NokiaConversations has released the ‘behind the scenes at Nokia’s London design studio’ video documentary, starring Stefan Pannenbecker, VP of Industrial Design at Nokia, Chris Linnett, Head of Lumia UX design and Kate Freebairn, Creative Director for Lumia UX design.
The video portrays the story behind the creation of Nokia’s first Windows Phone and their tight collaboration with various teams at Microsoft.
1) “Learn from the mistakes of others… you can’t live long enough to make them all yourselves!!”
2) “A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and Honest people are screwed first.”
3) “Even if a snake is not poisonous, it should pretend to be venomous.”
4) “There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.”
5) “Before you start some work, always ask yourself three questions – Why am I doing it, What the results might be and Will I be successful. Only when you think deeply and find satisfactory answers to these questions, go ahead.”
6) “As soon as the fear approaches near, attack and destroy it.”
7) “The world’s biggest power is the youth and beauty of a woman.”
8) “Once you start a working on something, don’t be afraid of failure and don’t abandon it. People who work sincerely are the happiest.”
9) “The fragrance of flowers spreads only in the direction of the wind. But the goodness of a person spreads in all direction.”
10) “God is not present in idols. Your feelings are your god. The soul is your temple.”
11) “Never make friends with people who are above or below you in status. Such friendships will never give you any happiness.”
12) “Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.”
Last week in Hong Kong, Google and Samsung unveiled Google’s new flagship Android device, the Nexus Prime, a 4.65″ Super AMOLED-toting, 1.2GHz LTE and HSPA+ smartphone. However nice the hardware of the new device is, it is second to the fact that it is the first device to run Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), the newest build of Android that unifies tablets and smartphones under a single OS for the first time.
“People like Android, they need Android…but they didn’t LOVE Android,” said Google’s Matias Duarte in today’s presentation. To remedy this, Google has not only introduced new and practical functions to ICS, but gave it a slicker look, faster responsiveness, and some extremely impressive bells and whistles.
Here are 30 of the most interesting new features:
1. “Roboto,” Android’s own font
2. Even more live wallpapers
3. Newly-designed lock screen
4. Disappearing homescreen command buttons
5. Tabbed apps/widgets drawer similar to Honeycomb
6. Resizeable homescreen widgets
7. Redesigned foldering capabilities
8. Hardware accelerated 2D drawing
9. Wi-Fi Direct support
10. “Favorites Tray” at the bottom of the screen that travels across the different homescreens
11. Native Screen grab capability (Press Power+Volume Down)
12. Improved notification bar, customizable notifications
13. New Music player notification in tray controls player
14. Improved keyboard
15. Improved typing error correction
16. In-line spell check and suggestion mode
17. Cut/Copy/Paste similar to Honeycomb, but with animated dragging and dropping
18. Speech for text entry has been improved with no delay
19. “Face Unlock” facial recognition for unlock screen (Did not work in demo)
20. New Browser (Includes new tab management feature. “request desktop site” feature, syncs to chrome, save pages for offline reading)
21. New Gmail (New action bar with compose, search, labels, refresh; offline search by default that searches the last 30 days of email)
22. New Calendar with pinch-to-zoom
23. Updated all of the native Google apps: YouTube, Maps, Google+, Google Music
24. Mobile data usage metrics in system controls, allows users to self-limit their mobile data consumption, and track data usage down to individual app level
25. All-new camera app with slider zoom, facial detection, “zero shutter lag” speed, launchable from home screen
26. Photo editing tools in “edit” menu in the camera
27. Native panoramic camera shot, similar to Sony’s “Sweep” panorama
28. 1080p video capture, continuous focus, includes the ability to zoom while recording
29. Incredible new Time Lapse photography feature
30. New tile-based “People app” interface for contacts, very similar to Windows Phone
31. “Android Beam” NFC-based content sharing with multiple ICS phones (Web Addresses, contacts, maps, YouTube videos, app sharing)
While reading an interesting article written by Jason Gross on ‘The Role Of Design In The Kingdom Of Content‘, I was intrigued by the kind of examples he mentions about the importance of design when world is still craving for content.
Excerpt from article : “The role of a UX designer is not always to make everyone feel all warm and fuzzy inside. A rich Web experience could include the emotion of happiness, humor, discontent, sadness, anger or enlightenment. A well-designed website enables us to attribute our emotion to its source and connect us to that environment through a range of senses. A UX designer should understand why and how to utilize the principles and techniques they have learned to support the website’s precious content.”
Read full article here.
I have always had this post at the back of my mind and often check myself against the qualities I have listed here. Of course I fail in some of them, but if you can aim to succeed with just a few of these qualities, your design work will get there too. At the moment I am working on a particularly tough project. The type that consumes your – energy levels, time, and concentration on any other task is difficult. Without being surrounded by good people it would be unbearable. So if you hire people, or are looking to join a team, try and find out these qualities exist in the people you are working with.
