Standup Desk

A month ago I moved to a standup desk, mainly because my friend Rafael Mojica talked me into it. However, first I needed to get a couple of things to adapt my desk as a standup one. The legs could be extended but not enough so Rafa told me that with two sets of bed lifts the problem could be solved. Next, a mat anti-fatigue. This is the second most important thing. No matter how comfortable are your shoes, they will feel flat and hard by the end of the day. A mat anti-fatigue helps you be up for more hours. Finally, some books helped raise the monitor a little bit for a more ergonomic position. This is the list of things of my low-budget transformation:

1. Ikea Galant Desk
2. Bed Bath & Beyond bed lifts
3. Sublime Imprint Anti-Fatigue Comfort Mat

Week 1
Extremely tired. The first day was the hardest, every day after was a little bit less hard. This week I would come home and jump onto my bed and rest.

Week 2
Started to feel legs much stronger and less tired. I could go for longer periods of time without sitting down and felt much comfortable getting work done. I could actually focused more on my work rather than on my feet or legs.

Week 3-4
Started to dominate this. I now feel that I move my feet and legs unconsciously during the day and I don’t get distracted much about the fatigue. I don’t get home feeling tired and even my wife told me I have stronger legs!

Conlusion
People thing I did this for different reasons, some think it was to improve my back position, to do excercise, as a response to a column problem, to follow a trendy thing, or to avoid prostate cancer. I don’t have a specific reason other than being healthier, but I wanted to try it myself and learn what it is to have a standup desk.

After a month or so, I feel stronger legs (and feet), much more energy during the weekends, and even better digestion.

Give it a try!

“Seeing more items faster is presumed to be a better experience”, McKinley said. But the A/B tests showed various negative effects of the feature, including fewer clicks on the results and fewer items “favorited” from the infinite results page. And curiously, while users didn’t buy fewer items overall, “they just stopped using search to find these items.”

Very interesting article by Dan Nguyen. Looks like infinite scrolling is great for browsing but it doesn’t lead to a specific action. Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr on the other hand have yielded good results.

Very often the reward is preceded by risk, and the path to courage begins with a step towards your greatest fear.  In design and life, taking chances propels us forward and inspires those around us to push their own boundaries.  When we do this collectively, the industry itself moves into the future.  Be confident in your abilities and resilient in your dedication.  Roll with the punches, plan all the way to the end, and jump when necessary.

Beautiful quote by Preston Bailey.

Timeline-wise, and regarding Google’s purported surprise that Apple made this switch, it’s worth pointing out that Apple began making mapping-based acquisitions in July 2009, when they acquired Placebase. Apple then acquired Poly9 a year later, and then, a year ago, acquired C3 Technologies for $267 million. What exactly did Google think Apple was acquiring these companies for if not to replace Google Maps with their own offering?

Who could’ve told?

The best wallpaper is back. Optimized for iPhone 5 and new generation iPod Touch. If you are looking for the iPhone 4 version it’s here.

Download for iPhone 5

Here are my thoughts about some creative UI elements that were coined during the last 5 years, from the small details to those that changed the way we interact with our devices.

Pull to Refresh

One less button to tap. Invented by Loren Brichter, the man behind Atebits and Tweetie. One of the most significative innovations in UID that had happened since touch screens came out, and here I mean since 2007 when the iPhone was released. It’s hard to imagine ourselves hitting a refresh button in every app we want to update its content. Now, in iOS at least, we simply pull to refresh instinctually, and it’s rapidly becoming a common pattern in iOS.

Twitter acquired Tweetie in April 9, 2010, and filed a patent for this gesture which apparently will not be enforced.

Swipe to [action]

Let the user discover. Additionally, Tweetie introduced a new swiping to display a menu ‘behind’ the tweet. iOS had already swiping for delete, but Tweetie used differently.

Today many apps use this same gesture to display a menu with actions, others, like Tweetbot have used it in a very clever way: Swipe right to see the tweet they are replying to, and swipe left to see the tweets that replied to this tweet. It’s genius. One can follow a conversation easly and jump to other conversations that developed in the way. This gesture-based feature alone makes Tweetbot a winner in my list.

