Evernote Apps to Help Remember People (Evernote Hello) and Meals (Evernote Food)
I tell myself I’m disorganized because I’m creative and I’m male. Maybe my right-braininess is to blame or maybe it’s something else. I try all kinds of productivity Apps to organize my life and my stuff, but every App I try seems to be designed by left-brained list makers. I would love to partner with a developer to create an organization App designed for creatives, but that’s really not the point of this piece. Just putting that out there! 
Evernote almost works for me. Out of every tool I’ve tried, I like Evernote best, and I LOVE that they’re tackling new Apps that improve life. Today there are two new Apps I’m looking forward to trying, Hello and Food.
Hello tackles the problem some of us have with remembering names when we meet people at events. I’ve used an App where I’ve explained that I’m bad with names and asked if I could take a photo. That process seemed a little awkward to me. Hello handles it in a way that makes it kind of cool. Hand your phone to the person you meet, they hold the phone up to their face and the App automatically takes four photos that string together to create a mini animation of the person’s face.
Here’s a video so you can see for yourself…
Hello is free in the App Store. I had to search for Evernote Hello to find it. After testing the App, the feature I wanted to see most was the light face animation. I went back and read the Evernote blog post about Hello again, and it looks like that’s a feature coming soon?
Then there’s Evernote Food, an App designed to help us remember as much about a meal as we want to capture. You can capture photos of food, drinks, dining companions and recipes. Give the meal a title and it’s there for you to remember anytime you want to look reminisce.
Here’s how Food works …
During the years I produced GeekBrief.TV, I had a lot of great meals with interesting people. It would be so cool to have them captured like this. I’m looking forward to capturing even more awesome breakfasts, lunches and dinners with this App in the future!
Read MoreThe New Apple Headquarters, Henceforth AKA The Click Wheel
Apple just submitted updated plans for its new headquarters in Cupertino. The circular building was first unveiled by Steve Jobs at a Cupertino city council meeting (video below). It’s a glorious looking structure that is reminiscent of iPod Click Wheels. Therefore, I’m proposing to geeks everywhere that we refer to it as The Cupertino Click Wheel. From this circle, the world is played.
You can download and drool over the plans like I am. Just spread the word … we’re calling it the Click Wheel.
Here’s the original Steve Jobs city counsel presentation…
Thanks iPhone in Canada!
Read MoreI Re-Designed the Tesla Model S Center Console Interface
If I could have any car in the world, other than a Maybach with a full-time driver making it possible for me to work in the back ;), I’d want a Tesla Model S. I’m not a car person, but I’d like a Tesla S because I love design and gadgets. Tesla S is a beautifully designed, drivable gadget. The green stuff, to me, would just be gravy.
Right in the center of the dashboard, the Tesla Model S has a massive 17-inch haptic touch display that controls lighting, climate, audio, door locks, windows and the panoramic roof. A browser connected via 3G provides access to Web content. It’s also home to GPS navigation. The audio player controlled by the touch screen gives riders access to audio stored in the car’s memory, streaming radio stations over 3G, and audio stored on portables that can be connected via Bluetooth or USB. The car has FOUR USB ports!
Bloggers started posting photos of the Tesla S touchscreen around the time the Steve Jobs bio came out. If you’ve read the bio, you know when Steve Jobs saw a new design, his first response was almost always, “It’s shit!” I think Steve Jobs would say that about the interface on the Tesla S center console. As bloggers were praising the Tesla S interface based on it’s size and coolness level, I was reading the Steve Jobs bio and thinking, “I could design a better looking interface.” This console is more state of the art than any one I’m familiar with, but to my eye, it already looks dated. Now, to be fair, I don’t think they’re done yet, and they may be working on something more polished and coherent as I write this.
One of the worst reasons for doing anything is because you can, and there seems to be a whole lot of “because we can” in this interface design. It’s a high resolution, full-color display and because it can display all that color, it does. That’s a mistake. At the top of the screen is an icon tray that borrows from the design of the Dock on Macs and iDevices. It also seems to be inspired by the shape of classic car design. The icons controlling media, navigation, energy, web, camera, phone and apps are each a different color. There is too much happening and it should be simplified.
It might look better in person, but in the photos, apps don’t flow together. It almost looks like there are three stacked screens rather than one large one. Underneath the App icons is a large space that is sometimes a Web browser, sometimes GPS navigation, the media player and all the other car controls. Other than the Web browser, this section has lots of room for improvement. Navigation elements and colors are inconsistent. Buttons on the media player look kind of cool, but they don’t share the design ideas you see on GPS or lighting controls. The Media player looks clunky and not very luxurious.
At the bottom of the screen is the climate control interface. That looks good and it looks finished. Designers didn’t re-invent the look and feel of physical buttons you’d find on a luxury car.
We know from iOS and Android, we gain a lot more than we lose when we give up physical buttons and knobs in exchange for software limited only by imagination. The design challenge is to use restraint so users can expect a consistent experience between Apps. Apple demonstrates how much consistency makes a difference through the use of objects that look and work the same from one application to the next. Based on what I’ve seen of the Tesla Model S center console, it’s something Tesla might want to think about.
In this conceptual re-design of the interface, I toned down the variety of color and tied the whole screen together so that one application flows into the other without creating a completely different look for each application. If I had more time, I would work on the App icons and the overly colorful display behind the steering wheel. I changed virtual buttons on GPS and the media player so that they look fresh and part of the same device. I also changed the media player to use album art as the background of the player.
I searched for the resolution of the 17-inch display. If what I found was right, it’s 600×1280. If you hit the more button, you can see my interface designed for 600×1280 and a side by side of the Tesla S interface and mine.
Read MoreA Lesson in Design
One of my favorite TV shows of all time is Designing Women. It is about a group of strong southern, opinionated women who worked together in a decorating business. They weren’t designers, but Designing Women is a much better name than Decorating women would have been.
Shortly after Luria and I started GeekBrief.TV, we found out about a distillery not far from where we lived. It was owned by a husband and wife and it was the first legal distillery opened in the area since prohibition. They made vodka and gin and the distiller told us the difference between the two. Gin is about what the distiller adds. Vodka is about what the distiller takes away.
That’s a good explanation of the difference between decoration and design. Decoration is about what you add to a room, a house, a product or anything to make it attractive. Design is about what you remove from a room, a house, a product or anything to make it work without distraction.
Decoration is intended to be pretty. Design is intended to be thoughtful.
This is decoration…
This is design…
(it’s also funny.)
Read MoreSteve Jobs Silhouette
I spent a couple hours making this Steve Jobs Silhouette look good enough to work against a dark background. Sharing it might save another artists some time.
Steve Jobs Silhouette (transparent .png file)
iPad Background Template
@Jindai asked me on Twitter why I made the iPad Stay hungry Stay foolish Wallpaper square.
The background on iPad is unique because it rotates. iOS will morph the background image to fit the screen, but not always in a way a designer would appreciate. If you want to create an iPad background you like when iPad is oriented either vertically or horizontally, use this template. Keep in mind only the square in the middle will always be visible. Design that space to be a spotlight area.
iPad Background Template (right click to download)