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The Miracle of WD-40

WD-40An apparently common problem that many iPhone users encounter is that, after many months of use, the home button — the sole physical button on the device’s face — starts to lose its responsiveness, sometimes precipitously. When this happens, it may take several presses, or a prolonged press, to get the button to produce any results. And sometimes where one press of the button is intended, the device registers two. Very annoying.

I was surprised to discover from a friend that Apple technicians diagnosed this problem on her phone as software related, which struck me as counter-inuitive, as it seemed to me to be very much a hardware problem. There has also been talk of the button needing software recalibration. I don’t know if that approach works or not, but I’ll tell you what worked for me: the miracle “water-displacing spray” WD-40.

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Now You Can Try Mixel without Logging In

MixelHappy new year everybody! Here’s one last holiday gift: there’s a new build of Mixel, our social collage app for iPad, available right now in the App Store. Version 1.2 adds a few minor interface changes for existing users, but its main feature significantly improves the first-run experience for new users — and for those who have until now been reluctant to give it a try because of our Facebook login requirement: you can now open up the app and browse the entirety of the network without having to login at all.

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Subscribing to The New York Times

My complimentary ‘digital subscription’ to The New York Times is coming to an end, so I just ponied up the equivalent of US$195 for a year’s renewal. For obvious reasons, I’m emotionally invested in The Times’ survival, and in fact would like to see it prosper for generations to come. But the process of renewing was unpleasant and left me angry, and it wasn’t even about how expensive it was.

The problem is that it’s so difficult for a customer to determine which of the many subscription choices really offer the best value.This is true even for a customer like me, who is dedicated to the brand, technically proficient and a former employee of the company.

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Kindle Fire Does Not Fire the Imagination

For obvious reasons, I’m an iPad partisan, but I do want to see the tablet market get more competitive. For that reason, I was excited about the Amazon Kindle when it was announced and so I pre-ordered it immediately.

When it arrived, I had an out-of-the-box experience that, as it turns out, would be indicative of my feeling about the device in general: good, not great. As I powered it up for the first time, the Fire spent about five or ten minutes downloading and installing a software update, leaving me unable to even use it. Not great. But it installed the update just fine, and thereafter it was mostly a glitch-free experience. Good.

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What I Learned When I Started a Design Studio

Earlier in the year, I wrote a bit about the design services industry in two blog posts: first, I wrote “The End of Client Services” in July, which outlined my thoughts on why the best interaction design is done outside of the studio/agency model. Then in August I followed up with “In Defense of Client Services,” which expands a little bit on why I believe services is such a difficult way to earn a living as a designer. I had meant to write a third post, but getting Mixel out the door got in the way. Over the past several days I was finally able to find the time to hammer out this follow-up.

Actually, I’ve been making notes for this blog post all year long, because it was ten years ago that I co-founded an interaction studio here in New York City, partnering with some colleagues from a previous employer. I stayed with the studio for four years, and I learned a lot in that time. Building that business significantly changed my outlook on the design industry, but I haven’t written too much on why. A decade later seems like the right opportunity.

What still strikes me the most about that experience was how little my former partners and I understood at the outset about what it takes to build a successful services business. In the years since, I’ve met lots of designers who have either founded or had the ambition to found studios or agencies of their own. Most of them, it seems to me, are laboring under misapprehensions very similar to the ones that hobbled my former partners and myself.

So here are a few of the key lessons that I learned from co-founding my own design studio. The usual caveats apply, of course, in that everything about business is contextual, and so your mileage my vary.

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Back for the Holidays: Hel-F’ng-Vetica Tee-Shirts

The good folks at Wire & Twine and I are bringing back my Hel-Fucking-Vetica tee-shirts just in time for the holidays. These shirts have been enormously popular, selling out of all of their previous runs, and they haven’t been available for four years. Now until 5 Dec, you can pre-order from a brand new run and get your very own. If you’re in the U.S., they should get to you in plenty of time for Christmas. The shirts are just US$25 each, and because this is a pre-orders period (a very short one!), all sizes are in stock.

Hel-Fucking-Vetica

Order yours today here.

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Why Mixel Requires Facebook Login

It’s been a crazy week since we launched Mixel last Wednesday night. The feedback has been tremendously positive, but there have been some dissenters too. Particularly regarding our requirement that users login with Facebook.

We’ve heard many times that this is a challenge for some, a nonstarter for others, and downright offensive to a few. It’s been a heated discussion, and we’ve listened carefully. After finally catching my breath a bit, I managed to put together our thoughts on the subject. In the interest of making it as digestible as possible, I’ve framed it as a Q & A, and you can find it over at this link on the Mixel Web site.

Hopefully this will help clarify everything that we’ve been thinking about this topic. But to sum up quickly: the reason we use Facebook login is that it lets us build the Mixel community around real names. This is by far the most important element of Facebook for us, and the document explains why.

I’ll also add one more thing. It’s probably not much consolation to users who feel left out of Mixel to hear this, but it was a very difficult decision for us to go with Facebook, one that we didn’t take lightly. In fact, I agonized over it almost right up until we launched, and kept asking friends, colleagues, advisors and investors for their input. No one offered a strong enough counter-argument to Facebook though, and so we stuck with the decision.

I also realize that my answers will not change the minds of people who are dead-set against using Facebook. Nevertheless, we value and pay close attention to all the feedback we receive, and it pains me to know that some people have dismissed Mixel before trying it solely because of our login system. We don’t believe there’s a viable alternative today, but hopefully that will change tomorrow.

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