain, .Me and other Gmail accounts)
2. Gmail pulls this email out of the other servers and populates my Gmail account. (It also leaves a copy on the server in case things go horribly wrong.)
3. Gmail is configured to “send as” any one of these email accounts.

Note: You could stop right here. If you don’t run desktop email applications, then you can simply use Gmail as an omnipotent online email client.

4. I’ve configured Gmail to respond with my various email addresses. This way, when I send an email through Gmail, recipients will see it coming from the correct address and not a Gmail account. For example, I can send an email from andrew@adaptivepath.com using my username@gmail account and it will appear on the other end from andrew@adaptivepath.com
5. I’ve also set up Apple’s Mail app to pull (via IMAP) from this Gmail account. Mail is similarly configured to send/return messages using the proper email addresses.
6. My iPhone is configured to behave the same way – email comes and goes properly either through the default Mail app or through Gmail’s online iPhone site.

Let’s take a look at the steps needed to make this happen.

Adding other accounts to Gmail
I’m assuming you have a Gmail account and that you’re familiar with the basics. So the next thing to do is go through the steps for adding additional email accounts.

Launch Gmail and click on the Settings button. Click “Accounts” and scroll to the section labeled “Get mail from other accounts”. Follow the onscreen instructions to add your other email account using Gmail Mail Fetcher.

For more on this, read Gmail’s help page. Note that this only works if your email provider supports POP access. Many do, but accounts like Yahoo! and Mail.com do not.

If you are having trouble with some email addresses, there is a trick. A few email providers will not like it when you enter certain email addresses into Gmail. Try changing the email address by adding a 1 to the name (it can be anything). For example, andrew@adaptivepath.com becomes andrew1@adaptivepath.com. This has no effect on your email access as you’ll be setting up your account information next. But, this somehow makes Gmail play nice with your existing email host.

Another setting that you should enable is “Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server.” This will enable you to access your mail from your desktop client if you decide to back out of this. Nothing will be affected, email will still be there.

Do this with as many email accounts as you have. Gmail gives you plenty of storage space so feel free to fill it up.

One caveat that’s worth mentioning. Presently, you cannot control the rate at which Gmail polls the 3rd party servers for mail retrieval. On many desktop applications, you can tell the client to look for new mail at preset times (1 min, 5 min, etc.). Gmail does this at an undisclosed rate. In my experience, it’s been pretty quick with my Adaptive Path account – maybe a 1 minute delay. When retrieving other Gmail accounts, it varies quite a bit.

There are plenty of articles written about this process. I’ve not explained all the variations of settings that are possible with Gmail’s Mail Fetcher. Google it or read these for more information:

How to Import All Your Archive Email Into Gmail
Consolidate Multiple Email Addresses with Gmail

That’s it for adding accounts into Gmail. Next, I’ll talk about how to “send as” any of your email addresses, not just the @gmail.com address.

Photo courtesy of quadmod. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Software as a service or cloud computing is nothing new. It’s just gotten a heck of a lot better in the past couple of years. I can use Gmail for email, collaborate with Basecamp, conduct meetings with WebEx, and write with Google Docs. I can access my files from Box.net, stream music from Pandora… the list goes on. Most of this can be done through a browser or without having to buy any software.

But it’s not just about the web apps, it’s about reducing the physical amount of hardware I need with me on a daily basis. I use a MacBook Pro as my primary computer. It’s got all I need to run Adobe CS4, Office, iTunes, Keynote – the stuff I make money with. But, the majority of the time, it’s used for email, online collaboration and writing. Despite it being a fairly lightweight notebook, it’s still bulky. I carry it with me everyday whether I’m traveling to a client or to conferences. At work, though I have an actual desk, I find myself sitting in a conference room, on a couch or at a coffeeshop quite often. I’ve come to realize that I don’t need such a large computer any more.

I don’t see this little guy replacing my Mac as it’s clearly meant to be a second or third computer. Netbooks are a transitional technology. They attempt to fill that gap between laptops and smartphones. The laptop being too big to take with you everywhere and the smartphone being too small or not powerful enough for more than the occasional use. I realize that there are some good smartphones out there (I swear by my iPhone, have used a Blackberry and have played with a G1). But, this is about that sweet spot or portability, power, and accessibility. I’ll have my iPhone wherever I take my netbook. But I will take my netbook to many more places than I would take a laptop.

I’m exciting about attempting this lifestyle change. It feels similar to when I gave up my G4 tower for a Powerbook. I look forward to new freedoms and new opportunities to bring my digital life with me.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about the challenges I encounter. Already, I’m looking for online services to write and store files. Much of what I’ll talk about will be about web services, but with a slant on increased portability, managing two computers and a balance of work and personal use. I’m curious to see what I can do well and what is not yet ready for prime time.