Welcome

to the porcelainkid blog. This section of website is meant to share short timeline of porcelainkid’s life as well as concepts and works in progress. In this place you may also find answers to your question.

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16/06/11
23:13

The great fail of Symbian OS

Symbian OS is in my eyes pioneer to mobile operating platforms – speaking of full service with mail, applications, synchronisation and more. It was standing out (with Blackberry) in times when most of cellphones was “dumb”. Sadly it ends there. As good as it was on classic cellphones it has got worse when candybar construction appeared. The company obviously didn’t know where to aim their next step and the UI has received only a small treatments – bulky thumbs friendly iconography and phone orientation dependent layout. While it is not painful experience to use Symbian S60 (Symbian OS 9.4) edition slate phones, it is not joyful either.

I first came across 5800 which was the first Symbian S60 slate phone and I hated it. The contents is rather small and resisitive screen is responding slowly. At least the system is stable. That can’t be said about the new S^3 version, which certainly did bring some improvements to ease touch input and generally speed the phone up, but that’s only the first glance.

The problem with Nokia is their marketing, which is almost always the top of everything. In videos the system looks appealing, but one just can’t judge interface by pictures, that’s impossible.

Incoherent experience and 1990-ishness

Any UI should feel like a strong, convincing product made for our lazy skulls. While reading mail, browsing the news or chatting with friends, we don’t really like to think about anything but the contents. This UI definitely requires lots of thinking.

Home screen

In symbian every part have different structure of use. Desktop is made of few screens with widgets, main menu is a candy-screen gallery of iconography by various authors, submenus are lists of commands and tertially menus contain mix of each always shaked into completely different cocktail. In the result user is constantly trying to figure out where the hell did he just happened to land and why. (more…)

22/04/11
17:41

Lifetab™

What is it?

It’s an online application giving purpose to all our data. I mean ALL our data. At this point we are creating, using and deleting our data. It’s like stuff for us. But it can be much more. Life can be pretty harsh today in digital world speaking of organization and handling all the information. Lifetab will do this for you and it will reward you for doing so. You will be able to create individual or social goals which will make you proud as you gain rewards not only from the system – badges, experience points, achievements – but also from the users – acknowledgment for what you have done!

What does it do?

Basically, Lifetab is a virtual reality where you are your own avatar. You grow up by performing various actions and as you grow up, you get cooler ranks, achievements and more accurate statistics.

Its sophisticated profile page allows users to exactly specify which information is public, which is strictly personal, and which is meant to reach particular group of friends. This way you can create an alternative virtual persona nicely reflecting your true self without disclosing anything too personal.

It logs your online presence (if you wish), pulls data from your facebook, twitter, foursqare…whatever profile / service you use and rewards you pretty much in the same way any mmorpg game does.

It’s your one-line diary that helps to understand your life. Moreover you can travel back in time and check what you were doing around the same day three years ago.

It gives you statistical overview of your real self-development, utilizes your connections in purposeful way, and much more.

It utilizes social power – via custom or administrated goals you can create and organize reachings, set rewards, entertain and make the world a better place to live in. Plus you can gain fame and acknowlegement for successful goals.

It’s yours – thanks to high profile customization options user can setup their preferences like – groups of friends / hieratical friend listing, their own diary domains, their own values and more stuff.
You don’t want to share the same information with your love and your boss, or do you?

(more…)

09/04/11
18:02

An Amazing Project

This has been digging my mind since last summer or so.

My friend Devine has been working on this system – Horaire. Which is essentially simple one line diary allowing him to track his personal development. I got sincerely interested in this concept and started playing around with the idea. Soon I realized its immerse potentialities and the project core was born. Playing with Horaire, it [core] soon started to grow – I added idea of browsing logs, custom categories, data harvesting from various fields, game system, and last but not least, augmented reality.

During my research I found many interesting names and projects of similar kind; Jane McGonigal – author of great book Reality Is Broken and researcher in field of social gaming, Seth Priestbasch – author of SCVNGR and experimentator in ARG, Ken Robinson – ‘education reformator’, and others. Those people and their work has inspired me to push things forward, and  affirmed that the idea is really worth creating.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of similar projects and we don’t want to kill these. We’re here to unite these under one hood so the data provided are really meaningful on the output. For sufficient statistics, we need as much data as possible. Some may not survive, some may overgrow us, but most importantly, we’re all just starters in this domain. We all are trying to finally give purpose to our data and understand its possibilities.

During the fall 2010 I worked hard to describe project structure, technology concepts, design and visual. And I started looking for developer. Took a whole bunch of mails and few months to find a good developer willing to work on the prototype just for the vision of world-changing project. Finally I succeeded. Ironically he was closer than I thought the whole time; Kevin is a friend of Devine, also amazed by Horaire. Thanks to the fact of interests, the project grown even more. With Kev joining the project we finally start moving forward, not only in developement but also in the concept itself.

Lifetab™
is in development since 24 December 2010
and under creation since 14 July 2010

…and I’ve grown 100% more nuts since that day.

14/12/10
17:58

Getting into the problem

To leave the empty visionary talk, some brief explanation of problem should follow. Also this is very important to get reader involved into the whole idea. The topic will be explained on few examples as well.

