Creating productivity tools at the intersection of product strategy, mobile software development, and user-centered design

Monthly archives for January, 2012

Understanding Comics



Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud

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After extending the history of comics (which is not to say “an extended history of comics”), McCloud present a number of structural and fundamental frameworks related to comics that are readily applicable to the design and creation of mobile user interfaces. I will be skipping over the frameworks that don’t apply specifically to this blog, but the book as a whole is well worth the quick read.

Comics follow a scale of:

  • Simple to Complex
  • Iconic to Realistic
  • Subjective to Objective
  • Universal to Specific

Picture Plane

(None of the pictures are mine in any way.)

Time can be shown through

  • Closure is the phenomenon of observing the parts, but perceiving the whole.
  • Separating frames (spatial)
  • Difference in content
  • Spelling it out in words
  • Separated by sounds

Storylines can be seen as:

  • Moment-to-Moment
  • Action-to-Action
  • Subject-to-Subject
  • Scene-to-Scene
  • Aspect-to-Aspect
  • Non-Sequitur

Lines can be used to draw motion in many different ways.

  • Motion: fast, slow
  • Emotion: anger, joy, madness, intimacy, tension
  • Sounds: loud, soft, quiet

The combination of words and pictures can be:

  • Word specific
  • Picture specific
  • Duo specific
  • Additive
  • Parallel
  • Montage
  • Interdependent

Art forms follow a process of:

  • Idea/purpose
  • Form
  • Idiom
  • Structure
  • Craft
  • Surface

Colors are really interesting as well:

  • Additive primary colors – Red, Blue, Green
  • Subtractive primary colors – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow

In the end, comics are an art form (like paintings or novels) and have limitless potential.  I believe mobile interactions are a new medium (just like television or radio) and also have much untapped potential.

 

Posted in User Experience - Tagged , ,

What Constitutes Good Design



  1. Sleek and Aesthetically pleasing
  2. Transitions are fast and clear
  3. Layout is informative and meaningful
  4. Typography is clean and crisp
  5. Icons are works of art in their own right
  6. Easy to understand
  7. When people use your app for the first time, they should intuitively grasp the most important features
  8. Simple tasks never require complex procedures
  9. Tasks are tailored to the human hand and mind
  10. Welcoming to people of all backgrounds vs. targeted towards end user
  11. Simplicity
    1. Never feels overwhelmed by too many features
    2. No irrelevant flash
  12. Easy to use – Give people access to superb technology
  13. Empowers people to try new things and explore
  14. Use Apps in inventive new ways vs craft a focused user experience
  15. Encouraging multi-tasking
  16. Personal feel

 

Posted in User Experience - Tagged , ,

Behind the Name



“Productivity” stands for the fact that the ability to organize your thoughts will make you more productive.  In an academic setting, you can imagine a student being able to organize their class notes to study for an exam.  In an enterprise setting, you can imagine an employee organizing their presentation ideas to prepare for a board meeting.  In a personal setting, you can imagine a father organizing his thoughts to plan a family vacation.

“Anywhere” stands for the fact that today’s software and information is and should be available wherever you are.  Going mobile isn’t a trend that a company can decide whether or not to follow.  It’s a fundamental shift in how people interact with information, and consequently their ideas.

Why Productivity Software?

I believe great ideas have the opportunity the change the world, but many of these thoughts end up neglected in some notebook and fail to see the light of day.  There are a small handful of tools that allow ideas to be easily captured and consequently  remembered.  However, these tools lack a simple way to organize and prioritize those ideas, which leads to a cluttered mess of thoughts.  With better apps to manipulate and structure ideas, more good ideas would be able to reach a more presentable form of great ideas.  And if great ideas start to spread, then change starts to happen because nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come (Victor Hugo).

 

Posted in Articles

Start Here If You’re New



Hi, everyone.  My name is Derek Chen and this is a blog about improving productivity through superior mobile user experiences and intuitive mobile design.  Most posts will be nothing more than random thoughts that I feel compelled to put down on paper, but every once in awhile these ideas will culminate into a unique perspective that will actually be worth sharing.  Breaking it down:

  • Goal: how to do more with less
  • Methods: superior UX, intuitive design
  • Products: apps, handsets, carriers, operating systems
  • Other related topics: human-computer interaction, user interfaces, mobile technology, productivity mindset, design thinking, personal efficiency

This all leads us to our end goal of being more productive, anywhere you are.

 

 

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Main Topics



Generally speaking, this blog will be broken down into three parts.

  1. Product Management – this section contains thoughts about how one would go about creating great productivity software.
    1. Product Strategy – analytics and making a product that is economically viable
    2. Product Design – user experience and making a product that is socially engaging
    3. Product Development – programming and making a product that is technically feasible
  2. Industry News – this section contains app reviews and articles about updates within the productivity software industry.
  3. Personal Musings – this section contains all the random stuff I feel compelled to put onto my blog and other miscellaneous items.
Posted in Articles

Quote of the Month



There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.

– Peter Drucker               

Posted in Monthly Quote - Tagged