iPhone 3GS – A Virgin’s Review

I’ve had my shiny new iPhone 3GS for over a month or so now and thought it was a good time to jot down a few thoughts for those thinking of buying one.

Of course there is so much to talk about but I’ll concentrate on the features new in the 3GS and try and steer away from talking about applications. One of the best things is the ability to customise your device through your choice of applications “solving life’s problems one app at a time” as I keep saying to my other half, but this is about the hardware and making the switch to it.

Blackberry users making the switch
I’ve been a keen Blackberry advocate for a few years now and sometime ago I wrote a post about getting one (concerned about being always ‘on’). For work purposes they are awesome and for a long while there simply was no better way to receive work mail on the move. Push email was how it should be an the Blackberry platform delivered.

Now I’m not about to write a review of the Blackbery, suffice to say that in reviewing the iPhone I should acknowledge where it is Blackberry users are coming from. The ability of someone to ‘learn’ an interface is somewhat predicated on why they have previously experienced on other devices.

The best aspects of a Blackberry are it’s connectivity, it’s qwerty keyboard and it’s battery life. User are well oriented in the UI with the use of the back-up and menu keys while there are also familiar green and red call keys. The red being particularly useful for ‘ejecting’ you from wherever in the menu system back to the saftey of your home screen.

Yes there are other great things to say about Blackberry, but these are the main ones you bring to the church of iPhone.

Set-up and first use
Of course it’s Apple. Everything is beautiful and ‘just works’ (sideways glance at Lorenzo). However there is this weird begining where you have to hook up with your laptop and iTunes. Having just bought my phone and being all excited and bathing in post-purchase afterglow I headed to a coffee shop to play with it. However this diversion would prove frustrating as I couldn’t start the iPhone without iTunes.

It’s obvious why they need you to hook up with iTunes, it is because you need to have the latest software, an iTunes account for apps and of course your media will need sideloading onto your handset. Of course, and while different this process isn’t hard and actually broadens the new users view of what is possible. Regardless this was still a little odd.

I can imagine there are a few new iPhone owners who didn’t have everything already and had to install iTunes and stack their library before starting which would make for a convoluted out-of-box experience to say the least.

Actually as I write this it occurs to me that a prerquisite to using the iPhone is to also have iTunes. As I take it for granted, I wonder how new users respond to this idea of phone + iTunes?

Battery Life
Frankly this sucks. Big time, as I need to charge about twice a day on current usage. You simply can’t use it in the field for a day, you’ll need to get to a plug somewhere along the line, so much so that if I were going out for a whole day with it, I would have to think about taking the charger and even a back-up handset.

In this regard the iPhone is a victim of it’s own success. Because of what it does and how it does it, you tend to use it more than you regular handset.

I’m a fairly heavy data user particularly on the way in and out of work. Generally I read RSS, use Twitter, mail and IM. I often snap photos or shoot small videos on my way in and ping them to Flickr using Shozu. But for someone who does what I do for a living and probably anyone interested in this review, I guess this is fairly normal behaviour.

What isn’t normal is draining a third of the battery on 1 hour of this kind of usage! I’m writing this on my way to work and without pinging the server I’ll be draining the battery. It’s clearly a screen thing but I wonder how much searching for wi-fi and 3G it does?

I’ve worked out to switch off some of the push services respective settings because I don’t need all apps making server calls. But lets just say my mum wouldn’t be dealing with this stuff easily. There is push, then there is pull, seek and ping ping ping.

As I walk through London using the phone, moving between hotspots but not wanting to connect to them, I frequently get the ‘do you want to join this network’ pop-up which can be annoying. Yes I could turn WiFi off for a bit, but this isn’t that quick a task to do. It’s far from hard, it’s just not designed as a tier one function giving users ready access.

Last week I went to a gig and wanted to Twitter and send photographs to Flickr. I didn’t use the handset much on the way and arrived wih about 80% battery after being unplugged for a few hours. When at the venue there was a full O2 signal showing but alas no 3G would work.

Without going into details it’s fair to say that trying to connect to the network for voice was fine but anything trying to use data was not happening. We’ve all been there on New Years Eve trying to make calls only to see the network overloaded, well this was like that but data related. And then, specifically iPhone related.

I was having trouble while my friend had no issues on his Blackberry Curve. The iPhone obviously has some data hungry packets about it’s person and this nukes my battery in a few hours.

