Marcus Kwan: design

Wow, time has flown...

Fri, 21 May 2004 06:15:17 GMT

We've been here 6 months now...whoa. There's no way to sum it up here, but it's been busy. Moved into a house in Redmond, great neighborhood. The rain thing is still a myth to me, I'm having to water the lawn and trees quite a bit. We're hosting the neighborhood happy hour tomorrow. Finally got the garage organized enough to get one car in. Kids are very high energy and growing fast. We think the boy said da-da for the first time the other day. Settling into work, lots of great people, I'm helping with the designs for IE, sharing and search. That's a lot of meat. At the end of every day, both Alex and I are exhausted! We miss our family and friends in Austin. We're looking forward to having Alex's sister come in for Memorial Day weekend.

Today is my last day as a frog

Fri, 07 Nov 2003 16:06:14 GMT

Well, this week has been nuts...as usual. Had a big update presentation with the client yesterday. I've been trying to help transition 2 others to fill my role. Sounds like they will try to play the zone. It is tough to have focus when you're a lame duck, but I've tried to be as professional as possible and dedicated to the team. It's been a good work week. frog has been a great experience. I'll miss it. Alex is a bit disappointed that I've had to work as much as I have this week....as usual.

So the biggest decision at work today is where to go for the good-bye lunch. I've had a bratwurst from the Best Wurst hotdog stand on Congress everyday this week so far. Mustard, onions, saurkraut and curry ketchup. I think I've had my fill.

Panther rocks!

Tue, 28 Oct 2003 04:57:32 GMT

The IT guys loaded up Mac OSX Panther while I was sick on Friday. It is cool! Why?

Easy Navigation. Persistant sources/favorites in the finder Finder enable quicker access and context to where you are. The color labeling is back and totally rocks. It's easy to mark trail to files and folders. Yeah, I know a lot of people will say that that's what Microsoft did x years ago with the tree on the left, but what I like about this is that its a limited set of starting points, not a fully redundant tree. And favorite starting points that I've put over there, not everything under the sun. They've made smart choices to limit the complexity, and allow users to make smart choices too.

Easy Windows Management. Expose is totally cool and fixes a large hole in windows management that OSX had. See the demo in the link here. It enables you to dynamically scale all open windows down so you can see the landscape and pick the one you want. You can also see just open windows of an active app. Simple, effective.

Just a few whizzbang features that make it really stand out and improve the overall experience.

Easy music sharing. Side note, it's cool to see Window's users in the office fire up iTunes for PC and share their music. You're able to access friends playlists who are on the network. It uses Rendevous, the same technology that Tivo uses for it's Home Media option to share files from PCs on your home network. I'm going to load it up at home so we can stream music between the PCs.

I can finally make the announcement...Hook'em!

Thu, 23 Oct 2003 18:03:28 GMT

It's time for a new adventure. I'll be leaving frog Nov. 7. I was finally able to tell my current client yesterday in person. 5 years at frog, almost to the day. It's been a great opportunity for me and I've learned tons. I'll miss all of the talented people I've worked with there over the years. I'm totally grateful for the opportunity frog gave me and I'll be leaving on good terms.

So where am I headed, you ask?

I'm headed to Redmond. Specifically, the MSX team. Longhorn. Helping design Aero, the next Windows shell, the UI of Longhorn. Feels great to say it! It's a great team and I'm psyched about it! One of my passions is designing products that people use and enjoy, whether it's a t-shirt, a brochure, a website, a UI. What a unique opportunity to design for 93% of the desktop users!

It will be a culture shock, I'm sure. It's a great team, lots of talent, but there will be lot's of things to get used to. My first large corporation, my first experience being on the 'inside' and not a consultant, different process. I'll let you know how it goes.

So add me to the list of Microsoft bloggers!

The family and I will be moving up northwest the first week of December. Its gonna be tough to leave Austin. We love it here and will miss being near our family and friends. Alex, my wife, is incredible. She's totally supportive and excited about the opportunity, but I know it will be tough for her to be farther away from friends and family.

So we're busy trying to manage the swirl of family life, getting stuff ready for the move, continuing to be involved on my last project at frog, and trying to spend time with as many friends and family here in Austin as we can.

More later, I'm at home sick today.

Thu, 16 Oct 2003 04:57:06 GMT

Theme change. Sorry I've been off the blog for a while. Lot's happening. I'll be able to say more in a couple of weeks. I'm having fun on my current project. I've been travelling quite a bit to LA. It's gonna be good...

My good friend JJ has left frog and is working for ascential software. We'll miss you man!

Now that's what I call off the wagon!

Wed, 24 Sep 2003 16:33:35 GMT

I'm not dead and haven't lost the tablet. I've been swamped with work and considering some big changes. There have been some very interesting developments I'm in a fortunate spot considering the climate out there, we'll see how things turn out this week.

Radio's best kept secret?

