“Who are you again?” you might be asking with a quizzical raise of the eyebrow. We’re Donny and Jasper — the writers who brought you articles like “The Future is Without Apps,” “Life without a Car,” “The World is Iterating on Silicon Valley,” and more through our publication Fwd: Thoughts, which we hope is the reason why you’ve subscribed to us. But if you tell us it’s for our chiseled faces and eyes deep like the ocean — we’ll take that too. Either way, we thank you sincerely.

But wait! Don’t tap the delete button yet. There’s a reason behind this letter and that is: We’re moving off Medium!

Our new home is at at fwdthoughts.com now. “Why?” Well, without starting yet another listicle on “13 reasons why we moved off Medium,” let’s just say it no longer has the reader environment we wanted to craft for our readers.

“But what’s that have to do with me?” Here’s our big favor to ask: we’d love to keep sharing our musings on product, design, and business with you and we want to bring our conversations along. Unfortunately, Medium does not allow us to bring you with us, so instead: please follow us here via email, Twitter, or Facebook, and we’ll keep you posted as soon as we publish a new piece. (Sorry for the empty feeds, brand new accounts!)

Thank you again for following us in the past year, we’re deeply humbled and honored to have so many people read the eclectic writings of two saplings. We’re hoping to hear from you on our new home fwdthoughts.com!

Jasper Cheng & Donny Reynolds

Fwd: Thoughts

We’re Moving! Please Come with Us? was originally published in Fwd: Thoughts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When Nintendo Switch was first revealed in October 2016, there were mostly two crowds that reacted. One group had been following the rumors for years and scoffed at the Switch’s graphics power and hardware capability. Another group absolutely adored the puppy-ear resemblance and hailed the system as an innovation in the physical multiplay space.

Both crowds are right, and the reason is because they aren’t the same user demographic. One sees the Switch as an Xbox-PlayStation status quo contender that has some portable gimmicks. The other group sees the console as a console-class handheld that supports TV output. With a product poised to be both a living room and handheld console, Nintendo is targeting an extremely lucrative and strong market as well as an anemic and declining segment at the same time. This dying category, of course, is the handheld market — the once glorious group of culture icons that has been experiencing a steady YoY decline of sales in the past decade.

Fundamentally, I see the Nintendo Switch as a handheld console, so I want to share some of my thoughts on why I think its primary market is handheld and how it might fare in the handheld market.

Value of Sophisticated Handheld Games

To understand why despite the decline handhelds still have the potential to provide value for consumers, we need to understand handheld games. The decline of this category is not necessarily invalidating the value of sophisticated, in-depth handheld games once loved by kids and adults alike. Titles popular on handheld consoles often require tens of hours to complete the whole story (e.g. Fire Emblem, Legend of Zelda, etc.). For a lot of people, a forty-dollar title can provide enough content for half a year. Some presenting intricately written plots or thoroughly thought-out worlds where you can spend as long as you want exploring and playing. This level of depth and sophistication is what the vast majority of smartphones games sorely lack.

In theory, any device with a processor can run the most stupidly simple to the most mind-bogglingly complex games. But in reality, a device tends to attract publishers that take best advantage of its input/output technologies and form factor as well as align best to its marketing narrative and first-party support. Consumers with different entertainment needs will gather around the consoles most suitable for them, and publishers reinforce these buckets by releasing the titles these users want. That’s why platforms generally have different genre makeups than that of their competitors (e.g. best selling games on the 3DS vs PlayStation Vita), and by extension, different consumer behaviors as well.

The Current Market

After making the connections between consumer behaviors, game genres, and gaming consoles, I did some plotting to visually understand where handhelds sit in the market against two axes: game sophistication and portability:

Now let’s annotate this graph with their respective revenues in 2016 and their YoY changes.

No surprise here, the handheld market is having a revenue drought. Most people have chosen to just play games on their smartphones instead because of convenience.

But who are these would-be handheld users?

Users of Switch

On Nintendo’s official YouTube channel, there are 60 something promotional videos. The majority of them are previews of games, but the crucial few that were also the earliest trailers of the console were exclusively focused on the Nintendo Switch lifestyle. Take First Look at Nintendo Switch for example, Nintendo demonstrates three main uses cases:

1. Home mode: Switch as a home console where you can enjoy in-depth gameplay at ease (Zelda + Pro Controller)
2. Handheld mode: Sliding the handheld off the dock, you get a fully functioning handheld for your own enjoyment
3. Tabletop mode: Switch transforms into tabletop console effortlessly and continues to function as expected with the two detached Joy-Con’s and the tablet propped up. In this mode, you can play a game with friends in the same room by sharing the Joy-Con’s.

The message is clear, Switch is intentionally designed for a very particular kind of users. These are the people who desire a more enriching gameplay experience than the one unfulfilled by most disgraceful freemium apps on smartphones. These are also professionals juggling social, work, and personal lives with limited time to spare for video games. Nintendo Switch represents the perfect combination for these folks:

1. It allows you to play in-depth games on the go
2. It lets you enjoy the immersive experience at home
3. It’s a shareable social console to connect with people offline without requiring other people to own the device.

