Summer’s here!

Cultural evidence of the fact that summer’s coming in London, very quickly disputed by physical evidence of several inches of snow covering the capital.

Still, you can’t argue with the appearance of the Heat Buster detective. We’ll all be needing to hang airconditioning pipes out the windows anytime now!

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Service Design Research

Jeff Howard has posted a selection of service design citations from a number of business journals going back 30 years.

Jeff Howard has posted a selection of service design citations from a number of business journals going back 30 years. With something of an emphasis on business systems and less on the cultural development of value, it can feel a bit dense at times but it’s a valuable resource and Jeff has added a very useful filtering system to trace the lines of flight.

Service Design Research by Jeff Howard

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Sign Up Forms Must Die

In this A List Apart article, Luke Wroblewski introduces the idea of gradual engagement for web services.

The concept is simple. Instead of forcing users to go through complex registration forms before giving them access to the service, get them started on actually using the service, building an online video or planning a trip, and collect up the data you need during the process. A neat example given is the travel planning site that collects details and creates an account through confirmation emails from airlines etc. No form at all.

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Sketching for business folk

Dan Roam has written a new take on sketching aimed at business people who need to communicate ideas simply and effectively.

Metropolis have an interview with him at Metropolis

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No such thing as a free lunch

Long Tail author, Chris Anderson recently outlined some of his ‘freeconomy’ ideas in Wired (which he edits).

“There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Milton Friedman

“Over 6488.537018 megabytes (and counting) of free storage” Google Mail

Long Tail author, Chris Anderson’s recent work is on free business models. The book, FREE, is due to be published by Hyperion in 2009 and he recently outlined some of his ‘freeconomy’ ideas in Wired (which he edits).

He says that the Web challenges the traditional economic model of rational choices in a world of scarcity. As the cost of owning and operating a technical infrastructure approaches zero or close enough to zero not to matter, the primary scarcities become not the actual commodity or money, but the time and perception of value of the user. He argues that what Google achieved with PageRank is a means to convert attention to currency.

He posits several categories of free:

“Freemium": where the basic version of a service is free to use
Advertising: where the service is paid for by a third party at the cost of impurity
Cross-subsidy: where you get something free when you pay for something else
Zero marginal cost: where distribution has almost zero cost which is met by an interested party
Labor exchange: where you create value in using a service thus paying for your access
Gift economy: where the content is user generated or open-source and thus gifted to fellow users

The ideas as outlined in the article are an interesting analysis of the state of play today. The book will hopefully address in more detail the economic underpinnings of a free strategy for more traditional business models. In some ways it feels like we haven’t come very far from Web 1.0 audience grabbing in simply categorising how it manifests itself now. What I’d like to see is concrete examples of businesses other than Google converting audience into revenue, but Anderson has made a stab at laying out how the web economy actually works.

Read the whole article here

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Computer Administrative Debris

Edward Tufte has released a video and essay critiqueing the iPhone’s weather and stocks apps for wasting much high resolution screen real estate.

There’s been a lot of web chatter about whether he’s missed the point of Apple’s simple design for an ‘On the go’ use case of the iPhone. I think much of this has been based on a critique of Tufte’s mockups of what richer information might be possible. Listening to the video, Tufte’s own point is clearer than the commentary. He praises the lack of what he terms “Computer Administrative Debris”, (a fantastic phrase) in many of the iPhone’s applications and is making a theoretical point that the weather and stock apps aren’t consistent with the zoomable, “content is the interface” nature of other apps. Tufte isn’t proposing himself as an alternative designer, but pointing out a missed opportunity.

I think it’s likely that these interfaces are a result of Apple’s ‘develop as it goes’ strategy with the iPhone. They may feel they don’t want to be the eventual owners of these applications once an SDK provides others with the opportunity. This argument is particularly convincing for Stocks and Weather which are some of the most accessible data streams available.

An interesting angle to all of this is the focus on the “resolution” of Tufte’s mockups and the argument around use cases. Tufte’s case for greater resolution availability through the zooming interface seems a more compelling theoretical framework than the single ‘On the go’ use case argument. I’m constantly surprised by the uses that the iPhone has introduced me too, things like reading entire books on Text On Phone. Yes, it’s a mobile device. No, it’s not just a mobile device. Zooming in and out to the resolution I require at the time seems a reasonable means of negotiating information density, and is an interaction not unknown to iPhone users.

Edward Tufte’s Interface design and the iPhone

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Making way for Stratford Eurostar

As we head towards the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, London’s Olympic Development Authority is preparing to break ground on the Olympic Park in Stratford, East London.

As we head towards the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, London’s Olympic Development Authority is preparing to break ground on the Olympic Park in Stratford, East London. Eurostar trains already pass through on their way to King’s Cross, although they’re not due to stop here until 2009.

These images of caravans and temporary housing adjacent to the development site mark some of the change this development is bringing to the area.