Some personal qualities to try and gain or maintain within a team and elements to consider when working as a unit;
Persistence
Commitment to a project needs to go beyond just time allocated to it. It needs to be exhibited as a character trait. To not give up, maintain momentum and motivation and keep on moving towards the overall goal is a core trait for a UX person to show. Inevitably this may result in annoying a few colleagues as you will not leave them alone until specific tasks are finished or you get an answer to a particularly important problem. Using a bit of charm will go a long way to ensure you can get progress.
Passion
There needs to be an underlying desire to ensure that the project succeeds and a genuine care about seeing it fulfill it’s initial promise. Having passion means going the extra mile, but also enjoying the elements of the work once it has started. Being interested beyond the bounds of a project but also spending the time to go beyond the normal delivery will affect other team members and soon create a positive working environment. Having passionate people on a team makes an enormous difference to the success of delivering a product or service.
Positivity
It is very easy to become dejected due to research findings or user studies that have shown results that were either not expected or detrimental to a project. Having the ability to look for the good, from a bad situation will pay off. A positive attitude to the work, difficult colleagues, stakeholders or customers, inevitably results in a better atmosphere, working environment and an increased potential for more work in the future.
Patience
UX work typically has the ability to impact on everybody inside an organization and certainly the customers or users who will interact with what is produced. The repercussions on some of the decisions made, affects different decision makers at all levels in a company hierarchy. Be aware that some changes will take years to see come to fruition and the plans that are laid out are likely to be the foundations – that you may never witness being executed. Therefore being particularly patient with people is a necessary part regarding change management. With UX work, your users will test you as you are testing them! Learn to control anything you may say in response to seemingly stupid comments or actions. Again it will serve you well in terms of collating valuable design research.
Progress
Be aware that on a project UX work has very different tasks that have outcomes with different time requirements. The pace of a project cannot dictate the pace of research and so compromises need to be met, either on budgetary expenditure or time spent. The important thing to be aware of is that incremental progress is a desired outcome for large scale ux projects – particularly on live products. Changes made need to be done in an orderly, considered manner so as not to disenfranchise or confuse customers. On new products, change can be made quickly, but be aware that the grand plan will be phased and broken down into critical elements first, the ‘nice-to-haves’ coming later.
Stamina
Some projects will last months and at times will require focus to ensure that the quality is not affected as issues occur and problems arise. The importance of giving the team a break in high-intensity work is very important but not quitting is really important. The ability to finish the work started is important to UX work, why research something if it is not followed through? To exhibit stamina, means that the necessary long hours and unusual times to conduct field research will be needed to offer a product that is well designed.
Humour
This is something you must have to get you through elements of UX work that are difficult. User testing in odd locations, the ability to convince a board member using charm and an outlook that can deflect hostility by using humour, is essential to a career in this field. UX people tend to be socially competent because they primarily deal with people to get products designed effectively. Having a sense of humour will allow events that may derail a project to not have a detrimental effect on the outcome. Sometimes you may simply have to laugh to keep sane and the ability to show this, effects team morale and positivity.
Embodiment
UX work is all about empathy for the user and designing for their needs whilst also aligning the business requirements in combination. To design with empathy requires somebody to have that as an attribute in their personality. To be concerned about user’s experiences means you cannot just pay it lip service. If a comment by a user is ignored and not represented in the final design, your attitude to their plight will be revealed.
As a UX person it is your responsibility to be the voice of the user and make sure it is heard as a product develops. Evangelize the needs and wants to those that are building the solution. But also consider the realities of what must work for the business and the inevitability of compromise. Diplomacy and politics are a necessity here but with all the factors being present above – you will be well equipped to tackle the hardest UX challenges.
Facebook is releasing a new method for accessing your account when you lose your password: a little help from “trusted friends.”
The social network says it is testing a new tool in the coming weeks that will let you designate three to five friends you trust. If you forget your password or can’t access your email, Facebook will send your friends a code that they can pass along to you.
We’ve probably all been there: You forget your password and have to go through the “Forget your password?” process of waiting for a new one to arrive by email. Or, if we use Facebook’s comparison, you lock yourself out of your house — and now can go to a friend who has a spare key. Your spare key for Facebook is the code.
The new system doesn’t actually seem more efficient than the usual route if you’ve simply forgotten your password, but if for instance your account has been hacked and you’ve been locked out of your email, this is a new solution. It adds a new layer of security (the feature was announced for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month), too, since your friends can verify your identity more easily than any automated email.
Security firm Sophos points out, though, that a hacker could also remove or change your trusted friends settings and render the feature useless.