Jasper has approached this target demographic analysis from a behavioral change angle on why the Switch is a great example of growing with your users. I recommend giving that a read if you want to drill down deeper.

Analysts are Wrong — the Nintendo Switch is a Brilliant Product Decision

But nevertheless Nintendo is boldly confronting two difficult and picky markets simultaneously. How exactly is Nintendo Switch going to win over a significant portion of those people to buy an extra device? How is Nintendo going to revive the in-depth gameplay of handheld titles? It all starts with product design.

Sociable Product by Design

The look and feel of the Switch is a good balance between the cute and approachable design on the 3DS and the sleek, muscular impression given by the PlayStation lineup. But the top highlight of this device I want to talk about is sociable design.

The ability to go anywhere and literally just hand a controller to a friend and say: “wanna play a game?” is incredibly liberating. It was complicated before the Switch. You two first had to have bought the same devices, share two copies of the same game, and then registered online accounts, (maybe even had to be in the same region), as well as had added each other as a friend on some network. For the same reason why sometimes giving you a good old piece of paper is less hassle than trying to navigate layers of digital tools and gates, the Nintendo Switch is a modern gadget with the simplicity and tangibility of an old-school physical toy. To borrow my friend Jasper’s words in his piece on Nintendo Switch:

The Switch’s use of controllers bring back the memories of huddling in a group of friends on the elementary school playground during lunch — connecting our gameboy colors together to trade Pokemon and battle.

You hand a Joy-Con to a friend, you start playing and have a good time. To me, this is the unique value of Nintendo Switch that no other handheld or living room consoles can come close to deliver.

Marketing

Now we got a potential market and an innovative product, people need to know about it. As much as people associate the word “marketing” with “deception” and “manipulation,” a product’s marketing defines its first impression and heavily influences subsequent purchase decisions. It is extremely important to get it right. Nintendo historically struggled with proper marketing, but this time around, has done a great job to demonstrate the social value of the device as well as its immersive capabilities. Most of what I would say here is nicely summarized by this Forbes piece by Paul Tassi titled The Switch Has Had Nintendo’s Best Marketing Campaign In Years. In a nutshell and with my clumsier wording: the marketing for Switch has been very consistent, understandable, and well targeted.

Alongside traditional marketing channels (which is a fiercely competitive and noisy space), Nintendo really went beyond and creative in educating the public its product and company values.

In the months leading up the big launch, Nintendo hosted a series of “Switch and Play” hands-on events around the world with consistent messaging and demos. I happened to be in Japan during the first hands-on event at Tokyo Big Sight. One of the main areas was set up with a three-part series of the Switch in its three configurations. You start out sitting on the sofa with 7 other participants playing Mario Kart, each of you equipped with a Joy-Con Wheel. You then move onto a ramen counter-like station where you get to fool around with the device in handheld mode, and end with a paired session playing Snipperclips with detached Joy-Con’s.

Furthermore, Nintendo even set up unexpected random popups to get the gadget in more people’s hands, much like Google’s move with the Pixel phone.

By exposing journalists and early adopters to clearly defined use cases of this product, Nintendo made sure people knew exactly what and who the Nintendo Switch is for.

A Few Words on Pricing

Nintendo Switch is one of the most affordable home consoles launched in the past decade. Xbox One was priced at $499, PlayStation 4 at $399, Wii U costed $299 at least, and only Wii costed $50 less than the Switch.

In the handheld market, both the original PS Vita and 3DS launched at $249, so Switch definitely sits on the higher end of handheld launch prices. For young adults and working professionals, the statement of a $299 toy sits comfortably between the “I don’t care I just play Candy Crush to kill time” apathy and the stereotypical gamer obsession with expensive gears. This is important to the positioning of the product, considering that Nintendo wants you to bring something more than a smartphone around to play with friends.

Wrapping It Up

In a dying handheld market, Nintendo is hoping that the built-in simplicity and social nature of the Switch at a justified price will convince you to escape the plague of quick-fix freemium games and come back to the sophisticated handheld titles for a more fulfilling, enjoyable, and social play experience.

Is this the console to deliver both living room, mobile, and social entertainment? Will this omnipotent and uniquely shareable experience take over the general public’s gaming needs?

It’s a steep challenge, but the ingenuity of this product is full of potential. I’m very optimistic about its future.

Switch on!

Hope you enjoyed the post. To serve our readers better, Fwd: Thoughts and I have unfortunately left Medium. If you would like to read more posts like this, please take a quick second and follow us on Twitter or Facebook. You can have our new posts delivered right into your inbox if you sign up for our spam-free newsletter.

You can also follow me personally on Twitter, where I can share a variety of good information on design and technology with you.

Will Nintendo Switch Revive the Dying Handheld Market? was originally published in Fwd: Thoughts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A new approach to organizing incoming streams of information

What is the problem?

Notifications are treated equally by default, but not all notifications are created equal. The OS assumes that each app takes responsibility in determining when we should divert our attention to it, but that’s right in a conflict of interest with the OS’s goal to ensure a wholesome and zen-like user experience. A flashlight app developer thinks you need to drop your conversation with a friend and look at a new promotional in-app purchase that allows you to adjust flashlight brightness. The same notification alert and style also reminds you that an important crash has happened on your host server.

