With Steve passing, my RSS reader and twitter stream filled up with stories of how Steve (or a product created under Steve) had made life better. Or that he inspired, and challenged people in their lives to do something big. To do something more interesting, to strive for great – or insanely great. I’ve been an Apple owner for some time, and owe most of my career to Apple’s products. Not that I couldn’t do great things on a PC, but something about the Mac – creating great things just comes naturally on something that is itself great.

Before going into my own Apple story – I wanted to mention my favorite Steve story. I’ve read books, blogs, news stories, but this is the one that stuck:

I had this idea about having a glass display, a multitouch display you could type on. I asked our people about it. And six months later they came back with this amazing display. And I gave it to one of our really brilliant UI guys. He then got inertial scrolling working and some other things, and I thought, ‘my god, we can build a phone with this’ and we put the tablet aside, and we went to work on the phone.

(Full Article Link)

Another article puts it:

Apple’s multitouch technology began life not as a cellphone, but as a notepad-sized skunkworks project internally dubbed Safari Pad, run by Tim Bucher, then Apple’s head of Macintosh hardware. To his credit, Mr. Jobs seized on the technology and morphed it into the iPhone.

(Full Article Link)

It’s the ‘my god, we can build a phone with this’ part – that he saw something no one else did. He had the vision see how all the pieces fit together in a new way, in a way that finally took his company from his garage to the largest company in the world.

These are the types of people I admire most. People who can see how things connect in a way that no one else can, and what I strive for in my work.

This one observation – that what he had was a phone – has jumpstarted a mobile revolution that has grown countless companies, developers, designer, and startups – to join in on what may be the biggest change we see in our lifetimes.

Steve was a great American inventor, salesman, designer, innovator… I could go on. He brought Design to the front, and not a meeting goes by where the non-designers in the room don’t invoke Apple’s design as something to strive for, making my job a little easier.

Now back to my fanboy story…

I was digging through some old photos – while I used Apple computers throughout school, my modern usage came about during Design school in 2000. Where after using some brand new G4 Macs in class, I went and purchased a G4 350 – the cheapest desktop at the time.

I was at the Plano, TX Apple Store opening in 2001 – 3rd in the states – where @schubox and myself were videotaping and interviewing people in line:

We’re caught on film here (around the 1:56 mark). And more photos here on flickr.

I was around for the second DFW area store opening a couple years later, in Dallas:

More photos on flickr here.

From that early G4 tower, I bought a G4 500 Dual Processor tower, and a Powerbook G3 to accompany – moving up to a G4 17 (which I used at BrightCorner when they wouldn’t buy anyone a Mac!) – and then getting the very first intel iMac (sooo fast!) when they were released in 2006. Throw in the very first iPod, a newton I got at a garage sale, an Apple TV, and of course the iPhone.

I’m writing this on my MacBook Air, getting my internet from my Airport Extreme – and my iPhone 4 is right here next to me. You could say I’m a fanboy, or maybe I just enjoy products that think a little differently. Thanks Steve.

I was lucky to have been asked to be part of the TEDx Dallas Idea Week. CoHabitat hosted a Mobile Salon, where myself and others talked about and answered questions about mobile design and development.

Before the panel, Vijay Thakkar (Technical Director at Newtoy – aka. makers of Words with Friends) gave a great talk on how their team works, and how they’ve released some great software – all in a short amount of time. It was one of those great small-teams-kicking-ass type of stories, and how you can bring this type of process to your organization.

After the presentation, I sat on the mobile panel where we answered questions around mobile development, design, and general mobile business questions.

Here are some photos from the event:

You can view all photos from the event here.

Today I gave a short presentation on “Taking Your Content Mobile” at Open Camp here in Dallas. It’s now easier than ever to quickly create a mobile specific version of your site using a few simple tools/plug-ins. If you’re not ready now, you’ll need to start thinking about it – and I’ll show you your options.

Surprisingly when I asked how many people had a mobile version of their site, less then half raised hands. And this is coming from a more tech focused audience at Open Camp. I should of asked what’s stopping everyone, and it could be the “why?” – why go mobile?

While Apple continues the marketing of the iPhone viewing “the real web”, many sites are easier to navigate, view, and scroll around when modified for the small screen (not to mention load faster).

The options breakout something like this:

• hosted
• plug-ins
• custom dev
• themes / templates
• style-sheets
• adaptive-layouts
• auto-generate

In my presentation I go over each of these, with examples and links:

If you haven’t gone mobile before today, now is your chance!

