As teams scale up, the division of work on a product is distributed amongst many more people in splintered teams. The sense of each individual having a major impact on the end product is reduced. The product takes on a life of its own, without much acknowledgement of the individuals behind it. Whether the end result is a success or failure, it becomes easy to hide amongst the crowd. But no matter how big it gets, people still tend to care when their name is attached to something. Everyone should be proud of the work they’re doing…enough to put their name on it.

Signatures from the original Macintosh team to be etched into the chassis.

The founding Macintosh team had a lot of pride in what they were building. They each had their names etched into the chassis of the Mac to prove it.

The build culture of today is commonly summed up as, “move fast, break things, ship often, fix later.” Conversely, thanks to Apple, people now have an expectation of high quality and thoughtful design from the products they choose to use. This cross-roads of build culture and audience expectation can make it challenging to feel proud of what you ship and the story you tell the world as you chase a mythical convergence where it all makes sense. In this regard, it’s likely fortunate that names often aren’t attached. But if you did, you just might ship superior products. A more interesting question may be to ask those building a product, “Who wants to put their name on it?”, and actually put their names on it. You might be surprised by what you decide to ship or re-evaluate based on the response to that question.

In shipping product, the gut check question may be, “Who wants to put their name on it?” bryanhaggerty.com/blog/2012/11/p…

— Bryan Haggerty (@bhaggs) November 27, 2012

Almost 3 years ago I posted my first tweet while on a trip to Washington DC.

Sitting in a hotel in DC about to look for some delicious Thai food.

A somewhat inane first tweet, and I’m happy to say that I did actually find that delicious Thai food.

Twitter’s early simple premise of sharing what you’re doing with friends has evolved to become a communication platform with seemingly boundless potential, which is yet to be fully realized. And that is why I’ve decided to join Twitter as part of their mobile team.

My time at LinkedIn has been filled with great successes and it was a privilege to work with some amazing people.

Be sure to follow me on Twitter @bhaggs

LittleSnapper is another tool I can’t live without. I frequently use it to capture and tag screenshots of my own work and designs from others for inspiration. Screenshot organizer, full web page capture, and non-destructive annotations make it that much superior to Mac OS X’s built-in screenshot feature.

The New York Times recently took a look at Netflix user’s movie queues based on zip code. An interesting comparison is to see how this data breaks down between the places I’ve lived, Boston, New York City, and San Francisco.

Strong commonalities between the three, but clearly Bostonians are more in it for the comedy and pop films. NYC and SF: You really loved “Rachel Getting Married” that much?

A USB drive key fob that is shaped like a key. Designed by 5.5 Designers for LaCie

One of my essential tools while designing user interfaces for the iPhone is Live View Screencaster, which allows me to broadcast in real-time a 480×320 portion of my Mac screen to a wi-fi connected iPhone. This allows for immediate visual verification on the physical device. The app can also pass through touch events allowing for the possibility to create simple prototypes.

My friend Aaron turned me on to this app and it’s been at the top of my list of every day tools since.

Our man Rob shows off our forthcoming LinkedIn for BlackBerry app at CES:2010 in the BlackBerry booth. The mobile team is firing on all cylinders these days.

Intuit will release SnapTax, an iPhone tax filing app, for the upcoming tax season. I just may have to file my taxes this year through my iPhone.

LinkedIn 3.0 for iPhone is now available on the App Store. Great work from my fellow Mobile team members. My primary role on the project was designing the user interface but I also dabbled in the code as well.

A smartly designed plug from Breville. Found on our new electric kettle.

Love the page slider UI in ScrollMotion’s Iceberg Reader.

It’s always a pleasant surprise to find our app icon for the LinkedIn iPhone app showing up in different places. Recently it has been popping up in illustrations [1, 2] for articles in the New York Times.

It is not surprising that many of the points of interaction on the iPhone are over sized. Lost, is that precision of a mouse pointer. More importantly, on touch-screens, due to the size of a person’s finger, it can obscure useful information in the interface. For controls such as checkboxes or radio buttons, it can be difficult to determine whether the finger press has resulted in the desired action without having to move the finger away from the screen. As such, the switch control is a cleverly appropriate control, due to that as the user operates the switch he can see the state of the control, without removing the finger from the screen.