They are simply not the same. Not every app on your phone is worthy of your attention. And even for those apps that are important, not every event within the app deserves it.

The current paradigm of information organization centers around the medium via which they are transferred. Everything goes in and out of apps. Want to share a web page with your best friend? Pick a messaging app first in the sharing dialog. You really care about this one friend and her snaps, but don’t really want to see all other Snapchat notifications? Too bad.

The flaw in this organization framework is that new information is not organized by where they come from or how useful they are, but rather who delivered them. If my mom sends me a message asking me when I will come home for Thanksgiving, I don’t care if it comes through iMessage, Messenger, WeChat, Line, or Email, I want to hear an alert sound and respond to it. But if Verizon sends me a new promotional blurb, whether via text, email, or call, I don’t want to be distracted by it.

Unfortunately, that’s not how our operating systems work today.

Rethink the organization of new information stream

What if we can build an information architecture from scratch. What would be a better way that’s more suited to our natural way of interacting with the world? I experimented with some thoughts and sketched out a crazy idea — demote apps, promote people and services.

Let’s introduce two new conceptual sources around which we organize all of our incoming streams of information: Person and Service.

• A Person represents someone you interact with in the real world or online.
• A Service is a single-purpose utilitarian source that takes some input from you and gives you something else more valuable in return, similar to chat bots.

So now you have two sources, how do we organize the new information coming out of them? Let’s create three tiers of importance: FYI, Query, and Alert. Most notifications fall into one of these three categories:

• FYI: time-insensitive, optional, not important to the user
• Query: time-sensitive, requires some response action
• Alert: mission critical, do something now or else something will go wrong

Implementation

How will apps and mobile OSes implement this information architecture? Let’s look at an example story.

Register Sources

First, all apps have to register their sources with the OS. Messenger, for example, will register a user’s list of friends as People in the OS, and all the chat bots as Services. News just needs to register each journalism publication as individual Services. Comico might choose to register each comic series as a Service. Uber can just register itself as one Service.

Tier Approvals

Next, each notification must be assigned a tier from one of these three: FYI, Query, or Alert. But where do these assignments come from? For most Services, they should be FYI or Query. The submission and approval process for each app should require permission requests from developers to apply for one or more of these tiers, just like how they have to apply for location services permission. This will prevent, for instance, shopping apps from abusing Alert tier privileges. Once these default assignments are approved on App Store or Play Store, users can also choose to fine-tweak them in the settings if they choose to.

But the most interesting part is when People interact with other People. Do we ask users each time when they are sending a message to a friend, whether it’s a FYI or Query or Alert? That’d be ridiculous.

Tier Inference by Context

The interesting case of People-People interaction can be solved by using tier inference. For instance, if I’m sharing an article from News app to a friend with no custom message attached, i.e. just a link, this should be categorized as FYI. I’m just sharing something, I’m not asking for their response. But if this message contains a custom message, I am then sending a Query type message. Ideally, these two bits of information from me should show up under different sections on my friend’s phone with two different styles of notifications — one stays quiet and non-intrusive and one grabs their attention.

When Jasper shares with me an interesting cat video, I won’t hear an alert sound, my phone won’t buzz, but when I go into Notification Center, I should see his video. But if he sends me a TED talk video with some thoughts and insights along with it, I hear a sound, my phone vibrates, and I know I should pay attention to this one.

Permission Granting

Currently, when an app asks for permission to send notifications, it’s actually quite vague. I don’t know

1. Exactly what kind of notifications it will send
2. How frequent it will send them
3. Which tier(s) the notifications will be in

The best solution to this problem right now is called “permission priming,” where an app explains why it needs to send notifications before asking for the permission to. The problem with this solution is that not every app does it. In fact, most don’t.

I propose a new permission granting flow where apps demonstrate their notification frequency and tier along with an example to ask for approval. I understand that a lot of developers rely on notifications to increase user engagement and maybe even profit from promos, but not every user is fond of every promo equally. I may want promo notifications from Muji, but don’t care at all about a Black Friday clothing sale from Amazon.

We should give developers a chance to demonstrate its notifications’ usefulness and let the users decide whether or not to receive them.

Only a Thought Experiment

From end-to-end, we start with how we share and end with how we receive them. Information is organized around who makes them, whether that’s people or services. Developers get to demonstrate the type of information they offer and the OS protects users’ time and attention by allowing the users to choose the ones they want.

Although, I’m not sure if introducing this layer of “people” and “services” complexity on top of your already busy home screen is a good trade-off. Now we have not only apps, but another abstraction layer on top of apps. That feels wrong to me and is definitely not the most elegant solution.

But this is just some of my thought experiments. What do you think?

Hope you enjoyed the post. To serve our readers better, Fwd: Thoughts and I have unfortunately left Medium. If you would like to read more posts like this, please take a quick second and follow us on Twitter or Facebook. You can have our new posts delivered right into your inbox if you sign up for our spam-free newsletter.

You can also follow me personally on Twitter, where I can share a variety of good information on design and technology with you.