O’Reilly Radar recently put it as “…is iOS then still to be judged primarily as a communications device platform? Or, as a low-end gaming disruptor to Microsoft Xbox or Nintendo Wii in the living room?”. And I agree, if we’re seeing a shift to a more casual gaming scenario where more and more people will pick up a game if it’s easy and natural what better platform then the one in your pocket? Or the one on your current laptop? This reduces the barrier of entry to gaming to zero, or at least .99.

“For One Quarter of Users, the iPad is a Game Machine”, which I again agree with. Not only is it capable of great visuals – it’s convenient, comparably inexpensive, and touching is a great way to interact with games “naturally” (like a Wii remote or the Xbox Kinetic). The article goes on to say “38% of iPad owners responding to the survey indicated that they had no desire to purchase a different mobile gaming device.” – and for some, I’m sure this is their only gaming device.

Gaming apps continue to take the top spots on mobile devices: “Gaming apps once again took the number one spot for and accounted for 41 percent of apps on the network in June” – this article also mentions iOS growing 36% to 56% of the total US smartphone mix.

Titles like “mobiles are the consoles of the future” are becoming more common, “by the end of this year, there will be 120 million iOS devices in circulation – only 20 million shy of the most popular console of all-time, the PS2, which has sold 140 million units.” – again, not everyone is playing games on their mobile devices, but with these numbers comes great potential!

Data from Resolve Market Research shows that after owning an iPad, you’re 38% more likely to NOT by a portable gaming device (like DS or PSP). Which makes iOS devices like iPad and iPhone prime targets for Nintendo and Sony (as if Sony isn’t already going after Apple).

I think the iOS devices have shown that they’re not just for Snake and Tetris. First person shooter games like Archetype, show how “console like” online mobile gaming can work. And Words with Friends, and other turn based games excel on mobile “go with you anywhere, always connected” devices.

When Google announced the Chrome App Store, a majority of the non-Google app were games. Even demoing “Lego Star Wars”, which is a pretty rich console game. While I don’t think it’s total clear yet, Google is moving to a web app strategy – and we’re already seeing HTML5 gaming engines – like Aves, show some promising demos. And games like Pie Guy have been out for awhile now, showing some basic HTML gaming on the iPhone.

What’s also interesting is Apple’s “here’s the platform, let’s see what people do” attitude – and people gamed, and now they’re releasing their “Game Center” hub that will better connect players to their games.

Personally I love gaming on the iPhone, and iPad – and just last week was excited about, and waiting for a game to come out – Star Wars: Battle for Hoth. But then happy finds, like Helsing’s Fire shows me innovation with touch based gameing is far from over!

A lot of these smaller, fun games also bring down the cost, from million dollar blockbusters to something that can be made in 72 hours, with a small team.

My 5yo also really enjoys games, and has recently been enjoying Monkey Island on the iPad, and Star Wars on the iPod. With a busy lifestyle – riding in the car, small chunks of time here and there, a mobile gaming device is perfect.

We have, and love the Xbox 360 (check my raptr account!), but our leisure time is being shifted from console, TV, movies, and more to mobile, and what we have on our devices.

So what does the future of gaming hold? Probably something in your hand.

I’ve received some great comments, questions, and kudos from my IA Summit and Big Design talks on Mobile Strategy, and I’ve heard from a good number of people that they’re using the presentation to make decisions about mobile strategy on their own (which is great!). I did put together a couple of quick worksheets that could help turn the presentation into a mini-workshop for anyone trying to make decisions about what to do in mobile.

The first is really just a follow-along worksheet, where you can take notes, and fill in the blanks:

Download PDF

The second is a sketch sheet, where you can start to vision out and do a little designing of your own. Sketch out a couple pages, and see if your interactions and flows make sense.

Download PDF

I added some things to remember while sketching:

• Simplify the design
• Design for touch – not mouse
• Note common mobile UI patterns
• Think about context – traveling vs. at home
• Design for speed – let them get to what they need quickly
• Rank functionality – you don’t need everything!
• Follow usage patterns – what are your users doing on mobile
• Remember location
• Don’t cram too much
• Note phone features – GPS, Camera, etc…

Hopefully this will help you or your company come to a decision on your mobile strategy.

I’m pretty much an RSS junkie. User Experience, mobile, technology, gaming – it all never stops. My passion for consuming news and feeds comes from my passion for what I do, and how it all relates with each other. Need a new icon for an iPhone app? I just starred that. What trends will shape the next five years? I’m sharing it right now. And I want to make finding these items easier for anyone who has a passion for these same topics…

I’ve been trying to keep up with everything everywhere (if only I could just download the internet ;-) for years, and luckily the tools have gotten better (have you seen the new reeder app for the iPad?- screen below), feeds better organized, and news – ever more abundant. Add to that the proliferation of twitter (etc..), and sharing these links has become a mainstream event in most people’s lives.

