Forethink Design

Yes, I believe we need ethic. Ethic for usability is a core value. But with same knowlege about usability, you can do horrible anti-usability or less-horrible but still dirty job for your big boss. It is tempting when you know what people do in a typical way, you can predict and may utilize it for making more money. But if you exploit and don't share benefit with user as usability expert, you are in hell of usability. Some stupid design is actually designed for more making money. Actually it is stupid because it is short sighted for short term revenue. You can make a report how much money you could make a money from better design or you can make a report how much money you made from stupid annoying design. Why I'm sure about it? Why I'm sure usability-abuse will be ultimate failure for your business? Because user is smart enough. You have to have love for user. That's 1st principle. Example. At front page of Yahoo.com, if you click an interesting news article, you will

I changed this video link to new 1 year old baby. S/he can control image browsing on iPhone. Interestingly can control speed for it. This is 2 years old baby Anna and she is playing with iPhone. It's quite awesome because she can't speak well yet nor read English but can do iPhone. Probably she can control TV set and DVD for watching Nemo. S/he is one of 5 percentile which cropped population by UI designer who usually focus on major population who can buy that product. What is easy? Yes, if 2 year old baby can do that it is definitely easy. Otherwise how about elderly citizen? Dean Kamen (Inventor of Segway) told us about his experience with 81 years old lady who did test run Segway. "I can't drive any more but need to go glocery store.","I can drive this (Segway)". What is needed for making easy interface? Good simple logic, Continuity... But how can it make Anna smile when she find music player? As once Spock said "Logic is only start of wisdom&qu

Robot get a new job. This is traffic guide robot at front of Kyungbu highway Seoul gate. He has white handsome face, blue uniform of police officer and red lighting wands. So drivers are supposed to be more careful when driving into tollgate. It is installed with new wireless paying system. But a scarecrow is only good for stupid sparrows. Smart sparrow will ignore it soon. It is certainly another annoying new invention. How much time is needed to be familiar with the robot for drivers?

For today's dinner, I decided to go a department store. Usually B1 floor is food court and fresh food market in Korea (Japan as well). You can choose a packaged food from a variety of small shops by shopping around together. Every time I hit the floor. I could see long line up at front of a Chinese food store where sell Shanghainese big Dimsum. It is really popular 20~30 people are waiting. It is quite unusual. OK, why not? I decide to stand in end of line ....and waited for 30min for my turn. Observation: 1. Long line attracts people. Many customers asked what it is and how it is. It attracts people who never tasted it before including myself. 2. After long line up, customer want to have more. For example, I just want to try one but bought 4. One lady in front of me tried to buy dozen but refused. I have to hate her... 3. Actually there are 2 kind of Dimsum. Because spicy Dimsum is more popular, you may get standard Dimsum easily. But it seems no one know about it. And I have to

Sony GPS CS1 is a simple location tracking module. It helps to match a photo with place where the photo is taken at. I can browse tracks where I travelled on Google Earth or Cyworld map service as well. It's fun! You can make a content for a real SPIME . But besides of accuracy problem, there are some problem with this. It can provide information about a place.. But it can't provide heading direction (Direction of point view). And if it is possible altitude information will be useful as well. And still GPS information such as "N37,32,54/E126,54,56.8" is not familiar with me. It should be "Near Hapjeung rotary heading west".

This is Mr. Pizza truck (Pizza restaurant brand). Driver's photo ID, name and company call number is printed on back of the truck. It is company policy to promote good public image as good driving manner. If you have any problem with this truck, you can call the company and complain about it. Anyway, the driver guy is not smiling in picture so I wonder he was a volunteer or not. And if you can read his name, you are too close to this truck...

Cyworld.com is one of my favorite site and I never sleep without clicking in it. One day, I found it is under service maintenance work. I think it is probably regular maintenance or major system upgrade. Anyway, I could guess the maintenance manager has quite good humor sense. Please check A. It provide current time(KST), remaining time, web cam which shows an IT guy(wearing coat in June) and excuse of maintenance (Blur blur ~~). Bottom part is more fun. C is suggesting you to run a free anti-virus program. D is showing a tip for getting a well sleep. You may follow demonstration by Cyworld avatar or click to see a video. At E, you may select a game for killing time. You may buy it for your mini blog later. I think it could be very negative but changed to positive experience now.

Yea~ I'm back. I'm big fan of sub title. Thanks to volunteers who translate into Korean, I could have enjoyed my favorite Japanese shows ( London hearts, Halo Moni etc.) and American show (Numerous...including all Startrek episods) without any language barrier. But it is just separate movement by some one who want to practice language skill or just want to share something fun with friends. Recently one of my favorite podcast Rocketboom introduced an interesting website who realize another dream of Wikinomics. DotSub is wiki style video & subtitle website. Volunteer who comes from every country can add their own language version for a video title. Really cool and enlighting. Because it might break lengend of Babel. Interested? Are you bilingual? Here is my tip for making good subtitle. I learn it from here and there. Why don't we make your own subtitle? Break the wall and make bridge between cultures. 1. Original transcript is important. It should be accurate as possibl

Yesterday, I went to 'One year old' birthday party for daughter of my friends. The climax of the party was baby girl's first grab. It is traditional event called "Dol-Ja-Bi". At front of her, father and mother present their wish list items such as book, a bunch of cotton thread, pencil (Traditional) and stethoscope, PC mouse (recently popular items). Baby will try to grab one of interested item. It might be related with her potential future. For example, cotton thread stands for long live traditionally and mouse is skill for digital age. Finally, she grabbed toy stethoscope at first and book for next. We hope she could be a doctor someday. Interestingly I found a guest baby boy who is 9 month old can’t grab anything yet. So I believe this event in the party is to present her ability to learn as human baby! Otherwise I found an interesting video by Alan Kay in 1987 . In the video lecture, he showed a 22 month girl who can use Macintosh computer. She can insert boot