Caveat about 'initial' reviews (Scripting News)

Caveat about 'initial' reviews (Scripting News): "One of the things I've learned from being a developer is to keep a notebook with my impressions, the things that confused me, the questions I have. That was before I had a weblog. Nowadays that notebook is public, which helps me share my process with others."

The iPhone Matches Most of Its Hype - New York Times

The iPhone Matches Most of Its Hype - New York Times: "But the bigger achievement is the software. It’s fast, beautiful, menu-free, and dead simple to operate. You can’t get lost, because the solitary physical button below the screen always opens the Home page, arrayed with icons for the iPhone’s 16 functions."

85 different prototypes

SiliconValley.com - Takahashi: Microsoft's tabletop computer breaks creative ground: "The team built 85 different prototypes."

Macworld: Editors' Notes: Apple and the value of design

Macworld: Editors' Notes: Apple and the value of design: "• Apple designers see the big picture: Manock talked about the lessons he had taken away from his time in the Stanford Design Program, one of which was to consider what he called “the profundity factor: Is what you’re doing going to make any difference in the world?”"

let things simmer

But Mr. Singhal often doesn’t rush to fix everything he hears about, because each change can affect the rankings of many sites. “You can’t just react on the first complaint,” he says. “You let things simmer.”

Matt Linderman, "Amit Singhal and Google's secret search sauce," Signal vs Noise, 4 Jun 2007, www.37signals.com/svn/posts/444-amit-singhal-and-googles-secret-search-sauce.
See the original story: Saul Hansell, "Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine," New York Times, 3 Jun 07, www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/business/yourmoney/03google.html.

ideal experience

The best ideal experience eliminates frustration and instills delight. This becomes the foundation of our vision.

The space between the current experience and the ideal experience is where the insights come from. Innovation happens here.

http://www.uie.com/events/uiconf/2007/articles/experience_vision/

Blackfriars' Marketing: Behind the scenes: why Apple's customer base is so loyal and enthusiastic

Blackfriars' Marketing: Behind the scenes: why Apple's customer base is so loyal and enthusiastic The obvious side to Apple's customer satisfaction lies in their attention to detail in every facet of product development. All their products are designed, at every stage, with the customer clearly in mind and each product is tailored to make it as easy to use as possible for the customer, regardless of how technically savvy or not they may be. The less obvious side involves two keywords: freedom and choice. In The Tyranny of Too Much, we explain how too much choice is a problem, a significant problem even. Recapitulating, too many options to choose from will increase our expectations and decrease our satisfaction with the choice we've made. Barry Schwartz's book, The Paradox of Choice, explains it in great detail and is well worth a read. This presents a problem for businesses, because it means that to satisfy customers they ought to give them less to choose from; however, our western society is so focused on offering choice that this almost certainly seems like a poor business decision. After all, choice is — for better or worse — transparently linked to freedom, and freedom is what today's society is all about. But the fact of the matter is that less choice, and consequently less freedom, is what actually liberates us as customers because it gives us greater satisfaction. Apple is one of the very few companies that get this — and yet, they get chided for it much more so than praised. via Good Morning Silicon valley

The Science and Art of User Experience at Google - Google Video

The Science and Art of User Experience at Google - Google Video

Apple TV Has Landed

"In the end, these early attempts to bridge the gulf between computer and TV perfectly reinforce the conventional wisdom about Apple: Apple TV offers a gracious, delightful experience — but requires fidelity to Apple’s walled garden. Its rivals, meanwhile, offer many more features — but they’re piled into bulkier boxes with much less concern for refinement, logic or simplicity. Put another way, these machines aren’t direct competitors at all; they’re aimed at different kinds of people. Microsoft’s young male gamers probably couldn’t care less that they can’t change the slide-show speed, and Netgear’s box “is for people who are more experienced,” according to a representative. “This is not for the random person.” Apple, on the other hand, is going for everybody else, random people included (at least those with HDTV sets). And that, perhaps, is Apple TV’s real significance. To paraphrase the old Macintosh advertisement, it’s a computer-to-TV bridge for the rest of us."

David Pogue, "Apple TV Has Landed," New York Times, 22 Mar 2007,www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/technology/22pogue.html.

failure can be a good thing

Companies like Dogster that constantly examine user data - especially the discouraging stuff - are finding the information increasingly vital online. 'Instead of working on a feature for months trying to get it perfect,' Rheingold says, 'we'll work on something for two weeks and then spend two or three days listening to users and fine-tuning it.'

Tom McNichol, "A Startup's Best Friend? Failure," Business 2.0, 1 Mar 2007, money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/03/01/8401031.