Paprika is a thoughtfully designed recipe manager for the iOS that first launched on the iPad in September of 2010. I purchased it then, squeamishly, for about ten bucks. Motivated by my growing evernote notebook of cocktail recipes I was intrigued by something purpose built. The app was expensive, but it delivered with elegant simplicity. I remember my only complaint being, “crap, how do I get this data onto my iPhone?” Sure enough Paprika for iPhone launched a few months later in December and to my delight included a sync service circumventing the need for a web app to provide cloud-like continuity from device to device. I happily forked over another $5 bucks for the iPhone app and $20/year for the sync service. Those are big price points for the current market, but I am down the cocktail rabbit hole and it was worth it for me.

I like this service roadmap pattern of transitioning from an app to a service through the addition of increased device support and syncing capabilities. I wish more folks would follow suit, wikipanion in particular. Being able to sell top dollar apps individually on all devices in addition to charging for a sync service is a hard sell. But if your service experience is focused (niche) and polished (high quality) I believe your customers will be there. Omnifocus is another example of this model but they have yet to start charging for their sync service which is in beta. It will be interesting to see how these apps gone services fair in 2011. While the web is still addicted to free, people like Paprika are trying to realize the value of context driven access to unique types of personal data. I hope this theory turns into a pattern for profitable businesses.

Reading an interesting interview with Odopod’s Tim Barber prompted me to eject some thoughts from my head that have been percolating for way too long. When asked how the SF creative scene is doing these days Tim talks about the walls breaking down between a few different domains and the resulting “tumultuous, inventive energy.” Excuse the ven…

When you look at the rhetoric coming out of these camps over the last 10 years its fascinating to think about what falls at the intersection.

• Product Design – Design Thinking + Design Strategy + Design Management etc


• Lean Startups – Agile + Customer Development + Open Frameworks etc


• Digital Agencies – Social Media + Augmented Reality + Viral etc

The sun at center of this universe is The Internet of Things and the concept of information as material that Mark Kuniavsky writes about in his new book Smart Things: Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design. What better concept to draw together these domains than a world where it is impossible to separate them? One thing I am missing from the macro view is the role of Hollywood / Game industry and Transmedia Storytelling.

If I was in school right now I wouldn’t know which way was up or where to focus. Interesting times.

Continuing the spirit of ejecting overly incubated ideas from my dome -

I have been thinking about connecting the dots between the recent surge of content strategy and the best social design strategy going – social objects.

Content and community have been bound forever on the web for obvious reasons. But I am curious about methods of design that embrace the connection between the two now that content strategy has got its foot in the agency door and “social” is a daily reality, not the next big thing.

• Can we grow social objects within an editorial framework?


• Does Content Strategy + Product Strategy = Editorial driven social applications that enable community to create content within an editorial framework?


• Do your Editorial Objects Sync With Your Social Objects?


• Are you giving the community the same tools as the publishers?

All questions I would love to hear peoples thoughts on.

Konigi, makers of some of the best UX templates out there (and our preferred OmniGraffle wireframe stencils at TBG) released their Keynote templates this AM. 

http://konigi.com/notebook/keynote-wireframe-toolkit

I have always been a bit iffy on using presentation software for wiring but at the end of the day whats a wireframing tool besides boxes, lines, text and the ability to template screens and pages?

Excited to try this out on Keynote iPad and see how it stacks up to OmniGraffle iPad.

Turns out the following rule is better for both the google bots and usability. Obvious to the cool kids, but good post-fodder for clients and the uninitiated.

p. …stop using words like Products, Solutions, and Clients and start using words that actually describe what you offer…

Jared Spool talks about a coleuge’s research into the ever present and ambiguous navigation labels products, services, and the like. Might as well say “stuff.”

(via BrainSparks)

Luke W lists a bunch of interrelated topics, ideas, and concepts from his time at Web School. All of it related to designing products and services on the web (surprise!). Hard to pin down a clear thrust of the post, but there are some serious gems in there…

p. 3. Whoever can frame the problem best, is the most likely to solve it… In today’s digital world, getting clarity into the problems organizations face is sometimes more valuable than coming up with solutions.

