RECENT WORK: Spinthought has developed the following iOS apps (most recent to oldest):
For iPhone - SetBreaker, SoundSlater, BigTimer, RecBoardLT, RecordBoard, QuizBuzzer, StoryPages
For iPad - SoundSlate, SoundSlateLT, StopWatches, TimeSpinners,ThumBrowser, RecBoardPad, StoryPagesHD

ben kopf Ben Kopf Photo user interacton designer

Interaction design (IxD) is "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services. What clearly marks Interaction design as a design field as opposed to a science or engineering field is that it is synthesis and imagining things as they might be, moreso than focusing on how things are." When we interact with any object created by humans, there's either a positive or a negative emotional response whether barely perseptible or intensely consuming. It is a user interaction designer's responsibility to create satisifaction, delight, and "enchantment" while we touch our world. User experience (UX) is about how a person feels about using a product, system or service, and is what I consider integral to an interaction designer's body of work.

My career in interactive design started in 1988 and grows and evolves every day. I am lucky enough to work with very talented, intelligent people in all facets of the broader user experience discipline. This site describes design work from my past, some musings on design in the present and a look at the future of interaction design.

iPad 2 Apple iPad 2 - a design so well thought out and executed that its original created a new consumer category. This was the first tablet computing device that has a form factor that resonates with every human being who touches it. The Captain of the Enterrpise would be delighted with it. The Tablet PC failed by trying to force a WIMP (windows-mouse-pointer) interface into a physical interface that cried out for human touch.

 

Jabra Pro Headset - This extremely comfortable and light weight head set for PC, desk phone and bluetooth enabled cell phones is brilliant in it's sheer usability, from the magnetic holder to the touch screen that gives you effortless control. This device won me over after a trial of dozens of ear bud and head set devices. But great design needs to follow through with great performance, and the Jabra Pro dies that with excellent clarity and transmission quality. Jabra Pro

 

World's Best Cat Litter World's Best Cat Litter - Where is the good design in a cat litter? In the product - this corn based cat litter is dust free, clumps better than all the rest, requires less, eliminates odor, and doesn't impact the environment negatively. You could eat the stuff (before use) and it wouldn't hurt you. It is "designed" better than anything that came before it. It is a good example of design reaching everywhere in our lives.

 

Fiskars Axe - Makers of everyday tools, Fiskars takes the common axe and makes it look cool, colorful, and rugged enough for it's target audience. It is a great example of compelling design you want to touch. This is another way to impact a category with good design. Take an ordinary product and make a delicious version of it. Fiskars Axe

 

Can get some satisfaction...

While I didn't work on the design of the carousel of products above, I believe they show off a few of the many tenets of good design and marketing.

APPLE IPAD 2 - FORM FACTOR

What Apple has done with the iPad® is generate an entire new "category of need". Could we have lived without the iPad - of course - but would we want to live without it now? Not me - it is already an extension of my mind as I interact with the internet via browsers and software designed for the web and mobile environment. The iPad exploded in sales and popularity beyond even Apple's expectations - but why? There have been tablet computers around since Apple's own Newton, including the Tablet PC push of the early 2000's. Why didn't they meet with such demand and relagated to niche markets?

The reason isn't just the iPad's delicious form factor, which embodies form and function like no other device. It's because the Tablet PC's operating system (Windows) was not meant for direct interaction. Pen based tablets at their introduction used either a capacitive or resistive touch screen, and either could use a stylus, but both were hindered by an operating environment that was meant for a desktop with a high-resolution mouse cursor driving the show.

At Autodesk I was tasked with rounding up and testing all things mobile during the Tablet PC launch. We were in the midst of developing Architectural Studio, pen-based architectural conceptual design software. At Comdex 2000, there were dozens of manufacturers presenting Tablet PC units in hopes of seeing Bill Gates new personal computing vision come true. I had ten or so tablets on my desk, in every variety of touch screen types and models. I was thrilled with the potential of pen-based computing at the time, but even my predilication toward gadgetry couldn't mask the flaws in their interaction design. Besides being cumbersome and slow, they were also priced beyond the average consumer's 'desire over price threshold', and web content couldn't be delivered in an effective seamless manner at the time. Mainstream consumption of digital media didn't exist yet. But in the mid-2000's that all changed, and the consumer wanted lightweight, mobile devices capable of delivering digital content in all forms anywhere.

