The Social Graph is Neither

November 9, 2011
by Riccardo Mori
Handpicked

In his detailed analysis The Social Graph is Neither, Ceglowski explains why, in his opinion, the so-called social graph — a recent buzzphrase made popular especially by Facebook among others — is neither ‘social’ nor a ‘graph’. An absolute must-read.

My favourite bit:

Social networks exist to sell you crap. The icky feeling you get when your friend starts to talk to you about Amway, or when you spot someone passing out business cards at a birthday party, is the entire driving force behind a site like Facebook.

Because their collection methods are kind of primitive, these sites have to coax you into doing as much of your social interaction as possible while logged in, so they can see it. It’s as if an ad agency built a nationwide chain of pubs and night clubs in the hopes that people would spend all their time there, rigging the place with microphones and cameras to keep abreast of the latest trends […].

We’re used to talking about how disturbing this in the context of privacy, but it’s worth pointing out how weirdly unsocial it is, too. How are you supposed to feel at home when you know a place is full of one-way mirrors?

We have a name for the kind of person who collects a detailed, permanent dossier on everyone they interact with, with the intent of using it to manipulate others for personal advantage — we call that person a sociopath. And both Google and Facebook have gone deep into stalker territory with their attempts to track our every action. Even if you have faith in their good intentions, you feel misgivings about stepping into the elaborate shrine they’ve built to document your entire online life.

Open data advocates tell us the answer is to reclaim this obsessive dossier for ourselves, so we can decide where to store it. But this misses the point of how stifling it is to have such a permanent record in the first place. Who does that kind of thing and calls it social?

Parlando di Apple e televisione con mio padre

November 7, 2011
by Riccardo Mori
Mele e appunti

Di mio padre e della stima che ho per lui ho già parlato in Dove chiacchiero di iPad con mio padre, lettura che suggerisco così che vi facciate un’idea più precisa del mio interlocutore. Per chi non ne avesse voglia, la versione molto condensata è al terzo paragrafo: 

Mio padre è un uomo acuto, intelligente e curioso. Le circostanze della sua vita gli hanno impedito di andare oltre la terza media, ma la sua volontà, la curiosità intellettuale, il desiderio di sapere e imparare sempre nuove cose, unito a una rara umiltà — quella di non fare mai mistero dei propri limiti, quella di chi dice So di non conoscere quasi nulla di questo campo, quindi chiedo a te che ne sai — lo hanno portato a essere una persona a un livello superiore di tanti laureati, sedicenti intellettuali e sbruffoni che ho avuto la sfortuna di incontrare sia di persona che attraverso Internet. Quel che ho sempre ammirato di lui è poi l’ingegno e l’inventiva: è il classico homo faber che risolve il problema della mancanza dell’oggetto che fa per lui progettandolo e costruendoselo.

Sono da poco rientrato in sede dopo una visita ai miei genitori (visita già programmata, ma resa urgente dalle recenti vicissitudini meteorologiche in Lunigiana — loro abitano lì, e sì, stanno bene). Visto che il loro vecchio videoregistratore ha tirato le cuoia, ho pensato di regalare loro uno di quei lettori DVD-CD-MP3 che leggono anche dischi registrabili, e abbiamo installato il tutto con relativa velocità e semplicità. 

I miei hanno due televisori: uno nel salone, uno in cucina. Per la maggior parte del tempo utilizzano quello in cucina, al quale è collegato un ricevitore satellitare acquistato quando Sky si chiamava Tele+, e ora anche il lettore DVD. Fra non molto, quando il digitale terrestre verrà abilitato nella loro regione, suppongo dovranno comprarsi l’apposito aggeggio. Più che l’ammonticchiarsi di vari dispositivi (che, per fortuna, non occupano nemmeno troppo spazio), a rendersi fastidioso è l’orrendo groviglio di cavi sul retro, ma soprattutto il moltiplicarsi dei telecomandi. Ogni dispositivo ne ha uno. Al momento, poi, i miei se la devono vedere con due telecomandi per il televisore: quello originale, e uno universale che hanno acquistato perché metà dei tasti dell’originale hanno smesso di funzionare. Nel 90% dei casi il telecomando universale copre le funzionalità del vecchio, ma di tanto in tanto occorre tirar fuori il vecchio per alcune funzioni di Televideo.

