Dieter Rams Exhibit @ SFMOMA

I had the amazing opportunity to go see the Dieter Rams exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), and I can't even begin to describe how amazing the experience was. If you're looking for inspiration of any kind, I highly recommend this exhibit. Prior to going, I would recommend viewing the documentary 'Objectified' - I just discovered it recently and it includes a section on Dieter Rams himself. A lot of today's most popular designers, including Apple's Jonathan Ives, attribute their insights to Dieter Rams in it, and it will give you some pretty good background to the exhibit.

The first thing I saw when I got into the exhibit: a display of some of the furniture he's worked on, and the first thought was "so that's where IKEA got their ideas from". The pieces on display were more than just beautiful, but they were somehow timeless - for pieces that were designed between 1960 and 1970, these were pieces that could fit into today's design.
But the part that resounded with me the most was a room with a display on one side and writing printed all across the wall on the other. The writing on the wall was the Ten Principles of Good Design:

1. Good design is innovative
2. Good design makes a product useful
3. Good design is aesthetic
4. Good design makes a product understandable
5. Good design is honest
6. Good design is unobtrusive
7. Good design is long-lasting
8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail
9. Good design is environmentally friendly
10. Good design is as little design as possible

The beauty of these principles is that they apply to the design of most things irregardless of the product you're working on . You can find these themes in every piece of his work - from furniture to software to lighters and vacuums, and I can't tell you how inspiring it was to see. You'll have to come see it for yourself.

The Awkward Record Scratch

I love music. I can't go a day without it - my current addiction is Tron: Legacy from Daft Punk. Much like my music evolved, my music programs have changed. Here's a history of what I use*:

Kinda complicated, huh?

When I was in high school, I started off with iTunes and YouTube, and it's evolved over the years. Part of that is the evolution in the technology I use - iTunes became pretty entrenched in my music system due to syncing with my iPods. YouTube was the way I discovered new music, but now, there are many ways to discover it.

With this, my library of music has become extremely fragmented. It lives locally and in the cloud, but there's no way to access all of it at once.

A lot of it has to do with the basic positioning of each program:

• Last.FM - It's a radio station with social underpinnings - a good portion of programs out there allow you to scrobble to Last.FM, thus building your library there. Unfortunately, it's luck of the draw on your radio - you can't access a song directly. 
• Grooveshark - Store your music online via the cloud - you could potentially recreate your entire library onto Grooveshark and access it via the web, your desktop, and your smartphone. The cons here is that Android and iOS do not have *sanctioned* Grooveshark applications and Grooveshark doesn't have every song . 
• Spotify - Spotify allows you to supplement your library with licensed offerings and provides an alternative music management system 
• YouTube - it's a video service. Yes, this includes music videos, but YouTube's focus is on social sharing. Plus... I'm not entirely sure these videos are legal....

The focus that each program accomplishes is fairly different from each other - at the core, a user can listen to music, but each program is now focused on answering 'what else can you do with music players?'. 

I started this post a while ago, so while this was percolating, Google Music came out of beta. Like iTunes, Google Music will lock you (more) into Google's ecosystem, which fits into the company's strategy. This is why it will be hard to make a unified experience for your music - in creating this experience, you create an escape from using the music services directly. 

Of the services that I use, Spotify comes the closest to what I want - it's a free cross-platform service and I can import almost all my music to varying degrees of difficulty (easy from iTunes, headache inducing from Grooveshark). I don't have to spend money on a Zune Pass, more space from Google Music, or music from iTunes, but that means I'm dealing with Spotify's UI, which is not perfect. But the question of music 'synergy', to borrow a term from webOS, still remains as a pretty interesting design question, and I hope that I can help solve it some day. There's a lot left to be said, from the possible effect on the music industry to playing nicely with competing companies, but I'll stop here.

*This graphic was created right before I discovered MOG - it should be under the category of 'Not Used Yet'

I'm a... well, I don't know: Part I

Most folks I've met are firmly in one camp or another when it comes to the never ending debate that is PC vs Mac. I used to be staunchly PC - I grew up with them and my family's choice of poison is Dell. It wasn't until recently when my Dell suddenly refused to charge and I got completely surrounded by Mac people that I even contemplated crossing over. I finally bit the bullet and purchased a 13 inch Macbook Pro which comes with Lion.

Let's just say I'm not so sure about the PC camp anymore.

I've never been one for mice - it's another piece of equipment to carry (tiny, but as a student, I was already lugging around enough stuff). By enabling gestures, the trackpad allows me so much more functionality at the tip of my fingers (literally) than the mouse and PC trackpad combo ever did. While some of my gestures are already keyboard shortcuts, I find it more natural to use the gestures (it might be my webOS background). Unfortunately, the tradeoff here is that I've found the contextual menu harder to get to - with a PC, I got to it with a simple right click or the contextual menu shortcut button that's part of the keyboard. On a Mac however, the equivalent is the two finger tap on the trackpad. This means that I have to press and hold with two fingers with my right hand and navigate with my left through the menu - if I let go, the menu disappears. An alternative I've found is pressing the Command button and then tapping, but this has been inconsistent.

I haven't really put my Mac through its paces yet - the majority of the time, I live on phones, my Touchpad, and my work laptop. Thus, the majority of my software is free downloads from the App Store. This is a big bonus for me, because there's no PC equivalent (yet...). I'm enjoying the apps that live in the status bar mainly - I have 1 click access to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ simply from my status bar. In addition to those, I don't have to hunt around the Internet for applications - my first stop is the App Store, which I found pretty familiar from iOS.

It's slightly unfair to be comparing my four year old Dell with Windows 7 to my Mac because I've lived with my PC longer. The constant concern of it crashing (old hardware + new OS optimized for better hardware specs = frequent BSoD) is still fresh in my mind, and I'm less likely to put up with my very short battery life. However, I find that I still return to my PC sometimes. Old habits die hard, and designers know that an effective product is one that a user can easily assimilate into their routines or methods of performing tasks. My Mac is super effective, but some basic tasks are still easier on the PC for me, such as word processing. I have not purchased any software that is better than the standard Mac option for it, but I have played with Microsoft Office on a Mac, and MS Office is much better as an experience on PCs (go figure).

All in all, I highly doubt I will ever return to a PC given a choice. I admit to wanting to throw my work PC out a window when I try to do a gesture on the trackpad. But I'm not entirely a Mac either.

I guess that makes me a fence straddler for now.

What's with my title?

Tele - Greek prefix meaning distant
Techno - prefix to indicate words related to technology
philia - Greek suffix for love

In short, hi my name is Sweta and I'm a phone nerd.

My first love is mobile user experience, and in the past few years I've used many mobile platforms. There are experiences that I've loved and some that I've learned from, and all have shaped my thoughts on design.

However, I also have an appreciation for web design and user experience in general. So the point of this is to stop pestering my social networks with 'Gosh, check out this eye bleeding UI' and instead collect my thoughts here.

My current collection of devices as a baseline:

- Phone: HP Veer
- Phone: Samsung Focus (WP7)
- Computer: Dell Vostro (Windows 7)
- Computer: Macbook Pro (OS X Lion - more to follow)
- Tablet: HP Touchpad

Disclaimer: my opinions are mine alone and belong to/reflect the opinions of no one else.

And with that, good morning