During my work on Architectural Studio I created a prototype tablet out of wood to support a proposal for a 'tablet station' for architects and engineers in the field. At the building site there would be several of these small tablets available in a multi-device docking station. Plugging in the tablet would automatically update the office servers with information gathered in the field, and vice-versa. I pictured the contracors on a job coming in to a site trailer in the morning, grabbing a tablet from a docking station just as they might grab a rechargeable tool, and returning to the job site to gather information over the day that was needed by the architects and engineers in their offices. Whenever necessary, they plug the tablet back into the docking station and update office servers with real time information (this was before wireless ubiquity when a docking station was necessary to synchronize information). That wooden tablet prototype was the size, weight, and thickness of the original iPad.

spinthought Learning to design all over again - in a good way

Spinthought was founded for the soul purpose of learning how to design, develop, and deploy mobile applications (apps). My experience at Autodesk using Tablet PC's and pen- based computers compelled me to investigate the iPhone when it was released, and to try my hand at mobile app design. Since my background includes substantial hardware knowledge, it gave me a broad and deep view of the various devices now saturating the marketplace. What follows are a few of the apps developed for the iPhone and iPad.

SoundSlate

 SoundSlate for the iPad - SoundSlate was designed to fill what I perceived as a missing need - a soundboard app that let the user create and add their own sounds instead of just playing back canned sounds. The app is popular with a wide array of user personas - musicians, DJ's sure, but preachers, tour guides, and magicians. We didn't count of those categories of users developing a need for the product. What it delivers beyond the competition (winning a coveted AppAdvice.com "Essential App" award for it's cateory) is a simple user interface and a minimilist control approach to the design.

Stopwatches

 StopWatches -The iPad was quickly adopted as a device for coaches, stagehands, teachers, and others that need to time multiple events at the same time. The iPad screen size gave us an opportunity to develop a simple stopwatch emulation UI in a multiple page format. StopWatches users can set up pages of stopwatches to time any event, and record laps and splits in CSV exportable format. The design principle used in all of our multi-page products is to give simple access to larger amounts of data in a easy to use layout. You can understand StopWatches from the moment you start the app, and gradually discover it'sbenefits and explore the more powerful side of the app. That and the Spinthought brand colors and layout provide a consistent experience across all of our chronological apps.

TimeSpinners

 TimeSpinners - Where StopWatches brings you the power of multiple pages to separate events and uses, TimeSpinners focuses on the simplicity of a one page layout with multiple countdown timers. Timers and times are saved and reused, and the app has been popular with cooks, photographers using timed development techniques, and others. TimeSpinners uses real world object familiarity to make it easy to set up and use, and the backgrounds of both timing apps provide a wallpaper feature for a personalized or practical touch, letting you backdrop the app with your favorite picture, or of a particular recipe you are creating.

Thumbrowser

 ThumBrowser - We raced to be the first to come out with a one hand browsing solution for the iPad during it's initial release, and ThumBrowser was available from day one. Each dot in a thumb-based command dot system can be set up with a variety of commands to use with it's built in browser. The app has not been a big seller, partly because of the weight of the iPad 1, and partly because it does not work directly with Safari. Future goals will include a powerful browser to enhance the app and bolster its appeal, since the iPad 2 brings an even lighter weithg form factor to the party.

StoryPagesHD

StoryPagesHD - StoryPages for the iPhone developed a devoted customer-base, so the form factor of the iPad made the transition to it's UI an obvious path for development. The problems encountered with SPHD were:

  • Not enough funding to see the entire design take shape.
  • A dramatically different UI approach meant a steeper learning curve.
  • The drawing tools were sub-standard.

Shame on us for too little time in the concept and discovery phases of development for StoryPagesHD. It was a valuable lesson learned however, and made future efforts all the more well thought out.

Embrace the mobile 'verse...

The best part of working on Spinthought apps is discovering the minimalism necessary to create a user interface for the mobile app consumer. After a few false starts before reading and obeying everything I learned in Apple's Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), the products that have taken flight are the ones where the user interface strictly follows these guidelines. Apple spent a lot of time investigating and testing what really works on an iPhone or iPad, and it shows in the apps they supply with the devices. The apps are simple, easy to navigate, and are heavily focused on their main function. The 80/20 rule must be applied with ferverish zeal to produce an app that becomes an extension of your mind with no thought needed to make it work.

dump your darlings...

