Saturday, January 25, 2014

[Personal UX/UI review] packet design

<case: CheilJedang's medicine packet design>
Issue: at the upper right hand corner, the packet says "pls be careful since your mouse get hurt when taking the medicine"
Recommendation: design the packet safe enough so that no one get hurt while taking the medicine and no need for patients to worry about safety

Monday, January 20, 2014

[Personal UX/UI review] subway ticket gate machine design

<case: subway ticket gate machine at Konkuk Univ. Station in Korea>
Issue: 1. twisted diagonal design makes passengers to twist arms to badge 2. badging area seems to be too large and can be misunderstood like below marking
<the same machine in a different angle>

Recommendation: like image below, 1. let passengers badge without making them twist arms 2. make badging area design intuitive enough so that no one get confused

Sunday, January 19, 2014

[Personal UX/UI review] building number and name system on campus

<case: Seoul National University has number and name at the top of some buildings> 
Positive: first-time visitors can easily identify buildings from afar

<case: Konkuk University building number system>
Issue: difficult to tell which building is which from afar
Recommendation: put a number and name on top of each building if appropriate

Monday, December 9, 2013

[Personal UX/UI review] iOS Jihachul app for Korea

<iOS app: Jihachul>
Issue: 
1. Is this icon necessary? If yes, what is the icon trying to communicate with?
2. If urgent nature is important, can this icon be colored e.g red to be distinctively and intuitively recognizable to people in a rush?
3. Two different information category: one is station name and the other is direction. Can these two are differently expressed in design so that easy to identify?
4. Again, text color and font size are the same with #3. Can this be iconized so that users can focus on where and when to get off and on?

Friday, November 29, 2013

[conference] Smart Contents Conference 2013

Title
Smart Contents Conference 2013
Place
COEX Conference Room 401
Time
November 28, 2013 10AM~6PM
Speaker
Stephen Lake, et al.
Organizer
Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning; Korea Creative Contents Agency
Focus
smart contents, next technology
Website
<Image courtesy of Smart Contents Conference Office>

I.       Disrupting Wearable Tech [Stephen Lake, Founder / Thalmic Labs]
1.       Message
1)      History: began business with mind to help disabled people
2)      Problem to solve: fluid interface between physical object and users
  Reasons not choosing voice control
A       Voice recognition is not accurate yet
B       Speaking control words generate social awkwardness
3)      Goal: blurring barrier between human control and reality

II.      The New Virtual Reality for Gamers [Dillon Seo, Korean Business Manager / Oculus]
1.       Message
1)      Innovation relationship: Hardware brings content innovation (e.g. iPhone gyro sensor-> apps) and sometimes vice versa (e.g. Avartar-> 3D Industry)
2)      Game platform history: PC and console ATARI 2600-> Apple II 1980 (Ultima) -> NES (8BIT) 1985 (Super Mario Brothers) -> PC 2.5D- Doom 1993, PlayStation (32BIT)-> PC 3D!- Quake 1996, PC 3D GPU- Voodoo 1996-> Kinect-> VR
3)      Application
  Games: EVE-V (on E3 Games)
  Movie: Total Recall, The Lawnmower Man
  Interior: model house
  Museum: Jurassic Park
2.       Takeaway
1)      Oculus Rift can be used for Christian contents e.g. Bible, pilgrimage

III.     Creating Wearable Technology with Fashion and Music [Linda Lobato Franco, Co-Founder and CEO of Machina Wearable Technology LLC]
1.       Message
1)      How wearable technology can be used?
  Fashionable, functional, adaptable
2)      Wearable fashion in practice- e.g. Innovalley makes technology implanted in sofa, clothing, etc.
2.       Takeaway
1)      The future is in mobility not necessarily mobile

IV.    Wearable Tech Q&A
1.       Message
1)      Opportunity
  Developers self-distribute through global virtual stores
  Start with ideas that you think you want to have
  Prototype fast, stick to your main idea
2)      Profit model
  Oculus: app store-like market, gear sales
2.       Takeaway
1)      Start with ideas that you think you want to have

V.      How Smart Car will Effect the Content (Software) [Jikhan Jung, CEO of PaKiTo, Inc]
1.       Message
1)      Status
  Nissan Leaf- mobile phone displays status of your car; electric vehicle can power your house and lets you charge at your house
  Tesla- has 7,000 batteries
2)      Why electric vehicle?: economic, safe, pollution-free
3)      Contents connection: remotely turn on air conditioning, locate your car, check car status
4)      In Korea?: Kia Ray EV, GM Spark, Renault SM3 ZE, BMW i3
2.       Takeaway
1)      Korea still needs work in building EV infra; not a great time to buy an EV yet.

