It seems like a lot of people skimmed without reading the top or bottom of this site:
It's not a company. It's not a product. You're not being asked to buy it or buy into it, just to discuss the concept if you'd like.
This website is a portfolio piece for a 21-year-old university student hoping to find an internship. In my opinion, it's an impressive demonstration of his design and technical skills. It certainly says a lot more than the average 21-year-old's resume listing what courses they've taken so far.
This guy has the chops to come up with a well designed concept and should have the opportunity to defend & iterate on it based on constructive feedback. Some of these comments provide that feedback while others flatly have an issue with the idea of a concept altogether. It's unfortunate that desktop UI has remained stuck for quite awhile and only MS & Apple can really provide a new paradigm for people to adopt. Both companies are basically thinking mobile-first which makes the compromises for productive desktop UIs inevitable. By forcing ourselves to think of productivity as a priority, it brings about concepts like this which give us a glimmer of hope on how technology is more than just giving us innovation in consumption only.
He's interested in the feedback and is here participating in the discussion (@ziburski). I just felt compelled to write something after reading a couple silly "you lost me as a customer" and "what's the point" comments.
I actually wanted to thank you for your parent comment. It needed to be said and gave me a chance to say what was on my mind. Hope you didn't take my comment negatively.
>t's unfortunate that desktop UI has remained stuck for quite awhile
A lot of things get "stuck" and for good reason. Steering wheel, gas, and brake. Sight, trigger, stock. Underwear, pants, socks, etc.
Personally, I think the NT team really nailed the concept of the desktop back in 1993 with 3.1. The start button which hid programs and allowed access to other functions was incredibly handy, a bit like how a desk has a desk drawer within reach at all times. The desktop as a dumping ground for whatever you choose and system tray for misc stuff really, really works well and with mimimal cruft. Windows applications worked unlike MacOS applications by integrating the menu bar directly into the application itself instead of making it a detached accessory of the OS. Right-click support also allowed a lot of dynamic functionality.
I understand that almost none of these specific were their innovations, but they took a lot of half-cooked ideas and made something very, very usable.
Its a shame the NT team is never brought up like the Amiga or MacOS teams. I don't think they've gotten their proper due. Its also interesting that MS ran back to the start button/menu only three years after letting it go. Its incredible how powerful the NT way of doing things still is.
"Personally, I think the NT team really nailed the concept of the desktop back in 1993 with 3.1. The start button which hid programs and allowed access to other functions was incredibly handy, a bit like how a desk has a desk drawer within reach at all times."
One of us is remembering things incorrectly ... I am quite certain that the start menu interface debuted with Windows 95 and was then later adopted by Windows NT 4.0.
NT 3.1, 3.5 and 3.51 all used the old Windows 3.1 user interface.
You're correct. Windows NT 3.1 was visually nearly identical to Windows 3.1. This was part of the reason for releasing a 1.0 product with a 3.1 version number.
I think part of it too is that on the desktop, we generally stay in one or two applications for long amounts of time. For example, we'll spend hours inside 1 or 2 browser windows. All the changes is the content within the browser, the positioning will stay static for hours. Or an IDE, spreadsheet, wordprocessor, etc... - all are long-running apps, constant opening and closing or resizing isn't needed. Current DEs also get app launching right, you can have workspaces, etc... The practical difference between using the OSX, Gnome Shell, KDE Plasma 5 or KDE 4, Ubuntu Unity, even Windows - isn't all that big. You can open your app with search, resize it to half the screen or maximize it easily, and you can switch through apps easily. They've all converged with a similar set of features for everyday use, the main differences are simply little widgets here and there.
I see those concepts in RISC OS¹, developed by Acorn (as in ARM, originally Acorn RISC Machines).
The buttons on the left open windows containing applications and files, like the Resources window that is already open. On the right are running applications. The menu on the text editor has been opened with the middle mouse button; to complete the save action (for a first time save, or new destination) the icon can be dragged to a file window.
The desktop can have files, folders or applications pinned to it, but there are none in this screenshot.
The screenshot is as the OS was released in 1991. The first released version, from 1987, had similar functionality but lacked icons on the desktop ("pinboard").
(The other thing I liked about this OS was how applications were packaged. They were simply directories beginning with "!" containing, at minimum, an executable file called "!Run". This made it nice to explore, especially as !Run was often written in BASIC, and there was a BASIC editor and interpreter in ROM.)
First I think this site and idea presented is brilliantly built and communicated - while I don't like gestures myself, they are useful for many things...
That said, one of the most elegant and wonderful UX I ever had was with Softimage starting on sgi in 1993.
Still to this day I felt they nailed user interaction so wonderfully back then.
When you watch someone interact with a deeply complex application and see them just swim through using it - it's really great.
Like professional animators and both sound and video editors/producers etc.
I don't have any opinion at the moment on this as I need to read all the comments and watch his video, but we'll put together site.
>Some of these comments provide that feedback while others flatly have an issue with the idea of a concept altogether.<
Agreed...feedback can make all the difference...if you're the affected party crowd-source the feedback on your own...what's valuable?, what's simply old-school thought thinly disguising envy?, and what's in-between...lean toward the "valuable" and pay close attention to the "in-between" if you want to have a reasonable chance of moving forward...