Tethering (using iPhone as a broadband modem for your laptop)
One of the great things (theoretically for most folk) is the fact that you can connect your laptop to your 3GS and use it as a broadband access point. However I wont find out if this waorks automagically with my MacBook because I wont be setting it up.

Why?

Well the problem here is O2, as they want to charge you to use this service.

I mean. Come on guys. Why is it that I can have uimited data access on my iPhone but as soon as I choose to view that data on a larger screen with a keyboard (and Flash installed ahem) you want to go and charge me £10??!!??!!

Seriously, what difference does it make to you? This service has never cost before, I’ve never paid specifically for the ability to hook up my laptop to my GPRS handset and attain exspense per kilobyte slow ass access so why now?

Robbing bastards.

Push Services
Not much to say here other than finally! Now I can sit back and let it come to me.

What I will say is that while it’s nice knowing that things will pop up on screen when they are good and ready, I have to say I’m not massively confident that it’s all happening when it’s supposed to.

I guess I should run a comparison test and send stuff to both my Blackberry and the iPhone. But really, this means little.

Applications
It is oh-so-easy to spend money in the App Store and on iTunes. Too easy.

Of course, when you get a new shiny handset beware the excited kiddy in a sweet shop mentality that will see you load your handset with lots of shiny new apps. Of course you will load up the musthaves, but be prepared to spend some dough.

What Apple have got right here (inevitably) is making it super friction free for you to part with your cash using micropayments Adding apps is a key way to make your iPhone a) useful and b) personal an it’s very simple to do, just make sure you have WiFi

Camera/Video
The poor camera was one of the reasons I didn’t buy the first iPhone. I’m an amateaur photographer (why does that statement always conjur up seedy images?) and having a decent pocket snapper is a key must have of mine.

Yes I have a decent SLR, yes I have a decent pocket camera but I still want a decent camera in my phone. It doesn’t have to be 10 megapixels, but it does have to have a decent sensor, take pictures when I press the button (and not 5 secs after) and it needs to have good connectivity for uploading.

Phone cameras warrant a post all of their own, but the main issue is always shutter lag, the time it takes between pressing the button and actually capturing the image. This is always complicated by the fact that the flash units on cameras run a red eye reduction feature which pulses the flash before the main flash in order to dilate the pupils. This has the effect of making your subject thinking that th the shot has been taken resulting in the blinky half eye shots that we all know and love.

Anyway, I. digress as the iPhone has no flash so this is not an issue.

What is an issue is that it’s utterly useless for taking pictures on nights out. Shame. Big shame.

Yep. That’s right no flash. Why oh why doesn’t it have a flash? The 3.2mp camera is actually decent, it snaps fairly quckly and the shots can be quite sharp. It’s certainly way better that my old LG Viewty which boasted a 5mp camera with HUGE lag and a decent flash.

Don’t get me wrong, the iphone is as good a mobile cam as I’ve had during the day, but in low light it’s bloody useless.

It’s great that it has video which really works nicely and enables you to trim and edit. Though I’ve never understood these sorts of tools on mobiles as they’re almost never used.

Cut/Copy/Paste
Believe it or not this was another reason why I didn’t want the first generation iPhone. Well, this the shite camera and the famed inability to send contact details, but finally THE BASICS ARE HERE!!!!

Yay.

What more is there to say other than: ‘Why the funk wasn’t it in the first phone’?

That said, the cut copy paste interaction is sweet. You tap to select then drag handles to position across the get you want to take. Lovely.

Also, you discover by accident that to ‘undo’ you simply shake the handset. I love this interaction because the input method (shaking) emulates the frustration you feel when you cock things up. Nice.

Gaming
I’m by no means a big gamer. We have a PlayStation and a Wii at home, but I never really got into the whole Nintendo DS and PSP thing.

Anyway like most people I have time to kill, especially on the train, so I’ve started buying games again. From the stupidly addictive PaperToss to RagDoll to Real Football 09.

The games are really well delivered, easy to play with controls presented on the touchscreen. Oh, and they are addictive.

Some games exploit the motion control capabilities such as Glow Ball or Rolando, but I think we are yet to see this come into it’s own.

In Summary
I read the other day that 75% of iPhone users spend 40% of their Internet time on their handset.

This may well be because they are now using the handset more than they would previously and are actually performing more Internet based tasks or it may actually mean a direct transfer of laptop tasks to the iPhone.

