What’s funny is that in the era when the floppy disk was still relevant, we were clicking on a floppy disk icon and were most likely saving to the computer’s hard drive, not the floppy disk. With CD/DVD optical disc formats phasing out in favor of flash thumb drives and always-connected cloud sharing, many still ask what icon could represent “Save” actions?

Do a Google search for “save icon” and you get this:

As recently as the middle of last year, Farhad Majoo wrote a piece for Slate asking why auto-save isn’t the default by now and called for the deletion of the disk icon, which was still part of the Office user experience.

Instead of thinking of these actions as saving items, maybe we should think in more modern contexts of cloud computing. ”Save” just doesn’t cut it anymore. Today many users have multiple devices and deciding on the location of the information and future access to that information is more complicated. My first thought after completing a task is about getting that information in a location that I can easily send from than I am about saving it to some folder on my hard drive (or in a rush, my sometimes cluttered Desktop).

When saving web files to a server to share with others through a web browser or saving a copy of the file locally from the server, many of the file transfer protocol apps call these “Put” and “Get” or “Upload” and “Download” actions. If I save something on my local hard drive or an external flash or hard drive, I may not be able to share that from my smartphone.

Apple has adopted new concepts around saving since they introduced a new document model in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. Since the summer of 2011, Mac OS X has built in version control and auto-save. iOS apps on iPhone and iPad keep in-progress work stored to memory if you hit the home button or switch to another app. Users have to actively try to quit an app and result in lost progress.

The fear of a computer failing without saving work progress is still ingrained in our behavior. We expect failure and have been conditioned to save often, which also leads to version control nightmares with documents having dates for wonky file names and little or no context of their purpose of existence. What makes “Design 05-29-13 V3.abc” different from “Design 05-28-13 V2.abc” and does the old one have value anymore? For some file formats, you won’t know until you open and compare them.

I’m putting my information to be able to share or access it later. That’s why I think this icon Apple used in iOS and now Mac OS X works so well:

Microsoft’s Windows Phone development site shows an “App bar icon” button view with a small floppy disk for the save action:

Pure Android shows icons for sharing and archiving in the action bar:

As we stay always connected and expectations change to having access to every file everywhere, saving isn’t about preserving changes and archiving work. The hard part now is putting things in a trusted place where we know we can always retrieve them from anywhere to share with just about anyone.

We’re putting our thoughts, feelings, photos and videos on social media servers. Posting photos taken with a mobile device to share with others is a driving feature of social media networks, but many users don’t think or know how to save them locally for archiving, because we’ve prioritized putting them somewhere to instantly share them. Social networks have added ways to make it easier for users to download all their data.

The more tech savvy of us put our files in servers run by web hosting companies and cloud computer services, such as Dropbox, Amazon, Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive, Apple iCloud. The benefit of putting things in the cloud is off-site back-up or we plan on sharing them, even if we’re just sharing it with ourselves to our other devices. Putting something in a location that is convenient for mobile access for sharing is our primary goal.

The biggest struggle with iOS is the app-centric workflow replacing the file folder structure. Sharing data across apps often isn’t clear and is limited to whichever apps are recognized by the system to open the file. Being on the list of what a user can share to depends on the app. This is the biggest priority I’d love to see improved in iOS 7.

Expectations around access from anywhere will only increase as mobile devices continue to get commoditized and we grow accustomed to always-on high-speed mobile connections. Being unable to share something from a mobile device is becoming as frustrating to heavy mobile tech users as it is to have forgotten to pack that one item at home that you wound up needing. Privacy is at odds with a culture that has surprisingly embraced high amounts of sharing and access. For things we don’t want to share or can’t share, putting the information somewhere deemed safe, while still accessible from anywhere, may be a significant workflow goal.

The arrow in a box icon designed for iOS still seems general enough that it can apply to this action as well.

A designer can work to impress their user with clever uses of beautifully rendered graphics with fine details that can be appreciated on today’s high resolution mobile displays. It won’t be long before the high resolutions displays become common on laptops and whatever is left of the “desktop” computer market. No one really paid much attention to slight resolution increases from the old standard 72 ppi to 96 ppi. These days, 320+ ppi is common on best selling mobile devices, championed by Apple with their “Retina display” smart product marketing. The fully rendered details of iOS apps help show off the benefits of the high resolution display. Even the apps not hitting you over the head with their style have sleek, stylish elements and more crisp, sharp typography, improving legibility.

