Technology

Moonraker

Moonraker: How This 70s Movie Demonstrated The Technology of Tomorrow

December 24, 2015 Movies Technology

Though personally not a Star Wars fan beyond its futuristic innovations, I coincidentally chanced upon Moonraker which is also heavily influenced from the science fiction genre. And it’s quite unimaginable that James Bond could also be cast in a space-age flick diverging from what Ian Fleming had imagined for James Bond in his book Moonraker which was published back in 1955.

It was the 70s when Moonraker gave us distinct clues of the automation and mechanics coming to us in the 21st century. Equally pioneering if not more, than the Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope which was released to an outstanding box-office collection in 1977 which prompted the producers of James Bond to review. Although for the Stars Wars series since the plot and characters had galactic representation the makers could go over-the-top with the weapons and humanoids. In contrast, being a Bond flick Moonraker’s plot had to be deeply entrenched with the human civilization theme while any technological innovations had to echo with the real world. Some of that space technology has either been popularized or retired or is in the process of being modernized today. Sure Bond gadgets are exaggerated functionally in the series but read on if you are just as curious to know about Moonraker’s tech offerings which are remarkable for the era when it was released. It’s an account of where fiction meets with reality at the horizon called ‘cinema’.

The Concorde and the Space Shuttle
It featured the Concorde (but the landing in Rio De Janeiro was off beat?). The supersonic Concorde flight and the Space Shuttle technology are definitely the biggest scientific innovations and suited the futuristic theme of the movie – it’s ironic that both the services (or should I say ‘technologies’) are now considered obsolete and have been thoughtfully retired. It’s also intriguing that the movie featured a fully functional space shuttle (named Moonraker) much before NASA had even conducted its first orbital test flight of the original space shuttle.

Drax Industries and Space Entrepreneurship
A mid-air space shuttle hijack prompts MI6 to investigate the incident and 007 is chosen for the job. The trail leads to Drax Industries and its billionaire owner Hugo Drax while unearthing his wicked plans. Not only did Drax build his own Moonraker shuttles but also had the groundwork to support their launch from the Amazon rain forests. This will sound familiar to the business model which Elon Musk has successfully created with SpaceX (except for launching rockets from the Amazon jungles which is never happening.) Entrepreneurship in space technology wasn’t even considered in the 70s when NASA and other government agencies around the world headed research and held rocket engineering secrets. Despite Drax Industries being a fictitious entity, it introduced to the world the concept of space entrepreneurship and deep-space colonization as a viable alternative for the future of humanity.

The Space Station
This brainchild of Hugo Drax wasn’t surprising considering that the Soviets had already launched the Salyut program in 1971. What was fascinating though was Hugo Drax’s space station had the most modern design and was technologically more advanced than the modular space stations we are used to seeing today at the International Space Station (ISS). The ISS doesn’t have a ‘zero gravity’ setting enabling the astronauts to walk normally like Drax’s space station. So maybe this was a bit exaggerated! The most ambitious feature I thought was the simultaneous docking of the Moonrakers – 6 at a time, to bring in supplies to the station, which could become a remote possibility in the distant future for the ISS.

In Conclusion
The producers of James Bond pushed to develop Moonraker ahead of For Your Eyes Only after the overwhelming response to the Star Wars and the space-age genre. The comparison with Star Wars is thus obvious. However the technology from Moonraker was deployed sooner than Star Wars, even though I believe that the AI/humanoid theme from Star Wars is priceless and requires more research before it can be realistically deployed. This is not to suggest that Star Wars isn’t an entertaining movie series. But to realize that James Bond also went into outer space to save humanity, and that Moonraker was this sci-fi show uncovering some breakthrough technological innovations in the 70s, is personally gratifying to note.

Free The Apple Watch

December 10, 2015 Technology

The Apple Watch was perfectly poised to sweep the industry. It had the goodness of the iPhone/Mac kitty, mainly the apps, the amazing product design and the indisputable quality of the Apple brand. Reasons which are enough for a device like the Apple Watch to own the industry which hadn’t seen much innovation in some time. Some of the early entrants to this arena were no match to the promise of experience and the technology which only Apple could deliver with its first wearable device. Sadly when it arrived it wasn’t the product we had anticipated, it wasn’t an ‘independent’ product. And let me explain.

