2011 – Page 2 – Connolly Design

September 8, 2011October 31, 2020

Some Apple products are imperfect by design

I’ve been using an Apple iPad 2 for a few months now, and have enjoyed it tremendously. One aspect of it that stands out is the deliberate imperfection that Apple has introduced into the design of the Smart Cover accessory. I’d go as far as to say that Apple has embraced Wabi Sabi, the Japanese aesthetic which accepts, and even demands, imperfection and transience as an important aspect of beauty.

The Smart Cover that I have on my iPad is leather. Out of the box, it wasn’t quite pristine, but had a lovely texture. In the last several months, though, it has acquired an uneven patina through daily use, along with more noticeable scuffs and marks. It’s no longer perfect, if it ever was, and it now provides a striking contrast to the aluminum and glass ‘perfection’ of the iPad. It completes the iPad, providing a visual warmth and a organic feel that the cover-less iPad lacks.

The unique imperfections have marked the iPad as ‘mine’ — distinct from an iPad that someone else might own — as effectively as the combination of apps, books, music, games, and other bits of data that I’ve installed/assembled/created on it.

Apple is, of course, aware of the inevitability of these ‘imperfections’. The packaging for the smart cover includes a notice: “The leather Smart Cover is crafted from high-quality, naturally treated material that gets its color from a rich aniline dye. Some color may rub off during use.” (Emphasis mine.)

Beautifully done.

September 1, 2011November 1, 2020

A new post, written on an iPad

For some time now, Google has been in the midst of a major refresh and consolidation of the design (and implementation) of its products. As of Wednesday this week, that design work has now extended to Blogger, the platform that I happen to use for this blog. At first glance, the new Blogger looks and works great. One major benefit of the revamp is that I can now write and edit posts on my iPad. That wasn’t possible on the previous version — or, at least, I wasn’t able to do so. The update doesn’t appear to be optimized for mobile — in fact, it’s a little flakey — but it does work. Maybe there’s more to come?

This post is about about little more than creating a test post on my iPad, while also taking the opportunity to express my admiration for what they’ve been releasing these past months. Google+ has been getting the bulk of the attention, but there’s great work being done on their other products as well.

August 30, 2011November 3, 2020

It turns out that Apple is not perfect

I’ve been having trouble with my Apple TV, and decided to pay a visit to the Genius Bar in the recently opened Apple Store here in Waterloo to see if I could get some help. I had been unable to address the problem on my own, or via a bit of Web research, and I wanted to experience the Genius Bar in action.

My three boys and I went to the store on a weekday afternoon, and I was surprised at how busy it was. The place was packed with customers and employees. I made an appointment to consult someone at the Genius Bar, and my sons explored some of the products on display. They had a ball, and nobody tried to interfere with their fun.

Come appointment time, I explained the problem I was having to Darcy, the friendly and knowledgable genius who was helping me. After exploring some options and trying to reproduce the problem, Darcy eventually decided to replace my Apple TV (a solution that I discovered upon returning home turned out to have solved the problem). The latitude given to Apple Store employees appears to be about as wide-ranging as I had previously heard. It was a great experience.

So what makes Apple less than perfect?

After making my appointment, I received an email from Apple confirming the time. The email included a link to an Apple Store iPhone app. I decided to try installing it, and clicked the link in the email to do so. The App Store application launched on my iPhone, but instead of seeing the Apple Store app, I saw a message saying “Your request could not be completed.” I asked Darcy about it, and he told me that the Apple Store iPhone app isn’t available in Canada, and that he’s not sure why the link is included in emails for the Canadian stores.

It’s an extremely minor issue, of course, and it didn’t at all bother me that I couldn’t download the Apple Store app. It is, though, telling that such a minor thing stands out in a customer experience that is otherwise exemplary all around. It’s just not quite perfect.

July 25, 2011October 31, 2020

July uxWaterloo beer gathering

The last year has been a busy one for uxWaterloo. We’ve had some great speakers and workshops, and our meetings always feature great discussions around a range of UX topics.

For our July 19 event we decided to kick back with an evening of informal conversation and beer. We met at the Brick Brewery in their hospitality lounge, where the beers were a welcome antidote to the hot and humid weather, and the discussions as rich and varied as always.

We’ll be meeting there for August as well, and while there’s no guarantee that the weather will be as hot and beer-appropriate, there’s always the great company and chance to meet new people in Waterloo Region’s UX community.

July 20, 2011October 31, 2020

Square to Square

This past weekend was a busy one, with lots going on in Waterloo Region. The highlight for me was Sunday’s square2square event, during which much of King Street was closed to motor vehicles between Kitchener’s Civic Square (in front of City Hall) and Waterloo’s Public Square. My two youngest sons and I bicycled from one square to the other, and the boys enjoyed the thrill of the (mostly) open road.

There was a lot to do between, and at, the two end points. My favourite discovery, though, was the remote-controlled model boats cruising the water in Kitchener’s Civic Square, courtesy of Golden Triangle Marine Modellers (no website, alas). One of the modellers, Paul, was kind enough to let both my boys pilot his tugboat for a while, and both did so without crashing into other boats or the concrete sides of the pool.

The next square2square event is Sunday, August 14, and we’re all looking forward to it at our house. Thanks, and congratulations, to the cities of Waterloo and Kitchener for organizing these events this summer.

July 4, 2011November 3, 2020

Happy Canada Day (Independence Day Edition)

It’s been too long between posts, and may stay that way for a while. Here’s one that marks the recent Canada Day holiday with pictures of our fireworks from July 1 (and its aftermath), posted on the day that our neighbours to the south celebrate their Independence Day. Enjoy.

