Losing Context - Bryan Haggerty

Dying Maps and Their Successors

I am a lover of maps. I have books about maps, my walls have been covered in maps (even a 5ft x 5ft MTA map at one point), and I’ve even written about maps. Which makes it not surprising that this past Christmas I received more than one gift which was a map.

In preparation for my move west to San Francisco my mother gave me a Streetwise waterproof folded map of San Francisco. Something to toss in my bag to always have. Yet, the more I look at the map, or rather don’t look at the map, I realize the obsolescing of this map form factor–and likely a chunk of Streetwise’s and other map makers’ business.

Forgoing Paper for Digital

I have all but abandoned paper maps in favor of web based maps and mobile phone maps. The last bastion of paper maps, of which I carry, are small wallet sized versions of New York’s MTA map and a San Francisco transit map. As in many underground trips, getting wireless connectivity can be a challenge if not impossible–hence these wallet maps can come in handy but their days are probably numbered (BART surprisingly has a decent bit of underground wireless coverage).

Software such as Google’s Maps for mobile, with the My Location feature which repositions the map to your current location, have made orienting yourself utterly simple with no additional hardware needed. Also, interacting with the map via search has made finding any address or business all the more easy.

Even many of the traditional niche maps such as those for transit or bikes, which most people would carry in their pocket, have been converted to mobile device ready versions–iSubway Maps or Khoi Vinh’s MTA map for iPhone. We now have more than just “a thousand songs in our pockets.”

Adding a More Physical Connection to Maps

iPhone Map showing a user’s contact near them

It won’t be long before the mobile versions of maps take on a more social component as well, such as being able to see which of your friends may be in the neighborhood or at a particular restaurant or bar near where you are.

And in terms of wayfinding, people often utilize landmarks to get around. Surely, we’ll be seeing Google add their StreetView feature to their mobile edition of maps. Thus allowing users to get an actual visual of the location they’re seeking.

These are all features which no paper map could ever provide. But there are still a few paper alternatives which deserve a mention.

Hangers On

While I find the wallet maps still somewhat useful, SUCK UK’s Tubemap Wallet takes it one step further by turning the actual wallet into the map–clever. There is also Moleskin’s efforts to throw in a few handy maps with their pint size notebooks.

Demoing the Experience

One of the most common ways to sell a customer on a product is to allow them to engage the user experience themselves–the try before you buy approach. It’s why electronics stores have rows and rows of TVs, sound proof stereo listening rooms, video game demo stations, and plenty more. Whether the customer makes a purchase or not, he has gotten a taste for that product, which will resonate far more than any product photo or video could.

Unfortunately, there are times though when the intentions of providing a hands on experience are stifled by elements such as over zealous anti-left systems, which can ultimately leave the customer with a negative perception of a product. This is especially the case for products such as mobile devices: laptops, digital music players, wireless phones. These are devices which are meant to be picked up, held in the hand, and moved around.

Laptops

Visiting a BestBuy or Circuit City, customers are sometimes faced with laptops which are so locked down a person can’t even comfortably rest their hands on the keyboard just to simply see how it feels–nor pick it up to feel the weight. Certainly two major points when deciding which laptop will fit that on-the-go lifestyle.

The majority of modern computing is done with the compliment of the Internet and many of these stores do not demo laptops with active Internet connections. Resulting in a demo experience which does not accurately meet a customer’s typical computer activities–Minesweeper isn’t exactly the ideal demo software.

Digital Music Players

Similarly, Microsoft’s Zune digital music player demo display almost exudes an aurora of don’t touch, just look. For a device which is designed to be held in the hand, the Zune’s demo display strictly prohibits the possibility by the presence of a metal shaft where a person’s hand would rest. Proving to diminish the possibility for the customer to envision the device as part of his lifestyle. It is also encased in a plastic and metal holder, which unfortunately adds perceived size to the device. Where size is a great concern for mobile devices, this certainly does not help to convince the customer of the product’s true thinness.

