Invisible Design

Last month I was in Luoyang (a place of great historic significance about Buddhism in China. See more here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longmen_Grottoes .

As I was walking by the rock cut caves, these two pieces of design captured my attention. Look at the lamp post. At the face of it – we see a perfectly old design. It has been carefully chosen to blend with the context – the historical site. But inside it is a contemporary high watt light bulb. But look at how both live in perfect harmony. Needless to mention, it looks look good too.

Second and even more amazing is this ‘sound rock’ (as I call it). As I walked around the caves I wondered where the music was coming from for I could not see any speakers. Finally I discovered the speakers hiding inside the dead looking rocks.
What you see under the bench is a speaker hiding inside a rock-shaped shell. It is nice to see how Simple & beautiful, merges with the surroundings, rather than standing out & shouting for attention. If great design disappears is that which in behaviour, then these two are good examples. I look at them as examples of simple smart design that is context sensitive. So the next time you see a gadget or an appliance that stands out from the context, just be reminded that it is not outstanding design. Because great design is that which is felt much more than seen!

Why iPhone will keep eating into BlackBerry’s market share

Stop looking at the device for sometime and just watch what Apple is doing around the iPhone. Go to iTunes App Store and you’ll know why I am saying what I am saying.
The new App Store has unveiled over 500 third party applications for the iPhone. Add to it, almost 25% of these 500 new applications are free. A lot of the remaining cost less than USD 10!
I am not going to talk about all the new games that you can download because many phones already do it and iPhone is expected to and does it rather well. But I would like to mention the specialized programs that can even help you access business analytics in Oracle database. iPhone no longer seems to be just a looker, it is turning into a great business doer as well.

What I see happening is that iPhone is covering the spectrum of multiple applications much faster than its other Smart Phone counterparts. What about BlackBerry? Well, despite its advertising and many new colours (pink is noteworthy!) as we see below here – BlackBerry is still essentially a business phone that my mom and girlfriend won’t buy. But iPhone is a kind of smart phone that my mother, girlfriend and even my brother would happily buy. Why? Now it is difficult to slot it as fun only. It can do both - fun and work equally well.

However there is something more important that is dawning upon me (rather late!). It is that the future of mobile phones is not about the shell the (hardware). Thus unlike today when you have a colourful phone for girls and a dark grey phone for the executive or a large screen phone for the movie buff or the great speaker edition for the music crazy; tomorrow’s phones could essentially come in different sizes and shapes but standard hardware capabilities (ps: no matter how many diverse applications we might develop, people I suppose, would still desire a basic minimum diversity of design). Standard does not mean lowest common denominator. In the future one could choose from among many available applications as per ones needs. So you and I could be holding similar looking phones but they might not be geared to do the same stuff. In other words, function would finally be freed from form.
What’s great about it? For starters I would not be forced to buy a funky looking phone just because I like music. I can buy a more regular looking phone but it could well do a great job for me on music sharing, downloading, sorting etc.
Or I need not buy a boring looking phone just because I need to check my store’s inventory on the move. The other interesting thing about newer applications is that it makes an old phone feel new. It is almost like a video game console being as good and exciting as the games titles that are released for it!

One question.
Why have we still not achieved this kind of freedom (function independent of form) in desktop or laptop computing devices?
Because PC applications, have been dominated mainly by one software company viz. Microsoft. In the computing arena we are still carrying Microsoft influenced enterprise legacy on our shoulders.
Microsoft started with enterprise software applications and it still makes things from that mindset. Because software applications were originally developed for work more than life, we still have the hangover in the way the largest software company creates these applications. Although we can never be thankful enough to Microsoft for all the progress that they offered from the dull and gloomy days of DOS prompt, to the new icon driven applications, we still need to shift gears and develop applications that can bring about a similar revolution in PC/Laptop Computing (unless of course if mobile phones become the PCs of the future as many of us believe).

Shift

It has been a long break. Some of you who visit this space might be wondering what happened. Well, a lot.
Traveling across big cities in China and getting a glimpse of tier 4 and 5 towns, frustrations of not being able to go into the depth of things mainly due to the language handicap, struggle and subsequent failure in trying to ‘crash learn’ the language, meeting many new people, discovering some of the joys and sorrows of the people in China, hosting my parents in this country and seeing them enjoy the experience, hosting my uncle and aunt and cousins and rediscovering the joy of being with blood relations, realizing that I have not written anything in the past three months, feeling the urge to create and failing repeatedly due to work pressures and a lot more..

While all this has been happening in place of writing and sharing I have been thinking about adding a new dimension to this Blog. I now feel that my passion for personal technologies and how people are using them and my preoccupation with design must start reflecting in the things that I put up here.

So from now on I will try and share as much of these, as I have tried to look at people in the past.
I hope that the change will be refreshing for the readers and also bring something new to this space.

I would share more about some of the additional changes that I am mooting, in the months to come. Till then, stay hungry and keep creating!