And the fact that they rarely have ANYTHING interesting to say. I have the WOMworld rss feed chucking stuff into mac Mail every single day, and to date I think I’ve counted about 3 interesting articles. I intend to write more about this when I’m not so irate and / or trying to eat lunch, right now I’m going to delete / ignore all those super interesting posts I’ve made about phones and UI before.

Another thing I’ve been up to in the last few weeks, some new signage for the front door of the office.

For the last week or so I’ve been working on some graphics for the inside of the new MOO office. Our meeting rooms are now Cyan, Magenta and Yellow (not my decision), so we have some lovely panels on the window of each room.

We also have new signage on the front door, but I will post pictures of that when I take a good camera in to work.

I’m not sure if it’s the fact that I see loads of the shiny things around the office all day now, but my N95 is beginning to look increasingly dull (interface especially) compared to a nice shiny iPhone. I’m waiting to see what (if any) hardware / software changes are made on the ’supposed’ upgraded one - I use my phone a lot as a device for grabbing quick pictures / videos when I’m out and about, that’s what’s put me off to this date.

The sync between Symbian and OSX has never been perfect, another plus point of the iPhone is perfect sync between the two. Not too sure if I’d use it that much at home, but I can see it being some use with iCal at work.

I haven’t been up to much of late apart from work at MOO, so I thought another post on that theme is a good option.

We moved office a week ago, into a much larger space. I’d only been at the old office for a few weeks but it was quite a sad day.

Well, this morning I got my 3 USB dongle through (along with some free goodies from 3!) First impressions - quite easy to set up, not a real test of endurance but I’m sitting at my dining table with Airport turned off. Even with a low graphic, high text content page like my Wordpress admin module, it seems to be quite slow - but then again I am used to 8mb+ download speeds at home. I have a long train journey home tomorrow night, so hopefully I’ll get the chance to test it out then. Thanks to Sam at 3mobilebuzz for getting it out so quickly!

Sam from 3mobilebuzz recently got in touch with me after reading my blog, and offered to send me a USB Broadband dongle for testing. I should be getting it in the next few days and will be doing a few detailed write ups on my experiences. Should be even more useful, as I’m moving house and will more than likely be without the internet for a couple of weeks. More to come on this when I get the dongle through the post!

In case you haven’t seen the update on my site, on Monday this week I started work at MOO, as Web / Graphic Designer. I’m very, very excited about this and very proud to be a part of it all. Why not go and order yourselves some MiniCards if you’ve read this, they’re very good indeed. Jack joined us in the studio this evening for a quick game of Guitar (or is that Banjo) Hero. 

One of the reasons I traded in my P1i for the N95 was that the interface left me unsatisfied. Even a simple action like answering a call became quite a dull task, I didn’t feel rewarded in any way by the whole experience. There’s a certain sense of satisfaction associated with pressing a button to do something - even moreso when the button itself is ’satisfying’ to press.

With the iPhone setting standards in terms of interface design and user interaction (for phones, anyway), it seems quite sad to me that we appear to be nearing an era where phone buttons probably won’t exist. Buttons obviously have major restrictions - in that they’re only made to produce an on/off effect or in some examples a pressure sensitive effect. For me, touching a flat screen - even if it launches an amazing sequence of digital trickery and movement - is a very, very dull experience. You may be interacting with the media inside the phone, but you’re interacting with it on a very non-personal level, and the screen doesn’t give you anything back in return.

So is there any scope for having a next generation phone ‘interact’ with you, like the click back of a button when it’s pressed? It’s something I’d like to put to some people, to see if it’s just me with these crazy thoughts. Maybe the next step from a fully interactive, multi touch screen is a screen that somehow makes your content ‘touchable’, like braille. Imagine if a set of buttons raised from the screen when you wanted to make a call, and fell back when you’d finished dialling.

I posted a few months ago that I’d changed my phone to a Sony P1i, after getting a bit bored of the Symbian interface. Well, I guess I can eat my words, as I’ve now switched back to the greener side and got myself an N95.