I know I fall into both categories as I quite often reach for my iPhone over my Macbook to do things that the later is arguably much better at, namely Reading blogs and surfing that webbernet thing.

Also im finding that I access the web when I normally wouldn’t have bothered and this is purely driven by the convenience factor.

It’s an awesome device. I dont regret buying it at all. It’s beautifully made and a joy to use and furthermore it’s actually useful as a handset thanks to the high level of custisation through applications.

It has immediately become more than a phone to me. It’s good as a phone, for browsing the web, for productivity, for gaming and has all kinds of utility depending on which apps you install.

It comes at a price though weighing in at around £1500 for 18 months plus apps (and don’t underestimate the cost of those).

However, it’s my new friend and I love it.

– Post From My iPhone

It’s all part of the process – Paper Prototyping

Nothing to see here.

I just love seeing lots of the same thing together. Although users never actually see your site like this (of course not). I always find it useful way to stand back and see the level of complexity you may be asking them to navigate.

The ’stand back and go ‘ooh yeah, bit complex a’int it?’ test’™.

Fosta and I did a book about it once showing shops all with the same naming convention.

HMV Getcloser.com is live!

It’s live and it’s now an open beta so anyone can join.

The doors were closed as we built the feature set to a sensible point, but now they’re open!

Got to getcloser.com and start to play. If you just want to see what it’s about you can visit the tour here without having to register.

The site is aimed music and film fans who like collecting, who want to broaden their knowledge and deepen their relationship with the things they love. It’s also aimed at aficionados, those that are domain experts, music and film creators and people who just want to be in the know.

For the past year LBi have been working with HMV to conceive, build, seed and launch their new social property getcloser.com. It’s a beta, so there is still lots to do, the data and product catalogue that sits behind it needs a little work, but it’s now ready to unleash on the world so that the community can start driving the development, helping add content, improving the tags, data, descriptions etc..

I won’t go into the details as to what the site does etc, the tour can do that, but what I will say is this; it’s been one of the most enjoyable projects I’ve ever worked on. Building a community of this type has it’s usual design challenges, not least that you need to build a community and to do that you need content, but you need content from the community!

HMV have been a fantastic client and the LBi team have been awesome. We used an agile development methodology that saw us release features every 2-4 weeks, slowly build a community, user test, evolve, sharpen.

As I say, there is lots to do though not just with the website as the idea behind getcloser translates to many channels; in store, on mobile and others. It will plug into existing social properties, blog tools and the desktop.

The relationship with HMV has been brilliant, long may it continue,

I very much look forward to taking Getcloser forward, but now it’s live it’s ‘hand’s off the steering wheel’ as my colleague Stephen Barber would say, to see how people respond to it. We’ll be making hot fixes and planning a new set of features that aid the tools there already, as well as developing new ones.

Multimap.com Honored at the Webby’s

Nearly 2 years ago here at LBi, we started working with Multimap to redesign their public .com web property.

It was time for their loved, but ageing raster-map offering to be dragged inline with, then new and innovative, Google’s ’slippy’ Maps.

With a raft of new features including drag, zoom, pan, hybrid view,all stuff we take for granted now, we set about defining a sharpened mapping proposition that worked for both Multimap users and advertisers.

It was a brilliant project, great fun, hard work and really quite challenging. The guys at Multimap (which sold to Microsoft in December last year) were all smart cookies and pleasure to work with. Personally I see it as one of the triumphs of the team I work in here at LBi. Not only was it great solution, it was a great learning experience and those two things make for great projects. Certainly satisfactory ones.

Stephen Barber was, and still is, ace on this project. Will Bloor was his usual unremitting creative self, Peter Jupp smashed the design and Mike McIntyre and Gavin Edwards aced some complex interaction and James Norton provided some wonderful interface development. It was also a pleasure to see Lorenzo in action, which doesn’t happen nearly enough for some of us here at LBi.

Well, enough spouting from me. Multimap.com has just been named as an Honoree in the Service category at this years Webby awards.

This is no mean feat as only the best 15% of submissions attain the accolade and this from a pot of nearly 10,000 entries received from all 50 US states and over 60 countries.

Multimap is now owned by Microsoft, so expect to start using it a lot more as it integrates into all their properties. Exciting stuff indeed.

