Nothing like an overview of historic overviews, especially when it comes to the iPod.
> ipodhistory.com: an entire website dedicated to a detailed history of the iPod.
> Wikipedia/ipod: extensive wikipedia page on iPod history.
> The origin of the iPod: evolution of the iPod (2000-2004) by Lowendmac|Orchard.
> iPod history since 2005: Lowendmac|Orchard also traces the recent history of the iPod, showing the diversification of the product.
> History of the iPod, iTunes & the Music Store by Geofftech, including complete timelines of iPod product releases.
> A brief history of the iPod (2000-2004): by iLounge, includes a look at the packaging.
> Raising the Genius Bar: 7 Years of iPod Evolution: Wired photo gallery of iPod evolution
> Video of the evolution of the iPod by T3 magazine.
> Timeline visualization of the iPod history.
> Why the iPod clickwheel must die: Mark Wilson of Gizmodo analyzes why the iPod's clickwheel UI paradigm cannot be sustained in future iPods (via unpressablebuttons)

Inside look into iPod development
Wired, being iPod-obsessed as they are (not necessarily a bad thing...), have a lot of in-depth articles on iPod history, especially some nice stories on its development.
> Inside look at the birth of the iPod
> The perfect thing: another look at the birth of the iPod.
> Oct. 23, 2001: Now Hear This ... The iPod Arrives: looking back on when the first iPod was launched.

UPDATE
Forgot one: MacWorld iPod Timeline

(Top picture by Hartleyjr.)

A tangible user interface (TUI) is a user interface in which a person interacts with digital information through the physical environment. Hornecker and Buur state that tangible interaction relies on tangibility and full-body interaction, and gives computational resources and data physical form.

Research, not products
Currently, most tangible interaction concepts are explorations of the possibilities of tangible interaction; design/research projects as presented by the tangible media group at MIT, Joep Frens' Rich Interaction Camera or these students from IDE. So why am I - being a conservative, usability-minded interaction dinosaur - interested in Tangible Interaction? Because I see tangible interaction as a way of making the interaction less conscious, and demanding less resources (attention, effort, time). And as Krug put it: we don't want things to make us think. (It should be mentioned that there are some that disagree with tangibility being a gateway to easier interaction: misconceptions about tangible interaction).

Tangible interaction in a shop near you
So I set out to identify examples of tangible interaction in products that are already among us; that you can actually buy, right now, in a shop near you. They might not be as radical and inspiring as the tangible interaction research/design concepts mentioned previously, but I think that though they are more modest, these are examples of products that really make a difference by providing tangible interaction. (By the way, the numbers are not intended as ranking or something.)

1) PowerMate: a physical volume button for your computer
The PowerMate in essence is the volume button from your teenage stereo set, but now in brushed aluminum, with a blue light beneath it (how cool is that!) and connected to the USB port of your computer, allowing you to quickly and quite exactly adjust the volume in media playing programs. As opposed to clicking that annoying little icon, or hastily accessing your media player if you accidentally play ACDC right after listening to Jewel.

2) Multimedia keyboards: quick and easy control
Several keyboards (Microsoft, Apple) now offer direct access buttons to control the media you are playing. Personally I find it much easier to pause, skip to the next song, or to adjust the volume by quickly hitting a single button, than to browse through my programs and find the right icon.

3) Old-fashioned landline phone: straightforward answering
On (non-wireless) landline phones you simple grab the receiver to enable the connection. About as simple as it can get. In contrast, on (home) DECT phones often you have to push a (green) button to start the conversation, and another (red) one to stop it, which is less intuitive.

4) Clamshells: the motion has meaning
Open up your laptop and it awakes from sleep mode. Seems to make sense: what else would you want a laptop to do besides starting up if you open it? And if you don't want it to start up, simply close it again. Or open your clamshell mobile phone to answer a call. One small complication with the latter situation: there needs to be a display on the outside to be able to see who's calling and decide whether you want to answer the call. And so you also need a way to divert the call without opening (and answering) the phone.

5) SonyEricsson K800i: open lens cover to activate camera
If you slide open the lens cover of the SonyEricsson K800i, the phone switches to camera mode, without you having to dive into menus (and subsequently having to open the lens cover because you don't see anything).

6) Canon copiers: extrapolating what the user wants to do
(Some) Canon copiers do a similar thing: if you put a memory stick in the copier, the device will access the memory stick, assuming the file you want to print is on there. And if you put an A4 document on the glass to copy it, the device assumes you want the paper size to be A4.

