I just hung out with an old friend last week and while he's into his tech, he doesn't work in the industry. he expressed the same sentiment in the last line of your comment.
UI versioning sounds like a ridiculously difficult challenge, so difficult that it's worth thinking about more, because most people won't (because it's so hard). I'm gonna take that idea and run with it a bit...
A few things come to mind:
- Added complexity - apps would have two unique versions at the same time "Oh i'm running gmail 15.2 with UI v 12.0"
- I wonder if another ways of achieving something similar is keeping legacy UI by calling it a "theme." While, politically, it might be difficult to get funding for a "theme" over a "redesign," with such an important and widely used application like GMail, it makes total sense to me that there are 2-4 interaction schemas that people could use if they'd like. Maybe "theme" is too weak of a name,--maybe "Schema"? Something else?
- What sort of protocol would a "theme" use to improve? Let's say that "we want to keep the important parts of this theme as much as possible, not mess with them, just add this new feature." How universally possible is that, or do a majority of big new features inherently complicate a UI and the mental models of its users?
- Getting into the nitty gritty details, though, there would almost inherently be splintering--different themes would have microinteractions and microfeatures that others would not. While that's probably good for the end user wanting to differentiate between them, it would make the "Do we add big feature X?" conversation across all "Theme Teams" AND development even more difficult.
- Would the themes themselves have versions?
- In a way, themes are already available as versions. Ex: I am running an older version ("theme") of twitter on my ipad because i just haven't gotten around to updating it. but It still works. What would be great is if twitter could allow me to switch between this version and the newest one so I could see if the newest version worked better for me. I could switch back if it didn't. Right now, I can upgrade, but I can't switch back, so upgrading is "switching permanently and hoping for the best."
I agree with the use case, but most of the time I show someone a photo, it a fairly quick process. Comparing (1) how you share photos now to (2) how you share photos w/ Xim: (1) "wanting to share photo-> pull out phone-> unlock phone-> open photos app-> select photo-> show people your phone" is a lot faster and easier than (2) "wanting to share photo-> pull out phone-> unlock phone-> open Xim-> select images-> add or select contacts* -> send message -> wait for others to receive message-> they pull out phone (if not already)-> they unlock phone-> they open the message-> they are redirected (to app or website)-> they can see the photo"
I don't think this use case is definitive, i just meant it as an illustration of "it will take longer to share photos with Xim."
I think this MIGHT be ok if you only had to go through a laborious process the first time you used the app or viewed a Xim, but I think you have to go through that whole process (minus the adding the contact) every time you share. This app is trying to work at that intersection of cyber- and meat-space, and I think the handoffs will just take too long.
The ironic use case--this could be a great tool for remotely sharing photos. But if you're doing that, wouldn't you be using your phone to talk with the other viewers about the photos? ;-(
* Seems more likely you're trying to show more than 1 photo, as it's fairly easy to show a single photo to many people.
Similar to above, and like you were saying, it's fairly easy to show 1 or 2 people a series of photos on your phone.
I'm a little confused--is the first video in the 3rd section ("intro to the design of everyday things") really an entire course? If so, i think the time-to-complete estimate (1 hr) should be changed...If it's not, it'd be great if the particular videos to be watched were noted.
Seems like "Design of Everyday Things" is a really short course, with only 3 Chapters and each video of 1-2 minutes. The total video lecture time for the entire course could well be ~1 hour. The project (timebank) is what will take more time and the estimate for that in Section 3.3 is 8 hours.
This even includes some bad police work. Because since the developer didn't post a single app of this type after the initial suspension google could have easily identified all apps and found them all and notified the developer that all apps must be dealt with.
This would be akin to the police having 10 open murders with the same exact weapon, charging the assailant with one and not looking for any other open murders on file.
Just because proposing a solution would be helpful, that doesn’t require he propose a solution.
Related, sometimes articulating a question in the right way is the hard part.