The guys I worked with on this project were:

• Stephen Barber
• Will Bloor
• Peter Jupp
• Mike Mcintyre
• Dave Dunlop
• Lorenzo Wood
• Darren Gerry
• Gavin Edwards
• Phil WHitehouse
• James Norton
• Marcus Alexander
• Suzanne Chapman
• Claire Freund

Amazon launches the Kindle – a portable eBook reader

Amazon’s new eBook device the ‘Kindle’ was released this week.

I find this an interesting one.

It was very well covered yesterday on lots and lots of blogs with pretty much everyone saying it’s rubbish. The 400 or so reviews on the Amazon page are largely negative too, this is an interesting point in itself for Amazon.

Here is a video of the out-of-box experience as captured by Robert Scobble:

The packaging looks okay, quite cute for it to come in a ‘book’.

Here is a video of using it and experiencing some issues

I was watching the Amazon demo thinking things like ‘Wouldn’t it be good if you could look-up words as you read. Oh, it does’, ‘Wouldn’t it be good if it wasn’t based on wi-fi hotspots. Oh, it isn’t.’ And so on…

Featurewise, it’s quite nice. It ticks a few boxes and for this reason Amazon will shift a few I’m sure.

Then I thought about the product design and decided that it’s a lame dog. It has some weird, flimsy, asymmetrical form that looks a little like James Bond’s underwater Lotus Esprit.. A little 80s.

Kindle

Lotus Esprit

The interaction looks far too complicated and it smacks of ‘get it to market quick’. It could have been soooooo much better, so much more desirable, so much easier to use. Also it seems that the interaction itself is awkward, scrolling up and down aligning a little cursor with menu commands rather than selecting them.

However I am a fan of the electronic paper screen, it’s just a shame it couldn’t be tough screen, but then that would defeat the point right?

But this isn’t the problem I se with this device.

My main reasons this won’t be the ‘next big thing’

• People love books. A bookshelf says a million things about its owner and people love the tactility of paper, the romance of curling up under a reading lamp in a comfy chair and losing themselves.

  The books we read represent us in some way, they have ‘self-expressive benefits’ to quote ‘Aaker’. To have read, own and display works by Shakespeare, Brontë and Dickens says something about the individual. The collection of books one has says something about the owner. Why else would we all have bookshelves? Okay, so they are practical, but they could easily be hidden.

  The same goes for newspapers. It brands an individual to be seen reading the FT, The Independent, The Guardian, The Sun, The Daily Mirror.

• It has DRM and apparently spies on you . Has Amazon learned nothing? You can’t ‘lend’ books. PEOPLE LOVE LENDING BOOKS!
• The product design sucks and the interaction is a little fussy. Before iPod, listening to music, changing track, albums and artists etc was a little less-than-slick. iPod made it slick. The Kindle flashes as you do things. HOW ANNOYING! This is not slick. It’s slow.

  You have to pay for blogs if you download them but can browse them in the web browser for free. Weird.

• People don’t consume books like they do music. With music you flit between things. The Kindle can’t ‘do an iPod’ which changed the way we listened to music. It broke the CD model. The Kindle has nothing to break, no stranglehold to release.
• People don’t want another device in their bag. “Keys check, wallet check, phone check, blackberry check, laptop check, kindle…? Sod it I have my phone/blackberry/laptop”

The name Kindle is rubbish.

It’s exciting because:

• It’s a very cheap mobile bookshop
• The screen is a great step forward
• It has the potential to change the way [some] people read

Sure some will fly of the shelves, but at $400 it’s simply too much for £50 man. People will offset the amount of books they read and think it’s not worth it.

It appeal to the niche. The tech geeks, the academics but it won’t light the fire for my younger brother. As one reviewers says:

“If you travel a lot, or require rapid and accurate access to references (as I do), the Kindle is definitely soon to be a necessity. I am a medical student, and I loaded an entire medical library onto the one I’ve been beta testing”

Having said all this, I might get one… For research purposes of course.

Apple stay in (iPod)Touch with thier fans

We have a new shiny iPod in the shape of the 16Gb iPodTouch. Much like an iPhone it uses the multi-touch user interface to engage its user in some beautifully inuiative interaction and employs that fantastic landscape-portrait ability first seen in iPhone.

The new Nano is fat and horrible. I don’t like it one bit so am not going to talk about it. It’s iRubbish.

Watching the guided tour it’s easy to see that it works in just the way that you would expect it to, so be prepared for a fanfare from Apple fans. I’ll give you the feature headlines because there will be plenty of detailed appraisals of iPodTouch’s first day at school all over the web by the time I get into work. Gizmondo’s 5 Things We Love, 5 Things We Hate and Engadget’s Liveblog for starters.