What is interesting to see is the influence which this control type is having on user interfaces–ones that are not on the iPhone or even on touch-screen devices. Apple itself, took this over sized control and implemented it in its new Time Machine preference pane in Mac OS X Leopard. Adobe implements it in its photo management application, Lightroom, as a means of toggling photo development options

Left: Apple Time Machine, Right: Adobe Lightroom

Switches in Web Applications

Top: Powerset, Bottom: Brightkite

The switch control is also making its way into web applications. Powerset, a new entrant in the search field, utilizes the switch control as a toggle between a wikipedia article’s table of contents and a more expanded view of the article’s sub-sections.

Brightkite, a location based social network, uses the switch as a preference control to indicate the privacy level of who can see your current location.

The switch does not provide any control that couldn’t be gained from using a select list, radio buttons, or even tabs, but it does offer a stronger visual state, one which is akin to the commonly known light switch. But like a light switch and many other physical switches, they are limited in what they can convey (i.e., on and off). Powerset’s use of the switch control certainly pushes the boundaries of how the control should be used.

The switch control is something to keep an eye out for.

In preparation for my move west to San Francisco my mother gave me a Streetwise waterproof folded map of San Francisco. Something to toss in my bag to always have. Yet, the more I look at the map, or rather don’t look at the map, I realize the obsolescing of this map form factor–and likely a chunk of Streetwise’s and other map makers’ business.

Forgoing Paper for Digital

I have all but abandoned paper maps in favor of web based maps and mobile phone maps. The last bastion of paper maps, of which I carry, are small wallet sized versions of New York’s MTA map and a San Francisco transit map. As in many underground trips, getting wireless connectivity can be a challenge if not impossible–hence these wallet maps can come in handy but their days are probably numbered (BART surprisingly has a decent bit of underground wireless coverage).

Software such as Google’s Maps for mobile, with the My Location feature which repositions the map to your current location, have made orienting yourself utterly simple with no additional hardware needed. Also, interacting with the map via search has made finding any address or business all the more easy.

Even many of the traditional niche maps such as those for transit or bikes, which most people would carry in their pocket, have been converted to mobile device ready versions–iSubway Maps or Khoi Vinh’s MTA map for iPhone. We now have more than just “a thousand songs in our pockets.”

Adding a More Physical Connection to Maps

iPhone Map showing a user’s contact near them

It won’t be long before the mobile versions of maps take on a more social component as well, such as being able to see which of your friends may be in the neighborhood or at a particular restaurant or bar near where you are.

And in terms of wayfinding, people often utilize landmarks to get around. Surely, we’ll be seeing Google add their StreetView feature to their mobile edition of maps. Thus allowing users to get an actual visual of the location they’re seeking.

These are all features which no paper map could ever provide. But there are still a few paper alternatives which deserve a mention.

Hangers On

While I find the wallet maps still somewhat useful, SUCK UK’s Tubemap Wallet takes it one step further by turning the actual wallet into the map–clever. There is also Moleskin’s efforts to throw in a few handy maps with their pint size notebooks.

And as for work, soon I’ll be joining the great folks at LinkedIn.com as a UI designer.

See you in Savannah!

Unfortunately, there are times though when the intentions of providing a hands on experience are stifled by elements such as over zealous anti-left systems, which can ultimately leave the customer with a negative perception of a product. This is especially the case for products such as mobile devices: laptops, digital music players, wireless phones. These are devices which are meant to be picked up, held in the hand, and moved around.

Laptops

Visiting a BestBuy or Circuit City, customers are sometimes faced with laptops which are so locked down a person can’t even comfortably rest their hands on the keyboard just to simply see how it feels–nor pick it up to feel the weight. Certainly two major points when deciding which laptop will fit that on-the-go lifestyle.