VI.    Why Startup and Innovation Ecosystems are Fundamental to the Global Economy [Bjoern Lasse Herrmann, CEO of Compass]
1.       Message
1)      Successful startup examples: Codility, labminds, retention knewton, next big sound, goodapril, jobfig, argos
2)      Startup Ecosystem Ranking 2012: cities are ranked by index for startup output, funding, performance, talent, support, mindset, trendsetter, differentiation from SV
3)      Contact: Blog.startupcompass.co, bjoern@compass.co

VII.   The Future of 3D Bioprinted Meat [Sarah Sclarsic, Head of Business Development of Modern Meadow]
1.       Message
1)      New opportunity for bio fabrication, bioprinting

VIII.  Next-Gen Search [Greg Lindahl, CTO of Blekko]
1.       Message
1)      Vertical category search engine: Blekko for desktop and Izik for tablet

IX.    Big Data Q&A
1.       Message
1)      Monetize- use big data to analyze users’ behavior
2)      Bio fabrication- medical fabrication (e.g. new organs), leather fabrication
3)      Advice
  start with what you want to see happening and with what you really care about
  work with great people (get along well, backup, technical skills complementing yours)

X.      Monetizing Content with Bitcoin [Tony Lyu, CEO of Korbit]
1.       Message
1)      What is Bitcoin?
  Paying network
A       VISA- bank account
B       Paypal- email account
C       Cyworld- DoTori,
D       World Warcraft- game coin
  Currency: Bitcoin
  Financial platform
2)      Why?
  Paying network-
A       commission- almost no commission
B       Speed- fast exchange
  Currency- limitation of 210 million
  Financial platform- open
3)      Application
  M-of-N transactions: for escrow, two parties need to agreed (e.g. among buyer, seller, and mediator, two parties need to agree, then payment can be sent)
  Oracles- payers can set conditions for sending money e.g. make payment when Seoul weather goes lower than 3 degree Celsius
  Colored coins- game item, stocks can be traded
  Timestamping- contents can be timestamped and protected
4)      Contents market change
  Phone owner- 6.9 billion globally
  Bank account owner- 1/3 of phone owners
  Microtransations
A       Blog tip- now users can send tips to any bloggers by using Bitcoin API
B       Freedom of speech- e.g. sending money to Edward Snowden will not be blocked

XI.    The Future of Online Education [Minjeong Kim, User Experience Designer / Coursera]
1.       Message
1)      Machine learning- Coursera knows which area people are having a hard time in learning
2)      Can add coursera certificate on LinkedIn
3)      538 partners (e.g. university, organizations)
4)      70% users are international
2.       Takeaways
1)      Learn at Coursera every week!

XII.   Protection Strategy from Cyber Attack on Mobile Content [Min Pyo Hong, CEO of SEWORKS]
1.       Message
1)      Cracking
  Smithing- SMS + phishing (e.g. birthday, free coupon message)
  Hacking tool- Dex2jar, apktool, weak_classdump
  Game cheat- memory hacking
2)      Service- Binary obscurity, library protection, memory protection
  Apk-> dex-> smiley
2.       Takeaways
1)      Protect your app by making it harder for crackers

XIII.  Bitcoin / Education / Security Q&A
1.       Message
1)      Security: needs security between devices (e.g. between cards, drones)

XIV. Futuristic Tech in Korea & Going Global
1.       Message
1)      Korea has fast adaption culture; the country can be considered as a good testing bed
2)      Advice for product design
  Design needs to be improved when catering for global users e.g. color, font
  Talk to global audience taste
  Have hypothesis before getting a feedback from users to measure your design success or not
  Feedback- get feedback at Dribble or Behance
3)      Advice for content creator
  Get feedback and execute instead of keeping your ideas in secret
  Fail quickly is more important than keeping secrecy
  Get the best and fresh sources e.g. hacker news
4)      Advice for project managers or CEO
  Don’t have too many business development people. Work on minimum number of deals
  Have a measuring tool for progress to keep you away from unfocused development
  Share dashboard everywhere
  Have metrics to check how well you’re doing
A       Business metrics- e.g. CTR can be used for measure of quality
  Share happy level from 0 to 10 among your team members <- this will indirectly show whether you’re on track or not
  Aim high- set the quality very high, best ever possible
5)      Advice for everyone
  Growth mindset instead of winning- students get more when focused on learning vs. succeeding
  Need to be open to learn and tough lesson
  Think to build, build to think; put something in the market and learn from your failure
2.       Takeaway
1)      Think to build, build to think; put something in the market and learn from your failure