Apart from the fact it’s a multi-touch screen product that allows you access to pictures, videos, music and more the main news is that has wireless capability allowing you to do three main things:

1. Allow you to browse the iTunes music store
2. Allow you to use Safari when browsing the web
3. Allow you access to YouTube videos

What’s really curious is that if you are in Starbucks (only in a select few locations for the coming year all US. 3 this year, 2 more by March ‘08), you can browse and download from the iTunes Store for free. You can use Starbuck’s wireless for free.

Excuse me, but how is that a good thing? Why is that worth a few minutes of the Guided Tour? Not only that I find it a rather odd decision by Starbuck’s given that they are trying to turn themselves into a record-come-bookshop anyhow? Just check here and here (this link via Barbd).

The iTunes Music store isn’t the full blown offering available online which to me seems a bit pointless. Do people who buy via wireless in Starbucks buy a certain type of music..? I guess they do.

Following hot on the heels of the acclaimed iPhone this product feels very much like an, errrrm, iPhone. Just without the phone. It looks so much like it and at only 8mm think I hope there aren’t cases of people rushing out the door thinking they’ve grabbed their phone when all they’ve got is their iPodTouch. Which could have a phone, looks like it has a phone. But doesn’t.

I guess they need to cater for those who aren’t going to buy the iPhone, but couldn’t it have been a little more different? I need to check the disk sizes that will be available, but I personally need a helluva lot space than that, so I’d be definite iPod/iPhone fodder. But with only 16Gb and everything so much like its cousin, I won’t be spending those hard earned pounds.

But then I guess I’m not the target market. I’m iPod Classic target market. Damn you Apple! You just made me spend more money. in no more than 3 lines of blog!

The new iPod will bring a new audience to the church of Apple, no doubt about it. They have met and exceeded expectations with this iPod line-up I have to concede.

Interaction-wise, of course it ’sings’ the way you’d want it to. During the demo, the rather irritating speaker explains how you can customise the primary buttons at the foot of your iPod menu allowing you to access you library ion your terms. Easy, obvious but nice and something ‘other’ companies would miss.

It’s fantastically realised and the interaction, they way you skip through photos, music etc is reason to buy it in my book. I’ve had the privilege of using an iPhone (not lyet launched here in the UK) and oh my, it’s good. It’s oh-so-very-multi-touch-good. With an Apple on top.

From a personal standpoint my iPod 3G has finally died a death. It still works, but it’ll only last 45 seconds unless it’s connected to a power source. It lasted better than most as I’ve squeezed 3.5 years out of it. However, the criticisms I had of that product was that Apple had designed a computer peripheral and not a mobile product. I haven’t heard many stories of iPhone screens scratching but I hope they’ve cracked the mobile product aspect of the design.

I can just see the horror on people’s faces when they first drop their iDevice. You know the feeling. Brand new shiny mobile phone leaves your hands only to skip across the tarmac picking up it’s first ‘customised-by-you’ touches. Back to my iPod I’m still freaking annoyed that a £300 product has been designed to fail in this way. iRubbish.

Also, is it me or is everyone else getting just a little bit iBored of the iBrand?

So, I need a new phone, I need a new iPod. Choices, choices. Space or whizzy stuff?

Link: Apple Keynote,

London 2012 – “My kid could have done that”

Day 2 and the viriol is still rolling concernig the new London 2012 identity and brand system.

I’ve seen coverage of the new Olympic London 2012 identity blazed across front pages, on the news and on the radio. Everyone is talking about it. So is this a bad thing? Is all PR ‘good’ PR?

I certainly think so.

It takes a while for the supporters to emerge and I’m starting to see supporting signs here, here, here and here signs that this identity will gain traction. I said yesterday that dissatisfaction and resentment always air more readily than satisfaction and support and this has been very apparent.

Comments include:

• “Of all the cities that are “would-be” hosts of the Olympics, only London have the balls to pull something like that off, and they have.”
• Like a lot of people, I didn’t like this when I first saw it; I thought about posting but I didn’t. But I kept thinking about it today, and the more I thought about it, the more it grew on me.
• I love how it works as a system. I love that its brash and crazy and risk-taking and young. And maybe its those qualities – which are often just as much a part of the Olympics as good sportmanship and acheivement – that speaks to my own favorite Olympic “moments…” The Jamaican bobsled team (I was a kid and I loved them that year and cried when they crashed), the first time snowboarding came to the Olympics… And I do think as time goes on it will take on the other, time-honored qualities of The Olympic Spirit.