7) SonyEricsson phone and iPod Nano: shake to shuffle
Talked about this earlier: shaking your mp3-player to get a random song. Comparable to shaking a box of breath-mints (to get a random breath-mint). Available on the new iPod Nano and the SonyEricsson W910. And on the Sansa Shuffle (next example).

8) Sansa Shaker: tangible group interaction with music
The Sansa Shaker is less of personal music player; with its built-in speakers and physical appearance it seems to be designed to be used in a group. To change a song on the Shaker you snap one of the colored rings (next song) or shake the whole device (shuffle). Adjusting the volume is also done by twisting one of the colored rings. (CNET review on youtube)

9) Guitar Hero and Wii: tangibility in video gaming
A bit obvious maybe, but how much more fun can tangible interaction get? Play virtual sports using the Wii controllers or play the guitar using the Guitar Hero controller, and here the sound change as you raise the neck of the guitar into the air as a living room version of Yngwie Malmsten.

10) Bopit: a truly tangible game
In the case of Bopit the whole game is embodied in the controller. You don't interact through a TV-screen. The Bobit device shouts at you whether you should twist, pull, or do what ever with one of the controls on the product. As you are playing the speed and the complexity of the commands increases. Guaranteed to drive you nuts. Watch this YouTube movie: you need to see this to understand it.

Feel inspired? Feel free to leave your own examples of daily tangible interaction in the comments.

More uselog posts on tangible interaction:
> Tangible interaction: design strategy for usability
> Tangible interaction prototypes at IDE
> MusicCube: a tangible interaction concept for music
> Shake control patent controversy
> Emotional intelligence in design: thesis defense of Stephan Wensveen
> Rich interaction camera: thesis defense of Joep Frens

A big thanks to all my colleagues from the ID StudioLab at IDE for supplying the examples and asking critical questions.
(Top picture: Zygote)

A new addition to the uselog shirtshop: the "What Would Steve Do?" black turtleneck (of course...). And for those of you who don't want to go for the complete Steve, there's a regular black Steve t-shirt as well.
(My apologies for just posting about uselog shirts at this moment, but I'm having too much fun with my new toy...)

Because I got some enthusiastic reactions on the usability quotes I post now and then, I decided to make them 'to go' by putting them on t-shirts. So, available as of now to all you people with a passion for usability and design: uselog t-shirts in the following flavors:
- My product is fine, they're just using it wrong.
- Designers are a) gods b) servants c) prostitutes d) all of the above
- Designer(d)
- Hmmmm. Maybe we need smarter test participants?
I'm using the spreadshirt printing on demand shop, so you don't have to wait for me to package the stuff, and I'll never run out of shirts.

For the first time in my life I have a dishwasher and I must say: I like it. But yesterday I realized that half my appreciation of the machine is not due to the fact that I don't have to clean the dishes myself, but to the fact that the dirty dishes are stored out of sight until they're cleaned. So I could use a kitchen cabinet to store my dirty dishes, but unfortunately that cabinet wouldn't clean itself the way my dishwasher does.

Then I saw this mural dishwasher design (picture below) that does the exact opposite of storing your dirty dishes out of sight, but does have a sense of beauty about it. However: will it still be beautiful when it's filled with spaghetti-smeared, yoghurt-dripping, three days old dishes exhitbited to you at eye-height and 20 cm distance?

(picture: todayandtomorrow.net)

Proprietary plugs and connectors drive the reviewers of Wired nuts in Cable Madness: Crazy Connectors we can do without: why in heaven's name does the HTC G1 (or Google phone) have a proprietary headphone connector? In a comparison of the HTC Hermes and the Palm Treo Geardiary is equally annoyed by a proprietary connector, but in this case HTC is on the good side:

The Hermes uses a standard miniUSB connector as opposed to the “Universal Connector” that the Treo uses. I love devices that use the miniUSB connector, as I have stacks of those cables around, and they are all interchangeable. Need another sync cable? Just grab one from the draw, share one with another device like a card reader, or pick one up cheap from most computer stores. With my Treo I only have the one charge/sync cable that I bought off eBay. Come on Palm, dump that silly connector (for that matter every company should dump these proprietary connectors) and join the miniUSB crowd!

