San Francisco ruled! We had a great time talking with old friends and colleagues about life, the book, etc. Great food, better conversation, gorgeous weather. And everyone I ran into seemed to be excited about Cadence & Slang.
On the book front: outlining continues, and I'm busy typing up many edits to chapter 2. Not a whole lot happened during the trip, but a lot of great conversation has redirected my attention, especially in the first chapter.

On the pledge front: right now we're up to 35%. But 50% of the project's time has lapsed. That's right: we're more than halfway done. I'm really excited about this, but we still need to work more before we're done. If you know anyone in the world of technology who could benefit from better design, or who likes reading about good design, I implore you to tell them about Cadence & Slang. Getting this book out there will help people that may not normally consider the nuances of great technology. Who knows, maybe it'll inspire somebody to get out there and kick ass. There are some ways to spread the word via fancy social media on the Kickstarter project page; use them, and an angel will get its wings.

Some interesting developments in the world of interaction design have happened since we last spoke, and I'd like to devote the rest of this update to them. There's Apple, of course, with their recent product announcement: the Magic Mouse. Apple have had a poor track record with their input devices; some duds exist, like the circular "hockey puck" mouse of the early aughts that doesn't teach users its proper orientation, or the late-nineties keyboard that required a tick too much effort to press the keys. But this - or at least the idea of this, considering that I haven't had the chance to play with one yet - looks pretty excellent. My only potential gripe: I would much rather use my thumb to trigger page back/forward, rather than a two-finger swipe. This follows the norm of most commercial mice available, and it seems to require less effort. Plus, the current Magic Mouse configuration leaves my thumb unused.

A List Apart flipped the proverbial card table by asserting that usability testing may not be useful in development. Naturally, only a few hours elapsed before the first eloquent rebuttal. Given how half of chapter 4 advocates discount usability testing methods and frequent design reviews, I'm extremely interested at the progress of this debate. But it's only a day old, it's a complex issue, and I want to give it its due. Expect me to write about this in a later post.

Barnes & Noble announced their Kindle-killer, the nook. I'm not wild about e-book readers for my own use, but this looks like a great (and highly welcome) step towards simplicity. They ditch the keyboard, and replace it with a touchscreen. The display is color. The device is a bit smaller, which makes reading it on public transit a little easier. Back and forward buttons are on each side, and they mimic the mechanical functions of a real book. I can't wait to kick the nook's tires.

Lastly, I posted today about jwz (aka one of the core founders and coders of Mozilla, the precursor to Firefox) ditching the Pre for the iPhone, then Steven Frank (co-founder of Panic, one of the best Mac software companies) writing an exceptionally thoughtful response in re: his tribulations.

I'm not terribly surprised at jwz's frustrations about the Pre. From what I've heard, it's quite a fast device in its initial state, but when you load data and programs into it, it begins to slow down with simple tasks. I'd venture an educated guess that the Pre's initial state was demoed the most aggressively to the quality assurance and executive teams. (Certainly it was demoed that way to the media.) But Pre-bashing is a hell of a lot less interesting than Steven's comments:

The iPhone/iPod Touch, being available for both Mac and Windows, has a single source of software in the app store. That Mac AND Windows thing is key. The app store is not just a software market for Mac users. This is why it blows the minds of indie Mac developers like myself. It’s because it follows the rules of the general software market, not just the Mac software microcosm that we Mac indies enjoy.



Specifically, you have a large group of people who will download and suffer any old shit by the bucketload as long as it is free or extremely cheap. And you have 10% of people who are actually particular about software quality and are willing to pay for it.



In other words, you have the Windows market, and the Mac market, but within the app store itself. And you’d better be damn sure which one you’re targeting, and set pricing and development schedule accordingly.

This makes a lot of sense for certain examples in the App Store: why some superior and beautiful apps have floundered when stacked against discounted apps of inferior quality. But there are others that have bucked this trend: tiny masterpieces of interaction design that just totally kill it in sales. I don't know if there are enough data points to tell yet, whether people are gravitating towards good design. And I also don't know if the iPhone excludes many people from the "Windows market" by default, simply by being an iPhone: after all, aren't most iPhone owners favoring good interactions by getting a device that, as jwz says, "just fucking works?" And aren't other well-designed devices, like the Wii and Flip Video, demolishing sales and crossing new demographic borders? Most importantly, though: is it worth separating people into groups of Windows users and Mac users in the first place?

(And re: Blue Bottle, I went there twice, and - at the behest of many of you - Ritual once. I was ridiculously wired for most of the trip. I can't believe some of the mad science that goes into pouring hot water over ground-up beans.)
Next: usability testing.