Thu, 07 Aug 2003 00:58:56 GMT

Paolo & Bryan talk about Radio's best kept secret. I think there may be more to the story.

Wed, 06 Aug 2003 00:45:27 GMT

Scratch the need for a phone built into the tablet. Integrating messenger 6 into the media center, you should be able to start a "phone" conversation with anyone, eventually anywhere--quickly! I was just having a conversation about using iChat AV for extended voice conversations and how good the audio quality is, better than a cell phone. The hurdles are availablity of both parties where as with phones you assume you're able to go ahead and call someone and leave a message. Messenger needs to get to that point, no I don't want to send them a mail. just leave them a message.

Dude, seriously, Media Center on the Tablet

Tue, 05 Aug 2003 20:31:23 GMT

I've been submersed in work and family. Kicked off a new project around digital music. Really exciting stuff. I'd be interested in how you use online music services.

I find this especially cool with the tablet. Loren talks about what to do with the tablet when your out and about. If you have full Windows XP with you all the time, all your stuff, jeez, there's tons to do. I think where tablets are lacking now is considering tablet use away from work. It doesn't all have to be work related. The tablet team should be thinking about work as 1/3 of your life. what about the other 2/3? Entertainment! Clock radio for sleeping! The goal should be to think about how the user can use this thing and never have to leave it. You wouldn't need an ipod, you've got all your music right there. On business trips, half the people i see using laptops on the plane are playing solitaire or watching a movie. The tough thing with the tablet there is having to prop it up or hold the tablet at the right angle, vs. a laptop or convertible where you've got a natural stand, whether you're using your lap or seatback tray. Oh yeah, heh, you'd have to have ripped a dvd to your hard drive, since most tablets don't have a dvd drive built in. :)

But I think the big problem is accessibility, namely starting up the functionality you need quickly, with a pen.

Standing up or walking around, you shouldn't have to invoke the start menu. I want simple taps to quickly get to journal, one note, or my media player. Standing up, windows management is even tougher. This is a problem. Instead, you should have the media center/10ft UI as a mode you be in to navigate to the functionality you want and need -- FAST. Media center perfect for interaction with a remote and I think the same goes for using a pen. Easy drill down model, big targets. That is key. But, you know what? I doubt it will happen soon because tablet's are stuck in the business market and media center is stuck in home and entertainment. Rather than thinking from the standpoint of a total user lifestyle in relation to a product, the user's life has been segmented to match a business model.

Someday I will afford experience design for myself

Thu, 03 Jul 2003 18:17:45 GMT

Got the new laptop in today. Dell 600m. It's ok, but nothing compared to my work ti-book or the tablet. But it will serve its purpose. Having trouble setting it up to see our desktop machine. They don't make it easy.

Apple announcements of Panther, G5 machines, and enhancements

Mon, 23 Jun 2003 21:41:47 GMT

Apple announcements today at WWDC. Panther, the successor to Jaguar, looks like they are rendering windows in the brushed aluminum look. Also, they've got a persistant left hand "Places" column where you can access drives and store favorite locations.

You'll be able to switch views in the primary content area like you can now with list, icon and horizontal tree view. Nice, they've brought back color labels for tagging files.

Exposé helps manage windows by tiling them and giving you a way to cycle through them by rollover, which enlarges them, switch to a mode where you can tab through windows by app, and hide all windows to reveal the desktop. These are handy.

Fast user switching, faster than xp. security enhancements to iDisk, called iVault.

No new powerbooks announced. Fast G5s in August. iSight, cool firewire camera, nice quality video. iChat AV, we'll see how this compares to MSN Msgr 6. Too bad they can't work together yet. And the Safari 1.0 download. Some nice stuff.

MSN Messenger 6 is cool

Thu, 19 Jun 2003 00:41:47 GMT

Messenger 6 is nice. It's definitely essential on the slate. All those months of frustration away from the desk trying to tap type or be horribly misunderstood or just plain giving up trying to messenger on the slate are gone! There are still some issues to be worked out.

I can't paste anything into the input panel in ink mode which is frustrating. how am I going to paste text from somewhere else to someone?

With ink, you've pretty much got to go full screen on the tablet to chat, that's fine, i can live with that. The problem is that if the other person is just using text, and they don't have to go full screen, they will miss part of the handwritten message because there's no scaling of the ink or horizontal scrollbar. They'd have to resize their window to see the entire message.

Thanks, Loren, Lora, Lennon, and Scoble for inking with me today!

Looking for some aggregation, integration and magic

Tue, 17 Jun 2003 18:35:30 GMT

Framing images the Tablet PC way

Bryan's working on a cool Tablet PC tool after all. Wow! After just a couple days of blogging, he realized he wanted a personalized way to share his photos. So he came up with the idea of an app that frames his pictures and gives him room to handwrite a personalized caption. Simple, focused, and useful. Very Tablet PC. I want it.