June 6, 2011October 31, 2020

Delivering overnight at Karos Health

Last Friday we had our second FedEx Day at Karos Health. Our first FedEx day was, to me, a prototype to see how the event would work at our company. That first try was a great success, and we resolved to do it again. While the details of our approach are slightly different than those at the company whose FedEx Days inspired us, Atlassian, our take on the concept is similar in spirit and purpose. (By the way, it’s called a FedEx Day, as you have to deliver something overnight.)

For our second event I had two goals in mind for my own activity. The first was to learn more about Ruby on Rails, a programming language and framework combination which I had begun investigating earlier in the week and with which I already had built an exceedingly simple application for creating and managing patient records. My second goal was to explore an approach to publishing documents as defined by IHE. I picked one of the simpler scenarios (use cases, in IHE parlance) to try to deliver on:

A patient in the emergency department has all her relevant available documents retrieved via 240 XDS transactions. As initial triage of the patient is done, an additional document regarding diagnostic results for this patient is registered in the XDS Document Registry. Currently, there is no way for the Emergency department to learn about the existence of this new information. With a publish/subscribe infrastructure, the initial query to the XDS Document Registry would be accompanied with a subscription request, as a result of which a notification would be sent to the 245 emergency department. The subscription will be terminated once the patient is no longer under the care of the emergency department’s institution.

— from “Unexpected Notification Use Case”, section 26.4.1 of IHE IT Infrastructure Technical Framework Supplement: Document Metadata Subscription (DSUB) (PDF)

Put another way, an emergency department physician has requested an imaging study, such as an MRI, for a patient. The requesting physician needs to see the results, provided as a document, as soon as they are made available by the radiologist who read at the study images. A notification alerts the physician that the result document is available.

Working with two of my Karos colleagues, I used Rails to put together a simple web app prototype focused on what a physician might see on a smartphone (an iPhone, for demo purposes, as that’s what I use every day) when receiving a notification that a document has been made available or updated. We used a simple script to push notifications into the prototype’s back end, which dutifully made them available to the different colleagues that we were demoing to. Each notification includes a link to the affected document, which can be viewed right away. Happily, the prototype worked well and I’m thoroughly enjoying Ruby on Rails so far.

It was fun to build and show the prototype, and fun to see all the other results that emerged from a day of directed play at Karos. We’re all looking forward to the next FedEx day at Karos.

May 24, 2011October 31, 2020

UW co-op recruiting event for Karos Health

Today, from 5:00pm to 7:00pm, Karos Health will be hosting a recruiting event at the Bombshelter Pub on the University of Waterloo campus. We’re looking for co-op software developers to join us for the Fall 2011 term, and we’ll be at the Bomber in force to extoll the great benefits of working at Karos.

While I’m obviously biased to some extent, I do believe that Karos offers a great opportunity for a meaningful work term experience:

Interesting work on shipping products and/or research projects
A smart and experienced team to learn from
A great atmosphere

The event gives potential co-op employees a chance to talk with our development team, as well as with past and present co-op students. Drop by to chat, and to eat some of the free food that we’re providing. Hope to see you tonight!

May 3, 2011November 3, 2020

My new/old wireless music player

I recently acquired a couple of pieces of technology that are pretty much at opposite ends of their respective lifecycles.

One is an Apple iPad 2, which I’ll write about another time.

The other is a product that represents a technology that was enormously disruptive to the music industry of its time. This product, and others like it, enabled anyone to listen to recordings of music in their home — no need to go out to hear live music, or to learn to play an instrument and make your own music.

I now have a Victrola manufactured by the Victor Talking Machine Co. in 1917! I’ve had 78 RPM records in the house for several years now, some of them in album form, and it’s great to have a portable (well, luggable), wireless device to play them on. It doesn’t use electricity — just wind up the spring-driven turntable, put the needle down, and listen! What’s striking to me is that my new/old Victrola functions as well today as it did when it was first built almost a century ago; I doubt that my iPad 2 will be able to make that claim.

I already knew that the steel needles that pick up the sound from the grooves of a 78 RPM record should only be used once, as they wear out and a worn needle will damage records. One fascinating bit of information that I didn’t know previously, though, is that different needles will produce different tones when playing records. Needle selection is an important, and personal, choice when listening to these records, and I guess technology lovers of any era love tweaking and tuning their toys!

April 12, 2011November 1, 2020

The prototype is done, let’s ramp up!

I wrote a little while back about the Research Entrepreneurship Accelerator Project at the University of Waterloo. The program got up and running for this past winter’s academic term, and saw a team of six students working on a prototype of an online marketplace in which artists and other content creators provide creative services for owners of Christie Digital MicroTiles. I was lucky to be able to work with the student team, as well as with the extended REAP leadership team.

Last Wednesday was the end-of-term presentation for the inaugural student REAP team, and I was happy to be able to see them present the results of their project to representatives for Christie. While I had seen the team’s work at various points during the project, the students still managed to surprise me. Their presentation was in the form of a play in which the team acted out the the scenarios that they had created in support of their design work. This was delightfully unexpected, but perhaps shouldn’t have been given that REAP is an initiative of the Arts faculty that happens to build cross-disciplinary teams.

Fittingly, the first REAP term was something of a prototype itself, and the lessons learned by everyone involved are already being applied as preparations move forward for the spring REAP term that starts in May. There are multiple projects lined up this time, with some interesting ideas to explore. The recruiting process is in its final stages — last night I had a chance to meet the student candidates for the next REAP teams —and I’m looking forward to supporting the new teams on their projects over the coming months.