walls.corpus

By Nathan L. Walls

  • Sunset, Jan. 2, 2021/Williams Township
  • On Bougher Hill/Williams Township
  • Sunrise, Dec. 19, 2020/Williams Township
  • Sunset, Dec. 27, 2020

Articles tagged “design”

iPhone 4S and the persistence of design

It’s not hard to find someone (or some people) seemingly disappointed with Apple not releasing a redesigned iPhone 5 today. Rumors were focused on a split iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 announcement, based on leaked parts and case manufacturers looking to get a jump on a new design.

I posit that outside of Apple, a lot of assumptions about what Apple would do are made based on how other companies treat design, not how Apple has demonstrated how it treats design.

Let’s first consider that most manufacturers have multiple phone models. LG, for instance, as of this writing, is showing 120 models / variants. Apple, today, has three phones, in four different capacities in two different colors. As near as I can tell, it breaks down like this:

Model Capacity Color Network No. of Variants
iPhone 3GS8GBBlackGSM1
iPhone 48GBBlack, WhiteGSM, CDMA4
iPhone 4S16, 32, 64GB Black, White GSM+CDMA6

So, we’re up to eleven active iPhone part numbers. By comparison, the iPad 2 has 18 variants (color, capacity, networking). While the variants might create the impression of complexity, you are left with some simple decisions:

  • How much am I comfortable paying for a phone?
  • If I’m willing to pay $100 or more, what color do I want?
  • If I’m willing to pay $200 or more, what capacity do I want?

You aren’t making decisions about form factor or screen size. There’s no “gaming” or “texting” or “business” iPhone.

But, look back at the LG example. You could just as easily look at Motorola or Nokia and see that you’re making a different set of decisions, based on your presumed use of the phone. The flagship phones change frequently. They change externally. I believe they change because the companies believe users believe they have to change to be “new.”

As a counter-point to the rapid changing of a lot of feature and smart phones, let’s look at the design life of Apple’s computers:

Model Last Comprehensive Redesign
iMac 2007
Mac Pro/PowerMac G5 2003
MacBook Air January 2008
MacBook Pro October 2008
Cinema Display/Thunderbolt Display October 2008

This is somewhat cherry-picked. I’m not including the Mac mini, for instance. I’m also not including design refinements like port addition/subtraction, size variants, edge-to-edge glass or similar. This is a subjective marker of the common ancestor. Arguably, you could go further back with the iMac.

Now, let’s consider the design language of the iPhone. The 3G was announced in June of 2008. The iPhone 4, in June of 2010. The design language of the iPhone 3G, carried forward with the 3GS, will be five plus years old, when a contract signed today expires. The iPhone 4 design language will be three plus years on. Suffice to say, given the context of Apple’s computers, the iPhone 4’s design is not old.

So, what’s at issue? I suspect we have two immediate markers. First, the fast design iteration of the iPhone to the iPhone 3G. Second, the fast iteration of the iPad to the iPad 2. The first versions were to 1) establish the market and 2) learn. The lessons learned were rolled into the subsequent iterations. Apple’s not afraid to make a design departure when it wants to.

But, if Apple believes the design is true, it also doesn’t feel like it has to change anything. Consider the PowerMac G5 case. It’s been iterated, heavily, internally. But the external case is still a winner. Same with the current iMac. I venture to guess we won’t see many more frequent, radical changes. I expect the MacBook Pro will at some point get thinner, akin to the MacBook Air, but then what? The iPad 2 design could likely go years, even as it adds a Retina display and simplify variants to wifi or CDMA+GSM+wifi.

Now, let’s layer on a couple of points from Dieter Rams’s 10 principles for good design:

  • Good design is long-lasting
  • Good design is innovative

At first glance, these might be contrary positions. But consider, if design can be innovative, it should be. If it can be long-lasting, it should be. Since the original iMac, Apple’s hardware designs have been innovative, but they have also been long-lasting, and increasingly so every year. I daresay design that is incorrect has been edited out. Consider: the dalmatian-spotted iMac, the buttonless iPod shuffle, the four button + clickwheel iPod.

Here’s my bet: Apple knows it has a winner with the iPhone 4 design language. Glass back, external antenna and all. It’s a beautiful and functional object. It isn’t going to change until (and not a moment before) there is something better, functionally and more beautiful. That could be next year. It could just as easily be three years from now.

Rights, permanence and social media

There was quite the brouhaha over Facebook changing their terms of service, as noted this past weekend on Consumerist, including a response from Facebook. It’s worth exploring why a social media site, like Facebook or Flickr would want permanent rights to member-provided comments, photos and such.

Now, I’m not talking about outright ownership. A social media service should never claim ownership over member contributions. Instead, I’m presuming the social media service’s — let’s call it LOLChatz for purposes of this article — terms of service are “requesting” a perpetual non-exclusive license to whatever members post. Comments, blog entries, ratings and photos all qualify.

Why permanence is a good thing

One scenario that seems to upset people is leaving the service, and LOLChatz getting to keep whatever you’ve done forever. If you leave, you should be able to take it all with you. Right? Not so fast.

Unless you were a strict lurker on LOLChatz, you created content that other people commented on. You added some forum postings, tagged some things, took a poll and commented on a few posts from someone else. In particular, you got into a pretty serious religious discussion that made your head hurt and has your mother calling to ask questions. Can’t LOLChatz just delete what you wrote when the hangover wears off and you decide to close your account? They can, but it’s harmful.