While Calendar (on iPad), Music (on iPad), Find my Friends, iBooks, Notes, Reminders, iPhoto, iMovie, Calculator, and Voice Memos have detail-rendered, textured UI elements, many iPhone apps do not. Calendar, Music, Contacts, Photos and Camera on the iPhone have minimal UI designs that let the content or interface exist without texture or unique personality. There isn’t much room to dedicate pixels for cute UI skins, but they have a sophisticated UI style that will remain timeless.

One of the reasons for the push by iOS competitors for “flat” UI design is certainly differentiation. Google is an information company, so the modern version of Android, especially with Google Now features, is built as a real-time, location-based data presentation, so the UI is simple and data-driven. Android was prioritized to serve many device sizes and hardware configurations, so it was never design-driven. When Google brought in Matias Duarte, reviews of the system were more favorable, with Android getting a distinct look and feel and features different from Apple’s iOS.  Android has had a more design-focused identity from the Honeycomb release and on.

Microsoft’s Windows 8 Metro Modern UI differentiates with simple, flat shapes, little dimension and clear typography hierarchy.

One reason to choose flat, simple UI is reduced time cost with rapid iteration. It takes time to render out rich, graphical details. The wide variety of screen size variance was due to Android device manufacturers using it to find a market differentiator, and with the iPad mini and iPhone 5, it’s something Apple has slowly been adapting to.

There is a huge push for rapid iteration for software releases as the mobile device market matures and new hardware features are thrown out to the market as a way for each manufacturer to find a unique element that captures attention. It’s getting increasingly hard to maintain consistency of UI elements with rich details across different sizes and aspect ratios.

Sophisticated design taste doesn’t have to be boring, though. Tapbots apps have a sleek, futuristic and fun UI that makes their apps playful. The CoverFlow UI in the iOS Music app is reminiscent of a bygone era when people flipped through album covers to find the right record they were in the mood for in a jukebox. These days, flipping through album art feels ridiculously mundane and inefficient when you can simply tell Siri to play the song, album or artist of choice.

A less-rendered, textured UI design works well for many mobile device contexts, but it’s not a design aesthetic that functions well for all software applications. Many experiences in the video game industry rely on creating a virtual representation of reality to enhance the gameplay experience. Imagine if a first-person perspective adventure or combat game used a flat UI design to represent the interface the player’s character used? The player would clearly see the disconnect and the production quality of the experience would greatly suffer.

Informational data-driven mobile apps will benefit from flat, content-driven designs with clear informational hierarchy without cute, but utterly useless tricks, like fake page stacks in an ebook that don’t actually represent the amount of content left to read. We can expect to see a variety of sleek, sophisticated apps making even greater use of typography and depth. Many app experiences will continue to justify a detailed rendering design aesthetic, such as games or media experiences trying to invoke an emotional reaction, and they will benefit the user experience by setting a mood with UI elements and interaction design.

http://mobile.theverge.com/2013/5/25/4365554/new-york-city-planning-to-use-a-more-progressive-handicapped-symbol

More on the project here.

I recently wrote a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook to let him know how much the accessibility features included in Apple products are a critical value to a minority group of people that rely on technology to help them connect to the world. These features are often a baseline that improve user experience for everyone.

My late mom’s cousin, David, suffered from blindness and other ailments his entire life. He was the only child of an English teacher and very innovative engineer.

As David’s symptoms got worse from age, my uncle offered to provide him a technological solution to help him stay connected to the world and express himself through writing. My uncle has been an Apple user longer than I have through his career in creative arts in education.

As a web UI/UX designer, my career path has guided me to become very familiar with web technology accessibility needs. Web standards and properly formatted HTML is very helpful for those relying on screen readers to present web content and page structures in a way that makes sense to the audience. The days of a designer hacking up a web page in a table to get things lined up is thankfully a thing of the past, though there’s still many who learn why they should come aboard the standards train. It’s a disruptive experience to hear web page content read out like it’s a data table when it really isn’t.

