Have you ever heard a song where the remix is better than the original song? This might be blasphemy to some, but I like this version of M83′s “Midnight City” more than the original. That’s saying a lot—absolutely love this song.
I want to just drive through concrete jungles, listening to this song.
What do you think?
If you told me that “get an app I worked on to be featured on the iTunes app store” was a goal of mine, you are wrong. Well, I guess things change.
Get an app I worked on to be featured on the iTunes app store
Paper’d is an iPhone app that allows you to browse through beautifully designed wallpapers for your phone and download them. Jamie and Nicole came up with the idea and connected with Adam and I to work on the Experience and Code. When Adam and I saw the idea, we knew this was a great idea that would go somewhere.
Week one has beyond exceeded our expectations. We were featured on the iTunes App Store, ranked #11 on top lifestyle apps and have had more than 40,000 downloads in one week. We were even featured on Mashable.
It was a lot of hard work and dedication to get this app out, but in the end it was so worth it. I couldn’t be happier to work with my best friend and a pair of new friends on an iPhone app.
I remember when Steve Jobs died, I told Adam that we should dedicate our work on Paper’d to him—really think about how to push this and make this a great app that people will love and want to keep using. It is amazing how much we have pushed the app together from the original idea.
We are very proud of what we have done, but want to make it better, make more apps and keep living, keep designing.
We passed Starbucks on the top Lifestyle Apps!
Number one might be tough to knock off. Note to self, don’t buy any Macs from your iPhone. We’re going for the top though—occupy app store!
We even got some BFF love from Alyssa
After living in Brooklyn for about three months, it’s becoming a weekly routine for me to go over to Atlantic Ave. and hit up the Brooklyn Flea Market. I’m always afraid to bring money to flea markets because I will spend a ton—so much great arts and crafts you won’t find anywhere else.
One of my favorite places at the flea market is W Records by Monkey. These guys take old vinyl records and create some pretty cool things: notebooks, necklaces, bracelets, keychains—see more on their website.
I absolutely love their stuff, and the reason is because of the material. Their product is 100% Brooklyn, from the look and feel and the practicality. When I was there a few weeks ago I was talking to one of the guys about the Beastie Boys song Rock Hard where they resample AC/DC. We were talking about how the Beastie Boys (who are also from Brooklyn) really mastered the art of resampling.
The stuff the guys make at W. Records by Monkey really reminds me of resampling—taking something old and giving it new purpose. If you are in Brooklyn go check out the flea market on Saturday and Sunday 10am-5pm. If not, order their stuff online. I absolutely love the Brooklyn necklace I got (image above).
For those of you who remember me in a past life, I used to make a lot of art and draw. I earned my Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting and drawing. For a while, I was motivated to go back to grad school to get my Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Painting and be a university professor.
My life has since moved in a very different path.
I absolutely love what I do now, and part of me feels like I am a better designer than artist. The biggest difference between an artist and designer is that an artist will create usually for the self and it is an expression of that. Designers, on the other hand, typically create for an audience or people…the users. I love designing for the users.
I still try to make time to draw a bit here and there. I did a little Valentine’s Day sketch of a Skrillex card. If you don’t know who he is, this probably isn’t funny at all.
Perhaps I should open a store on Etsy and continue to do doodles…if I have time.
I’ll make time.
I think my cat would make a great operating system!
It is amazing how many skills I’ve learned from playing video games. So many hours playing StarCraft and Command & Conquer: Red Alert taught me to monitor everything in project management and multi-task. The SIMs taught me that if I drink too much water I might piss myself in the living room floor in the middle of a party.
Just kidding. Seriously. I don’t pee my pants at parties.
I have recently been playing Star Wars: The Old Republic where I play as a Sith Bounty Hunter. I am a freelance contractor, it only made sense to be a bounty hunter, right? The game is your standard Role Playing Game (RPG) where you start with a basic character. From there, you go on quests and do missions to earn experience points. Once you acquire a certain amount of experience points, you level up and can add certain skills to your character, making him or her more powerful (than you can possibly imagine). You can also gain credits on the way to purchase new items, combining your skills with weapons to become even more effective.
Uh…this sounds like real life. The reality…it is very similar.
This month marks a full year that I have been working with my mentor. When we met, I was still pretty junior and had a lot to learn from her. There were certain tasks she assigned me that took me some time to finish, and she usually gave me a lot of revisions. Not after leveling up, baby! After doing a lot of these projects, I learned and gained experience. My dexterity, knowledge (but not resistence to lightning, unforunately) increased and I became more effective at what I did.
It is amazing how much has changed in a year, and what I’m able to do. I emailed Marie a few days ago and asked her to give me feedback on what I can do better and areas I can focus on. I think it made her really happy to hear that.
Here are some RPG realizations that will help you in the work world:
In life, you can never stop leveling up. Acquire new skills constantly, sharpen your old skills and you will find bliss in the work world.