For human or any other entity, it is very natural to exist in certain surroundings. The biggest element of the surroundings is our planet – the framework for our existence. It contains smaller divisions – elements existing in the same places we do. This is connected closed system we’re part of. It is very natural to perform actions in it, it is very natural to interact with it, and it is very natural to customize it. The whole system is being processed via 5 senses to our minds – to our abstract processing unit, where the information is bended, explained, understood, categorized and stored. No need to mention that we can feel some kind of atmosphere, or a mood if you wish, of the place. The information stored by this process is transferred to genes over the years so for the newer generation this particular experience may feel absolute. The whole system was designed and created at once, and has evolved as needed and has been changed many times in order to solve its mistakes. Why to mention this? Speaking about billions of years of evolution is important to get the abstract idea of environment and to understand these needs in GUI.

We have learnt to create physical elements depending on our environmental knowledge. Based on the stored data in us, we tend to make the physical designs and our artificial surroundings to feel as natural as possible. Our subconscious intention is to create a comfortable, pleasuring place to live and to fill this place with objects with the same precise intention. Physical, environmental designs are much more perfect, than the non-physical ones. Mistakes are just too obvious to ignore. While designing a physical object, revision is easy to perform – the created prototype is put through series of tests, the mistakes are noted and resolved. Everything is done in a very natural process of interacting with the item. You wouldn’t buy a scissors that doesn’t fit in your hand, would you? For some reason not many users think about how well the non-physical interface is designed, but today it is very important to do so.

So what is that ideal natural state? Generally it should be a UI which feels natural to use, is easy to follow, is not visually overwhelming and acts as a part of reality. There is something needed to be understood in order to create such designs. The abstract meaning of UI, the connection between data and reality, the most important part is you.

Let me make an example.

I always tend to put myself in a clean environment, which provides a depth of perfection and absoluteness. Which allows me to focus on what I need, when I need? It allows feeling the environment just as it is and nothing more. I imagine a small example of a perfect surrounding suitable for everything. It is a square room; it is modular and can transform its shape when required. The whole place is painted white only, but there is a light. The light is changing color according to the desired mood. It is big enough to feel free, but not too big, to feel small. It is a unit of harmony of the relationship between men and their surroundings. It feels like nothing, but everything. Your presence is filling it with whatever you want.

Now to connect it with the GUI, imagine yourself inside of such a room. You have few options to explore it. By olfaction, touch, vision, hearing, and taste. While working with a graphical user interface, you get fewer options. You certainly can touch it and see it, but you can hardly taste it or smell it. Also hearing is not that useful and the touch is more like an input device, than a processing unit. In the reality we are part of the surrounding, on the screen we are not. I personally disbelief the designer should try to reproduce elements of reality on the screen. In contrary he should look for a way to bring the “abstract” feeling, the mood of the room into the device. Current UIs proves the remaking pots, buttons, gloss, shadows, etc. is not ideal. The device is more of an empty room from the example above, than a desk or table.

The data explanation today is mostly graphic. Designers can work with shapes, colours, text, icons, sound and even movement. Although the major problem isn’t how it does look, it is the way we interact with data. Even when the UI is dynamic, changing with every movement, click, whatever, the data access is mostly static. Once click – one action – one rendering. I think the interface should be visually simplified, while the ways of interaction should be improved and extended.

I’ll show few visual examples in the next story.

Thank you.

25/11/10
20:12

Sans-serif fonts to replace the mainstream

I’ve spent last few days looking for a good and strong sans-serif typefaces after chatting with my friend. Today we use mostly the system-delivered faces and if you are a professional you probably use Helvetica, FF DIN,ITC Avant Garde Gothic or similar well-known hi quality fonts. This could be a problem when you want to define your personal identity though. To keep some recognizable mood in your presentation there is very few fonts to be used…

Also it depends on what you want. For me it’s something DIN-like – Helvetica Neue qualities and neutral enough to be used everywhere. Here’s what I found:

(more…)

21/11/10
02:08

PROTOTYPE 01

Tags: , , ,

There has been many updates on this site, although all of them totally minor. Now that the research has progressed it is a great time to perform a bigger one. Few watchers may notice that I am still updating the blog-part only, but be sure the main site will be online soon. It will be running completely new web rendering engine, which I am currently working on. Please note the site is fresh-uploaded not debugged version now. I am planning to finish these tasks as soon as possible. Also I’d like to finally implement Horaire (timeline), to track my work efficiency and keep the blog updated at least by short entries of this kind.

PROTOTYPE 01

The test version of the engine is planned to be released till the end of 2010.
More information is coming soon.

21/11/10
01:54

User Interface Design

The world is not only made of hardware anymore. Displays with interfaces, programs, non-physical structures have become as much important as the devices itself. Many daily actions we perform via digital interface and it doesn’t necessarily mean only the computer UI. We can play music on portable device, almost everyone possesses a cellular phone, and lots of people have watches. All these particular physical devices has non-physical interface, which is the most elementary for its function. (more…)

21/11/10
01:53

Introduction

Name’s Josef Pacal and I am a designer. I’m currently based in Czech republic, although I am a cosmopolitan and I don’t believe in boundaries. At the moment I focus on Branding, Corporate Identity, User Interfaces and product design. But I am interested in architecture, which is meant to be my future career. As I believe in nature and its basic laws I keep looking for simple yet effective geometrical explications of words and statements. Trying my works to interact with the context its being used in I communicate with the recipient on widely acceptable natural level.

At the moment I am writing series of stories about User Interface design, because this is a department I can write a lot about. A department that I believe needs to be changed.Few years ago I started a project Colorfusion which is my platform to perform these changes, but for a lack of time, there was no major progress. This is meant to be changed in 2011 so I am in middle of research to support my ideas. I am about to share concepts of stories to open a discussion, so the work will be more meaningful.