The notification system is broken, how can we fix it? was originally published in Fwd: Thoughts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what this week’s most important announcements are. Apple, Google, and Microsoft, the three towering tech giants dropped a series of gadgets that are well positioned to change the future of PC. There is a clear trend among them: each is designed for a special subset of professionals, which is reflective of the industry as a whole: traditional PC’s are fading from average households and becoming specialized professional tools.

But among these innovative pushes for PC’s to become the trucks of computers is Apple’s TV app. The one app that unifies all your television experience by aggregating all the content every tvOS app offers into one interface. This, out of everything released on October 27th, is probably the most strategically important product announcement.

Capturing a market that hasn’t grown noticeable

I don’t think it’s innovative. It’s not flashy or futuristic, but that’s perfectly fine. The crucial realization is that Apple is moving ahead of everyone else to capture a market that doesn’t yet stand out. Remember the first MacBook Air? No one asked for an expensive, screamingly thin, and underpowered laptop. But they all missed the point. Apple didn’t create the first Air to satisfy an existing demand, it was a classic case of industry disruption: they were iterating on a product that would eventually surpass existing ones while others were busy polishing the status quo. It would start expensive and niche and slowly by the magic of economics come down in price and go up in power. And before anyone could act, Apple touted the best line of ultrabooks that left others years behind in competition.

I think that’s the trajectory for Apple TV. Apple TV was more than underwhelming for its first few years of life, and expensive compared to its competitors. When Apple announced the new Apple TV with an App Store, that signified a strategic shift. The introduction of tvOS meant that the black box is no longer a glorified streaming dongle, but a standalone family computer. The new voice-controlled computer could position itself against Echo, Google Home, and stands in the center of a mesh of smart home devices.

Then comes the TV app. How does a single app change the game? By being here early and helping create a top-notch family computer experience before others. It’s like the early MacBook Air. But why a family computer? Why not self-driving cars, drone delivery network, Apple houses, or an AR headset? Those are equally promising, but TV is the low hanging fruit. Last time I checked, families and homes are not going away anytime soon, so rather than other products that require a tectonic shift in consumer behavior and perception, a shared content-consumption experience, namely TV for the last century, is the low-hanging fruit ripe for disruption.

Post-millennials are Apple TV’s primary targets. Maybe us millennials too

Millennials are cutting the cord, that’s old news. But we haven’t stopped watching TV. More importantly, post-millennials, who are still in school learning how to algebra, will never grow up with the cord. They will grow up playing with touch screens, navigating apps, and soaking themselves in immersive technologies and content on demand, never subjecting themselves to the broadcast schedule set by someone else.

This generation will see the TV as a giant computer, not just a content streaming device. They will expect this giant screen to facilitate social moments with friends and families, interact with them, talk to them, entertain and educate them.

The TV app brings together the video content everyone wants to watch, but more importantly, presents it in a way post-millennials understand.

As content partners fully accept their slipping revenue in top boxes and traditional cable businesses, more of them will flock to devices like the Apple TV. Apple is already putting iOS devices in the hands of many children. These young minds will grow up iOS-native. Apple’s design philosophies and interaction models are home to them, which poses more inertia to buying a competitor’s device. And if we fast forward in a simplified world model, when they grow up to be working adults and start having families, the Apple TV will be the go-to choice for family entertainment. It will already work with everything they own.

Humans are creatures of habit, and I think that’s the winning strategy Apple TV is betting on.

On the same note, perhaps emerging markets will welcome devices like the Apple TV more so. We have literally hundreds of millions of people in India, China, and other rising nations that grew up with smartphones and tablets and never became accustomed to the rigid world of websites, search boxes, file systems and apps. These people use chat interface to call taxis and pay utility bills and expect devices to understand what they say and what they want. A unified TV experience with voice as the input method can’t be more perfectly positioned to appeal to these users.

In other words, the emerging population demands a more human-centered and shared computing experience more than ever.

How the Apple TV can do that

Apple already developed a crucial ingredient of shared computing: switching user context by Touch ID. Accounts, passwords, and identities are notoriously hard concepts to understand and remember, more so in countries that leapfrogged the age of email+password mess. Users in China usually identify themselves by phone numbers and security codes sent via texts. (That may or may not have anything to do with the fact that the email address system inherently assumes a good grasp of the Latin writing system). What if Apple uses fingerprint to skip registration and login, and as soon as you put your finger on the touch ID sensor, it automatically detects a new user and asks you to spell your name or simply logs you in?

Imagine a subtle Touch ID sensor on the TV remote: when the mother holds the remote and presses the Touch ID sensor, Apple TV switches to her user context, with personalized recommendations for her and “Up Next” episodes she left off. When the kid and his friends come home, Apple TV switches to his account showing commonly used games, shows, and education apps.

Now imagine an Apple TV that can pair with an arbitrary number of remotes. Naturally, these remotes will be left at different spots in your house. Apple TV can listen to the “Hey Siri” hot keyword from all these remotes and provide instant help via the remote’s speaker closest to you. If Apple can cram an unbelievable amount of technology and battery life into the Watch, it can do the same for the remote once the cost goes down.