L’altro giorno mio padre, evidentemente frustrato dalla situazione, mi dice testualmente: Ma perché Apple non tira fuori un televisore che funziona come un iPad? Si fa tutto con un’unica interfaccia, senza impazzire con tutti ‘sti accrocchi. Passato lo stupore gli ho detto che parrebbe che Apple ci stia pensando davvero, al che la sua risposta è stata, più o meno: Fammi sapere quando è in commercio ché lo vado a prendere subito.

Sono certo che molte altre persone condividono questo tipo di frustrazione. Chissà, probabilmente se Apple produrrà davvero la iTV (o come si chiamerà) potrebbe avere i numeri per diventare un altro di quei successi fragorosi che polverizzano la concorrenza. Una televisione con un’unica interfaccia iOS — ossia facile da usare e soprattutto da comprendere, ostacolo di moltissimi telecomandi e dispositivi attuali — sarebbe certamente un gran bel regalo per molti consumatori, specie i meno avvezzi alla tecnologia.

Ovviamente, le difficoltà che Apple dovrà affrontare, se decide di costruire questa iTelevisione, non riguardano né l’hardware né il software, ma i contenuti. Già è stato difficile relazionarsi con l’industria musicale e d’intrattenimento per quanto concerne l’iTunes Store, figuriamoci le stazioni televisive, sia per la sola realtà statunitense, sia per tutte le realtà nazionali se e quando l’iTelevisione verrà immessa sui mercati internazionali.

Durante la chiacchierata con mio padre sono venute fuori considerazioni più che altro legate all’interfaccia e al design di questo possibile dispositivo. Ancora una volta sono rimasto sorpreso dall’approccio e dall’intuizione di mio padre per queste cose; non dico questo perché penso che mio padre non sia un uomo intelligente e acuto, anzi. La ragione principale della mia sorpresa è che lui non possiede un computer, né un iPhone, né un iPad, né naviga in Internet, né dimostra particolare interesse per i gadget elettronici (a meno di non riconoscerne l’utilità, naturalmente — per questo due anni fa si è comprato un navigatore satellitare per l’auto). La sua esperienza diretta con i computer risale agli anni Novanta, quando ancora lavorava in un’azienda. Conosce Apple attraverso la mia esperienza: ha visto l’evoluzione di Mac OS sui miei computer. Ha visto l’interfaccia di iOS sui miei iPhone. 

Pertanto mi ha fatto piacere ascoltare le sue osservazioni su come potrebbe funzionare l’ipotetica iTV: Pensa a un telecomando fatto come un iPhone, con pulsanti virtuali. Si potrebbe perfino eliminare il concetto di canale associato a un numero. Invece di un tastierino numerico ci sono le icone dei vari canali. E sul tuo telecomando ci metti solo i canali che vuoi, così come sul tuo iPhone ci sono soltanto le applicazioni che ti interessano, e non tutte le centinaia di migliaia a disposizione. Gli ho chiesto, scherzando, se avesse letto i miei appunti, in quanto conservo delle bozze di articoli per il mio blog che risalgono al 2009, e all’epoca stavo raccogliendo note per un articolo (mai ultimato) sulla metafora dell’interfaccia di iOS. Una di queste note metteva a confronto le metafore dei vari sistemi operativi: Se Mac OS X continua a proporre la metafora della scrivania di un ufficio, qual è la metafora di iOS? Quella del telecomando di una televisione: ogni applicazione è un diverso canale di intrattenimento (o di accrescimento culturale).

L’utente Mac di lungo corso che è in me — devo ammetterlo — è infastidito dall’interesse che Apple (ossia Jobs) dimostra verso questo possibile percorso ‘televisivo’. Quella parte di me vorrebbe che Apple riservasse le sue energie per tirar fuori un Mac nuovo, innovativo e strabiliante, non una iTV. Ma se Apple sarà veramente in grado di rivoluzionare il settore dell’intrattenimento domestico come ha rivoluzionato quello musicale, magari trasformando la televisione in qualcosa di meno passivo e più intelligente, allora ben venga. Quando un’innovazione tecnologica ha la potenzialità di rendere le persone meno stupide e più consapevoli delle proprie scelte, io sono sempre favorevole.

