Getting US only apps on your UK iPad/iPhone

So you’ve got yourself a shiny iPad a few weeks ahead of the rest of the UK…

The self-satisfaction and smugness kinda wears off when you realise there’s not much in the way of apps for it in the UK store.

Well, there’s a way round that (isnt there always?), It’s probably not all that official but it works. 

Here goes:

1. Fire up itunes and log out of your current account
2. Go to the store homepage and scroll to the bottom and you’ll see a ‘Change Country’ link. Flip to the US.
3. Now have a poke around for a free app for your iPad. Hit download.
4. You’ll now get prompted to sign in or register. You need to register a new account (with a different email address) based in the US of A. When it asks for an address you can pluck those details from a hotel/restaurant using google.
5. Now when it gets to payment options fear not - as you’ve only added a free app so far, there’s an option to set payment to ‘None’. Choose that.
6. You’ll be sent an email to verify you’re real. Hit that and you’re off.
7. Now… you’ll have access to all the free goodness that’s available (books is a good start) but you want the other good stuff right? Point your browser at eBay and search for iTunes US gift vouchers. See where this is going right? Grab a Buy it Now from a reputable seller and ask them to send you the codes. Redeem those codes inside your newly created account and you’re golden.

Oh and having two accounts in iTunes (and switching between them) works just fine.

Enjoy.

Chiming in on the spec work debate

So anyone with half a brain knows spec work is bad, wrong, evil and all of that stuff, but I’m of the opinion that the real weight of the argument is actually being lost amongst all the cat-fighting and bitching.

Working for free is obviously not a great idea and not a sustainable one either.

But, pitch work will never go away and I think it’s ok for an agency to spend a reasonable amount of time and resource putting together a demonstration (not a design) of their thinking relating to how they may solve or approach problems they can pull from that RFP.

Designing for a pitch (both on the visual and interaction layer) is insanely stupid for many reasons, but the biggest one of all is that beyond the RFP you have ab-so-fucking-lutely no idea what either the client or user needs or wants.

Anything you produce is pure finger in the air guess-work based on a number of assumptions. It destroys any credibility in the design process and relies on aesthetics to blow smoke up a clients arse.

This sucks not only for the agency but also for the client too. Would you phone up a kitchen shop and say “hello i’m interested in a kitchen?” then expect your perfect kitchen to be delivered to your house without A: measuring the room its going in B: finding out what you need to do in it C: how you like to do things in your kitchen.

What you’ll get is something that might look nice but won’t fit and ultimately work for what you need it to do.

Whichever working style you have, design is iterative. It is humanly impossible to nail a design problem at an interaction level and an aesthetic one in one hit.

Very often the argument falls back to “…well we have to show something” and “…this is what the client expects” - and to that I say bollocks. The client (unless they are painfully stupid) will respect your desire to do the right thing by them and their business. This is wholly a communication issue. No-one in their right mind would ever turn down the opportunity for something to be demonstrably and measurably better.

This isn’t the clients fault either. Proliferating this process won’t make it go away. There is an obvious need for education at agency level and for some genuinely creative ideas to help demonstrate due diligence before design even begins.

Microsoft - Will You Ever Learn?

Sometimes despite every effort not to come across as a drooling apple fanboy, Microsoft does something so hideously abhorrent it just can’t pass without at least some comment.

Office 2010. That’s 2010 as in the same 2010 Arthur C Clarke wrote about as ya know… the future and all.

And this is what the boys in Redmond have come up with.

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/04/27/office-2010-screenshots-emerge

It’s become defacto that less is indeed more in this information-saturated, sensory overload of a pants party we’re all subjected to on a daily basis.

So what do the Office BU decide to do? Strip back their flagship product and develop a slick, seamless, intuitive, experience, befitting of anything that has 2010 written on it. Nooooooope. More. Add More. Clutter that “ribbon” up with more options, labels, doodads and whizzbangers so when you look at it you actually have a stroke from your brain having to figure out what the freaking hell is going on.

I read the other day that Microsoft have a dedicated UX team in the region of 200. That’s 200 people not doing their job right. No doubt they’re beavering away connecting electrodes to peoples heads, scrutinising stats, and studying the mating patterns of llamas. But come on enough with the science, ban anyone with an HCI qualification from the room. Look at what you’re making - ask real people what they need and how they want to use it. Stop foisting New on us every few years. We love consistency, familiar patterns, simple stuff. You may have noticed those guys down the road in Cupertino seem to have figured it out pretty well. Sure they’re not perfect but my 2 and a half year old kid can use a Mac and not a PC. We tried. We know. That’s science.

UX Cheat Sheet

I rustled this up as a little helper for me and my colleagues. Click the image to download a PDF.

Digital user experience in print

Jacek Utko has got a whole lot of love recently on a global scale following his TED presentation. The Polish designer has been tearing up the eastern european newspaper industry breaking down traditional print ideologies and bumping readership as much as 100% in some cases following his redesigns.

What’s interesting to me is that many of Utko’s redesigns follow a lot of similarities with common best-practice web UX principles and design metaphors. In particular his work on Puls Biznesu shares a number of common design cues with successful online news resources. Whereas we used to look to print for inspiration and how best to present content in the most effective way - it seems like now people have engaged with digital, learned new conventions and ways of digesting content the familiarity with traditional print design has slipped. By bringing digital design ideas back into print, the user/reader is back in their comfort zone again.

http://www.utko.com/

Why definition is everything when it comes to Interaction Design

If a definition needs defining then it’s not a definition.

If there’s any room for interpretation throw it away and start again.

If you as a User Experience professional can’t distill the message into one clear definition then how can you expect the user to make that interpretation?

Definitions cannot be conceptual or describe something intangible, they need to be concrete. In the same way a story needs a beginning middle and end, your definition needs to encompass all of that in such a way that no-one can misinterpret your vision.

Its not easy, and working with brands who sometimes don’t understand their product themselves you’ll find yourself tearing your hair out.

But like Kate Bush said to Peter Gabriel - don’t give up. Starting a UX project without a clear product definition is like starting to build a house using cheese. Never a good idea.

Mindmapping software makes for a f*ckin awful IA tool

Let’s get it out there. Mindmapping software is not a great tool for creating sitemaps.

If i have to look at another spaghetti-lined abortion of a diagram again i think i might just stick two pencils up my nose and headbutt the desk.

If i need to spend three hours tracing my finger around a diagram to establish the relationship between two pages then something is clearly broken.

Stop it now.

User Experience and the Fixed Wheel bike

Anyone that has ever ridden a fixed-wheel bike or Fixie as the ker-azy kids like to call them, will testify to the fact that riding one is not generally an easy or pleasant experience. Having a fixed rear wheel offers absolutely zero to the effectiveness of a bicycle. I would in fact argue that it becomes a detriment to the process of getting around safely.

But. It’s fun.

The User Experience is inherently flawed because of all the perceived drawbacks of the design, but still thousands of riders will go out of their way to overcome those hurdles because the experience outweighs the sacrifice.

That’s a lesson i think all UX designers can learn a lot from.

From the “beyond basic” school of UX no-no’s. Always remember to set DNS for your domain without the WWW. Just hit three sites in a row that had forgotten to. Bad.