[Sigia-l] Implications and Unintended Consequences

[Will Parker]

On Jan 11, 2007, at 7:42 PM, Ziya Oz wrote:

> As one of the remaining 17 people on the planet who can afford a  
> cellphone
> but never owned one, I'm anxiously waiting for the actual  
> availability of
> the iPhone.
>
> For another project, I've been parsing responses to the iPhone over  
> the last
> couple of days in many different forums. I must have read close to  
> 5,000
> articles/posts/comments.
>
> Obviously, a prime point of debate is Apple's virtual keyboard vs. the
> tactile feel of the rest for text entry. The "iMac will flop  
> because it
> doesn't have a floppy drive" crowd and those weaned on thumb-boards  
> think
> Apple's soft keyboard is a joke. Of course, virtually none of these  
> people
> had the sustained experience of using it, but who's counting.
>
> What remains essentially unexamined is the way in which designers  
> will have
> to think differently about how to expose actionable data to the  
> user. In
> fact, this very point will determine to a large extent the success  
> of UIs
> targeting not just the iPhone but similarly smart devices designed  
> for fast
> data/info retrieval on-the-go.
> <SNIP>

> Anyone else believes, as designers, we need to rethink how we  
> structure and
> expose actionable info so that, especially for small, mobile devices,
> inter-app connections become seamless flows as opposed to requiring  
> user
> text-entry in a stop-and-go fashion?

Ziya:

I started writing a response to your most excellent post on the  
implications of the iPhone design, but about an hour into the process  
I realized that I ought to just go ahead and make it into a blog  
article or three. It may take a week, but that's in the works, and  
when I'm done, I'll post a link here.

The thing about Ziya's that got me in the ruminating and writing mood  
was the notion of design implications and consequences.

As I've mentioned here before, I caught the design bug while working  
on the Mac Office team. One of the more enlightening events during  
that period came when I was asked to contribute to a competitive  
review (read: 'threat analysis') of Apple's presentation program,  
Keynote.

One of the major objectives of the analysis was to project potential  
capabilities and features of future Apple 'office' apps, based on the  
features we found in Keynote 1.0. (While top Microsoft management was  
blithely dismissive of Apple as a competitor, MacBU management  
was .... um, rather more _sanguine_ on the matter.)

Ever since, I've implicitly or explicitly included two subheads in my  
analysis of any design: "What does this imply?", and "What are the  
consequences?" This week, both Microsoft and Apple have given us a  
look at their products, but more importantly, they've both made  
serious attempts to describe their design imperatives and processes.

In the article I'm writing, I'm going to focus, as Ziya has (and btw,  
Ziya -- THANKS!), on the implications and consequences of what each  
company has shown this week.

So, what's your take? What **future** capabilities are implied in the  
Apple keynote and Microsoft's CES keynote? What are the likely  
consequences to the companies, their customers, their products? How  
will these products and designs be used? How will they affect their  
designers and users?

-------------

As a starter for this kind of discussion, I'd like to point out this  
interesting little item on OLPCNews:  Another Kind of Laptop  
Revolution: OLPC-Enabled Youth Gangs , wherein:
  - Michael de la Maza, a member of the OLPC community, points out  
that OLPC laptops would make excellent tools for terrorists.

- Lee Feselstein, peace be upon him, has provided the more general  
case that OLPCs would make good tools for any insurgency, and ...

- OLPCNews contributor Wayan has described a more insidious use case  
- facilitation of that natural curse of all primate societies, youth  
gangs.

I call this the "Hey, let's give advanced communications technology  
in small, ruggged, highly portable packages to the absolutely least  
powerful members of a BUNCH of different societies and see what  
happens!" scenario, and I'm planning to point it out to my friend,  
the science-fiction writer.

- Will
Will Parker
wparker at ChannelingDesign.com

"The only people who value your specialist knowledge are the ones who  
already have it." - William Tozier