Theoretical design vs practical design

November 7, 2011
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

In a recent post on Google+, Raskin vs Jobs: Serious design vs selling design, Oliver Reichenstein, speaking of Jef Raskin and Steve Jobs’s different design approaches, draws a distinction between what he calls ‘serious design’ and ‘selling design’ and associates the former with Raskin and the latter with Jobs: 

Half way through the Steve Jobs Biography, the biggest revelation for me so far is the clash between Raskin and Jobs. It’s a clash between serious design and selling design:

  1. Serious design does not necessarily sell well. That’s why it needs to be expensive to even exist.
  2. What sells is sentimentalism, nostalgia, solemnity—what sells is kitsch. That’s why kitsch can be so cheap. Because it sells so well.

That is true for any kind of design. And this is why iCal has this fucking leather surface that makes any user interface designer puke wet feverish dogs. And that’s why Apple has so much money in the bank. Not because of the mind blowing design of its hardware. (They always had the nicest hardware). But because people are sold through its nostalgic interface.

I usually follow Reichenstein’s contributions with interest and find them quite brilliant, but this piece strikes me as being rather rushed and superficial. From his distinction, it seems clear to me that he considers ‘serious’ design to be generally better than ‘selling’ design. While I may agree with the general sentiment, I find these two labels misleading. 

Contrasting the concepts of ‘serious’ vs ‘selling’ sounds wrong to me, simply because there are examples of serious design that sells: household objects, pieces of furniture, cars, watches… Where by ‘serious design’ I mean something created and produced by professional people, and where the amount of thought that went into the object is evident just by looking at things such as execution, attention to detail, functionality, usability. Macintosh hardware in general, but especially recently, seems to me another example of serious design that sells. But perhaps Reichenstein means something else with that ‘serious’ label.

As regards to the Raskin vs Jobs example, I think that a better, maybe even fairer distinction in their approaches would be calling such differences as an opposition between theoretical design and practical design. Raskin’s idea for the first Macintosh, for instance, was conceptually fascinating and full of thoughtful interface considerations, but I always found it lacking in practicality and somewhat short-sighted by favouring a conservative approach in some technical aspects of the Macintosh design. As Andy Hertzfeld recalls:

There’s no doubt that Jef was the creator of the Macintosh project at Apple, and that his articulate vision of an exceptionally easy to use, low cost, high volume appliance computer got the ball rolling, and remained near the heart of the project long after Jef left the company. He also deserves ample credit for putting together the extraordinary initial team that created the computer, recruiting former student Bill Atkinson to Apple and then hiring amazing individuals like Burrell Smith, Bud Tribble, Joanna Hoffman and Brian Howard for the Macintosh team. But there is also no escaping the fact that the Macintosh that we know and love is very different than the computer that Jef wanted to build, so much so that he is much more like an eccentric great uncle than the Macintosh’s father. 

Jef did not want to incorporate what became the two most definitive aspects of Macintosh technology — the Motorola 68000 microprocessor and the mouse pointing device. Jef preferred the 6809, a cheaper but weaker processor which only had 16 bits of address space and would have been obsolete in just a year or two, since it couldn’t address more than 64Kbytes. He was dead set against the mouse as well, preferring dedicated meta-keys to do the pointing.

I also disagree with other statements by Reichenstein. He writes: What sells is sentimentalism, nostalgia, solemnity — what sells is kitsch. I’d say that what sells is something that works, something both visually appealing and that is functional as expected. And, unlike Reichenstein, I think that Apple is selling a lot exactly because its devices now best represent that mix of ‘visually appealing’ and ‘functional as expected’, but it’s the “blowing design of its hardware” that first strikes the regular customer, not the ‘nostalgic interface’, which incorporates blatant skeuomorphic elements only in some parts of the UI — parts that users have to discover, and that aren’t thrown in their face as soon as they start a Mac or an iPad. There is nothing I find particularly nostalgic in the Finder or in most system applications. Skeuomorphism, especially in the Mac OS X user interface, appears to me mostly as the exception, not the rule. 

That’s why I think the iCal example in Reichenstein’s piece is a bit misplaced. I don’t believe for a second that Apple sells a lot because people love iCal’s leather theme. Actually, most Mac users I know personally are annoyed by interface quirks like iCal’s leather, and I’m talking about people who aren’t designers or power users or even long-time Mac users. The skeuomorphic, nostalgic elements in Apple’s interface design are more like secondary details you find included in the whole design package, not the main reason you get that package in the first place.

