Urban Aesthete | Your Daily Dose of the Arts

Flipboard: Confirming vision of dynamic design

Lex — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 17:59:13 +0000

One central thesis we have at Urban Aesthete is that visual design is an important differentiator in technology, and specifically in software and information presentation. Many tech companies are able to deliver the guts of a product, but few can take those fundamentals and create a compelling aesthetic vision. Clearly Apple does this very successfully, but it lacks the scalability of open-source, industry-wide solutions. The vision we have of the future is one where interface is pivotal, and dynamically adjustable across devices. Concept drives algorithm, which then intelligently puts together a beautiful, designed solution. Instead of custom pixel editing, we are moved by a set of driving principles — a visual architecture.

The recent Flipboard release reflects exactly this thinking and this emergent movement. The application’s guts are similar to that of a long-existing technology, the RSS reader. However, the presentation is crisp, intelligent and beautiful. Even more significantly, it is an automated, dynamic overlay on top of the churning mass of social media.

We have seen a symmetric development in Mint.com, which is also a front-end overlay for Yodlee.com. Today, Mint.com has over 1 million users. Flipboard is seeing similar growth in numbers. Here is what the CEO has to say about the first day of launch:

It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. We thought it would take a while for people to understand the concept and get used to it and download it. I didn’t realize that it would be explosive – that within seconds people would be downloading it by the thousands.

The other thing I didn’t anticipate was the way that people used the product. They use it far more intensely than I thought they would. When people started downloading it they were flipping back to 2009 on their Facebook pages. It was crazy! They just sat there just flipping. Flipping, flipping, flipping, flipping. That stuff takes server time. We have to build pages for every few hundred posts that we go out and get.

You ever see that UPS commercial where they go live with a website and there was this group standing around and nothing happens as they’re looking at a counter, and then it goes up to 1 and they’re like “YAY”, and then 10 and they’re like “YEAHH!”, and then it climbs up to like thousands and they’re like “Uh-Oh”, it was totally like that man, it was exactly like that commercial.

Photo: Dance Shine-4.

Lex — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 21:13:48 +0000

Lift, impress. Heavy duty thoughts on a slate of reflection.

Photo: Dance Shine-3.

Lex — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 17:48:11 +0000

Things are getting a little warped. Heavy. Load bearing.

Photo: Dance Shine-2.

Lex — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:01:49 +0000

Slow and steady, appetizers abound. Nothing too delectable, sequential.

Photo: Dance Shine-1.

Lex — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 02:56:16 +0000

A warm-up. An easy one. Just some thoughts sprinkled on the cold hard carcass of a prehistoric skyscraper.

Scanned Environment with Overlay Tech.

Lex — Wed, 26 May 2010 02:51:19 +0000

A next step forward.

Software scans the visible surface into 3D and then performs artistic projection. I am excited about usable technology that can be built using this approach, such as scanning your living room and projecting interfaces onto various objects and machines. Thoughts:

Check the calories on your milk and enter them into a future version of a food and fitness tracker.

Project interfaces onto your notebook to scan files or drawings and archive them onto a wireless harddrive.

TV , media and communication anywhere.

It reminds me of augmented reality, without the glasses.

Photo: Shadow Flow-2.

Lex — Sat, 22 May 2010 20:53:02 +0000

What has happened to us! Woken by dreams of black water. Folded into dry reflection.

Photo: Shadow Flow-1.

Lex — Mon, 17 May 2010 22:07:49 +0000

A rolling unknown. Say what you mean, mean what you say.

Photo: Isolation-1.

Lex — Sat, 15 May 2010 15:49:48 +0000

We forget how to speak. We hide in fences. We miss the poetry of it all.

Web Resolution Hits 1024×768

Lex — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 01:46:28 +0000

What a great nugget for web designers, taken from w3school.com. No more 750px wide websites here! Unless you aesthetically limit yourself to 450px, ahem.