It was developed as a visual bridge between two incompatible scales, the Imperial system and the Metric system.
Wikipedia

I even remember seeing the Modular Man in some painting at the art museum back home, but I didn’t realize it’s significance till now.

Companies like Apple are making design impossible for startups to ignore. Startups like Path, Airbnb, Square, and Massive Health have design at the core of their business, and they’re doing phenomenal work. But what is ‘design’ actually? Is it a logo? A WordPress theme? An innovative UI?

If you work in a/with a startup, read this and send it out to everyone. I just did.

If there was ever a wireless speaker I wanted to own, this is it.

I was excited to check out how the new Clear app team have implemented the navigation between views — especially the “back button”. In Clear app you have to pinch two elements together to go to the previous/higher view. This means you have to use two hands though — I had to wait to get off the train to be able to move to the lists view from the item view in Clear app. It’s hard to think of intuitive and easy to use alternatives to the back button — I think even Clear app hasn’t nailed it.

Update: Just realized Clear app also implements a pull down to navigate “up”. (I know I know, very ironical)

I’d been trying to think of alternatives to the “back button” — an action that takes you back to the previous view. Some “back button” alternatives that came to my mind:

• Shake the phone to communicate “no, take me back”
• Tilt the phone to the right to slide the current screen out of view

These are prone to accidental navigation if made too sensitive. Also, the metaphors might not work well in all cases.

• Swipe screen towards the right to go back to the previous view

This could be a viable option but it limits what you can do with the opposite action of swiping the screen to the left

• Draw a "<" on the screen

Maybe this could work, I tried drawing the shape on my iPhone — it’s surprisingly not the easiest to draw. A slight variation, a narrower arrow is easier, so maybe that’s a better option.

The implementation in iOS & Android of a software or hardware back button seem to work fine, but is there an even better way?

Note to self: It’s not just about the solving a problem, but how you solve the problem.

That being said, I am all game for the innovation that happens on new platforms. Don’t let standards stop you from innovating. Do keep in mind that you should be building for the user and not a platform.

It’s ironical, but easy to see that, the app wars are becoming the new browser wars.

You can download my slides here

What I really like is how these guys have made sure they keep the touch interface easy to navigate with fingers by not crowding it and keeping the “hit area” big enough.

Someone gave me a demo of the Mutewatch at a conference last month and it was really as impressive as the video claims. Although at $299 I can’t really justify buying it to try it out, so I’m gonna stick to my Mondaine for now.

• When paying, count your zeros
• When counting your zeros, decimal comma is not the same as decimal point
• Don’t leave your $30 t-shirt in your $15 a night hotel room
• Ice in beer can prevent hangovers
• Saigon Red beer is better than Saigon Green

I was in Saigon, Vietnam over the weekend for BarcampSaigon and I really liked it. Loved the food, the people, the weather & the barcamp. At the Barcamp, I spoke about my workflow for designing products – mobile apps to be specific. I’ve uploaded the slides from the talk for download here

Other links from my talks:

• Wireframing tools – Prototyping iPhone apps with Keynote & Kodak Picture kiosks
• Street photography – http://flickr.com/djnavv
• Writing a CV in HTML
• An awesome CV example

I’ll be going back to Vietnam in a month, this time to Hanoi – hoping it’s as good as Saigon.

Since 21-May–2011, Alfred has been shown 1,149 times. Average 18.8 times per day

Like everyone, I’ve found my own unique ways of using it. Today I thought of one more which could be quite handy. Quite often I run into text where it’s hard to make out a capital O from a 0, a capital I from a lowercase l. If I could change Alfred app’s default font to a console font, a quick copy and paste into alfred could be very useful.

Here’s a screenshot to illustrate:

I love the Alfred App team for sticking to simplicity & I respect that. Just throwing a suggestion out there.