Here's a hand-drawn mockup I did of some thoughts we came up with while brainstorming about the app as we chatted on Windows Messenger. I drew this mockup in Windows Journal on my Tablet PC and then emailed a screenshot over to Bryan. It was our first pass, so it's missing some obvious pieces. But it's great to be able to sketch out an idea like this on a Tablet PC and then email it to someone else in a matter of minutes.

This engineer never had it so good.

[from loren]

This is cool, Loren. While I agree you don't really need an image editor to do stuff like this, it would be nice to have it integrated into my blogging tool. I'd love for you and Bryan to talk with my friend Alan who's developed FMRadio and see if you could get it working inside that framework. Same with Tabletblogger. While many small utilities may get the job done, putting the right combination of tools together into a common interaction framework is yahtzee.

MSN Messenger screenshots leaked

Sat, 07 Jun 2003 00:08:17 GMT

On the other hand, I've been playing with MSN Messenger 6.0, which is supposed to be top secret, but I see that screen shots have leaked out. I can't wait until everyone has this, though. It'll make my Tablet PC far more useful with my IM friends.

[from scobelizer]

Interesting NPR article on Henry Ford

Tue, 03 Jun 2003 16:39:06 GMT

Interesting how they note that Henry Ford was not as much an innovator as a efficiency expert. His revolution was in manufacturing and optimization. Which worked for a time, but GM came along and recognized that people wanted to buy cars as expressions of themselves. Designing for individuals' self expression became a differentiator in the marketplace.

You can see the same argument playing/getting argued about over and over between the Mac & PC crowds. Dell, for instance, has built an entire business model around build to order pc's because in the market where the only differentiator is cost, you have to build pc's faster and cheaper than the next guy. Dell has optimized to where they carry less inventory and have less cash outstanding than it's competitors. They've got their house in order and can be poised to be a fast follower and allow others to do the innovation, but will they be able to sustain in the long run? Because Microsoft has desktop ubiquity, it furthers the PC manufacturers lack of ability to innovate and differentiate. These companies think that its by increasing sku's giving consumers more choice. What is the difference between the HP 120, 320 620, 735, 720, 812 935, and 950? Simply creating more skus creates confusion and delaying consumer purchasing decsions.

Gateway is seeing this need to break out of the PC manufacturing space because they are getting beaten down by not only HP and Dell, but Best Buy etc. So they are looking to sell all things electronic. But doesn't Best Buy already do that too? They need an experience layer to really tie things together and create an experience that is wholly different.

Interesting because I've noted how there is that same movement happening in software development. At frog, we create processes for clients by which they optimize the manufacturing of their software. Styleguides that unify the different development (software manufacturing) groups. This is great and it needs to happen, it's the industrial revolution for software. But there is the flipside we cannot ignore which is the innovation and designing of experiences to create differentiation.

Thu, 15 May 2003 21:39:52 GMT

I'm finding that the safari tabs are too easy to accidentally close. I like the idea of the SDX tabs much better. You can use key command or the close button which is consistent in the toolbar.

Tue, 13 May 2003 21:46:08 GMT

We just got our wifi adapter for the tivo, now we don't have to drag the 25' phone cord to across the living room anymore to update the schedule. Now all we need is another tivo to share info back and forth. Hmm....father's day is coming up.

Mon, 12 May 2003 14:27:15 GMT

Loaded up Denim. Going to mess around a bit.

FM Radio is an integrated News Aggregator, Blog Publisher, and Web Browser

Wed, 07 May 2003 17:53:37 GMT

Fri, 25 Apr 2003 07:47:12 GMT

Product announcement. The slick Windows interface for Radio from Social DynamX (a partner of UserLand) is now available for download. It should be up in the store soon. It offers the following:

1) Spell check.

2) A slick Windows editing surface.

3) Tabbed browsing.

4) Outlook style news aggregation.

5) Simple image insertion.

Here is a screenshot:

[John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Tablet on 24

Tue, 01 Apr 2003 15:11:28 GMT

I bet there will be a tablet on 24 tonight.

Thu, 20 Mar 2003 16:00:06 GMT

Finally got the call yesterday. May need to send the tablet back or bring it up when we present. However, I'm thinking that it might be beneficial to them to have continued feedback about how to improve the tablet from a world class UI designer. I will make myself available to them, but will need the use of the tablet to do so.

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 18:22:35 GMT

Interview with the maker of NoteTaker the OSX outlining app. Wonder if there's a comparison with this and MS OneNote.

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 17:18:39 GMT

http://www.kevinsites.net/. Audioblogging war coverage. I guess voice is still faster than a tablet -- especially when there's no wifi available.

Tue, 18 Mar 2003 17:16:36 GMT

Microsoft retools enterprise management The tech titan is set to announce new software called System Center that's intended to make it easier for corporations to oversee their PCs and servers. [via CNET News.com]

We worked on a very early version for this in 2000. I'll be interested to see if they are able to solve some of the UI, interaction problems we were trying to help with.