One of the Zune’s major selling points is its ability to play video in a horizontal orientation allowing for a more movie-like viewing experience. Yet the demo display makes the act of trying to experience this prohibitively difficult, unnatural feeling, and ungraceful. With its awkward enforcement of allowing the device to be rotated only one way, it appears clunky.

Wireless Phones

In America, wireless phone providers are in the game to sell phone service as opposed to phones, but this does not mean that providing customers with the ability to experience their offered phones should be neglected. All too often customers are shown a bolted down, gutted out phone with a sticker acting as its screen. Aside from the fact that the customer can barely hold the device in his hand, he can not even experience the user interface and actively demo those said features. This shell of a phone also all to often gives the impression of the phone being cheap in terms of quality of materials. It is no wonder American consumers assume wireless phones should be cheap in price as well.

Choosing a wireless phone becomes a blind faith decision, based mostly on wireless provider, price, and a feature list. The advancements in mobile user interfaces have been quite pitiful, much of that could be attributed to the fact that customers really have no opportunity to compare shop. Not to mention that for the majority of people, once they purchase the phone they are locked in for two years with it.

Demoing the Experience Properly

Apple is often given the gold medal for doing things right in many aspects and in providing customers with the ability to truly demo a product, they achieve it perfectly. Every iMac, MacBook, and iPod at their retail stores is free to use unrestricted–often tied down by only one unobtrusive security wire. They can be picked up, held in the hand, and used just as they would be in a customer’s real life.

It is a major factor in why Apple is able to sell so many units. A customer can walk into an Apple Store, pick up an iPhone, make a phone call to a friend, write a text message, check their email, and visit a web site. There is no blind faith decision to be made. The customer doesn’t have to buy the device first to find out how much it weighs in their hand. No contracts have to be signed before the user interface can be truly experienced.

Help Guide for Opening the Vista Box

A customer’s first experience with a product is often its packaging. The customer wants to take that package home and tear it open as fast as possible–not read a manual on how to open it as is the case with Microsoft’s Vista box.

Steps to opening the Microsoft Vista box

Configure a New Dell in 38 Easy Steps

Can’t afford that new MacBook Air? In just 38 easy steps you can get yourself setup with a new Dell laptop instead.

Dell has forgone attempting to provide the user with a simple ordering process in favor of countless upsells. The extra “components” Dell asks the user to configure range from what Adobe, QuickBooks, and TurboTax software to install to decking out the laptop with a carrying case, external mouse, and printer. While at it, throw in a matching flash drive. Don’t forget warranty, accident insurance, and premium tech support. With all this extra stuff, the user probably won’t be able to install it himself–throw in that in-home install and setup.

Apple of My Eye

As a Mac-using freshman in 2000 at Northeastern University’s College of Computer & Information Science, I was pretty much a joke to everyone–mostly due to my computer, but okay, that could be debated. The all too often question was, “how are you gonna do computer science on a Mac?” Surprisingly, I did just fine, and before I knew it, a lot of people were picking up on the Mac trend. By the time I graduated a lot had changed in the Mac world and surprisingly, I actually knew a handful of other people who owned Macs.

But when I saw the below photo taken by Mollie Sterling of a classroom at her alma mater, The Missouri School of Journalism, I was more than shocked. I knew there was an up-tick in Mac usage but I certainly never imagined something like this. Even if it was staged or if having a Mac is a prerequisite, it is still an amazing sight.

Mac filled Missouri School of Journalism classroom [Large Version]

Looking Back at Futurism

Earlier I had spoken about what I had thought about the state of current user experience books and that if I am seeking to find new knowledge I would have to look elsewhere. Oddly enough that elsewhere may be in the past. Which as I write this, seems utterly obvious but I think Alex Wright sums it up nicely in his book Glut:

“For all the barrels of ink and billions of pixels spent chronicling the rise of the Internet in recent years, however, surprisingly few writers seem disposed to look in any direction but forward.”