The rich product basket of Apple including the iMac, the iPod, the iPad, and, the iPhone have existed as sovereign personalities with its own audience. The iPad, iPhone and iPod need the Mac/PC only for syncing content and are pretty much independent devices. Apple with its vast design experience curated an entire domain of great product design with hardware and software. Beginning with the unibody design and later with Yosemite by transforming the skeuomorphic UI with the flat design language. Other features such as HandOff and Continuity, and introduction of Maps, Notes, and Notifications on OSX which brought about a wonderful cohesion of OSX/iOS environments. All this and yet it did not take away the freedom of its users to work independently with these devices. Until the Watch came along. The graphic depicting the Apple devices isn’t honest to the Watch which can’t work without the iPhone.

The Watch as a wearable gadget with a small form factor meant that it would not naturally transition the rich cohesion of experience of the OSX/iOS devices. Although this does not make it an exceptional case when it comes to making it self-reliant within its functions and features. There are other watch devices today which do not need the phone support for offering a better user experience. And sure they may not tote a rich app ‘garden’ like the App Store. For now, let’s free the Watch from the clutches of the iPhone.

Apple’s product design cycle is unclear, if one is to understand that the earlier design iterations of the iPhone and iPad missed some essential features that were common to the devices of its kind. Considering this, the Watch isn’t freewheeling so soon until about a few more design iterations. Let’s hope the wait isn’t too long and painful.

Apple Reinvents the Pencil

November 18, 2015 Design

Apple’s Chief Design Officer Jony Ive was in conversation with the Editor-in-Chief of Wallpaper magazine Tony Chambers on Apple Pencil, and spoke at length about the design of the device as well as Apple’s design philosophy in general.

I had declared before that the Pencil was going to take the world by storm with its innovative UI and multi-functionality design along with the iPad Pro. At the core of the design philosophy for Pencil, Jony says, was the ability to use a device to paint and draw:

What we found is that there’s clearly a group of people that would value an instrument that would enable then to paint or draw in ways that you just can’t with your finger. And I suspect that this isn’t a small group of people. I don’t think it’s confined to those of us who went to art school.

For some time after the Pencil’s announcement the world was up in arms quoting Steve Jobs on introducing a so-called “stylus”.  Apple was fundamentally violating a design principle because Steve Jobs famously considered using a stylus as a sign of product “failure”. In reality the Pencil augments the finger as Jony Ive describes it vividly in this quote:

the Pencil is for making marks, and the finger is a fundamental point of interface for everything within the operating system. And those are two very different activities with two very different goals.

Suggesting that the Pencil is more than just a stylus and not replacing the finger interaction which Steve Jobs implied. The Pencil is in fact a successful merger of human dexterity with innovative technology. In which the Pencil not only identifies hand pressure but also the tilt angle on the screen to offer a seamless screen interaction. We often discuss Apple being an organization in the forefront of using design-thinking methods for developing innovative products:

We do this a lot when we are working on things like the trackpad or new keyboard on the MacBook. To develop those sorts of devices requires an incredible amount of observation and measurement and it means that you need to ask the right questions and know what to focus on. This is part of the value of being a design team that’s been together for many years. We’ve been working on these problems for 20-plus years, so it’s an interesting area. And I think we are gaining experience, we are learning.

Jony also brought up Apple’s design method which does not involve Focus Groups which is a well-known fact again. Here’s his take on whether the feedback from his young kids proved useful in the design of the Pencil:

Apple does not do Focus Groups – So far, anecdotally – you know we don’t do focus groups – but anecdotally, certainly from what I’ve seen, with my children and friends’ children, they are captivated.

And finally, he left a valuable tip for aspiring designers to inculcate design culture in their work:

The design team at Apple uses sketchbooks and do lot of sketching – Yes, we all do. The whole team use sketchbooks. I think it’s a mixture of drawing either by yourself or when you’re with people flitting between conversation and drawing.

 

 

 

 

iPad Pro and Apple Pencil – First Impressions

November 16, 2015 Design Technology

With loads of emotions, I had been awaiting the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil launch since Apple announced the breakthrough products in September 2015. The day finally arrived last weekend when I visited the Apple Store.

Disappointingly, my first impression when I held the iPad Pro was it just felt like a normal iPad! It wasn’t anywhere closer to the picture I was harbouring in my mind, of a large sheet of fine glass and slightly bulky device. Somewhere that tweet about the iPad Pro form factor feeling like an iPad Air 2 came true. Or maybe what I was feeling with the iPad Pro was a victory for Apple’s ingenuity in industrial design! Making something as powerful as the iPad Pro and letting the ergonomics sync with the present generation iPads. The new Smart Keyboard as well is a well designed and an exclusive accessory for the Pro. On the flip side we will have to wait for the next iPad Pro version to see the breakthrough 3D Touch technology at work which made the iPhone 6S series special in so many ways.