Back at BarCampRDU in August, 2007, Luis Villa led a session on open web services. One of the key points of discussion revolved around the question, “Should you be able to remove yourself completely from a Web 2.0 if you decide to take your data and go home?” My answer, from my notes:

In the same way as not being able to unattend a party after the fact, you shouldn’t be able to pretend you didn’t participate in an online conversation. Contributions to a discussion should be permanent. You can, however, decide to not go to any future parties. There’s tension between the individual ownership at stake and the fact that the data also belongs to the community. Such is the value of social networking. So, having the freedom to leave is different than having the freedom to delete.

For example, if you were to have a back and forth with another member, then closed your account, if everything you did went away, you’ve just made a hash of the forum or comment thread you were participating in. Important context is now missing and that makes follow-up responses misleading. Not having those responses disappear helps keep things honest. So do notices indicating that a comment has been edited.

I partially like how Flickr handles account closure and image deletion. If you leave, you can delete your photos on the way out. But, I don’t like that when you delete a photo, if you’ve copied that photo into a comment thread or group forum, the comment displays an “Image No Longer Available” message where the photo used to be 1. That’s something of an edge case, though. What about simple departure and account termination? In that situation, comments and forum postings stick around, but the account avatar indicates the user is no longer an active member. This, I think, is partly what Facebook was trying to explicitly allow themselves to do with their terms of service change. It’s also feasible they were trying to improve on Flickr by reserving rights for photographs 2.

Defining what’s allowed isn’t the same as explaining it

What this really gets at is setting the expectation that you can’t come to a party, add rum to the punchbowl, then unmake the punch when you’ve decided you’ve had enough and want nothing more to do with the people you’re drinking with. What you can do is stop drinking and leave. How a site establishes this understanding with members is where trouble creeps in, mainly because they aren’t creating that understanding. Yes, the legal language in the terms of service needs to allow for it. But legalese can really invite some language parsing of, “well, they’re not keeping themselves from doing it, so they can do it.” I presume there’s a gap between what the legal team drafted and what the management team intends to do. This gap needs to be filled with a straight-forward, non-legalese introduction.

Creative Commons fills this what might otherwise be an expectation gap admirably. Check out the full legal terms for the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 U.S. license. There’s approximately 2,250 words to the license, without the supporting material that says Creative Commons isn’t your lawyer. There’s a lot of very specific language in terms of what’s allowed, not allowed and under what conditions. It’s likely more that most people are going to chose to read completely.

Now, look at what Creative Commons shows users when they click on a Creative Commons licensing logo. It’s a very easy-to-digest summary of what the license allows and the responsibilities that go with it. But that’s not all that it does. It also guides a reading of the full legal text, if you want to go there. You go in reading and looking for language that allows you to do what the summary indicates you can. Having that introduction in place blunts the impact of finding what otherwise might be scary clauses in the terms of service. There’s a further benefit if the terms of service legal language changes. If the explanation acknowledges the changes and says, “this is what the changes allows us to do and here’s how it protects you,” that’s a lot better just having the diff to try and divine intent from.

That sort of explanation and introduction is precisely how a site like Facebook should introduce their terms of service and future changes. I’d like to see Apple do the same thing with the Apple iTunes store terms of service, too.

Explaining permanence (and other things) in human terms

How should a social media site summarize legal language that allows it to keep and display a copy of anything added to the service? Here’s my attempt:

Q: Who can see my content on LOLChatz?

A: Any member of LOLChatz can see content you mark as “members-only”. Anyone on the Internet can see content you mark as “public.”

Q: How do I close my account?

A: Go to your account page and click the link labeled, “Close my account.”

Q: Does my content go away if I close my account?

A: No. Content that you’ve added to LOLChatz does not expire and will be available on LOLChatz permanently. We want to keep member conversations complete, and it wouldn’t be complete without what you’ve added.

Q: Will you ever use my stuff in ads or anything?

A: We highlight conversational threads we like on the LOLChatz blog and we may highlight yours. If we’re interested in using a post or photograph in our marketing or advertising, we will ask for your permission.

Q: Is this the legal agreement?

A: No. The specific legal language you want is at http://example.com/tos

  1. With obvious exceptions for things libelous, inappropriate, etc.
  2. I have no way of knowing Facebook’s actual intent, so I’m trying to thing of a neutral explanation for the terms of service. It might be that the terms of service change would enable them to make t-shirts of your kitten photos, no matter how long ago you quit Facebook, and they were ready to reactivate Beacon to let your friends know.

Red Robot as a problem solver

Red Robot/Raleigh

I like Red Robot’s problem solving. Not in his typical CRUSH ALL HUMANS sort of way, but in how John Rees solved a problem with Red Robot. In a shop full of ThinkPad users, going away for lunch and then coming back, it’s rather difficult to tell which laptop is yours. I’ve seen the same difficulty with MacBook Pros, too. John solved the problem with the Red Robot/Exploding Dog laptop cover. Looks slick, too. Total win. (Update: GelaSkins is where John says he got the cover.)

John, 5x5 and I were one of a hundred or so people at Edge Office for the first Triangle Tweetup of 2009. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with a large group, but it’s worth getting out to meet folks face-to-face, largely because you learn little tidbits, make connections and generate ideas.

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