I’ve found that most people who do what I do have similar interests. They’re interested in what I’m reading, and I’m interested in what they’re reading. So I wanted to make that easier, not only for RSS junkies like myself, but for people who possibly leapfrogged directly to twitter, or have other reasons for not consuming news via readers, feeds, “top sites”, or something forced on them, like Google Buzz.

So here you go – if you’re on twitter and interested in the following topics, follow me, and I’ll share what I find (details on this below):

• http://twitter.com/jeremyfeeds (@jeremyfeeds)- this is the mothership, taking directly from my Google Reader shared feed, and posting here. Be prepared for some heavy tweeting.
• http://twitter.com/mobilefeeds (@mobilefeeds) – this is segmented specifically for those interested in mobile technology: iPhone, iPad, Android, mobile usage, statistics, etc…
• http://twitter.com/trendingtravel (@trendingtravel) – travel news: hotels, travel sites, itinerary tools, destination guides, etc…
• http://twitter.com/touchtrends (@touchtrends) – keeping up with touch and multi-touch news and trends.
• http://twitter.com/gamerposts (@gamerposts) – news around the video game industry, new games, deals, new technologies, etc…
• http://twitter.com/jeremylikes (@jeremylikes) – this is a collection of things I favorite, like, and star on twitter, flickr, and tumblr.

And of course if you’re already using google reader – go straight to the source – my Google Reader account: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/jeremyj or read them at your leisure on my Google Profile page: http://www.google.com/profiles/jeremyj

While this may seem daunting (updating all these accounts) – it’s actually really simple. I’m using a great little online tool called dlvr.it. This lets me take my feed (that I’m creating anyways) and split it using keywords across these different twitter accounts – automatically! It’s not perfect – a post about travel could leak over to @gamerposts if the article for some reason mentions “airlines”, but in general it works pretty well.

dlvr.it also keeps stats, and tracks the click-throughs, which is interesting, and if accurate shows how many people are just out there on twitter searching keywords. In a months time @jeremyfeeds got 10k clicks on just 700 posts (which it tells me is an average of 15 clicks per post).

More and more people are turning to twitter to find new and interesting news posts online – and I only see that as a trend that will continue to grow as twitter gains more and more mainstream popularity.

I hope by doing this, I can help people find out more information on what they’re passionate about, and in turn, will eventually share their own findings.

Feel free to also follow my personal account @jeremyjohnson, or my less serious @raisingrobots as well. See you online!

The signage was bigger and better thanks to fastsigns being a sponsor this year.

It’s really amazing the great talent we have in the area, and this year we augmented with some great out-of-towners like: Jared Spool, Bill Scott, Chris Bernard, and Dr. Susan Weinschenk.

Stephen Anderson had us supplied with a mini-set of Mental Notes cards.

Many of the slide decks were out on Note & Point from the presentations at Big Design: Kelsey Ruger, Travis Issacs, and Joe Dyer. And a couple more presentations on the Big Design SlideShare group.

But what about the parties you ask? Yes we have those as well.

What does success look like for Big Design? A great group of people – wanting to connect, share and explore new topics.

Looking for more info about Big Design and how it went? Check out the #bigd10 hashtag, and some of the blog posts and photos that followed the conference:

My photos on Flickr

@michaelcummings flickr set

http://theusabilitycorner.blogspot.com/2010/06/big-design-day-1-secret-entrance.html

http://theusabilitycorner.blogspot.com/2010/06/big-design-conference-my-timeline.html

http://worldofdevign.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/putting-on-my-bigd10-yellow-hat/

http://www.mkanderson.com/portal/archives/1797

http://derans.blogspot.com/2010/05/big-design-conference-2010-recap.html

http://www.madmacgirl.com/2010/05/30/brief-reflections-on-the-bigdesign-conference/

http://baxie404.com/2010/05/big-d-conference-day-1/

First, I went over the general trends and numbers of what’s going on in the mobile space – nothing in my opinion moves faster, or changes more frequently. It hard to keep-up, and new stats come out everyday.

To start here’s my presentation (hosted on SlideShare), you can download the PDF here, or listen to the podcast.

The first step (after learning a bit about mobile in general) is determining what type of mobile project you have:

• Mobile First
• Content
• Application or ecommerce
• Entertainment

Each of these have specific properties that will help inform your strategy. As an example, if you’re creating a Mobile First product – you’re going to need to target multiple devices, starting with one of the dominate mobile OSes: iPhone or Android. You’re going to most likely go native, as your project being mobile specific will need access to many of the phones core functionality. That, vs a content site with a well established .com – who would want to go with something like a mobile formatted website as a companion to the desktop site.

