darushimo

No, it’s not.

Just because proposing a solution would be helpful, that doesn’t require he propose a solution.

Related, sometimes articulating a question in the right way is the hard part.

Ah if you have on hand, I'd love to see the source / study.

Wow i hadn't heard of this and looks like the right solution for a particular need I have. Thanks a bunch for mentioning!

Perhaps that's the price for placing an ad, and the news letter goes out w/ 2 ads, weekly?

I just hung out with an old friend last week and while he's into his tech, he doesn't work in the industry. he expressed the same sentiment in the last line of your comment.

UI versioning sounds like a ridiculously difficult challenge, so difficult that it's worth thinking about more, because most people won't (because it's so hard). I'm gonna take that idea and run with it a bit...

A few things come to mind:

- Added complexity - apps would have two unique versions at the same time "Oh i'm running gmail 15.2 with UI v 12.0"

- I wonder if another ways of achieving something similar is keeping legacy UI by calling it a "theme." While, politically, it might be difficult to get funding for a "theme" over a "redesign," with such an important and widely used application like GMail, it makes total sense to me that there are 2-4 interaction schemas that people could use if they'd like. Maybe "theme" is too weak of a name,--maybe "Schema"? Something else?

- What sort of protocol would a "theme" use to improve? Let's say that "we want to keep the important parts of this theme as much as possible, not mess with them, just add this new feature." How universally possible is that, or do a majority of big new features inherently complicate a UI and the mental models of its users?

- Getting into the nitty gritty details, though, there would almost inherently be splintering--different themes would have microinteractions and microfeatures that others would not. While that's probably good for the end user wanting to differentiate between them, it would make the "Do we add big feature X?" conversation across all "Theme Teams" AND development even more difficult.

- Would the themes themselves have versions?

- In a way, themes are already available as versions. Ex: I am running an older version ("theme") of twitter on my ipad because i just haven't gotten around to updating it. but It still works. What would be great is if twitter could allow me to switch between this version and the newest one so I could see if the newest version worked better for me. I could switch back if it didn't. Right now, I can upgrade, but I can't switch back, so upgrading is "switching permanently and hoping for the best."

- what are your thoughts?

I agree with the use case, but most of the time I show someone a photo, it a fairly quick process. Comparing (1) how you share photos now to (2) how you share photos w/ Xim: (1) "wanting to share photo-> pull out phone-> unlock phone-> open photos app-> select photo-> show people your phone" is a lot faster and easier than (2) "wanting to share photo-> pull out phone-> unlock phone-> open Xim-> select images-> add or select contacts* -> send message -> wait for others to receive message-> they pull out phone (if not already)-> they unlock phone-> they open the message-> they are redirected (to app or website)-> they can see the photo"

I don't think this use case is definitive, i just meant it as an illustration of "it will take longer to share photos with Xim."

I think this MIGHT be ok if you only had to go through a laborious process the first time you used the app or viewed a Xim, but I think you have to go through that whole process (minus the adding the contact) every time you share. This app is trying to work at that intersection of cyber- and meat-space, and I think the handoffs will just take too long.

The ironic use case--this could be a great tool for remotely sharing photos. But if you're doing that, wouldn't you be using your phone to talk with the other viewers about the photos? ;-(

* Seems more likely you're trying to show more than 1 photo, as it's fairly easy to show a single photo to many people. Similar to above, and like you were saying, it's fairly easy to show 1 or 2 people a series of photos on your phone.

I'm a little confused--is the first video in the 3rd section ("intro to the design of everyday things") really an entire course? If so, i think the time-to-complete estimate (1 hr) should be changed...If it's not, it'd be great if the particular videos to be watched were noted.

That's a false equivalence. Apps are not people.

Experience Design: A Framework for Integrating Brand, Experience, and Value by the founders of Method, an Experience Design firm in NYC, SF...

pretty great so far

I agree that it'd be great if they released the application for free, but I don't see a problem with charging for the app.

This company is arguably improving the experience of viewing that content, and, as a consumer, as long as they're upfront about the ads/cost when I purchase the app (I haven't checked if they are yet), then the ball's in my court to decide whether it's worth the ads and/or the $3/$5 price tag. I can always use a free app or just go to my browser if I don't want to pay.

Or are you finding the fact that they're charging for a product that's built on top of a free service inherently questionable? I definitely vibe with that sentiment at times, but in this case, I can't see a problem with it, especially if it meets Wikipedia's restrictions/standards.

Or is there something else that you find questionable?

I'd actually say this is a usability problem. If i just tap my touchpad (on MBP), there's a click event registered, but it's very, very short. the response from the button depends on the duration of the click event. If I click and hold down the touchpad, i see the whole animation, but if i don't and just tap, i see either a quick flash or no animation at all. This could be really confusing, especially with the skeumorphic buttons that look like they would react in they were clicked ("I clicked it, but did the click register?")

This could be fixed by adding a minimum click length for the current animation to occur. If the click length is lower, the full (or a partial) animation could just automatically occur at a fixed (fast) rate.