An even crazier idea: imagine remotes not as controllers, but standalone computers themselves. You can plug one of them into your newest game controller or console, and instantly the controller or console can talk to your Apple TV without a hitch. Bring your remote to your friend’s house, suddenly you can play a multiplayer game against your friends with your Game Center account. Or maybe, the remote itself is just an iPhone… I’m getting ahead of myself here. I’m sure many of you have even better ideas. The possibilities are exciting and limitless.

Obviously, Apple TV’s path to dominate post-millennials’ homes has a lot of big if’s. Google might take over the integration market with an Assistant-themed ecosystem. Amazon for all you know might have a lineup of killer devices up their sleeves. Nintendo Switch might finally make us all gamers again and reclaim its throne in the living room. Even Microsoft seems like it’s finally starting to appreciate design. As we transition away from tediously moving our cursors and wording every single intent on the keyboard toward waving magic wands at devices that require the least input to accomplish the most, the living room computer will be the way to the future of shared computing experience. Apple TV is a platform designed to do that, and the real protagonist of the show has just gotten started.

Hope you enjoyed the post. To serve our readers better, Fwd: Thoughts and I have unfortunately left Medium. If you would like to read more posts like this, please take a quick second and follow us on Twitter or Facebook. You can have our new posts delivered right into your inbox if you sign up for our spam-free newsletter.

You can also follow me personally on Twitter, where I can share a variety of good information on design and technology with you.

No one is writing about the Apple TV app — the real star of the show was originally published in Fwd: Thoughts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“You don’t have a car anymore? I bet it was hard adapting to this lifestyle, huh?”

“Yea it was, except the difficult part wasn’t getting around, but becoming comfortable with the idea of not owning a car.”

American Cities Have an Automobile Addiction

“It wasn’t getting around?” It’s hard to believe that. After all, America has an automobile dependency issue. It’s a vicious cycle that works like an addiction:

When a place is getting congested, we build more roads. To do that effectively, we get rid of “impediments” to traffic flow, such as pedestrians, signalized crossings, cyclists, and trams. These sprawling roads stamp out buildings and replace them with parking lots, open-air shopping streets with enclosed malls, and walk-in businesses with drive-in ones. Slowly, cities become hostile to pedestrians, cyclists, and other transit options. More people are forced to drive and are denied the freedom of choice, which crams more cars onto the streets. And then we have traffic congestion all over again.

We have evolved our cities and suburbs to accommodate more cars at the expense of other modes of transport. This is a vicious cycle of automobile dependency, and the nature of which is no different from an addiction, one that is deeply carved into our urban landscape and modern culture. Living in an American suburb without driving a car is flat-out impractical for those with kids to send to school, no transit options, and errands to run.

No wonder Americans are so dependent on cars.

However, the problem in my choice to not own a car wasn’t my mobility, but rather something else.

Cultural Barrier to Becoming a Non-Owner

Two months ago, I moved to Mountain View and decided to put off buying a car until I settled in. Nobody thought I was going to last long without wheels in a gasoline-powered American suburb, but nervous to swerve off the paved road, I began life without owning a car.

Two months later, I looked at my spending and summed up my monthly transportation costs: $300±20, which is cheaper than the average cost to maintain a car. Suddenly, I could no longer justify owning a car.

In my process of adapting to a lifestyle without auto-ownership, what I found harder than getting around was becoming comfortable with the idea of not owning a car. Living in a culture where cars are essential to most, ditching car ownership feels unnerving, powerless, even embarrassing. To many, owning a car is a rite of passage, it means that you have come of age and maturity, and have acquired a piece of adulthood.

I was extremely uncomfortable when I imagined this scenario: after a friend gathering, everyone else is swooshing away in their fancy wheels and I’m the only one left waiting for an Uber, in my mortal flesh. Car-less. Naked. Stuck. Desperate. Ugh, what a humiliating experience, poor kid! But why is this experience humiliating?

I think it’s an image problem. Mainstream thought goes: a man with a car is a man of capability and power with complete control over his freedom. A man with no car lacks something. This something implies more than just a gas-powered vehicle. Yes, that’s right, I was uncomfortable with my image and having the classic insecurity of not owning something everyone else does — without a car, was I still an adult?

The Dying Love for Ownership and Shifting Definition of “Freedom”

The reality is, the emergence of new transportation makes car ownership less and less appealing. Post-recession sales numbers might say otherwise, but the general trend is that millennials are less enamored with ownership and leaning more towards practicality and value. For those who still drive, car leasing is becoming ever more popular. In some circumstances, people like me completely rely on ride-sharing and public transit to get around.

Admittedly, I only spend $300 on transportation because I take shuttles to and back from work, which is mainly what most people use cars for. However, with the increasing amount of investment into transportation infrastructure, self-driving cars and trucks, and ride-sharing platforms, an increasing number of people will have more options to reach their destinations. It’s likely that sometime in the future even the farm towns in the Midwest will no longer require hands on wheels.

Will our generation grow up to send our kids to school using one of those “Uber for Kids” apps? Maybe, but the important thing is: we’re getting more choices. Car ownership and leasing won’t be our only options anymore.