(Picture: Geardiary)

(Screenshot of Linux on the Asus Eee PC)

The popular mini-notebooks, also called netbooks, suffer from a higher return rate than regular notebooks, mainly due to the fact that most netbooks run Linux, according to the director of U.S. sales of MSI, Andy Tung. Linux netbooks are returned 4 times as often as ones that run Windows XP. An excerpt from the interview with Laptopmag.

Our internal research has shown that the return of netbooks is higher than regular notebooks, but the main cause of that is Linux. People would love to pay $299 or $399 but they don’t know what they get until they open the box. They start playing around with Linux and start realizing that it’s not what they are used to. They don’t want to spend time to learn it so they bring it back to the store. The return rate is at least four times higher for Linux netbooks than Windows XP netbooks.

Just an example that to consumers usability might not be the most important thing (for most of them Windows based computers would be far more easy to operate), but that to users usability indeed is an important product quality.

[via Bright]

UPDATE
An article appeared on ZD Net in response to the interview mentioned above: Linux 'teething problems' affect netbook returns. In the article the Linux vendor Canonical says it sees similar return rates with its machines. However, the software vendor also indicates that this does not mean that Linux is faulty, but that consumers got something different than they expected.

"Some people are misbuying, and then they send it back because it's not Windows," he said. "What would be more worrying would be if they simply didn't like it for itself; if they used it and it didn't work. But that doesn't seem to be the case."

US telecom provider Sprint will start to offer free, in-store smartphone training to its customers, because 21 percent of the company's smartphone buyers come back to the store to return the phone or to seek help in setting it up and learning to use it (NYT, smartphone.biz, Sprint). Initially the Ready Now program will only run in Sprint's own stores, but in time will spread to independent retail stores as well. Sprint has hired extra employees for every store to handle the workload.

Who will pay?
Anyone wants to put a number on what that might cost? And it makes you wonder: does Sprint oblige the handset manufacturers to chip in as well? And, more interestingly, do they require a higher contribution from manufacturers of handsets that cause more user questions and product returns? I know I would.

Fixing a bad design in the store
The article on smartphone.biz points out two possible causes for the large number of complaints and returns:

This could be a reflection on the technical competence of the average purchaser of today’s function-packed smartphones. Or it could be that retailers and manufacturers aren’t doing enough to explain how new handsets operate.

In short: either the users are too dumb for today's multi-multi-tasking smartphones, or they don't get enough training. I find this line of reasoning tricky, as it points to only one alleged source of the problems: the lack of technical savvyness of the user (more instructions means fixing that lack). The article fails to mention the other (real) source of the problem; the one that you can change without expensive user training: the unusable handset and its configuration. As Dave Gustafson of unpressablebuttons pointed out, what's new about the iPhone are not the features, but it's that you (Mr. or Mrs. Average User) can actually get these features to work. Something that some CEOs still fail to notice. If Sprint wants to solve the root cause of this problem, it should require its handset suppliers to deliver smartphones that make the users feel smart, instead of handsets that outsmart its users. Then, in addition Sprint could take care that configuring the phones to work on their network would become easier, which is what the Ready Now program is about.

Configuring MMS
A lesson about the effects of poor setup of handsets can be learned from MMS. When MMS - the once would be follow up to SMS (text messaging) - first came on the market in Europe, and I wanted to try it out on my newly purchased phone, I got a prompt: 'configure data access provider'. When I finally managed to do that, it turned that to send an MMS I had to go through a 14-step dialogue. Now where's the fun in that? A lesson T-mobile learned from that is to allow its users to receive phone settings via an SMS message that can be sent from their wireless configurator website. This is necessary, because phones that are sold in retail stores are not configured for the network of the provider you are going use the phone on.

But the bottom line is that both countermeasures - an online configuration page and extra support in stores - are sympathetic attempts at fixing a problem that should not be there.

Apple's last publicly presented concept product: the knowledge navigator (late 80's) (via Counternotions)

In a - in my humble opinion - brilliant post on his counternotions blog, 'Kontra' goes head on with the notion of product concepts: Why Apple Doesn't do 'Concept Products'. He argues that product concepts often are made in and for a make-believe context: the designers working on them are not challenged by real world constraints, thus coming up with concepts such as the Nokia Morph that are as appealing as they are unrealistic. In addition he points out that presenting 'future concepts' might actually contribute more to the public image of a company than to day-to-day product development. If your concept really is that good: why not keep them a secret and put al your effort into getting it to the market instead of sharing it with the rest of the world? His argumentation finally culminates in Kontra’s law:

A commercial company’s ability to innovate is inversely proportional to its proclivity to publicly release conceptual products.