Of course there are a myriad of detractors, but John Snow (a very credible news reader here in the UK) has warned us though‘Be careful, it will grow on you’.

He’s right. Or at least for my experience of the brand he’s right.

I remember seeing it for the first time and thinking “Oh. Okay. Urmmm. Wow. That’s different”. But it has grown on me. Now I really like it. I’m sticking up for it. I’m sticking my head up and saying “I support it”.

Personally I’m a little takenaback by the lack of support from the design community who usually berate everything for playing to the status quo. This identity certainly doesn’t do that. SO I expect some more emerging and high-profile supporters soon.

My favorite comment concerns the perceived ease at which these things are created; “MY kid could have done that” has chimed out on radio programs, television news and in the papers.

Well, great.

If your “kid could have done that” then that means it’s simple. It’s uncomplicated.

And simplicity is one of the most complicated things to achieve in design particularly in a spac where the identity has to work on tickets, billboards, clothing, signage etc etc. Also, it has to work with various sponsors on the side of cups, in newspaper adverts and so on.

This site provides 10 reasons for loving the new Olympic identity and adds that if your “kid could have done that, then get them to send in their resume”. They go on to point out that some of the best brand lock-ups are simple such as the Christian Cross (two lines) and the Mercedes badger (three lines and a circle).

This prompted me to think about the comments that criticise the logo for not being literal enough. Comments such as:

• “It doesn’t represent London”
• “It doesn’t represent sport”
• “It doesn’t contain red, white and blue”

I’d bet my house that if the logo was any combination of those things, a London landmark with some sporting gesture woven in, rendered in our national colours then we’d hear comments of “Try harder”, “Unoriginal”, “London is more unique than this” etc.

This brand system has to be reognisable at 10×10 pixels and at 100×100 ft. This is a brand system that provides a massive amount of scope for ‘play’. Expect to see bright coloured, angular forms across everything.

Love it or hate it. It will be plastered across London in various forms and I’m sure you will recognise it when you see it.

John Maeda @ Design Museum, London

John Maeda @ Design Museum, London

Originally uploaded by Snowbadger.

I’ve just been to his talk at the Design Museum with some colleagues and came away feeling nostalgic, a little sad and a bit inspired.

Nostalgic because Maeda ‘plays’, he makes stuff, he doozers away and this reminds me of my first years studying product design when we were encouraged to do that; making furniture in workshops and mechatronic robots in the labs.

I hope we get to a point where the culture of what we do at LBi has this level of experimentation. That would be cool, we’ve started at least.

I’m a little sad because I’m no longer making stuff like that. I use excuses like time, responsibility and whatnot but that’s no good. Maeda has 6 children, and I only have 2!

I want my job to provision me this as his does.

I’m inspired because he’s pointed out that we let ourslves become defined and that we shouldn’t. Hence the usual questions of “is it art or design?” That he refuses to answer – “I don’t care” he says.

Pigeon holes have gotten in the way.

What is an Experience Architect? What is a designer? Etc etc. Does it matter? Aren’t we all interaction designers? Experience designers? Why label at all? Can’t our brand be an indicator of what we might offer?

I don’t want to be a pigeon. They’re skyrats.

I’m inspired by Maeda’s rules of simplicity (though a little too simple!) and observations of complexity and reflecting on our internal discussions about ’simplicity being very hard’.

I’ll be going to the riflemaker to see his 16 ipod fish. It didn’t look that good, but the other stuff did.

AOL and Yahoo Homepages

Have you seen the new AOL homepage? It look svery similar to the Yahoo! one.

One wonders how they can get away with this sort of thing. i mean there are design patterns and there is 100% rip-off. It even looks as if the grids are pixel perfect.

Wow.

Wall of Post-Its

Any interaction designer worth their salt spends a few Post-it notes during the design process, but I gotta say I love this idea: A wall of them as a permanent, considered inteior feature.

From the site:

“A wallpaper consisting of four layers of varying grey tones on a bright primary backing. Each layer is perforated in a grid format and backed with a tacky adhesive similar to ‘post-it’ notes. Pixelnotes is inspired by the way we work within a space. The walls become functional, an integrated noticeboard that documents our activity within the room. Pixelated formations and shapes develop according to our patterns of use”