Developing a user interface for an iOS touch device is so dramatically different than a mouse and cursor system that you have to throw out most of your notions of good interface design. Touch and gesture recognition change the interaction model completely. An iPhone is the embodiement of the "less is more" philosophy in design. You must fanatically focus on the primary need of the users. The user is mobile, wants easy access to a simple UI, and wants it all to be dynamic and location aware. On a mobile device the where is just as important as the what; even the position of the device can be used in the UI design of an app. Cool bells and whistles are an impedance and those great features you dream up must be applied with absolute scrutiny. So be prepared to "murder your darlings" and forget the desktop PC environment ever existed.

Fortunately, user centered design has finally surfaced in any company that takes the design and workflow of products seriously. And social support communities like Get Satisfaction make it easy to connect with customers and to collect invaluable in real time. All Spinthought apps feature a "Feedback" tab in the help system that lets a customer easily report their emotional assessment of your app, good or bad.

autodesklearning how to understand and understanding how to learn

Autodesk is where I formulated my core design values and expertise. I also became skilled at interacting with the wide variety of disparate personalities. Much of design work is playing well with others, and creating a harmonious work environment. During my 12 year tenure at Autodesk I discovered much about myself, all the while learning the process, politics, and management techniques used in a large software company. There were office celebrations, clashes, and crunches and I forged some lasting friendships with some of the most intelligent and easy going people I have ever met.

While I was at Autodesk, I had the priviledge and pleasure of working on several groundbreaking products, a few of which are showcased in the following panels.

Autodesk Actrix

Actrix was designed to be a competitor to the popular Visio diagramming tool, and had several features that distinguished it from the competition. Actrix shapes were the first parametric shapes to be used in a diagramming product, in that you could create "scripts" to have them behave in certain ways. For example, in an office layout you could have a conference room table that provided a context menu that lets you select the number of seats. As the number is selected, the geometry representing the table would grow to accomodate the number of seats.

Actrix was in many ways easier to use than Visio, and offered far more flexibility at that time than the leading product. But Microsoft's purchase of Visio to integrate as part of it's Office suite doomed the sales of Actrix since the most popular general office software now included a diagramming tool.

Architectural Studio

Architectural Studio in 2000 defined a new way to bring architectural concepts to life in a mixed 2D and 3D environment. It was unique in it's approach to tool use and document creation. Architectural Studio let principle designers freely draw out concepts in 2D and interactively extrude them into 3D shapes and forms. My hand in the design was eveywhere as was the entire team's, but I can call the People Palette my sole design. It was the first visual representation of a collaboration session used at that time. The entire application experience could be shared live, in much the way of collaboration tools we use today. Architecutural Studio was an attempt to bring a designers real world environment into the digital age, and was fully endorsed by architectures from all the major firms. Michael Graves used the product on a big screen demonstration, sketching out an orignal buidling drawing for the audience.

Design Review 2010

Design Review first developed in 2002 was another product that was ahead of it's time in regards to the green revolution we are so familiar with today.. Countless drawings and printed materials still flow between the many stakeholders in the constructon process using AutoCAD, at great cost to companies for the paper, ink, and overnight shipping. Design Review eiimated that waste by acting as the medium for all drawings to me reviewed, marked up, and resubmitted for drawing modifications. Again I was lucky to be working with exceptional people where we all contributed to every facet of the design. My focus was on interaction UI and functional workflow, where drawing details and time stamps had to be accurate and easily understood for legal reasons.

Map3D

Map 3D is a cutting edge GIS mapping solution for the location service and a great variety of serviices, from city planning to demographic mapping. My role as interaction designer was around several facets of the product, including layout and workflow, essential to the complex nature of the products in this space.

Plays well with others...

I spent over 11 years working at Autodesk - and it was all about working with teams and losing your ego in favor of cooperative design. I've divided the work in three sections loosely based on my product work at the company.

THE FIRST YEARS

After Aimtech I had the title I needed to pursue solid work as a user interface designer. The market was good for designers as companies began to recognize user centered design as a desirable approach to software development. Most of the team was from Cornell University, many of whom worked at Ithaca Software with Carl Bass, now CEO of Autodesk. But when I joined it was the candid Carol Bartz who ran the show, and the company still had the feel of a startup, especially in Ithaca NY where I found myself after leaving New Hampshire.