Today, in cities like Tokyo and Shanghai where transit options are abundant, freedom means mobility without the crippling financial and materialistic burdens or the sacrifice of citizens who can’t drive. They are no less mobile. But we don’t need every suburban town to become dense urban centers to enjoy more transit choices, I think progress in our transportation industry, from autonomous cars to efficiently optimized carpool network, will change how we define “transit” and by extension, “freedom.” The image of a car-less adult won’t become a novelty for much longer.

Empowerment and Freedom of Choice

Can a country so fond of personal vehicles and with a passion for freedom in every sense of the word make an uncharacteristic switch to relying on other people to drive us? I’m not sure. But I think the choice of non-ownership will become more common and its values more recognized.

Not being forced to own a car is an empowering privilege, and it’s going to be more and more common. After all, it gives us financial flexibility, time, and freedom of choice. People should not feel afraid, but empowered to have more options to get around.

Hope you enjoyed the post. To serve our readers better, Fwd: Thoughts and I have unfortunately left Medium. If you would like to read more posts like this, please take a quick second and follow us on Twitter or Facebook. You can have our new posts delivered right into your inbox if you sign up for our spam-free newsletter.

You can also follow me personally on Twitter, where I can share a variety of good information on design and technology with you.

Life without a Car was originally published in Fwd: Thoughts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How we may soon no longer need to install apps with help from Google and Surprisingly: Apple.

“There’s an App for That.”

It’s the trademarked slogan that defined the mobile world since 2008. Surely, apps seemed to be the way to go. Coding bootcamps that claimed to teach you app development chops within weeks popped up everywhere; products used commercials to go out of their way and show off their new apps; heck, even that family restaurant around the block got its own menu app built.

With the release of the App store in 2008, Apple was the first to popularize the idea of nicely packaged, downloadable applications on your phone. However, this concept of centralized software distribution isn’t actually new. Many handheld and desktop devices already had some form of application store built in years before Apple’s App Store debut. The reason why Apple succeeded, in retrospect, is a combination of timing and technology. By 2008, the iOS (then “iPhone OS”) platform was able to offer access to a maturing 3G network, a well-documented development environment, great handheld graphics, and most importantly, the backing of a technology giant. Mobile apps made sense. They were the most efficient way to deliver the newest content and services with native experience and performance.

People don’t care how it all works, they just want to throw birds at pigs and show off their #nofilter selfies. The ability to download and run cool apps was the iPhone’s winning feature for a short while. Android soon followed suit. Smartphones became cheaper; networks became faster; handheld processing power quadrupled; apps prevailed.

“OK Sherlock, So What’s Wrong?”

Nothing. But we can do better now. “Better than this app that lets me feed and play with cute cats?” Yep.

You see, mobile apps succeeded because of the right combination of fast network and capable handheld processors. Technologies have progressed much further than that in the meantime, and the world of apps has grown beyond a healthy size. Among all of the headaches that follow the impenetrable mobile market today, the two most urgent would be the delivery and discoverability of content.

Delivery and Discoverability

Everyone with a smartphone has experienced this at some point: “Wow, this restaurant/shop is offering 20% off the special entree…oh, but only if you have this app,” or “Wait, I have to download an app for this? I just to want to see what my friend posted.” You probably heard from a friend or saw in a billboard about this really cool app that’ll transform your life, but hesitated to install it, or worse, pay for it.

The problem is twofold. Let’s start with the first: delivery. Your average digital couch potato now has a shorter attention span and less patience. Paying for and installing an app, what was once a magical, fast, and smooth experience, is an act of commitment for many nowadays. You won’t believe how many people demand a convincing reason, your heartfelt speech, and your first-born child just to get them to try out a new app. Just think about that one friend who still refuses to download the Messenger app (seriously just get it already). Companies want to deliver content and services to customers as fast and easily as possible, but the increasing reluctance for the perceived installation-barrier is putting up a delivery obstacle. Our home screens are the new San Francisco — space is at a premium.

The second problem, discoverability, is a little bit more subtle, but was well articulated by a few tech journalists in the past. Many popular apps, such as Instagram and The Daily, began as mobile-only apps that surfaced great content only within a closed platform. You had to download and register for Instagram in order to see your friends’ Instagram photos. I’m sure that there are many more apps out there today that I’m not aware of with useful content that are not searchable or viewable on your browser. A fragmented Internet where creative and original content are locked up in proprietary platforms is not the Internet we know and love.

App Linking and Indexing Works, But Not Good Enough

Now that we understand the problems, let’s take a look at the current solutions. The word “app linking” may not sound familiar to you, but every time you tap on a YouTube link in another app and the YouTube app opens up to play the video, you’re experiencing it. Google, Apple, and Facebook have all implemented variations of this technology. App linking brings you to the app that best presents the content you want. Great.

The other half of our existing solution to compliment app linking is app indexing. Google and Apple have provided ways for third-party content providers to show their own in-app content in a search query, allowing previously locked away content to surface on Google and iOS Spotlight.

Perfect. That seems to have solved our delivery and discoverability problems. User searches for something, in-app content shows up in the results, user clicks the link and gets brought into the app.