The digital gravitation

November 2, 2011
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

Whenever I find myself in a situation with limited or no Internet connectivity, I immediately perceive a change in my daily habits and the whole day gets a change in shape. Unless I’m extremely busy and need to stay in front of my Mac for the better part of the day, I usually don’t feel particular attraction towards the machine, and the usual subtle urgency to stay up-to-date and catch up with email, online readings and news, fades away rather quickly. The force I call digital gravitation recedes, and looking at the open MacBook Pro in front of me is like looking at the Earth from the moon. It’s like zooming out and observing the computer for what it ultimately is: an object, a container — albeit a peculiar, powerful one.

When television was in its prime, it was often referred to as ‘the magic box’, an expression which today I feel best suited for computers and devices like the iPhone and iPad. They are containers where a lot of people basically put their lives. If you feel I’m exaggerating, just think of the personal stuff your main computer holds. Your work and private correspondence, your documents, your photos, your music, your work files, your writings, sensible data for financial transactions, your toys (in the form of computer games). Basically everything you need on a daily basis. Even contacts and friends you can interact with through the Internet and social network platforms.

A few months ago, when minimalism was the latest coolest thing geeks and nerds raved about, I read stories of people who enthusiastically claimed how they got rid of their physical possessions — especially books, vinyl records, CDs, DVDs, paper documents — to completely digitalise their lives, putting stuff in the cloud, and remove what they felt was a cumbersome burden. They sort of rebooted their lives, now being able to ‘travel light’. An exhilarating, liberating feeling. Some of them even said that their computer had become their most treasured possession — “it is my life”.

While I understand that feeling, while I admit there’s something extremely appealing in being able to fit all one’s belongings in a couple of boxes and a knapsack, I’m also a bit wary of letting computers and the online world vacuum my physical possessions. As I’ve said many times already, technological progress is driven by convenience. There’s nothing wrong in analogue photography, for instance, but digital photography is more convenient. Managing your photos digitally is more convenient. Managing the music you own and buy digitally is more convenient (despite being of worse quality than a CD). Storing, managing, watching films by loading their video files from a hard disk is more convenient than having to deal with physical supports. Managing friends and contacts is more convenient by using digital tools than keeping in touch with letters and phone calls. 

We’re in a process where we’re progressively moving a lot of different things into one place, driven by the digital gravitation. It’s extremely convenient, no doubt about that. Younger generations, who’ve never experienced a world without this kind of high tech around them, feel naturally attracted by the digital gravitation.

I’m fascinated by technology and the changes we’re experiencing today, but at the same time I don’t trust it completely & unconditionally. I’m not at ease with putting almost everything into a computer and online. I am naturally drawn to feelings of permanence, and to me digital stuff represents mostly transience and ephemerality. As I’ve said in a previous piece, Books are bricks — important ones:

Here’s the thing: my books are memory triggers. Containers of both the literary work of their respective authors, and personal memories and snapshots of my past, of my history. I can pick any book in my library and remember some occasion, event, or watercolour of feelings connected to it. I usually have a pretty good picture of the circumstances surrounding its purchase (where I was, with whom, my mood and how my life was in that period, etc.), and in some cases the book triggers collateral memories and events […]. All the memories connected to my books are obviously stored somewhere at a subconscious level. Without my library, I’d probably be able to remember such things anyway, but with a greater effort, and I would surely end up forgetting a lot. My library, in a way, lets me remember more and lets me add more events to my inner warehouse. I also end up with the feeling that things get archived in a more organised way. My books are bricks that constitute an important part of my personal building. My books are not a burden. My books are not ‘clutter’ to get rid of.

In that article I was speaking of my books only, but they’re not the sole memory triggers; they’re not the only things building a tangible personal history: most of what I own does. It’s not a matter of ‘sentimental value’ nor of some kind of fetishism for physical objects or bygone eras. It’s a matter of personal coordinates, of meaning, of what I perceive as personal depth. In this perspective, digitalising my stuff means somehow levelling it, throwing it in a machine that processes differences and returns a kind of sameness to all my personal stuff. A sameness called content. Content that, once published online, is yet another drop in the ocean of transience, where it seems that only your most updated content is the important one. A shallow perspective. 