We owe a lot to those who came before us and I’ll be perfectly honest, I cannot say I know a great deal about those who laid down the path, which is the basis for my career today. The work of these visionaries or futurists when looked at today, the hits are amazingly accurate and the misses well, while amazingly interesting have yet to come to fruition.

But this makes me wonder, are we more caught up in the day after today? As opposed to, who is laying the ground work for that true tomorrow? Yes, working day to day is an iterative process and you’ll get anywhere one step at a time. Some of the works of earlier futurists describe ideas which are far beyond anything they ever had, and I’m not talking about looking at a bird and envisioning all humans in flying cars. So where are today’s futurists? I assume it is only negligence on my behalf to find them, hopefully.

Drag, Drop, But Not There

Dragging and dropping files on a Macintosh has almost always felt limitless–drag a file onto an application in the dock, over a folder, onto a window, and things just work as you’d expect.

Living the dual life that I have–Mac at home, Windows at work–I often run into oddities between the two operating systems. While a long time Mac user I use my Windows computer more frequently so we can rule out the idea that I’m just too used to the Mac.

I recently attempted to take an action which I expected no resistance, dragging a JPG onto the Photoshop icon in my task bar. My thinking was that I wanted to open this file in Photoshop and what better a way than to simply drag and drop. Certainly would save me the time of clicking on Photoshop, selecting Open from the File menu and then navigating to the file’s location.

The error message I received was odd in that its tone came off almost as if they knew what I was doing was certainly what any normal person would try to do. So instead of doing what I needed, it gave me some instructions on their way of doing it. It’s strange due to that the only action which could take place, would be to open the file. Had I wished to drop the file into a particular window I would have done so.

BlackBerry Pearl Bytes

I’ve been a BlackBerry Pearl user for only a short while, almost a year. It has its merits but my next phone probably won’t be another BlackBerry. There are more than a few quirks, but one that has always got me is so simple to solve that it seems weird it has been overlooked for so long.

The Pearl was Research In Motion’s, maker of the BlackBerry, first entrance into the multimedia phone space which includes a camera and audio, video playback–all types of media which require a fair amount of memory. With limited storage, it is not uncommon to want to know how much space you’ve got left on the Pearl’s 64 megabytes of internal memory, or 65142784 bytes as my BlackBerry prefers to tell me.

In a time where we are beginning to even forget about kilo-bytes it truly seems baffling that Research In Motion would even present the memory total and usage in bytes. I studied computer science and even I don’t want to spend the time deciding whether I want to divide that number by 1024 or 1000 to get a better idea in today’s terms of how much memory I got left.

Mac People Japan

Almost 10 years ago a startup screen which my brother Mike and I had designed was featured in the Japanese magazine Mac People. When I was approached to have the startup screen featured in the magazine and included on their CD, I had requested that they send me a copy of the issue. Long after my exuberance about being in a magazine at age 15 had passed, having assumed they passed on including our work, a package from Japan filled our mailbox.

My 15 minutes of fame has occurred and I suppose I’m at liberty to say, I’m Big In Japan I Was Big In Japan.

GMaps Street View leaves New Yorkers with Much to Desire

Google has just released, Street View, its latest feature to the Google Maps product. Essentially an enhanced version of Amazon A9’s now defunct block view. While impressive, I could not help but notice the lack of image quality of the panoramas. Although surprisingly, it seems this is a New York specific issue.

Shown below are two views of Apple’s stores in both San Francisco and New York City; of note is the difference in image quality between the two. San Francisco Street Views also have another additional level of zoom detail.

Figure 1. Google Maps Street View of SF Apple Store

Figure 2. Google Maps Street View of NYC Apple Store

I cannot envision what Google’s reasoning is for offering lower quality images of New York’s streets. My assumption is that identical equipment was used in shooting the panoramas for both cities. Security and privacy seem to be the only logical explanation (i.e., lower quality images mean in a city as populated as NYC you will reveal fewer recognizable faces).