I used Printstagram for the first time and was very impressed with the quality of prints I got. Postagram is good, but the paper quality is not as nice and the larger image seems to pixelate the Instagram photos. I got 48 photos printed for $12 and they make great cards to send to people or hand quick notes. They also make a good keepsake. I really recommend them.
Wow, was he right. I must admit, I was skeptical at the time. When it came out, I wondered to myself, “why would I give up my perfectly good Motorola RAZR and iPod (now classic) for one device?” Then, I didn’t see the potential. I don’t know if many of us did. That’s what made Steve great. He knew what we wanted before we even knew we wanted it. A few reasons I’m thankful for the iPhone:
Happy Birthday, iPhone. I can hardly wait for the years to come. I still dream of one day having a carbon fiber iPhone.
And you? How has the iPhone changed your life? No, I do not think it is ridiculous to say it is a life-changing device.
If the words “dudes” and “chicks” offend you, simply replace dudes with “men” and chicks with “women.”
I like to think I’m “the first dude on Pinterest” but that’s probably not true, but it certainly felt like it when I first started using it. Like Google+ being a sausage fest of dudes posting animated gifs, it seemed like Pinterest was just a virtual pinboard for chicks to post links of stuff they wanted to buy or which angle of Ryan Gosling they liked. However, I did see some value to it as a guy.
I first tried using Pinterest like a chick and attempted to find links of things I wanted to buy, but it did not interest me. I decided to try to take the approach of how I used to use real pin boards. Back in my high school art days I kept physical pinboards of inspiration, places I’ve visited, etc. This isn’t to say a chick can’t use a pinboard like this, but it is certainly a more approachable way for a dude to use it.
Finding Inspiration
Tumblr is still a site I use for inspiration, but I now use it to look at photos of tattoos and cats, which is great. I like the idea of curated inspiration in Pinterest and it’s my first tool used to look for compelling items/products.
Get a Feminine Touch (Not like that)
To be completely honest, dudes should use Pinterest because there are a lot of chicks on it. I use Pinterest to really seek advice from chicks on trendy items, things they like about dudes, etc. It’s a great way to get new perspective.
Organization
I’m not the most organized person in terms of my personal life. Instead of using physical lists or a program like Evernote, I decided to create a pinboard to keep a list of items I wanted to get for my apartment. The beauty of Pinterest is I have the URLs already saved, so I can puchase them.
One thing Pinterest certainly is not is a dating site. As much as I wish it and Etsy was sometimes, Creep Responsibly, gentlemen. Dudes, get on Pinterest and follow me.
I’ve been on the Path app since the startup launched the iPhone app about 10 months ago. All of the sudden, I received email notifications from my people requesting to be my friend. I was curious what happened.
The mobile app released a new update with a competely redesigned User Interface. Could this be the reason Path was able to cultivate thousands of new users? The conensus seems to be “yes” that it did play a factor. Here is what Matt, an avid social networker and iPhone owner said about it.
“I initially signed up last year when they initially released the app. It was a poor user experience and had no incentive to use it on a regular basis, so I forgot about it quickly. After the update was released, I downloaded it and remembered that I had an account. I don’t use it as often as Twitter and Facebook, but the UI and UX in the new version is incredible. It is a pleasure to use for the most part, my gripes are trivial. Just goes to show how critical user experience and design are.”
According to Tech Crunch, the user base of Path jumped from 10k to 300k users in the two and a half weeks of the update. Can usability and user experience increase your user base that much? The answer is yes. Criticism of the app prior to the UI refresh was that it seemed like a lesser version of Facebook or Instagram. With experiences shifting more to real time and timeline-based experiences, Path re-focused their product to personal stories (paths) shared with close friends.
So what exactly did they change in the user experience and user interface? Let’s take a look at some of the new elements that were introduced.
Unified Content
Perhaps following the way of the new Facebook timeline, Path’s new user interface introduces unified content: music, thoughts, photos, video, location-based checkin, and yes, even when you are going to bed. The shift seems to be going away from widgets/sections and unifying content. We see this in Sparrow, Gmail, Facebook and Twitter.
No Tab Interface
The first thing that jumps out of Path’s new UI is probably the red call to action, which is a red plus button on the bottom-left of the UI—always fixed there. When a user taps on it, the interface reveals the different type of media he or she can post. One reason for this is Path has multiple types of media to post. When you use the Twitter app, you tweet. When you use Instagram, it’s a photograph. When you use Foursquare, it’s a checkin.
This is one of the first apps I’ve seen in a while where there is no tab interface.
Horizonal Swiping
This interaction became famous with Facebook’s iPhone app as well as the Twitter iPad app, where horizonal swiping would reveal different views versus only utilizing the tab interface.
Considerations
We’ve highlighted on the elements that have been working well, but let’s cover some things that could be different. It’s not to say what was done is wrong, but raises questions on UI best practices—what works and what may be evolving:
While I still use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and other content sharing social media sites, Path has become one of my favorites because of the user experience. I want to feel like I am sharing with my close friends and viewing their content, and that is what I am doing/receiving. The Path redesign is a great example of how user experience considerations can cultivate new users and really enable your products success.