Actrix was a diagramming product in direct competition with Visio (now part of the Microsoft Office Suite), and was overall a more powerful product, in part because of the genius of the (now defunct) 3D Eye Software developers that created it. Their collective body of knowledge was a rich fodder of bedding from which I learned. Actrix applied parametric equations in it's shapes, giving it programmable objects that could be used in many applications and disciplines. As great a product as it was, when Microsoft purchased Visio in the late nineties that meant a diagramming tool was in every office by default, so Actrix was abandoned almost immediately.

THE MIDDLE YEARS

While Actrix was in it's death throes I was approached to work on a skunk works project code named StudioDesk, a Java based conceptual design environment for architects and architectural firm principals. The name of the product was changed to Architectural Studio in the early 2000's and the Ithaca office was split into two operating groups: one on Arch Studio (was we nicknamed it), and one on GIS (geospatial information systems), or digital mapping a business space Autodesk had been in for some time. I can say that my time working with the Architectural Studio team was a high point in my career - it was and still stands out as a product that was way ahead of it's time. The product used a real world desktop metaphor to layout 2D and 3D drawing tools for a uniquely easy to use software experience. That and it's built in real-time collaboration system (proud to say a lot of the collaboration design was my own), made it stand out at tradeshows and even caught the eye Michael Graves, reknowed designer and architect. Given the current tablet craze and resurrenge of pen based computing, Architectural Studio may have had a fighting chance for survival. However, at it's version 3 release the dot.com bubble burst, company funds dried up, and paying so much for such a simple product was seen as an expensive extra to the architect's tool set.

THE LAST YEARS

So with the sad demise of Architectural Studio, our group in Ithaca had to scramble to find a product to work on; and thanks to the effort of one particular individual, the Architectural Studio team was able to start work on a brand new design review product, first named DWF Composer, then renamed Design Review. Essentially the software lets you open an AutoCAD drafting file (DWG) file and then "mark it up" (also called annotate) with various tools to then be returned to AutoCAD as an overlay so the drafter can correct mistakes, make additions, or modify the drawing as needed by reviewers. Design Review is still available today, and is a free product distributed to anyone wanting to markup any AutoCAD based drawing.

My role in the development of Design Review was senior interaction designer - there are many aspects of the product that are my design, including the historical tracking mechanism, much of the user interface, and most of the interaction workflow functionality. While Design review was originally a revenue stream, around the time of the 2009 economic implosion it was made free of charge to anyone, so the team was disbanded. I moved into the GIS group at that time, and worked on a few features for the customer facing aspect of a couple of the products.

aimtech"I fight for the users"

Aimtech was the starting point for my career in user experience and design, and provided possibly the most valuable lesson a user interface designer could get - direct contact with customers that have problems using your software. First as a Technical Support representative, then as the Technical Support Manager, my personal interaction with customers provided a user centered view of the problems people have trying to use computer software. It is much easier to get buy in on feature improvements when you can back up your suggestions with real customer feedback - which is what I did to become the first User Interface Designer for the company.

IconAuthor Software
IconAuthor was a computer based training tool (CBT) designed for non-technical consumers to program training software. By dragging and dropping icons that represented programming functions into a flowchart, you could run the flowchart from the top to view a complete interactive set of screens. The tool aimed at making the concepts of variables and if statements understandable by mere mortals, and for the most part acheived it's goal very well. The program grew from a Windows 2.1 based product up into the internet age beginnings in the mid-90's but was discontinued when the company was purchased by rival CBT software maker Asymetrix (later purchased by Macromedia, then Adobe). Asymetrix develped Toolbox, a page based authoring tool also popular at the time. The pressure of competition from powerhouses like Macromedia and their flagship product at the time Authorware, didn't help Aimtech's position in the marketplace, but it did fire us up enough to create our web entry Jamba, shortly before the demise of the company.

 

RezSolution Software image

RezSolution was a by-product of an internal tool we created to help us resize images to adjust to the improving resolution in graphics hardware in that day. Graphics in 320x240 were common, then 640x480 became the standard, then 800x600, and finally 1024x768. It was very flexible and powerful with an MDI (multi-doucment interface) that was just appearing in Windows applicaitons of the time. The software was well before the video hardware rsolution of today, but various customers had stock images in all sizes, and we needed to accomodate their efforts. RezSolution was used heavily in conjunction with IconAuthor's standalone animation module called 'IconAnimate', a basic animation package used primarily for CBT enhancement.

RezSolution worked so well as a standlone product for our customers that we marketed it in CompUSA and other computer stores of the day, but as with all Aimtech software, it was abandoned when the company was dissolved.

