Disqus - Latest Comments for KPfefferle

Re: http://blog.leapfor.it/post/17155827909

KPfefferle — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:20:09 -0000

The main flaw I see in this flow of logic is that you assume that your users curate their Facebook friends list in the same way that they would want to curate those they would want to challenge through Leap. There seems to be a significant movement towards pruning Facebook friends lists down to only those people who are intimately known and shared with while keeping networks like Twitter open to a larger audience. Personally, I think Leap will have limited usability for me when confined only to my Facebook friends - and I don't see myself changing my Facebook friending criteria just to expand my Leap circle.

I think it's a common pitfall for app developers to assume their audience uses social services in the same way as them when considering social connect sign-ins, but be careful that you're not excluding potential users with the choices you make based on those assumptions. Leap will be much more appealing to me when Facebook isn't my only option.

I'm curious to see what kind of lean startup experimentation and measuring you do as you launch to evaluate the impact that this design decision has on the use of Leap - it'll make for a great future post :)

Best of luck with the launch!

Re: Kelly Creative Tech || Websites and application design in Columbus and Coshocton Ohio || Curious Apple UX Choices on the iPad

KPfefferle — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 12:52:24 -0000

Actually, I have several iPhone applications that will flip to position D. I think their biggest push with this is that if you want to show something to someone, you can just flip the device over vertically rather than spin it horizontally (flipping vertically is a much more natural motion with hands on the sides of the device).

While you CAN use it in any direction, it still seems to me that position A is the "home" position that the user will return to time and time again.

Re: Kelly Creative Tech || Websites and application design in Columbus and Coshocton Ohio || Curious Apple UX Choices on the iPad

KPfefferle — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 12:35:08 -0000

I'm not sure that Apple REALLY intended the iPad to truly be a position-agnostic device as you presume. The function really follows the iPhone to the letter in how it handles orientation in relation to the hardware controls. The iPhone and iPad are both "upright" in position A, and every other position is just an optional secondary derivative.

That being said, I am quite surprised how often I use my iPad in one of the landscape orientations (B or C) compared to my iPhone. The iPad seems a more natural fit in landscape mode, and it seems even Apple expected this considering their case design that encourages propping the iPad in one of those two orientations.

That being said, position A is still "right side up" (as you will notice in all of their commercials and other advertisements).

Re: amber rae. (I think it’s really important that the teaching of...)

KPfefferle — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 13:46:32 -0000

I think this quote assumes a false dichotomy between science and art. As a coder who started college in engineering and finished in music, I appreciate that my early programming achievements were graphing calculator games and maze-course robots that may not have been artistically pleasing, but were technical works of art in the truest sense.

I support the idea of letting people build things early to drive the interest, but we've got to approach programming as an integrated technical/artistic field like architecture - where the aesthetics and function must work as one.

Re: Status Updates in Search

KPfefferle — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:21:11 -0000

I think you make some valid points here and your concerns certainly have basis in reality, but I think you have overlooked one very important fact: search engines like Google and Bing must learn to filter out the spam in order to continue to provide quality relevant results.

One of the unique things about search engines harvesting content from Twitter and Facebook status updates is that these networks already have built-in metrics for gauging source reliability that have come about organically. If someone on Twitter has a high follower to following ratio, then they usually are providing a value that goes beyond any superficial mutual-follow mentality. Being retweeted by others is often another sign that the content (and/or link) you provide is valued by the user community.

Can these traits be faked? Maybe, but a false account would have real trouble matching up with all of the metadata that I am sure is available through Twitter's firehose feed (date of signup? rate of follower growth? number of tweets per day? reply rate? who knows what else?). As easily as I can look at a new follower's profile and decide whether they are worth my attention (or a block), it sure seems that search giants like Google and Bing will be able to filter the junk out from the good solid content.

Because these social networks are relational (and those relationships can be measured and quantified much better than relationships between web sites) I believe the search engines will be able to distill a lot of true value from the stream. I'm already encouraged by what I see in Bing's Twitter search results even though I don't know exactly which factors they are using to gauge value, I am impressed by their ability to pull just a few high-ranking tweets for each trending topic. I am sure they will do the same with all search terms.

I'll be interested to see if and how it has an effect on network behavior, but for now I'll keep doing what I do and let Google and Bing worry about doing the thing they must always do to remain a search leader: weed out spam and point to content of actual value.