Foursquare-powered door lock
Erin Sparling and Nicholas Hall of apartm.net show off their new door lock, powered by Foursquare. Check in at the door and the door unlocks. Location is getting cooler.
Posts on innovation, user experience, research and design
I'm currently a product innovation manager with experience in product management, user-centered design, usability engineering, brand management and visual design.
Note: This is a personal blog containing personal opinions about research, innovations and experiences that I find interesting and informative. It is not associated with my employer in any way, shape or form.
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The phone book was the first Facebook
I guess it had to happen. Someone finally wrote an entire book about the phone book. Leave no stone unturned, right? Well as it turns out, there's a great lesson in the history of the phone book for innovators. When asked about innovations that changed the world, most folks conjure up thoughts of things like the light bulb, telephones, cars, etc. But how about the lowly phone book? Actually, it was pretty amazing - primarily for the cultural change it symbolized and helped usher in.
From the article at Reason:
Phone books provided a crucial element to the system: intrusiveness. While many American cities had been compiling databases of their inhabitants well before the phone was invented, listing names, occupations, and addresses, individuals remained fairly insulated from each other. Contacting someone might require a letter of introduction, a facility for charming butlers or secretaries, a long walk.
Phone books eroded these barriers. They were the first step in our long journey toward the pandemic self-surveillance of Facebook. “Hey strangers!” anyone who appeared in their pages ordained. “Here’s how to reach me whenever you feel like it, even though I have no idea who you are.”
Its immediate effect was that it facilitated commerce. For businesses, phone directory advertising would evolve into a crucial business tool. It reached the same mass audiences that newspaper and magazine advertising did, but it was cheaper, more persistent, easier to manage: Place one ad and you got a steady stream of inquiries all year long. For consumers, phone directory advertising was an even bigger boon. It gave them a comprehensive overview of the choices that were available to them for any given product or service, an efficient way to comparison shop. It made commerce more accessible and thus more competitive.
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Quick thoughts on Twitter's UX
I liked this passage on some of the psychological differences between the UX of Twitter and Facebook, particularly the concept of following as a subscription and the type of relationship that sets up vs. friending. Given the privacy debacle Facebook has been dealing with the past 36 hours, the note on the simplicity of the privacy is also a big plus for Twitter.
Twitter nailed a few important things in their user experience compared to alternatives like Facebook. Posts are public by default, so there aren’t debates or surprises about privacy. Streams are built out of subscriptions (“following”), not “friendship”—a word that loses meaning when your friends are 500 strangers.
via 37 Signals
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