For Immediate Release

ARLINGTON, MA (U.S.) - February 7, 2010 - McAfee, Inc., the world's largest dedicated security technology company released their 2010 suite of consumer products today, designed from the ground-up by Involution Studios. PC Magazine is already enthusing over the new user interface, calling it "user-friendly," "pleasant," and "streamlined," giving it a 4 star rating and "within shouting distance" of their coveted Editor's Choice Award. This is an increase from the 2 1/2 star rating given to the previous version.

Tomorrow is the expected announcement of the new Apple “tablet” computer. Predictions for this device are all over the map, ranging from a “true” tablet computer, down to an oversized iPhone, and everything in between. I don’t have any inside information about Apple, but I think I have a pretty good idea what this new device is going to be. And if I’m wrong, Apple may just be releasing their first major lemon in a really long time.

I expect the new Apple device to be a “Kindle killer:” a device that leverages the iPhone OS in a larger and more versatile interface that is optimized for buying, transferring and consuming content. I hardly think it will limit itself to simply books or magazines; I expect this to be a next-generation media consumption device, to beautifully handle video and to incorporate gaming at least inasmuch as the iPhone does currently and quite likely even more.

For Immediate Release

ARLINGTON, MA (U.S.) - January 13, 2010 - Juhan Sonin, Creative Director of Involution Studios Boston, will be speaking on Thursday February 4 at the mHealth Networking Conference in Washington, D.C. His presentation, Health Everyware, is based on more than five years of experience envisioning and designing a system and artifacts around next-generation health care.

This is part one of a three-part series that will detail Google’s rise to becoming the dominant company in the computing industry. Part one will review the history of IBM and Microsoft, Google’s predecessors in this position; part two will take a close look at the last decade in computing and particularly at Google’s; and part three will look into the future and help you understand what’s to come for Google and the rest of the industry.

Depending on which gushing analyst you listen to, Google’s release last week of the Nexus One “superphone” is going to change the computing industry. Some are pointing to the phone itself and the fact that Google is now officially a hardware company. Others are pointing to the Google ecommerce store and approach to selling the phone and calling that the true harbinger of future dominance. Wrapped up in much of this excitement is a sense of surprise, as if Google’s doing these things wasn’t something that—at the very least—should be seen as a predictable result of Google’s expanded impact in the industry over the past decade. This very short-sighted breathlessness makes me wonder if the people who are telling us what to think really know what they are talking about.

Not much surprises me anymore. After more than a decade spent providing boutique services, followed by the last 6 or so years strictly in software, I’ve really earned the increase in grey hairs on my face and head. However, one thing I continue to find absolutely baffling is the way companies and designers often attempt to design their software from the bottom-up, screen-by-agonizing-screen. That approach is categorically wrong. Any design or redesign must start from the systemic level, from the top-down.

What does that mean? Consider an application that most of us are familiar with, iTunes. If Apple came to me and asked me to simply redesign the home page for Videos inside of iTunes, without regard for the rest of the product, they would be setting up me—and the redesign effort itself—for failure. The Videos home page is one screen amidst a veritable tsunami of information. Anything we do to that page will impact the user experience of the entire product. To redesign that screen, large and important as it may be, in isolation is an inherent fail. By changing it without changing the many pages around and relying on it, we would simply be buggering up the overall user interface, no matter how much better that spot redesign might be.

This week, embattled R&B artist Chris Brown closed his Twitter account after a profanity-laced tirade. This makes Brown just the latest public figure to have an embarrassing meltdown and then abashedly terminate their account on the social networking giant.

At the same time, just last week a university student interviewed me to discuss trends in the relationship between social networking and how people behave. Her concern and focus was on the trend of drunk or high college students using texting and Twitter to lash out against boyfriends, ex’es, teachers and other people who have done them wrong. As I told her, this sort of behaviour has been happening since long before modern communication technology existed. The difference is, shouting “I hate Ellen!” from the balcony of your fraternity house is ephemeral and easily forgotten or denied, while texting or Tweeting it becomes an immediate artifact and only strengthens Ellen’s ability to point you out as the jerk you “really are”. One can only guess how many social networking accounts have been closed in the aftermath of a substance-induced tantrum.

Online surveys are one of the most commonly-used feedback mechanisms for businesses. And it’s no wonder: they are cheap to create, deploy, tabulate, report and share. They provide a degree of insight into how customers think and feel about your company, products and/or services. While getting valuable and insightful results is much more likely when the survey is being administered and interpreted by a trained professional, it is an unfortunate reality that most companies let untrained marketing or communications professionals attempt to create surveys. I’m writing today to try and help those intrepid souls.

While there are a variety of simple tips to help amateurs create better online surveys, the single most important by far is: keep it short. Most people will respond to a short, quick survey. Those same people will not respond to a long and arduous survey. Despite that, most customer satisfaction surveys are looooooong. For example, a hotel chain I stayed at recently sent me a 21 (!) page survey. Here’s how the transaction went:

1. Get an email asking me to complete their survey
2. Click on the link and intend to complete it
3. Arrive at the page and see there are only five questions on it
4. Heartened, fill the page out and click “Next”
5. Get an alert that I’m now on page “2 of 21”
6. Disgusted, immediately close the browser and return to my life

Most of our customers are relatively sophisticated with technology. They either own tech start-ups or are in a role where they are involved in the software, website, IT, digital marketing or some other type of technology within their company. Not surprisingly many of them carry powerful mobile computing devices and are far ahead of the general population in their adoption and use of these tools. In fact, if you are reading this, you probably count among these progressive few.

Sorry to burst your bubble and scuttle your budgets of time and money. It’s true. I’ve seen it dozens of times: clients come to us saying something has to has to has to be shipped in 12 weeks. We tell them there is no way that can happen, no matter how much they pay us. They disagree and pay us what is required. They are subsequently unable - between their internal approvals, back-end engineering, design integration, product testing, deployment and many other factors- to get their product shipped anywhere near the deadline.

Beyond the Sisyphean nature of the frustration felt by everyone involved, our relationship with the customer is ostensibly strained in these situations. On one hand, we’ve worked hard and quickly and done everything we could in the contracted time frame; on the other, the design remains incomplete albeit for reasons beyond our control. Most customers are reasonable and accept that the delta is caused by their internal issues. Sometimes we try to give a little extra to help them get over the hump. Every rare occasion an unscrupulous client tries to take advantage of the situation and compel us to work for free because of their issues. Either way, nobody is happy. Our goal is always to lead or help our customers in shipping incredible software, and making a reasonable profit in the process. If we wanted to afford yachts and vacation houses, believe me we would not be in the services business to begin with!

It is generally accepted among the design intelligentsia that Apple is designing better software and hardware than pretty much everybody else in the core areas they choose to play. Yet there is one area where they have notably failed - if only by non-participation - yet stands as one of the most vital hardware solutions in the present and future: docking.