marc escobosa

7 February 10

interface & design

iPad User Experience Guidelines

6 February 10

san-francisco & culture

On Homelessness: Clarence Williams

A portrait of Clarence Williams

This is Clarence Williams. He’s 54 years old.

You can often find him where I found him last Friday morning: soaking up the morning sun somewhere on Clementina where it hits 5th street.

This is his story, or at least part of it:

He was born in New Orleans, served in Viet Nam but then came down with HIV/AIDS shortly after returning in the early 80s and left for the refuge of San Francisco, away from the taboos and stares of the south.

With nothing to his name, he signed up to be an experimental tester for every AIDS drug he could find.

“And I did a lot of street drugs, too,” he told me last Friday.

“And one thing led to another,” he admitted, “Now, I’m here.”

One day, he would like to write a book about his life.

politics

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Compares Job Losses Under Presidents Obama and Bush

5 February 10

design & culture

User Centered Innovation is Dead

While tech experts were busy commenting on the qualities of the iPad, what struck me was the level of excitement that the event created. On Tuesday, the day before the product was unveiled, a Web search for “Apple tablet” produced more than 17 million links! On Wednesday, hordes of people attended the news conference remotely. Everyone was anxiously waiting for Apple’s interpretation of what a tablet is.

This was validation of Apple’s peculiar innovation process: Insights do not move from users to Apple but the other way around. More than Apple listening to us, it’s us who listen to Apple.

This contradicts the conventional management wisdom about innovation. In fact, one of the mantras of the past decade has been user-centered innovation (cheeky link here!): Companies should start their innovation process by getting close to users and observe them using existing products to understand their needs.