To set up Trusted Friends, go to your Security Settings Page (Account > Account Settings > Security), and click on the Trusted Friends section. From there, you can scroll through your friends and choose up to five. (You may not have access to this just yet — this section doesn’t appear in my settings.)
Although created about 1 year ago, it still remains an insightful resources to start learning about some of the most commonly used terms in the internet (or rather technology) space – The Web.
For geeks its all HTML5 & CSS3 and for a common man, who doesnt really care about the underlying technology on which this website is running or responding, its A MUST READ !
A team from Google has come up with some awesome graphics and super easy text to help understand the basics of 20 most popular things about the web & browsers.
Click here to see it in action.
VoiceOver is not the only child in Apple’s accessibility family. New features for low-vision, hearing impaired and now also for motor disabilities.
Low Vision
Continuing with the family metaphor, low vision is probably not the favorite child of Apple. But some new features is added.
Zoom From Start
It is now possible to set-up the device without a computer or sighted assistance. Just do the regular 3 finger tap twice and a little dialog asks if you want to use Zoom or not.
Read Selected
You can now enable a preference to allow read selected text.
This works pretty much like on the Mac. When you have selected the text you want read for you a pop-up with the option ”Read” will appear. When you press it the a voice will read it with a pace of 30%.
Reader
This feature has been on the mac for a while and is great for elderly and low vision also for mentally challenged people.
What it does is, in Safari you now see a little button next to the reload button that says ”Reader”. Now when you tap it Safari strips out all other content except for the article. Which means no navigation, no ads, just the good part.
Camera
Besides making it a very fast and easy way to open the Camera app, with pressing home button 2 times on lock screen and tap the now appearing camera icon.
Pinching in and out on the screen will now zoom in/out very fast and easy. And to help you even further you can activate a grid to help you align the camera for the money shot.
You don’t even need to find the on-screen button to take a picture, you can now use the volume up button on your device or with a headset with that button.
If you still cant find the person you are trying to capture, just turn on VoiceOver and it speaks where and how many faces in the shot.
Mirror Screen
If you have a device with the ”A5” chip in it (iPad 2, iPhone 4S) you can mirror the screen wirelessly to an Apple TV in 1080P Full HD.
But don’t worry too much if you don’t have one of those fancy devices, be cause you can still use Apple’s 30-pin-connector to HDMI cable and do the same thing, and supposedly you can also use any 3rd party cable since Apple has opened up that to developers (NOTE: this has not been tested).
Even FaceTime works great for this.
Hard of Hearing
A lot of great new features for deaf and people hard of hearing.
Hearing Aid Mode
On iPhones you can now activate something called hearing aid mode. This will help if you have problem with too much static noise from the phone. So what it does is putting less power to the antenna which will decrease some signal reception, especially 2G/Edge, but also reduce irritating electrical noise.
Stereo Balance
You have had the ability to use mono sound, but what if you still have some hearing on one ear?
Now you can adjust the amount of sound that goes to which ear to get the perfect balance for you.
Custom Ring Indications
This is a really cool feature that makes it easier to see when and who is calling or sending a message.
You can now set individual vibrations to each contact! Why stop there you can also enable the LED flashlight on the back to make signals on incoming calls.
Motor Skills
So this is Apple accessibility’s new born. They now enable people with certain motor disabilities to access the world of iOS.
New Assistive Technologies
Apple says they now made it possible for more assistive technology to connect with iOS devices. As of now I don’t know which new AT or what kind but as long as it there, I am happy.
You can also set the default way to output incoming calls, to regular, speaker or headset.
Assistive Touch
This new feature is extremely impressive. It lets you record a couple of gestures and with an easy menu, access them with with a single tap.
You can have a menu, with access to many shortcuts and other helpful commands, floating on top of the screen at all time. Or have Assistive Touch on or off by pressing Home button 3 times, if enabled in the settings.
iOS 5 introduces a wealth of new features that can be used to aid people with visual, aural, and mobility impairments. You’ll find these options on the Accessibility setting screen under Settings -> General -> Accessibility.
VoiceOver
VoiceOver is a system that allows people with visual impairments to navigate the touchscreen of an iOS device. Switch it on and your iOS device speaks to you, telling you what’s under your fingers as you touch areas of the device. As before, VoiceOver requires that you use gestures in a different way than you would with the feature switched off. For example, to activate an item, you double-tap it. To scroll a page, you flick with three fingers.
The VoiceOver screen includes multiple functions. The first, Speak Hints, is an On/Off option. When on, VoiceOver will provide some additional detail on how to use a button or feature you’ve selected. The slider below the Speak Hints entry allows you to adjust the speaking rate of the VoiceOver voice.