I have this feeling that we’re somewhat diluting our identity as human beings — what we are and what we do — by giving too many implicit and explicit concessions to the digital world. In a sense, it’s as if our identities were growing into sedentary, obese entities largely spoiled by all the convenience digital gives us. (Some may disagree and say that the Web is the ultimate democratic environment where everyone is equally important because basically everyone can present themselves and voice their opinions, share their thoughts and views like I’m doing now. It’s true for the most part, yet I can’t help noticing how many sectors online are no different from their real-world counterparts: dominated by élites made of individuals whose actual merits are sometimes questionable. But I’m digressing.) 

This doesn’t want to be another tirade about how ‘evil’ the digital world is. I recognise the value and usefulness of lots of technological advances. I’m writing from my parents’ house, deep in the countryside of northern Tuscany, with an intermittent cellular 3G connection, and I’m able to do audio chats with my wife back in Spain, so I’m not complaining for the sake of it. But these days spent largely outside my routine — opening my MacBook Pro just a couple of hours in a day to do some very basic stuff like checking email, do a bit of work, drop the occasional tweet and chat with my wife — made me understand once again how much time, energies and resources the digital gravitation is attracting. And how much we yield to this attraction. One of my fears is that there might come a time when we will basically be empty shells (or behave like ones) without this ‘digital bond’. Years ago, “I want to see the world” meant you had wanderlust; today it basically means shutting off your computer and phone. Having your life ‘zipped’ inside a computer and shared online may be convenient and even fun at times, but I can’t help feeling it’s also a bit flat, diluted, and sad.

Skeuomorphism and the eye of the beholder

October 26, 2011
by Riccardo Mori
Tech Life

While I was gathering my thoughts on the subject, yesterday I blurted a tweet: Skeuomorphism is a designer’s problem, more than a user’s. All this debate about skeuomorphism has been going on for a while. I think it started heating up while Lion was still in developer beta, and an iCal screenshot was leaked, showing Apple’s redesign of the application UI. I remember thinking I hope it’s a joke or something. It was not a joke. iCal really looks like this:

ICal 5 0 closeup

Wait: you’re still wondering what Skeuomorphism means, right? The Wikipedia has a nice description: 

A skeuomorph, or skeuomorphism (Greek: skeuos — vessel or tool, morphe — shape), is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues to a structure that was necessary in the original. Skeuomorphs may be deliberately employed to make the new look comfortably old and familiar, such as copper cladding on zinc pennies or computer printed postage with circular town name and cancellation lines. An alternative definition is “an element of design or structure that serves little or no purpose in the artifact fashioned from the new material but was essential to the object made from the original material”. This definition is narrower in scope and ties skeuomorphs to changes in materials.

To give you some other quick examples of skeuomorphs: iOS (alarm) clock apps that look like old, analogue clocks (and sometimes sound like one, too); the Voice Memos app, with its prominent old-fashioned microphone; photo apps with an interface that emulates a real film camera, and with ‘filters’ that emulate film grain and other artifacts.

Skeuomorphism seems to have made designers and assorted geeks/developers quite upset. Just to stay some more with the iCal example above, I’ve read articles of people complaining about the remaining bits of paper that simulate a hastily ripped calendar page. I have read rants about interface metaphors and how skeuomorphism is bad for the general progress of interface design.

Again, the Wikipedia entry sums up the terms of the question rather nicely:

The arguments in favor of skeuomorphic design are that it makes it easier for those familiar with the original device to use the digital emulation, and that it is graphically appealing.

The arguments against skeuomorphic design are that skeuomorphic interface elements use metaphors that are more difficult to operate and take up more screen space than standard interface elements; that this breaks operating system interface design standards; that skeuomorphic interface elements rarely incorporate numeric input or feedback for accurately setting a value; and that many users may have no experience with the original device being emulated.

