Emily Chang - Blog

It still strikes me as fascinating that the iPhone and the OLPC (or XO) laptop were both released in the last year, and yet they're such radically different "computing" and communication devices and concepts. I've spent some time playing simultaneously with the iPhone, the XO or OLPC laptop, and my regular computer combo - an Apple slim keyboard and MacPro tower. I thought about the emotional attachments I've formed based on user experience. Ignoring the discussion of their obviously different markets and functions for a moment, I wanted to share my experience of using each. Read more...

As I was designing for a client web application today, I kept living through John Maeda's first law of simplicity: thoughtful reduction. The goal was to design a new comments system for parts of the site so members were more likely to leave little notes for each other. In order to make it fun and easy, we wanted to reduce the person's input to as few clicks as possible, but with enough expression that she would want to click it. Read more...

As we amass more and more data, it seems only natural that we'll need new methods to navigate this space. Jeff Han's multi-touch screen is impressive. I don't know if it's the best way to manipulate all types of data or more fine-grained scenarios, but it clearly opens up possibilities for using a wide range of motion and touch. I would love to use this in the design process for rapid re-organization of elements and trying out different types of flow. For photo or video-editing and other types of narrative storytelling, the multi-touch would be incredible. Read more...

Today happens to be the four month anniversary of eHub Interviews, a series of email questions and answers with the creators and companies behind many of the new web 2.0 services and applications that we've been witnessing and using online. According to many of you who write in, the interviews are "one of your favorite parts... it puts a human face to all of these projects. It really adds a valuable dimension to the web review sites." I'm glad to hear it. Among many of the self-appointed roles that I have at/as eHub, the interviews are one of my favorite activities. One of the questions asked in each interview is "What is your design philosophy?" Read more...