The next area includes feedback options. The Typing Feedback screen, which you access by tapping the Typing Feedback button on the VoiceOver screen, is where you determine how the device indicates what you’ve typed. You can choose to have the typed characters, words, or words and characters spoken to you when you’re using either or both a software and hardware keyboard. Below this item are three On/Off options—Use Phonetics, Use Pitch Change, and Use Compact Voice (the last of which is new with iOS 5). Each determines the character of the spoken voice.
The Braille command includes a new option. In addition to support for Contracted Braille and the Status Cell option, there’s now support for eight-dot Braille devices.
The Rotor command (called Web Rotor in the previous version of iOS) includes a greater number of functions that you can control with the Rotor gesture. For example, you can now adjust speech rate, volume, hints, and vertical navigation. New spoken languages are now available from within the Language Rotor list—Irish English and South African English, for example. You can also now choose different feedback when navigating images with VoiceOver—Always, With Descriptions, and Never. Finally—also new with iOS 5—is the option to speak notifications as they’re received.
Zoom
The Zoom feature is unchanged from the previous version of iOS. Enable it and you can zoom the screen by double-tapping with three fingers. To zoom out, use this same gesture. To move around a zoomed screen, drag three fingers.
Large Text
This is another unchanged feature. From the Large Text screen, you can choose a larger text size for Calendar, Contacts, Mail, Messages, and Notes ranging from 20-point to 56-point text.
White on Black
Similar to OS X’s White On Black feature within the Universal Access system preference, you use the White On Black option to invert the iOS device’s screen colors, making it easier for someone with visual impairments to see.
Speak Selection
Within the Accessibility section you’ll find a new Speak Selection option, which you can switch on or off. When switched on, you can select on-screen text via the usual method and then tap a Speak button to hear the text spoken.
Speak Auto-Text
Another previously available feature, Speak Auto-Text speaks any autocorrected and autocapitalized text when it’s switched on. This is helpful not only to people who have visual impairments, but also to those who don’t pay strict enough attention to a device’s desire to substitute words when it detects alleged mistakes.
Hearing Aid Mode
Another new feature with iOS 5—at least if you have an iPhone 4 or 4S—Hearing Aid Mode makes iOS devices more compatible with hearing aids.
Custom Vibrations
If you can’t read your iPhone’s screen, it’s very difficult to use caller ID on a muted phone. The new Custom Vibration feature—which, like Hearing Aid Mode, is only available on the iPhone 4 and 4S—allows you to assign a unique vibration pattern to a contact. This way, when your iPhone vibrates in a pattern similar to the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (termed the Symphony pattern), you know it’s Ludwig calling.
In addition to the five included vibration patterns, you can create your own. Just choose to edit a contact within the Phone app and then tap the Vibration entry. In the Vibration screen that appears, select Create New Vibration. In the New Vibration screen, tap out the rhythm to “Shave and a Haircut” or “Jingle Bells” or “Louie Louie,” if you like. Tap Play to check your work, tap Save, and then name the pattern. Select it in the Custom area of the Vibration window, and tap Done in the top left corner to attach it to your contact. You can also change the device’s default vibration to a custom vibration.
LED Flash for Alerts
Switch this iPhone 4– and 4S–only option on, and your phone’s camera flash will blink when you receive an alert for an incoming text message, push notification, or call.
Mono Audio
Stereo is a problem for people who have difficulty hearing equally from both ears. This option alters a stereo signal through the headphone port so that both sides of the stereo stream are broadcast through each earpiece.
Balance Controls
Along these same lines, if the hearing in one of your ears is better than in the other, you can use the new Balance Control slider to make one channel of the stereo signal louder.
AssistiveTouch
If you have difficulty touching the device’s screen, AssistiveTouch is for you. Switch it on, and a target-like icon appears on screen. Tap it, and a gray overlay window appears from which you can select Gestures, Device, Home, and Favorites icons.
Tap Gestures and you can choose to control your device with two to five fingers—helpful when you have little finger dexterity. Tap Device, and such common button commands as Mute, Rotate Screen, Lock Screen, Volume Up, Volume Down, and Shake appear on screen. Tap the command you want to invoke. Tap the virtual Home button to be taken to the home screen. Tap the Favorites icon to access gestures you’ve created.
You create these gestures by enabling AssistiveTouch and then tapping the Create New Gesture entry at the bottom of the screen. In the screen that appears, use up to five fingers to swipe or tap out a gesture. You can then activate one of these gestures from AssistiveTouch’s Favorites menu.
Incoming Calls
This iPhone 4– and 4S–only option setting lets you choose how incoming calls will be routed—Default (via a headset, if one is connected, or the speaker), Headset, or Speaker.
Triple-Click Home
This setting, aimed at people who will use the device’s accessibility features, allows you to configure what a triple-click of the Home button does. The options include Off, Toggle VoiceOver, Toggle White On Black, Toggle Zoom, Toggle AssistiveTouch, and Ask.
