Roomba: The Smart Little Vacuum

Roomba: The Smart Little Vacuum

    Recently, our apartment purchased a Roomba Discovery and our floors have never been cleaner! This little device comes with some impressive physical features along with intuitive AI algorithms to be as effective as possible. On the physical end, it has a rounded bumper in the front to know when it hit a wall or some other object (duh). This is obviously crucial for a self maneuvering robot, and it works really well (most of the time). Aside from having a clean setting and a max setting (clean setting but longer), there is a spot clean option where it will spiral out in a 3 foot radius and then come back in for a really thorough cleaning job. When it comes to the software, it has a few behaviors that work in the architecture known as subsumption architecture: a hierarchy of actions ranking in precedence depending on the stimuli it receives like IR information and wall contact. It will wander as a base behavior, and when given commands from the remote, it will put that behavior on hold and let you, the user, guide it around the room. The docking station is my favorite feature because it sends out two IR beams in a cone shape and when the Roomba is low on battery, it will find that IR cone and isolate between the two beams as it drives towards the dock, essentially parking itself perfectly every time!

      Like any piece of technology, it isnt perfect. It needs a flat surface to drive on, so shaggy rugs, clothing, and larger objects it can ramp up on will get it stuck indefinitely until the user can free it. the battery life is also quite low, so if it can't find its way back to the dock in time, it will just die, on the floor, and make a sad defeated noise :(. Lastly, if it gets stuck under a small table or a chair, the bumper is big enough to have it hit a leg, spin around to go another direction, hit another leg, then circle under the piece of furniture forever. (The bright side is that spot will be REALLY clean).   

The iPhone and iWatch Reveal

The iPhone and iWatch Reveal

     So Apple finally pulled the trigger with their take on this new generation of hardware along with the newest iteration of the traditional tech. Before I give my thoughts on the thing going on my wrist, I have a few things to say about the thing going in my pocket. The new iPhone 6 was presented in the way Apple does best: delivering a stunning, state-of-the-art presentation of the industry's most middle-of-the-road technology.

    The video was beautifully crafted and made it look super pretty. However, one must strip away the pretty wrapping paper and compare the phone to the competition.  Literally every piece of that hardware (aside from the fingerprint scanner) has been substantially lapped. 1334x750 pixels on a 4.7 inch screen? Phones smaller than that have had 1080p full HD screens for a year and some change at this point. 2GHz dual-core 64bit processor chip? The phone currently in my pocket, nearly a year old, is rocking quad core 2.2GHz 64bit. 8MP camera? Samsung Galaxy phones have had 13MP cameras since the Galaxy 4 was announced ages ago. However, like I mentioned earlier, it's top notch presentation, but also application of said technology too.

   Though this technology is dated, it's time tested, easily accessible, and malleable enough at this point to put it into an extremely attractive package. Sure, other smartphones have internal components that would run circles around computers from just a mere few years ago, but often times phone companies have to make it a piecemeal job to stuff it all together. With Apple, they have made a truly seamless (in many places literally) experience with dated technology which in itself is impressive. The hardware itself looks like it doesn't have edges; not just a lack of corners and angles but actually lacking creases and places where two different materials meet. The software (which I have played around with) finally could stop playing catch up to Android and allow for control of your device in ways yet to be seen by consumers of any camp. Apple is, again, delivering a stunning, state-of-the-art presentation of the industry's most middle-of-the-road technology, and there isn't necessarily anything wrong with that. Only time will tell how much of a wave this version of the world's favorite phone will make, but my guess is it will be the software that will be producing conversations.

Now as for this watch...

      I honestly can't make heads or tails of it. There are a lot of really innovative design features and options like the slew of easily removable wristbands, the digital crown interface, and the magnification style software. They all work in tandem to make a seemingly easily navigable and fantastic LOOKING product, but if you couldn't tell by my caps, I have my skepticism with most first iterations of almost every piece of tech, and Apple is no exception.