Peter over at Adaptive Path posted an interesting internal convo: adaptivepath (Adaptive Path Blog)&utm_content=Google Reader about collaborative-consumption on their blog. Ben from AP cited Live|Work ’s motto from their old homepage…

p. You are what you use, not what you own

I like that quite a bit, and could stand to reflect on that. The next day Bruce Sterling posted a spime watch about the  NeighborGoods  re-design, a service that embodies the concept of collaborative-consumption. I have yet to use it, but will definitely fork over the 5 bucks when I move to a new neighborhood this month.

We need more of this in the world, and more of whats happening in Detroit  (via bruces).

Umair Haque wrote an interesting post arguing that Apple’s service and hardware businesses cannot succeed together indefinitely. The post wasn’t very well received, but Umair sticks to his guns. The core of his gripes centered around how the iPad furthers Apples customer lock-in strategy and how openness is the future for businesses creating hardware that traffics in media “things.” Related to my post the other day, I argue that this idea of openness as related to media, is going to matter less and less as services continue to evolve and play nicely with one another.

So apologies for a bit of a repeat from yesterday, but I am amazed by how fantastic the Netflix and Kindle apps are on the iPad. Seamless service experiences. iPad was just the avatar. You can cut right past Apple’s media, DRM etc. I wouldn’t call that being locked down. Thats very powerful. And that was Apples choice. Granted a choice they had to make to keep their savvy customers happy. I think that those applications (services) represent enough openness for the average person, ya?

What I am hearing Umair say, is that locked down = doing it wrong.

But historically…

Open & Open Source = less than ideal user experience (crappy if you want toss some mudd).

Geeks want open (lumping myself in this bucket). But people want great customer experiences. The more open you get the harder it is to maintain an awesome UX. Look at Android, its considerably more open than what Apple is doing, but it is also sloppy as hell in comparison to Apple. I cant get music onto my Droid easily, legacy hardware issues abound etc. Look at Boxee and XBMC, my non-geek friends can’t get those apps up and running in their living rooms. Open isn’t there yet and it may never be. Good services will eat Open’s lunch. Why? As Umair points out good services are healthy businesses and capable of delivering fantastic customer experiences.

Its not about openess in the geek sense. Its about services playing nicely with one another and high quality overlapping customer experiences. If things keep swinging in the Netflix / Kindle app direction this argument over openness changes if not disappears. I think Apple is riding a razors edge of being locked down just enough. They let people like Kindle and Netflix play on the iPad, but they would never let another proprietary media format like WMV onto their devices filesystems. Essentially Apple is saying we will let third party services play on our lawn but not third party technologies. An interesting distinction, and one that I think allows them to run both services and hardware businesses indefinitely. At the end of the day customers are going to care more about Netflix / Amazon style service experiences than the underlying technology lockdown. With iPhone OS 4.0 announcement showcasing the ability to run Last.fm and Pandora in the background instead of your iPod I see Apple in a position to be the best avatar/touchpoint for awesome services. While Umair is trying to get his mp3s off his iPad I will be happily streaming away with the rest the kids. :-P (Edit: I was wrong Umair likes streaming too) :-P

In all seriousness, Bruce Sterling touched on this shift during is SXSW closing comments and it resonated with me. The Upcoming generations are going to care less about the philosophies (dogma) of the current web generation who scaffolded this whole web thing together. My nieces and nephews don’t care about DRM or openness. They grab my iPhone from me and head straight for games and media they can get for free. This new generation is going to be brought up on good service experiences. Not principles from Napster era local MP3 hoarding 30+ year olds. A dogmatic approach to openness isn’t solving any problems (not saying Umair is dogmatic).

“When I was your age I had to go to the AOL and get a massmail in the Zelifcam chatroom to have any fun on the interet! And I walked uphill both ways to school.”

Shout out to Higgs at Made By Many who brought this to my attention. He wrote a nice post on the topic. Check out the comments for an interesting response from Umair.