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Category: interaction design

The Open and the Closed: Closed is the new Open

Published December 16, 2007 by cgerrish

Open Door

A closed system can be a portal to openness through the network. This is a fundamental change in where the opportunities for software application development will be located in the future.

In the era of the desktop computer, an executable program needed to reside on the local computer hard drive and take advantage of the tools offered by the operating system. Access to APIs and documentation defined how open a system was. Ability to alter, or improve the system, to better support an application was a further sign of openness.

This same paradigm has been used to think about the coming age of the teleputer. Pundits and hackers cry out for access that is analogous to the desktop OS development environment. They don’t seriously attend to the possibility of a radical shift away from the hard drive to the cloud. This idea is a riff off of Steve Gillmor’s recent post.

A Short Interlude:

Upgrading software and maintaining compatibility through multiple versions on a desktop computer is one of the top usability problems of the desktop environment. The installed executable application model creates infinite complexity at the point of least understanding and ability to cope. Think about what happens when you move that complexity back into the cloud and give responsibility for managing it to the application developers. A “computer” becomes simple for the user, and as complex as the business model and developers of the application can support.

Tim O’Reilly, in his NY Times Op Ed piece, asks Verizon to open their platform in the same way that the computer is open— either on the desktop or the server. Although he coined the term “Web 2.0” for his conference, he doesn’t seem to really understand the implications. The new path to openness is laid down by Steve Gillmor when he writes about the “hard drive” vs. “the cache.” With HTML/Ajax, Flash and Silverlight, small runtimes can be present anywhere and everywhere. The future of application development is against these small runtimes in the browser and single purpose network connected applications that make use of a subset of browser capability.

It’s an avenue to much greater user acceptance and uptake; and it removes an element of complexity from the local machine. This is how you dramatically reduce the hours of work required to maintain a computer / handheld device. Those who demand access to your computer and teleputer so they can load it up with the code they’ve written are not necessarily doing you a favor. They are probably just setting you up for a future moment when your phone will crash beyond your ability to repair it.

Resist the forces of complexity that wear the guise of “openness.” Closed systems can support both simplicity and openness via the network. Open systems support potential complexity at the device level and openness via the network. Open systems like Linux will enable closed system CloudBooks that will achieve simplicity, reliability and openness through the network.

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Web As Industrial Design: Painting with Code

Published December 1, 2007 by cgerrish

Juicer Prototype

 If you happen to be passing through Terminal 3 of the San Francisco Airport any time soon, check out: Prototype to Product: 33 Projects from the Bay Area Design Community. Rushing through the Terminal to my gate, I didn’t have enough time to spend with each of the pieces. The exhibit features preliminary sketches, detailed illustrations, models, prototypes and the finished product. Every time I see this kind of approach to design I think that Web design should be done in the same way.

Designers of Web sites need to take the materials, the DOM, the semantic HTML, the CSS, the javascript, the images and links into account when they design something for a person to use for a particular purpose. Industrial designers need to know and understand their materials. Will there be a new generation of Web artists and designers who can paint in code?


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Digg, Mixx and Viral Negativity in a Social Network

Published November 25, 2007 by cgerrish

Arrington writes that some of Digg’s unpaid editors are moving over to Mixx. Since they aren’t compensated for their work, switching costs amount to getting some of their friends to switch too. This is an interesting case study in the value of social networks. If the creators of the “user generated content” decide that the environment has become poisoned with negativity, they may decide to pull up stakes and migrate to another more friendly environment.

One Digg user makes the claim, in Arrington’s article, that:

I think Mixx has a real chance for success…Mixx has a much more positive audience than Digg. It always amazes me that even the most popular and highest quality articles can get so many negative and unnecessarily degrading comments on Digg. So far the users of Mixx have proven to be quite a bit more pleasant, something that I know will be welcomed by most users.�

Negativity can quickly become viral in a social network, especially where some kind of voting takes place. Competitive strategies can overtake collaborative strategies and then the community’s overall output starts to become skewed. To combat the negativity, the owners of the site make rules to curb some forms of competition, and before you know it– it’s not that fun anymore.

It’s interesting to watch the figures of game theory play out before your eyes. Should part of the valuation of a business that depends on social networking and voting be dependent on its ability to enforce and maintain a friendly environment? See Craig Newmark for a lesson in how this can be done.

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Kindle: The street has its own uses for things

Published November 22, 2007 by cgerrish

Kindle, Amazon’s reader

I still don’t quite understand Kindle, but I think it’s worth waiting for the street to come up with a use for it. In reading through the overwhelming stream of condemnation, I could only think that something that this many people hate must have something going for it. I’m of two minds: I posted against it, and now I will post something in its favor.

I was listening to Jason Calacanis on Leo Laporte’s This Week in Technology and William Gibson’s quote surfaced: the street has its own uses for things. That lead me to Cory Doctorow’s take on the same theme. Amazon has its intended uses for Kindle, some of them may come to pass.

I’ve previously written on what we buy when we buy creative content. We think we’re buying the writing in the book, but we’re actually buying the physical object, a book. We buy the delivery mechanism. Creative content lives in the mind’s eye as it comes in contact with the physical marks that can be purchased. We often moan about having to buy the same music over and over again in different formats. But that’s all there is, there are only formats and the players that decode them. Music and literature don’t inhabit the physical plane.

Kindle is a delivery method, it’s also a toll booth– a means of collecting fees on content that flows through it. It’s a method of publishing into a different format; this format is a machine. For the street to find uses for Kindle, it will have to win users. The offering price is too high, but perhaps it will be reduced, much like the iPhone. Will we buy the same books in yet another format? We have so far, why wouldn’t we do it again?

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