You might have already noticed the problems here. What if the app doesn’t support app linking and indexing? App indexing requires the content provider to actively put effort into implementing it, so by default, your content is not visible to the world wide web, exactly opposite of how most web-based content work. And only until recently, in order for your app to be indexed by Google, developers had to build mirroring web versions. Just imagine the troubles. On the consumer side, what if I don’t have that app to begin with? What if I don’t want to install that app just to read an article? The list goes on.

Think about that one time when you tried to check out something and it redirected you into App Store instead. Very annoying. And no, no one wants to install your app.

I don’t want to maintain a walled garden of apps. I want to consume and create content.

“So then, what is the solution?”

Just get rid of “apps.” Let’s see how we might be able to do this.

App Streaming from Google

Google’s approach to the delivery and discoverability problem has relied on app indexing and linking. If the developer puts in the effort, users can see previously mobile-only content surfacing on Google search results. This is great for Google to stay relevant in a mobile market that is increasingly reliant on native app content instead of web search. But in countries like China and India, where mobile phones are the first computers for millions of people and mobile-only content is king, where does a search engine provide their links to begin with? Suddenly, “everything is just a Google search away” loses its magic.

Roughly four months ago, Google rolled out an impressive technology that almost no one remembers — App Streaming. It does exactly what it sounds like; instead of installing applications like we’re used to, you tap a link to the content and Google will stream the right parts of the app to you on-demand. No need to install it, ’cause you’re already running it. It might be Google’s first pilot experiment of their cloud platform, but the idea of streaming applications onto your phone is not new. In fact, the very technology itself was bought by Google from Agawi a few years back.

Combine App Streaming and App Indexing, suddenly you remove the two barriers to all information previously locked away in mobile apps.

On-Demand Resources from Apple

While Google’s fantastic solution is still in an experimental stage, Apple is nudging its developers in more or less the same direction, albeit characteristic of Apple, in a less obvious or more incremental way.

On-Demand Resources (ODR) is a technology released with iOS 9 that downloads a small core application only on installation, and then downloads extra parts and content as needed. ODR currently is being used mostly in games, where a user only downloads the assets (graphics, videos, etc.) for a few beginning levels. iOS will then download more levels as the user progresses, and delete assets for completed levels to make space.

How does this mirror Google’s approach? It doesn’t. However, if ODR becomes commonplace and the supporting infrastructure is flexible enough, you can reasonably imagine Apple extending the framework to a more general use case. In any case, they got this wonderful tool under the belt that will potentially blossom into a form of install-free applications.

The Underrated Quest for Web Apps

While we’re on Apple, I want to bring up Steve Jobs’s vision of the first iPhone. You might still remember fondly that the first iPhone was a closed platform with no developer environment or third-party apps. His solution? Web apps.

Web apps don’t need to be installed. They run (relatively) securely in closed browser environment. They are web friendly, meaning they can be indexed and surfaced by search engines. Oh wait, isn’t that exactly what we want today? Probably.

I’m still leaning on the belief that web apps were simply Steve Jobs’s transitional plan to native apps, but even so, I think he was (at least accidentally) onto something. If we had in 2008 the powerful Javascript frameworks we have today, perhaps web apps would have taken off. Feel free to paint the story into one where Jobs the Visionary foresaw the discoverability and delivery problem, because perhaps he did predict this.

A Future without Apps

A lot of what app streaming offers competes with other sophisticated web app technologies (React Native, etc.) that are quickly closing the gap between native and web. However, one decisive differentiating factor would still be the native look and feel or possibly performance that web apps sorely lack. There is just no perfect solution yet.

On top of it all, what we really need is a platform-agnostic solution to app streaming that truly overcomes content delivery and discoverability problems. We want something akin to Java applets on browsers (yikes) on mobile. Imagine the possibilities: regardless of the OS or the brand of supercomputer you have in your pocket, you will be able to run an app and view its content with zero friction and with native feel and performance. As for developers, you can write an app once and stream it to all devices and browsers.

With Google streaming apps to your phone and Apple nudging developers to store parts of their apps in the cloud, we may have just entered the beginning of a future where installation becomes obsolete and the border between “website” and “native app” is blurred. This is a future without apps. And it’s wonderful.

The user forefront of all these insanely complex, powerful, and cool technologies is one of ultimate simplicity and elegance.

Welcome to a future without apps.

Hope you enjoyed the post. To serve our readers better, Fwd: Thoughts and I have unfortunately left Medium. If you would like to read more posts like this, please take a quick second and follow us on Twitter or Facebook. You can have our new posts delivered right into your inbox if you sign up for our spam-free newsletter.

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(Disclaimer and clarification: I wrote this article long before I joined Google. Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.)

The Future is Without Apps was originally published in Fwd: Thoughts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This email was originally written in my draft box to be delivered to Bloom Built’s Day One support email. I realized that some people might resonate with me, or have differing opinions to offer, so I decided to muster up my courage and press the Publish button on my first ever Medium post.