 

Jamba software screenshot

Jamba was a (then fledgling) Java-based product that made it easy for non-programmers to create Flash-like interactive applets for the web. Based on the same principle as IconAuthor, it used icons and a flowchart tree to let you easily drag-drop functional icons into a working applet. It was the first and most powerful Java product of it's kind, as Sun had just released the programming language about 6 months before we started development. Jamba featured some new concepts: one was my idea for a targeted user setup, that asked the installer what discipline they were involved in to adjust the environment accordingly. Another new idea were full creation wizards that let anyone create their first applets without ever having to work out the details of the flowchart-like programming tree. And for better or worse, I suggested integrating a Jamba song (done by a musically talented employee) as the product installed. It was very catchy, and the idea was certainly new (but you could silence it, another new idea at the time).

The product was in direct competition with Shockwave, Macromedia's entry into web targeted interactive applets. While we won the coveted "Internet World" magazines best of breed trophy for applet creators, the product was also abandoned after the dissolution of Aimtech.

 

Learn baby learn...

Aimtech emobodied the spirit of the American tech startup of the day in the 90's - small, fast, and tireless. We worked hard to bring our products to market, and grew quickly to a mid-size company. The working environment for me was very different over my tenure, but I remained flexible enough to work there for a decade before it's purchase by Asymetrix in 1997. I learned all the basics surrounding the tech industry working there. My role started as technical support specialist, a serendipitous by-product of my computer hobby exploring the first versions of Microsoft Windows®. My hobby became my job - something I think everyone should be lucky enough to enjoy in their life. Soon I was promoted to Technical Support Manager, the team won an outstanding service award from the toughest technical reviewers of the day, Computerworld magazine. Aimtech support was awarded the only five star rating ever given to a service organization, and customer accolades won us a lot of praise in other articles. Of course my team carried the load but they sent me the prickly customers for soothing, a job I excelled at for some reason. My hiring process had a lot to do with getting the best team together: I would hire anyone with a great phone personality and then train them in product awareness. Potential employees with loads of tech knowledge but few interpersonal skills were not hired. You can teach a good phone person with bad tech skills to be a good tech person, but you can't teach a good tech person with bad phone skills to be a good phone person.

In my years as Technical Support Manager, the user centered design process started to bubble up in software development circles, and eventually I talked Aimtech into making me the sole User Interface Designer, in charge of all the product lines UI design. This was only a consulatory role for the most part, as software engineers still ruled the day in most of the software development process and decisions. To this day many companies are still without any interaction or user experience designers, but most are finally seeing the huge importance on good design (thanks Mr. Jobs). I was always heavily involved in the design of the products thank to my direct interaction with the customers, including the corraling of a"top ten pain points" for the VP of marketing that I provided prior to the start of development of a new release. So the job was a natural fit, and I never looked back - "design" has been in my title ever since.

 

 

freelance flexible, focused, and energized

Today as a part of spinthought's services I continue to do user interaction design projects for a variety of companies and their design departments. Recently I have provided user interaction design solutions for the following companies.

IBM Logo IBM is a personal contract job (not under spinthought services), where I work as a senior user interaction designer. It continues to be a pleasure to work with a group of dedicated, easy-going professionals who value your work and have given me some very positive feedback. It is easy to understand how IBM and its culture continues to be so successful for 100 years and beyond.
Sound One is an audio engineering company where I have contract where I share responsibilities with my spouse, and we are learning and loving every minute of the work. My role is spinthought's Chief Designer, where I work out our company process, financials, and of course theinteraction and user interface design for the project. Sound One Logo
Education Online Logo Education Online is a startup where I currently consult pro bono in the capacity of user interaciton designer. The goal of EOL is to essentilally bring premiere tutoring on a variety of subjects to students at a price anyone can afford, especially those familys with limited means. The work is based on an artificial intelligence system developed by John Leddo, and our team is working toward a goal of 2012 launch.

EzEz Apps

 EzEz Apps creates interactive entertainment apps, interactive kids books, and interactive graphic novels for the iPad. My role is lead user interaction, interface, and creative designer.

design practices

Here starts a collection of what I consider great works in design practice. It is a compilation of designers and designs, articles and books, that I can recommend and believe offer true insight into the world of user experience.

Guy Kawasaki is everywhere. He blogs, writes books, designs, lectures, attends, and delivers some of the best design principles around. Here is an infographic grafted from his new book:
Enchantment - The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions.
Enchantment Infographic