The majority of modern computing is done with the compliment of the Internet and many of these stores do not demo laptops with active Internet connections. Resulting in a demo experience which does not accurately meet a customer’s typical computer activities–Minesweeper isn’t exactly the ideal demo software.

Digital Music Players

Similarly, Microsoft’s Zune digital music player demo display almost exudes an aurora of don’t touch, just look. For a device which is designed to be held in the hand, the Zune’s demo display strictly prohibits the possibility by the presence of a metal shaft where a person’s hand would rest. Proving to diminish the possibility for the customer to envision the device as part of his lifestyle. It is also encased in a plastic and metal holder, which unfortunately adds perceived size to the device. Where size is a great concern for mobile devices, this certainly does not help to convince the customer of the product’s true thinness.

One of the Zune’s major selling points is its ability to play video in a horizontal orientation allowing for a more movie-like viewing experience. Yet the demo display makes the act of trying to experience this prohibitively difficult, unnatural feeling, and ungraceful. With its awkward enforcement of allowing the device to be rotated only one way, it appears clunky.

Wireless Phones

In America, wireless phone providers are in the game to sell phone service as opposed to phones, but this does not mean that providing customers with the ability to experience their offered phones should be neglected. All too often customers are shown a bolted down, gutted out phone with a sticker acting as its screen. Aside from the fact that the customer can barely hold the device in his hand, he can not even experience the user interface and actively demo those said features. This shell of a phone also all to often gives the impression of the phone being cheap in terms of quality of materials. It is no wonder American consumers assume wireless phones should be cheap in price as well.

Choosing a wireless phone becomes a blind faith decision, based mostly on wireless provider, price, and a feature list. The advancements in mobile user interfaces have been quite pitiful, much of that could be attributed to the fact that customers really have no opportunity to compare shop. Not to mention that for the majority of people, once they purchase the phone they are locked in for two years with it.

Demoing the Experience Properly

Apple is often given the gold medal for doing things right in many aspects and in providing customers with the ability to truly demo a product, they achieve it perfectly. Every iMac, MacBook, and iPod at their retail stores is free to use unrestricted–often tied down by only one unobtrusive security wire. They can be picked up, held in the hand, and used just as they would be in a customer’s real life.

It is a major factor in why Apple is able to sell so many units. A customer can walk into an Apple Store, pick up an iPhone, make a phone call to a friend, write a text message, check their email, and visit a web site. There is no blind faith decision to be made. The customer doesn’t have to buy the device first to find out how much it weighs in their hand. No contracts have to be signed before the user interface can be truly experienced.

For almost all major elections since I became legal to vote I have voted at a different voting location. That in itself can be a challenging time, between updating my voter registration, to finding the voting location and hoping that I’m on the books. Since the time to vote comes around infrequently voters have little chance to truly become familiar with the process, especially for someone like myself where locations and type of voting machines are always changing. One can only put his faith in proper signage and the kind people who give their time to volunteer to help voters, vote.

Unfortunately, it always seems to go awry. Places such as school gyms are retrofitted to act as voting stations, multiple tables to check in, no one ever truly being sure of where you need to go. And in my case, when looking for assistance, being greeted with words such as:

Oh, here we go again. Another one who doesn’t know.

It is not surprising that often people simply choose to skip the entire process. This is no small feat to fix the problem, yet I’m not sure anyone has really put a concerted effort into actually planning and ultimately implementing changes. The pinnacle of voting location wayfinding seems to only be, “Vote Here” signs. As appreciative everyone is for the volunteers, they are lacking in the proper training to assist voters.

But, as confusing as voting can be sometimes, this is one of the only poor experiences I would say people should trudge through.

Steps to opening the Microsoft Vista box

Dell has forgone attempting to provide the user with a simple ordering process in favor of countless upsells. The extra “components” Dell asks the user to configure range from what Adobe, QuickBooks, and TurboTax software to install to decking out the laptop with a carrying case, external mouse, and printer. While at it, throw in a matching flash drive. Don’t forget warranty, accident insurance, and premium tech support. With all this extra stuff, the user probably won’t be able to install it himself–throw in that in-home install and setup.