My uncle and I talked about accessibility features iPads have for the visually impaired. Siri seems like a good start for helping someone get a task accomplished. He gave David an engraved iPad and some Bluetooth-enabled accessories that would help him.

Unfortunately, the iPad didn’t quite meet his needs, and in contrast with a general policy to not accept returns on engraved items, the Apple retail store employees offered a full refund, even for items he didn’t keep in the packaging. It turned out that a Mac Mini would have additional features for accessibility he was looking for and was up for giving that a try.

Sadly, I received a call to learn David’s health had suddenly taken a turn for the worse and he passed away that week. My uncle wasn’t given another chance at enabling him.

However, when I heard my uncle tell me how thankful he was for the common sense and general kindness he experienced from Apple store employees, along with the product choices that help people do things they need and want to do in their lives, it reminded me of how important both accessibility and good customer experience management is. My uncle expected to suffer the financial burden of the cost of the iPad and was pleasantly surprised when he was told otherwise. If only all retailers were this respectful of their customers. If only all people were this respectful and kind. Of course the “kindness” is a long-game business strategy and only goes as far as what’s a cost-benefit for the company. This was far from a charitable effort, but it was refreshingly decent and creates an emotional engagement when expectations are met.

Beyond all the hyped marketing and salesmanship, there is a value to technology that is pure and not at all cynical or falsely self-important.

In the technology business, a ruthlessly competitive world that can be dehumanizing and treat users and customers as a disposable short-term relationship or a personal data product generator to sell to the highest ad bidder, it’s hard to find those trying to understand and actually help people with invention and not spending their effort chasing down a merger/acquisition lottery ticket from a bigger fish.

As a designer, I know it can be a struggle to sell clients on the value of quality design and user experience, but it’s worth the extra effort even beyond the reasonable, bottom line cost-benefit analysis, though that really helps.

I hope I get an opportunity in my design career that allows me to build something half as meaningful as a tool that enables a person to reach out to the world that would otherwise not have such empowerment.

Thanks to computers, the Internet and accessibility, there are more people communicating with each other right now who in other times in history would never have been able to.

The key to this working is making sure through all the chatter, we’re also listening.

Microsoft tried to hedge their bets by applying a new, modern design solution to a variety of devices with different physical input methods and computing user experiences. This was a problem of repurposing the new Windows Phone design to something that it was not designed for. Repurposing can be a great cost-savings method and working within constraints sparks creativity, but you can only repurpose something so far before the less than ideal solution fails too much and lets people down.

Leadership didn’t recognize the problems that would occur by applying the software design formerly called Metro UI to all “Windows 8″ devices, trying to solve different problems with the same solution. They simultaneously applied the same solution for laptops with touchscreens and touchscreen-only tablets similar to an iPad.

Metro was a great title that they should have purchased the rights to from the current owner instead of hedging on whatever Windows-related title they settled on.

They could have used that new identity to let people know they were trying something new for the new touch-based interface tools of today and not force it on the traditional computers that the Windows driven by the Start button worked for.

I’ve seen my father struggle with the hand-eye coordination required to learn how to mouse around a desktop computer screen for the first time, but for most, that’s become a strong learned behavior. I’ve seen many people struggle with managing the windows that get cluttered behind other windows.

The iPad works better for him because of the simplicity of direct interaction, but he wouldn’t be confused by the Metro UI of Windows 8 on a touchscreen device either. He has no attachment to the Start button or the concept of different “windows” running different applications. Neither does my 3 year-old daughter.

The windows concept can probably work on large touch screens, but it needs to be optimized for that interaction method. The Samsung devices that multitask with small windows on 5″ device feel forced. How much highly usable and valuable information and interaction areas can you show in windows on a small device?

Bringing the Start button back will smooth things over for those who are used to it and attached to it, but it’s a patch on an underlying problem.

For every new technology device type that surfaces, they each require a user interface that is designed for the context for which it will be used.

This is something good designers know and their clients are best served when they accept the professional advice:

The success of a design solution that helps solve one problem is rarely a “one size fits all” that applies to all problems.

Even if the problem appears to be similar, researching the problem is worth the time investment. Applied research generally pays off in the long-term.

Maybe it will help avoid the myopic view of seeing every problem as a nail when all you have is a hammer.