The Pencil’s story is quite different. I had used the FiftyThree Pencil last year but wasn’t too happy with the pressure sensitivity and the woeful response of the ‘stylus’ on the iPad. It required me to hold the tip in a certain way to touch the screen to draw something. The tip was rubbery and basically the experience never felt closer to a real pencil which I was initially expecting when I bought the product. The Apple Pencil feels every bit like the real stuff. The tip is hard and sensitive and detects the pressure points quite beautifully. It works even when you tilt it. The Pencil and iPad Pro combination is exciting – both are meant to work together actually, and a perfect platform for artists or architects to run their imagination wild. I’m already foreseeing a new genre of digital artistic wave being generated as a result of this innovative product from Apple. Now with Evernote supporting Apple Pencil it’s no doubt a fantastic device for everyone (and doodling takes a whole new meaning). I can’t wait to see what the upgrade for these devices has to offer.

“We didn’t really do a stylus, we did a Pencil. The traditional stylus is fat, it has really bad latency so you’re sketching here and it’s filling the line in somewhere behind. You can’t sketch with something like that. You need something that mimics the look and feel of the pencil itself or you’re not going to replace it. We’re not trying to replace finger touch, we’re complementing it with the Pencil.” – Tim Cook

Understanding Designers

November 11, 2015 Design Technology

I received yet another email today from a recruitment agency for a ‘UI Developer’ position, and lately I have begun to doubt the industry’s understanding of the difference between ‘designers’ and ‘developers’. It’s also discouraging when recruiters email you saying “Hey, I have this great position for you…”, only to be left disappointed when you go through the job description which clearly mentions programming skills as a prerequisite! Especially when my résumé or online job profile does not even mention the word ‘developer’ anyplace, I can’t figure out how those emails land in my inbox. Obviously there are some recruiters acting under professional compulsions and fulfilling a different criteria. But merely having an understanding or liking for a programming language doesn’t turn me into a developer. So I take this opportunity to explain about the Designers as I know them in some detail here. 

Designers imagine to create things, and developers engineer to make them work.

Designers apply visual talents in their methods to bring an idea to life while developers apply their mathematical acumen to make that idea work. Even if these roles appear to be similar for some individuals, it should now be clear from that simple description how their responsibilities and perspectives are poles apart. For instance, designers thrive on user insights, picking or rejecting ideas intuitively depending on what would and wouldn’t work for the product. Empathy comes naturally to them because without knowing who to design for they can’t begin to imagine and create visuals. Or even if they do create something just out of their imagination it may not work well with the intended audience in the market. This is quite different from the painters or fine artists who use their vivid imaginations, colours and forms on the canvas to express their inner feelings and thoughts. On the other hand when you empathize with your users you stand in their shoes to feel their physical and emotional needs and pains. Designers have an inbred mechanism which helps them translate those inert perceptions into tangible creations making use of design-thinking tools such as prototyping, iteration and design. When you remove these cherished elements from a designer’s inventory you risk losing the overall individuality of the product itself.

Why is a designer so important? Designers represent the uniqueness of the brand. They breathe, drink, sleep; basically exist emotionally with the brand while integrating it into their personality, and hence are able to imagine countless possibilities for the product. Having empathized with their product’s core value they are able to distill rationale through the quagmire of scrutiny. Good designers are an invaluable asset to the organization because they can transform a product’s narrative with their creativity and design leadership. So when designers are reduced to being just an ‘apparatus’ to fulfill short-term goals, it hurts the business objectives and sabotages the future growth of the brand conclusively. In fact, the best organizations in the world value the contribution that designers bring on the table. They are nurtured not just as employees but as the ultimate custodians of the brand’s ethos and sanctity.

Designers do not automatically become developers if they develop an understanding of how things work. In fact that signifies they are smart enough to cross over (empathy) and comprehend the challenges of the developers which is an advantage for organizations who are dealing with complex big-data and large IT transformational projects. It’s important to bear in mind that customers are no longer satisfied with systems that simply work, rather they are habituated to a continuous rush of apps offering delightful experiences. A user’s expectations to reach a certain level of gratification has already reached manic proportions which can only be delivered through a good design strategy. In a fiercely competitive industry riding on the theme of customer experience, designers are the only individuals who can technically connect the dots, unify the aspirations of product teams into a single sequence, and filter the undesirable perceptions to form a substantial product strategy. To expect them to do anything else but design is quite honestly, suicidal.