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oloolo

22 karma · joined November 21, 2009

Oliver Reichenstein, aka @iA
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oloolo··on iPad app sales numbers: WIRED vs Writer
Counter question: How many times do you read your downloaded app?
oloolo··on iPad app sales numbers: WIRED vs Writer
If this is true... (?) I wonder how many are aware of that? I wasn't.
oloolo··on Edward Tufte's impression of Windows Phone 7
The difference between an interface designer and a user is:

1. The designer knows many opinions (and due to being exposed to an avalanche of user feedback over the years you really see interfaces in a panopticum). But you never get enough. It's like a drug.

2. The user only knows his opinion. Every user opinion is important--to the designer.

Tufte is just an intelligent eloquent user. His interface design competence is as weak as his photography.

Without working in the field you don't get this perspective on interfaces. Tufte has an intelligent riff, but it's always the same professoral top-down "it-has-to-be-so-and-so", and sometimes he's just plain subjectively irrelevant.

oloolo··on Edward Tufte's impression of Windows Phone 7
Well, in contrast to Tufte, I actually have built a couple of Interfaces...
oloolo··on Edward Tufte's impression of Windows Phone 7
Tufte's site is s piece of crap, completely ridiculous. Criticizing websites is easy, making websites is hard. You're not an expert in user interface design if you haven't done user interface design.
oloolo··on The Pleasure of the Text
Thanks. 1. I've been talking about reading typography for a long time and just got curious about what writing typography could be like. 2. Was always jealous of those amazing coding apps. 3. noticed that switching between writing in a small input field in the backend and reading in (a designed) preview mode on the frontend in WordPress improved my writing and just couldn't figure out why. 4. Secretly stalked people who wrote texts on computers at work, in cafés, and when visiting clients (online newspapers). Yeah and then (since I studied Philosophy) there was all this theoretical stuff (Barthes, see below) in the back of my head.
oloolo··on The Pleasure of the Text
1. Those programs exist because there is a need to get out of the mess that Word is. 2. Programmers do have amazing apps, writers don't. 3. Fullscreen is not the solution to absence of distraction. I can work perfectly distraction free in Firework without going fullscreen. Cross editing is the main sickness of digital writing.

The key is a predefined writing-optimized typography that justifies the absence of formatting (a massive distraction) and a sub-mode that gets rid of all the visual clutter when necessary. Some think that Focus mode is just a gadget. It's not. The noise that is similar to the signal is the most distracting.

oloolo··on The Pleasure of the Text
And then there is that black thing that puts it at an angle...
oloolo··on The Pleasure of the Text
"I don't own an iPad" — but you know better than those who have used it for hours and hours (http://twitter.com/#!/iA/favorites)...
oloolo··on The Pleasure of the Text
Maybe you should actually try the app before you judge it. There are better and there are worse tools to work with, believe it or not.

Besides Burroughs there are literally hundreds of people that tried it and love it emphatically:

http://twitter.com/#!/iA/favorites

They're not all idiots.

oloolo··on The Pleasure of the Text
You'd be surprised.
oloolo··on The Pleasure of the Text
Yes. Barthes discerns between texte lisibles (readable) and texte scriptible (writable). Which was one of the inspirations to switch our focus from readablity to writability and create Writer. In Barthes' theory things are a little bit different, though ("readable" and "writable" indicate different kinds of written texts, not text in and post creation).
oloolo··on Web Design is 95% Typography
The article is from 2006, man.
oloolo··on Web Design is 95% Typography
1. Typohiles are megalomanics 2. We should read minds, but that would be megalomaniac 3. Let's just be a user then

No. Users are people with an opinion. User experience designers are those who deal with all those user opinions and try to find the best compromise. User experience designers are engineers.

http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/can-experience-be-des...

But that's not what the article is about.

oloolo··on Web Design is 95% Typography
This shocked a lot of flash boys and neck beards back in 2006.

But nowadays...

Luckily, I had a chance to prove it many times.

oloolo··on Writer for iPad: First Reactions
Yes, we will. Hopefully before Christmas. BTW: We're looking for Cocoa developers... http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/work-ia/
oloolo··on Writer for iPad: First Reactions
It's not about reading, it's about writing. Many measures in writer came from studying coding programs.
oloolo··on Writer for iPad: First Reactions
The idea of using a monospaced font was to invite the writer to conscious slowness. Reading typography needs speed and ease, writing needs care and precision.
oloolo··on Writer for iPad: First Reactions
It's not ironic, it's conscious. The typewriter was the blue print for the app. It was supposed to be called writing machine (from German Schreibmaschine = typewriter).
oloolo··on Writer for iPad: First Reactions
What's the difference between coding and writing a careful solid consistent text?
oloolo··on Designing for iPad: Reality Check
It's called calibration.
oloolo··on Designing for iPad: Reality Check
It says: "To find your average reading time all you need is taking a two minute test reading into one of the texts in the app and you’re set."
oloolo··on Designing for iPad: Reality Check
Did you read the full article? Doesn't seem like it, since "it requires a designer who's execution is better than average" is exactly what it says. And not just that, it also defines the criteria for using metaphors and textures.
oloolo··on Information Architect's 2006 Facebook redesigns
So you're saying

"I don't use facebook but I am sure they did their research, therefore it's perfect as it is."

Seriously? The reason why the search is on the bottom is exactly because I thought that

1. Facebook follows the push (feed/mail) paradigm and not the pull (search) paradigm 2. Search in a feed application is a form of filtering (if user testing shows that people miss it, you can still place it under the logo) 3. I do use facebook but I don't use the search because a) so far it has nnever shown me good results and b) it's not clear to me what kind of results it is supposed to show (my stuff, all of facebook...)