Accelerometer

Look mom, no hands! It is repeatedly said by Jen Simmons, the devices we hold in our hands, are now more capable than the PCs we have on our desktops. Our phones and tables have now GPS, Cellular data, accelerometer, gyroscopes, vibration motors, HD cameras, Retina displays, compass, and everything else a PC has. The question is how are we taking advantage of this?

Instapaper makes a great use of the accelerometer. It detects the inclination of your iPhone or iPod Touch and atomatically scrolls up or down just by tilting your device. Genius.

GPS & Maps

(Image from A Book Apart – Mobile Fist, by Luke Wroblewski)

New search for new type of input. Yahoo! (yes… Yahoo!), made a great use of the map in the app Sketch-a-Seach (not available anymore). Instead of displaying the list of items based on a filter or radius around your current location, the app allows the user to draw the boundary where he/she is interested in discovering local businesses. Again, mobile wins over desktop.

3D iBooks

The invisible UI. The Status Bar in iOS is 40px on the iPhone and 42px on the new iPad. These smart-pants at Apple decided to leave that area “unused” to allow space to a very-well-done 3D effect when flipping the page. This effect is perfectly noticeable with the black iPad as the screen color continues seamlessly into the iPad frame. Do you want to blow your mind? Turn off the lights and start turning pages.

Slide to Unlock

2-year olds really appreciate this. Remember the old want o unlock a phone before 2007? Every phone had its own way to do it, but there was always a screen modal that would tell you what keys you needed to press in order to unlock the phone. In most cases the passcode was Any Key + #. There was not one single 2-year old that could unlock those phones because they would need to know how to read! Today every 2-year old can unlock an iPhone or iPad, and these will never accidentally unlock while in your pocket.

Pinch to Create item

Getting rid of the buttons. Buttons are a hack, says Josh Clark. It seems that at Clear took it very seriously. Why tap a ‘+’ button to add a new item? Simply pull to add a new one to the top of the list, or pinch two items apart to create one between the two. So far the only utility app I know of without buttons at all.

Menu Buttons

Provide clues. The challenges with menus is that they can be long lists, and that sometimes they can’t remain visible to the user at all moments. So, what is the most common practice to let the user know there is a menu? Usually this is a button at the top left corner. Kara McCain suggested that these buttons should be like sparklines, ”data-intense, design-simple, word-sized graphics”. Translated to a GUI, the icon in the button should represent the way the items will be presented on the list. Best solution so far, and provides visual feedback to the user on what to expect. Here are four examples:

Five years laters the iPhone was launched seems we are starting to understand the importance of mobile, content and UX in these devices, and as these become more powerful and capable, I am sure new UI elements will be born.

Ryan Block on the new iPad:

One of the things I found most interesting playing with the new iPad is that, as it turns out, the difference a Retina Display makes is even more exaggerated on a 10-inch tablet than it is on a 3.5-inch phone — and that’s in addition to everything else. It’s not just a linear improvement, it’s actually greater than the sum of its pixels. This screen has changed what a tablet should be, and trust me, you won’t want to go back.

As the iPhone approches end of cycle and a new release is expected sometime in September or October. Some rumors of a 4” display have surfaced. This sounds difficult to believe if the developers have to redesign their apps. But what if they their apps would just look bigger without resizing. First, the resolution would have to decrease from 326ppi to 288ppi. Would the new display still be called ‘Retina Display’? Why would Apple sacrifice quality over quantity? I don’t know what Apple will do, but I am extremely happy with the size and resolution of the iPhone 4 display.

Unlike any of Apple’s product announcements, I didn’t want this day to come. However, as Gruber says in his article, it was a well thought and planned transition.

How do you replace the irreplaceable man? Like we’re seeing. An open-ended medical leave, where he retains the CEO title. A continuation of strong new products, including a major improvement to the iPad, the device that is upending the entire computer industry. The ceding of day-to-day operations and leadership to Tim Cook, his right-hand man and chosen successor.