Dissemination of 'Vision of the Future'
The argument about revealing strategic directions to your competitors struck a cord with me. In 1995 Philips Design did the wildly inspiring Vision of the Future project. A number of years later they had a consultancy agency (I believe it was McKinsey) execute a study to investigate to what extent their predictions had been accurate. If I recall correctly, it turned out that about 70% of the concepts had become, or were on the verge of becoming real products. In most of the cases, however, the companies that were making the products were not Philips (I apologize, I read this a while ago and I have been trying to find a reference for this story, can't find it anywhere...).

On the other hand, there was also the Philips spin-off company Polymervision, aiming for something that is remarkably like one of the Shiva concepts from Vision of the Future. But most of all, the Visions of the Future project put Philips Design on the map as one of the most inspiring design agencies to work with and work for. And you need to ask: would all these other companies not have developed these products if Philips Design had not made (and revealed) its predictions? In other words: was there really any damage done by publicly displaying these product concepts?

Wake-up Light: from concept (left) to product (right)
But even without publicly revealing your concepts beforehand, it can be challenging enough to go from a good concept to a good product. To paraphrase Bill Buxton: you need to make the right product and you need to make the product right. An illustrative example might be the Philips Wake-Up Light: a lamp that gently awakes you with light and sound. Researchers at Philips discovered a 'user need' for a gentle wake up experience. And providing a pleasant wake up experience is also an essential part of the Daylight concept (video) in the Next Simplicity Event, and the rise and shine concept that is advertized on the Philips SimplicityHub. So Philips seems to have explored the concept pretty thoroughly, and seems to be putting its weight behind it. But when the Wake-Up Light hit the market, it provoked somewhat dualistic reactions, like these (at Amazon):

It's a great idea but very bad UI. [...] Shame though because it's packed full of nice little features - but it is really let down on usability. If you use it as a bedside lamp you have to remember to reset it to your wake-up setting before you go to bed.

If you go through the reviews - as for example these (sorry, in Dutch only) - you see a picture emerging that most reviewers really appreciate the functionality of the Wake-Up Light, but quite a lot of them make remarks about the poor usability and material quality. Sometimes it almost sounds like they put up with the product's weaknesses, because it has such great functionality. In essence: great concept, but the execution could have been better.

Philips has now developed a '2008' version of the Wake-Up Light by the way. Not in shops yet, but I'm eager to see about the reviews by users (here's one by a gadget site for starters). I hope they nailed it this time, because I really want to have one of these lamps too, but I'm not prepared to struggle with it.

Concept cars to test the water
Contrary to what Kontra states, I do believe that in the automotive industry the concept car approach is a very good way to 'test the water'. For example the new Fiat 500 (right) is almost identical to the Trepiùno concept car (left), presented in 2004. And I guess the enthusiastic reactions to that concept car may have contributed to Fiat's decision of making it a real car.

Concept cars for user interfaces?
However, is the concept car approach feasible for product and interaction designs as well? I have my doubts. Concepts cars are mostly about 'styling' (pardon my French). Sometimes they throw in a new feature or two (bike rack, kitchen in the back of the car), but in essence the automotive industry is gaging our reaction to a new style: is there a 'wow' factor? Interaction designs are not about style. In some cases they can provoke a 'wow' reaction, such as Jeff Han's multi-touch interfaces. However, I doubt whether presenting the general public with new interaction concepts will bring you any other knowledge than whether your new UI concept has a 'wow'. It won't tell you much about its everyday applicability, or even whether you've discovered a good UI concept, that's founded on real user needs. All you will know is whether your new UI concept is 'cool'. And as stated before: 'cute' is not a good adjective for systems.

Execution is everything
On the UXmatters blog Steve Baty underlines the importance of execution, with regard to UX strategies. Especially this line stuck with me:

Strategic fit describes the extent to which your organization’s desired goals—and your plan to get there—play to the strengths and capabilities of your organization as it is now.

You can have a great plan for a User Experience Strategy, but you should really consider whether your company is able to execute that strategy. The same thing goes for product concepts, I believe. A groundbreaking, radical new product concept is inspiring, but if your company is currently not able to realize it and needs some time to live up to the strategy, by exposing your product concept to the public you have just told everyone in what direction you will be heading in the coming years...

[Philips Vision of the Future originally uploaded by phayung]