The second step is to get into the design process, which has lots of factors:

• What parts of your existing site need to go mobile? (if you have an existing site…)
• Who are your mobile users?
• What devices are they using?
• How do you design for mobile?
• What devices do you need to focus on?
• What technologies do you use?

I try to answer all these, and almost like a decision tree, you usually come out with a solid plan to move forward.

At the end of the presentation I go over a number of upcoming trends surrounding mobile. I’f you’re looking to keep up with mobile trends, I’ve created a twitter account that posts all the mobile related articles I’m currently reading: @mobilefeeds

Luke W. (www.lukew.com) attended my talk, and posted a recap - IA Summit: The Mobile Question – and boxesandarrows just posted the podcasts, you can download my presentation’s podcast here.

My slides make a bit more sense with me talking to them ;-) so I’d like to see everyone in the Dallas, TX area come see me at Big (D)esign on Saturday, May 29th – and if you’re getting ready for a mobile project, see me at the conference for some one-on-one.

The thing about mobile is that it’s always changing. Today as I write this on a plane with my iPad (which just came out this past weekend) i’m wondering about the iphone event apple is putting on later today and how that will effect my presentation. Hopefully not much :-) Either way, I’m ready for tomorrow and interested to hear stories from all the UX professionals at the IA Summit.

In my presentation I have a snapshot of the current mobile space (side note: whenever I try to type “c” I try to use my fingernail, which doesn’t work on a touch screen…) and then I walk through a way to help you and your team to come up with a mobile plan. A plan that’s specific to your experience, users, and technology.

Mobile has been a passion of mine for a long time. I’ve had Windows CE, Windows Mobile, Palm, Blackberry, Nokia, Sony, iPods, etc… And never until I tried an iPhone did someone get it right, a light and fast experience that responds like an extension of your arm.

I’m not fully a iPhone fanboy – I really like a lot of the AI (After iPhone) devices. I’ve played with Android, and Palm Pre devices – all really nice, in fact some better than the iPhone in some ways. This “age” of mobile is just exciting! I don’t think since the first GUI devices have we seen so many new human-computer interactions developed in such a short time.

As i’ve mentioned before, as technology becomes smaller and cheaper – talking, connected, interactive, disposable, video cereal boxes here we come!

If you’re here at the IA Summit, I hope you stop by to discuss mobile design and development with me!

I remember B.i. (before iPhone) when applications on mobile devices were something only hardcore travelers, geeks, and gamers had tried. But now, you say mobile, and the nearest marketing person responds with “So when can I get my app”? For the first time, it’s easy, and really fun to download an app. I currently have 253 apps on my iPhone – I don’t think even Apple saw this coming.

We had Forrester come out to our $largecompany about a year or so before the iPhone, even then – people were trying to make the decision on what to do in mobile. This was before apps were easy to download and mobile browsers were converging on a standard. Forrester at the time said what pretty much everyone was saying, if you don’t REALLY need an app, STAY AWAY! It’s amazing how quickly things change in the mobile space.

With Apple’s desire to own the entire experience it’s no wonder they got it right. You can’t string together a series of unrelated things and expect them to work together. It takes owning the experience, which is something Apple excels at. But even with the success of the iTunes music store, when the first release of the iPhone OS – apps were nowhere in sight. The web app was enough. But when they finally opened up that SDK to create apps, wow did the iPhone get way more useful.

Again, I think Apple surprised themselves this time – and the interactions used to access these apps on the iPhone home screen show they didn’t think people would have more than 15-20 apps, if that. Someone like me with my 200+ apps, loose apps, forget about apps, and have a hard time finding some apps. And my 5 year old, once he fills his screens, he can’t really spell yet, so searching is out for him. It’s time to fix this, and I hope with iPhone OS 4 they will. But let’s think about how they could fix this problem… How do you make it easy to sift through 250+ apps?

Via: Fast Company

For me it’s GAMES. I’m amazed the quality of games coming to the iPhone, they keep getting better and better – and both me and my 5 year old are big fans. In fact, when I asked my five year old if he was interested in a Nintendo DS or an iPod, he went with the (what he calls) “phone”. I’ve had gameboys, PSP, and other handhelds, but combine the fit and finish of Apple, with some really creative game designers, and you have the ultimate gaming device.

I also have a lot of useful apps that I’d say I use daily to weekly, and a large set for when I travel. Apple needs to devise a way for our pages to reflect the different contexts we’re in on a mobile device. When I’m around town, one screen set – when out of town a different set – and how bout a “lounging around” context? Maybe we need “sets” that we can flick up and down? Or use voice command to put the iPhone in a home/work mode? How about a category switcher using a little page curl at the bottom of the screen? I’m sure Apple will figure this out, but they need to do it soon… I can’t find my Plants vs. Zombies ;-)