      After seeing all the software side of things, I have yet to see anything it can do worthwhile that a current smartphone cannot besides be on my wrist and throw a few gimmicky things at me (I'm looking at you, weird drawing widget thing). It may be a reservation with the idea of the watch concept all together at this point, but then again I don't feel nearly as hesitant with Android watches. They are much more open to inclusion of third party influence, which will result in a faster growing ecosystem of watch specific features that will make the piece more standalone. The iWatch, and most things Apple for that matter, never had that same openness. If Apple wasn't making the drastic changes in how the user interacts with the software of its products, then tough s***, you have to wait until Apple churns out an "official software update". All that being said, this smartwatch is laying down the groundwork for something potentially groundbreaking, but until Apple or one of its approved associate companies breaks said ground personally (think Nike), all it's going to do is providing a limited experience and saving you the .7 seconds needed to pull out your phone.

HTC One M8 DotView Case

HTC One M8 DotView Case

     So when I got my most recent phone, it was perfect for my needs. Fast, sleek, and packaged all of the features I needed into a single device. It did, however, have one glaring issue: the physical design was so slick that holding it was a bit of a nightmare. It was like holding a bar of soap. So I decided to search for cases that added some grip to my phone. I picked up the DotView case and it had one really cool feature:

It allows for the case to be closed by a mesh that lets information through in a unique dotted design. It would show messages, time, weather information, email updates, and missed calls to name a few. However there are a few big design flaws...

     First, the whole DotView interface relies on you swiping and tapping over the front mesh. However, the mesh is pretty thick, and current touchscreens work by detecting your finger's natural electric conductivity. Because the plastic mesh is in the way, touch input is rarely accepted (maybe 1 in 3) when, in theory, you are supposed to interact with the phone in a number of ways fluidly in this manner. Second, the mesh flap doesn't close all the way when it flips around like a book cover. So it always protrudes from the back of the phone by almost an entire inch, making this case nearly impossible to hold without the flap getting in the way or making the phone awkward as hell to hold.

Bringfido.com Map Duality

Bringfido.com's Map Duality

    Over the summer. I worked for three months on helping Bringfido.com, a pet friendly travel booking site where all listings allow pets to stay in the space, improve their design and make it more aesthetically and functionally pleasing. I did this by scouring the internet for all the travel sites I could find and evaluate their positive and negative features (It ended up being 19 pages with pictures, I can show anyone who cares to see it). This was an interesting way to encounter a case study that incorporated both good design features and frequently clunky interactions. I am going to relay a single feature that is a fantastic example of both!
     
      Bringfido.com managed to do some novel things that even the bigger sites wouldn't try. The most notable was the map method of searching for a destination. It not only allowed for exclusively finding a location through the map itself, but if it was moved by the user with search results on the page, it would live update the results based on the currently viewed geographical location. Another impressive feature was localized advertisements. If I were looking at a place to stay in Charlotte, the ads would only show businesses that were in the Charlotte area. They wouldn't be travel ads either, but rather dog kennels, parks, groomers, and other places people with pets would actually use while there. This is a direct extension of holistic design in that the designers thought not just of the service it is providing, but thought about what the user will need throughout the entire travel experience.

     However, this map is a source of agony for everyone in that office for a number of reasons. For one, it takes up the majority of the screen as soon as you traverse to the search results page. If your mouse is anywhere over the 75% of the screen the map occupies, it will instantly zoom out with the intensity and speed of a space shuttle. This will result in completely changing the search results and losing the results you were looking for. Every. Single. Time.  On top of that, the listings it shows are never really complete. If you were to zoom in farther, you are greeted with many more qualifying results. While this specific flaw isn't inherently awful, it does make for an annoyance when you have already booked a hotel only to find one later that is closer to where you want for much cheaper. This strange duality of innovation and glaring oversights makes for an interesting case study on how a single aspect of a site can be both positive and negative at the same time for the user.