When I have some spare moments, I’m going to start working on developing my own theme for S60 V3, with a set of unique icons. Seeing the stock icons that Nokia use reminded me how terrible they are. I’m currently using a theme with slightly more inspirational icons than the stock ones, as you can see below. More on this as it continues!

I haven’t posted anything on here for a while, so here goes with what I’m up to at the moment.I’m currently working on some web concepts for Ireland based Creative consultancy Greenhouse. More on that as the project progresses during the next few weeks, but it’s looking to be quite exciting, and could possibly involved some ‘3D’ icons (something I never thought I’d take an interest in… but thanks to Jack and James I now have a fascination for).

I’m also in talks with a company in the US about doing some work on an interface for a mobile application, which I am very, very excited about. My wandering thoughts on this blog were picked up a few weeks ago, it’s really nice that this is being read and people are understanding what I’m trying to get across.

I also did a bit of work for the Westway Arts project, doing some illustrator templates for some decorated utility boxes that should be appearing in West London in the next few weeks.

Finally… I am doing some graphics and promotional stuff for pinkdoodle.com, a kind of ‘creative persons’ eBay, started by a graduate from CSM last year. More on that as and when it happens.

Although I suppose technically I’m a designer, as you may gather from my blog I’ve got quite an interest in mobile technology and interfaces. Having used Nokia phones for years, and specifically ones running the Symbian OS, I’ve found that although the technology within the device is constantly developing and changing, the operating system has remained more or less the same for the last 4 or 5 years. I’ve changed to UIQ 3 on a Sony Ericsson P1i to see what the deal is, and after a week and a bit of use it seems to be more than user friendly and a nice step up from the limitations of S60.

Since the launch of the iPhone I think a new benchmark has been set in terms of interface design on phones, especially the way that applications work and interact with each other. There are probably hundreds of reviews on the net of the iPhone UI from people much more qualified than myself, so I won’t go into that.

Symbian recently previewed ‘Symbian Touch’, a touch screen version of their standard UI used on N series phones. I’ll let people make up their own minds, but I still think there’s a lot of developments that could have been made to the aesthetics of the interface - without directly copying the iPhone. Now phones have been opened up - the screen is now pretty much the size of the device - companies have almost infinite play over the way they use the screen as a canvas.

The development of the touch screen interface is probably as significant as the change from B+W LCD to colour screens, I think we’re yet to see the real ‘next generation’ mobile phone.

I’ve thought this ever since I looked into QR Codes for my Everyone you’ve ever known poster during my third year of CSM. The benefits of QR Codes are obvious - it’s like an automated form of note taking and means people don’t have to scramble to make notes of websites / products / gigs - whatever.

But - I believe there is quite a large limitation. At present, and I would imagine on launch in the UK, QR Codes launch a browser window on your mobile device. The program to scan the codes is relatively simple - like a hyperlink on a web page. Considering the current state of network providers in the UK, chances are most normal people don’t have a data account, and if they do, the bandwidth is relatively small. You don’t always want to check out a product or site there and then.

I might tie this work into my interface work started a while back (when my current projects have eased off). QR Codes are no doubt going to add a form of interaction to printed media (a kind of ‘primitive RFID’), but they are at present highly restrictive and dare I say it, quite simple. Barcodes in their traditional form have been around for years, it’s not a new technology by any means. Rather than the simple ‘barcode on a poster’ format, is there any scope for things to be taken a step forward, while not advancing the physical technology needed to make and read the codes?

I’ve been slacking a bit in terms of getting content up on here, due to being quite busy.  While I’m on here though, I seem to have noticed a lot of QR Codes knocking around on adverts and billboards (some looking remarkably similar to my ‘Everyone you’ve ever known’ poster - but that’s another issue entirely). I spotted this one on the poster for the new Nokia N81, I guess people are starting to realise what they’re about.

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Got a few things coming up so decided to do myself some new business cards. 60 variations of various pictures I’ve taken - either of work, general stuff, or just plain interesting stuff.