Hello Day One Design Team:

Thank you for the new Day One! Having been a diehard fan of your product since 5 years ago, I’ve been excitedly waiting for the new release like a little kid anticipating a big gift for Christmas. Yesterday, I bought the new version for both Mac and iPhone in a heartbeat. Heck, I didn’t even realize it was 50% off. The abilities to upload multiple photos and keep multiple journals (which I view as a great organizational foundation for the future Publish 2.0) are much welcomed!

I’m notorious for being slightly obsessive when it comes to design. I couldn’t help but notice some things that could use improvements in the new app. That being said, while the iron is still hot, I hope you don’t mind some UI feedback coming from a part-time UI designer:

Redundancy Brings Confusion

I personally believe in this design philosophy I learned from The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin: too many choices can overwhelm a user, increase learning curve, and make overall user experience more confusing. The award-winning to-do app Things by Cultured Code was a great example that offers a sensible UI layout with minimal redundancy.

Day One 2.0 for Mac, on the other hand, has a total of 6 ways of creating a new journal, 5 ways of creating a new entry, two places of viewing the same stats for one entry, and many other redundant UI elements. Allow me to demonstrate a few of these.

6 Ways of Creating a New Journal

For most users, writing a notebook/journal is quite a committed task. I wouldn’t think that “New Journal” option is a frequently used action by many people. Having six different entry points to this action seems a bit overkill.

5 Ways to Create a New Entry

Day One comes with reminders and prominent “New Entry” button right at the top, which helps nudge me to write more entries. However, it really strikes me as an overdone design when a “New Entry” is tucked into unnecessary places whenever possible. You might argue that these forms of choices are necessary because the new Day One app has customizable views so that users have access to this action in all modes (i.e. dual-panel vs single panel, etc.), but I beg to differ. Although that’s another whole conversation on modeless design and minimalism.

The Pile of Filtering Options (and Other Stuff)

The filtering options come in two forms, icons and menu items, which sit right next to each other in the exact order. The search button, which would normally be functionally grouped with filtering options, is placed far apart from the filters. The “Print”, “Export”, and “Open PDF” items are redundant as well (and can be accessed from two other menus). I suddenly had this thought: are you guys designing this in preparation for a Windows release? That would make a little more sense, since Windows provides no universal menu bar.

My biggest pet peeve, if not considered a general design taboo, is to put read-only content (i.e. the journal stats) in a menu bar, especially when doing so serves no additional value.

I was hoping these menu stats might at least serve some sort of purpose, but was only disappointed to find out, after trying several possible view configurations, they are never necessary. You can always see the iconic stats at all times. To my dismay, as I adjusted this vertical sidebar to accommodate more filter icons, the menu items didn’t trim the repeats. One would normally expect the triple-dot to contain additional actions that don’t fit, not simply the same lineup offered in menu form.

Switching Journals

While having multiple journals is a fantastic new addition, UI-wise I’m not completely sure why the Journal Sidebar is necessary, when the dropdown takes care of switching just as well, albeit with one more clicking. Therefore my question becomes: is decreasing the action cost of switching journals really worth the additional complication of a third collapsable column in the app? Uncomfortably, this design pattern evokes the bitter-taste of Evernote for Mac (yikes!).

On top of my examples, I’m afraid to say that I have noticed more UI inconsistencies and parts with ambiguous hierarchy. I can’t help but feel that my initial experience with this app can be described in three stages: “wow” for the much needed feature addition and overall UI refresh; “hmmm” for some thinking and reflection on the UI decisions; “arghh” for thinking that it’s a shame the app turned out this way. Although, since this is only an initial public release, I’m rather confident that your team will fix up these design bugs quickly.

What Happened?

I thought about the reasons behind these design decisions, so here are just some of my guesses. Day One 2.0 was supposed to take one year of development but spanned two years unexpectedly. For a team of a dozen developers, this is a huge project. As an engineer myself, just seeing you guys pull off a cloud syncing platform, a universal iOS application (iPhone + iPad), a watchOS app, and a Mac application all with full-fledged functionality leaves me no doubt that this is an excellent team equipped with amazing weapons of productivity.

Meanwhile, when a team is so crammed for time, it’s inevitable that some design flaws slip through the cracks. It’s more than likely that my conjectures are wrong though.

Suggestions

I’m not a design veteran by any means, so I’m just going to jot down some of my suggestions that may or may not be useful.

• Reduce the number of menus, and the number of items in each menu. Consolidate these options into the OS X menu bar. If you’re designing for a possible Windows version, please reconsider the extent at which you want to unify both designs.
• Combine search and filter options into one width-adaptive adjustable bar below the view options (Timeline, Photos, etc.). The iOS version is doing pretty well at this.
• Get rid of the journal sidebar. Just do it. Please.

Thank You

It pains me to be the party-pooper in this release hype, especially amid the launch party of one of my consistantly favorite apps. Writing this mail feels almost too harsh, because your design is still far better than many other rivals out there. Nonetheless, I think that’s exactly why I want to send you my unsolicited feedback and opinions, which may or may not be redundant (no pun intended). I hope you find some of my perspectives helpful in some way.

Lastly, thank you for your hard work on building (in my opinion) the best journaling app. I look forward to every future update from you guys!

Your Big Fan
Donny Reynolds