Metaphors, expectations, usability

Apart from personal pet peeves, many insist on the metaphor problem related to skeuomorphic design. They say that certain designs may represent objects which younger generations have never experienced in real life, and that it may confuse them. I’m not saying this isn’t a valid argument, but I haven’t seen any strong examples that make this argument really compelling. Clocks? Calculators? Calendars? Address books? Paper notebooks? Newspapers? Magazines? I don’t know in your part of the world, but in mine we’re still surrounded by these very objects. What’s more, I’m actually noticing a resurgence of classic, ‘analogue’ designs for these objects. I see them in stationery shops, commercial centres, electronics stores, newsstands. I really have a hard time believing that a teenager has never ever seen a calculator. Perhaps they haven’t had a direct experience with the object, but it’s hardly believable they cannot guess how to interact with one. Simulated buttons and switches are the easiest metaphor to grasp. 

In my opinion, the real problem, the problem that really concerns the final user, is one of expectations and usability. People don’t mind skeuomorphic designs. They often prefer them over designs which might be more efficient but look bland. What irks a user is a design that sets some expectations and then doesn’t fulfil them. A calendar app that emulates a paper calendar, but with pages that don’t turn or can’t be ripped away. What’s the point of presenting a beautifully rendered replica of a paper calendar, if you have to touch a Delete button to remove a page? True paper calendars don’t have Delete buttons. This is a dangerous mix of analogue and digital, a misleading mismatch of expectations and ultimately a small usability nightmare.

But is it really all about skeuomorphism? No, it’s just bad design. Pointing the finger at skeuomorphism is, in my opinion, focusing on a very specific aspect of a broader, more serious issue: badly designed interfaces, tasteless visual design, poor and sloppy executions. Often developers favour skeuomorphic designs for their visual appeal, but they don’t go skeuomorphic all the way. The emulation stops at a very superficial level. It’s a semi-functional façade that fails many of the expectations it sets, and users find themselves with applications that under-deliver, are not that intuitive to use as they seem, and users end up feeling a bit cheated.

Sometimes it’s just for show, and it’s okay

Back to iCal again. What’s annoying to me (and ultimately constitutes a usability issue) isn’t the faux leather or the stitches or the bits of paper left by previously ‘ripped’ ‘pages’. It’s the fact that it looks like a real paper calendar but doesn’t even try to behave like one. You can create a perfectly functional application with a skeuomorphic design: it’s just a more complex, less forgiving task. If you create visual elements that invite interaction, you must allow for interaction. If you don’t want a user to think that a panel or a lever can be operated, just draw them in a less conspicuous way, make them look flat, make them look like they’re just for show. Learn from game interface designs, especially graphic point-and-click adventures. The best of their breed are great at differentiating objects you can interact with from objects that are just background or have just an ornamental function.

When the user perceives that certain visual elements are just for show, it usually isn’t a big deal. Some consider skeuomorphic designs which do not reference real life counterparts as particularly flawed. I think the final user doesn’t really care, especially when it’s clear that some skeuomorphic details are just embellishments. Case in point, a piece by designer Jon Gold has been quoted often, recently. Especially this part (emphasis is his):

Calendar, Notes and Contacts are all explainable — they reference real world things (even if they shouldn’t). My Mum likes that her calendar looks more like a Filofax than Outlook 2003. Fair enough. A Filofax is a thing. I get it. And the Compass app is based on a compass. Another thing.

But I’m pretty sure there’s not a thing in my physical living room called a ‘Find My Friends’. The metaphor is empty. It’s not referring to anything. It’s just a leather texture.

Paper doesn’t scroll; much less so a digital map debossed into a bevelled Corinthian leather surround. It can’t be a thing.

It’s when we’ve transcended reference to lazily base new interfaces on inconsistent real-world materials that things become dangerous.

We risk rooting ourselves in the past. 

The fact is, everyone understands that the Find my Friends app doesn’t represent a physical object. It’s not that the metaphor is empty, it’s that sometimes there’s no actual metaphor to look for in the first place. It’s really just a leather texture. There is no real deception. There is no failure at meeting expectations. It’s just an embellishment. Perhaps someone at Apple thought it might look ‘elegant’, or ‘young’ or pleasantly quirky, or that the faux leather gave the app more depth or character, but that’s it. Users get it. I don’t see anything really ‘dangerous’ about it. If we must compare faux leathers, iCal’s is more ‘dangerous’ because in that case it contributes to the deception of a faux paper calendar that doesn’t behave as expected. Users don’t have expectations about Find my Friends exactly because they know it doesn’t have a physical counterpart. 

Skeuomorphism is not bad per se. Sometimes it’s just a bad choice.