To be fair, it's also a good, cohesive amalgamation of UI interaction concepts as well. If someone did realize this design, I'd be on-board for trying it out.
I wouldn't. It seems like a very Apple style of interaction, which emphasizes that you are interacting with an Apple UI. By which I mean to say, using a Mac or an iPhone is at least 50% about using a Mac or an iPhone, and maybe 50% about doing whatever it is you are trying to do. In an ideal world, you shouldn't be thinking about the tool.
> By which I mean to say, using a Mac or an iPhone is at least 50% about using a Mac or an iPhone, and maybe 50% about doing whatever it is you are trying to do.
Could you elaborate on this? I don't feel that way at all when using any modern OS/device, but maybe I just haven't thought about it in the same way.
Apple's focus on minimalist aesthetics have come at the cost of discoverability. Interactions are concealed by gestural input and incomprehensible icons without text labels. This issue is getting worse rather than better, e.g. force touch on the new Macbooks.
Using Apple devices requires a great deal of memorisation. For power users this is a relatively minor burden, but it is a serious issue for inexperienced users, or those with problems in cognition or memory.
Apple is just using another approach to having power users and novices using the same UI. How many people started by using a mouse for Edit (copy) before using, [Alt] [E]dit (copy), then Ctrl-C all in one step. Yes, you need to memorize Ctrl-C, but that's not a long term issue. The same is true of touch interfaces, you can use them knowing few shortcuts and slowly add more over time.
People spend hours a day interacting with a computer in one form or another, they will memorize things.
PS: Remember getting annoyed when Microsoft when gaga over the 'ribbon' concept? I bet you don't think about that one much anymore.
Keyboard shortcuts have good discoverability in most applications, because they're listed alongside the drop-down menu options. If you use Edit->Copy a lot, you can see in the menu that there's a keyboard shortcut.
Many of Apple's UI interactions can only be discovered through guesswork or reading the docs. If you open Launchpad often, nothing alerts you to the fact that there's a touchpad gesture for that. Unlabeled icons are rife in iOS and there is no discovery mechanism equivalent to a tooltip.
> If you use Edit->Copy a lot, you can see in the menu that there's a keyboard shortcut.
You can. And I do. And given your post, I assume you do too.
But did you know that most people don't?
I teach people computer skills (a lot of children, ages 8-12, but other ages as well). Only the very clever ones (those we can expect to welcome on HN in a couple of years ;-) ) figure it out by themselves. You'd be surprised of the in-your-face stuff people simply do not read on the screen. I then point it out, but it's about 50/50 whether they'll pick up the habit.
And it's the same thing with this interface the author has designed. It's all intuitions about how he uses computers, how people like him use computers, and how the self-selected group of feedback-providers use computers. Nothing about the general public. No research, no tests, no reference to classic UX textbooks and theory.
Now if he had stated upfront that those three categories are actually the only intended target audience, then at least he would have acknowledged that this is a possible problem, up-front. Not doing so, it appears he hasn't given much thought to it.
So, sorry but what I see is not a user interaction designer, but a graphics designer with a cute hobby.
If you think that's harsh, imagine he'd have redesigned the user interface of your car. Would you trust the ideas reading only about mockups and "intuitive" justifications? Wouldn't you think, mm-mm yes nice ideas but until you actually tested them on a focus group they could go anywhere and further effort is pretty much wasted until you do. What if you assume his driving style is rather different from yours?
The lack of discoverability extends to OSX's keyboard shortcuts as well. I completely changed how I work after I discovered 'Command Tab' and 'Command ~'
Those are actually precisely where I discovered a bunch of OSX's shortcuts. I think this was around the time I configured the two finger right click to make playing Minecraft without an external mouse feasible.
I'm pretty sure the default is Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right, but I've customized it so many times I can't be completely sure.
OS X actually allows a lot of customization. You assign a keyboard shortcut to any menu item in System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> App Shortcuts.
It's amazing how buried some of these are. Nothing tops print screen for me - Cmd + shift + 3 for the whole screen or Cmd + shift + 4 for the selection option...
My absolute favorite is cmd + shift + 3 - release - space to take a shot of a single window. Maybe it's the release part between 3 buttons and pressing space, but that shortcut is always wired to use for me.
Sure, if you avoid a product then you’re going to get stuck in the 'novice user' trap. IMO, the problem with a lot of these designs is they were created by and for frequent users. I remember Photoshop at being incredibly opaque to start, but you can also get used to it surprisingly quickly while regularly learning new things.
Not sure what you're getting at? The ribbon breaks office for frequent users. Around office 2003 I could have files, fonts, formatting and review all on the same amount of screen real estate as the ribbon.
This was invaluable when working on complex documents. Post ribbon all that's forcibly broken up across multiple tabs. Instead I get giant buttons for functions I don't use permanently taking up space, rather the. An efficient array of those I do.
You can still create custom ribbons. Screen real estate should be at slightly less premium now, so even if it's slightly worse I don't see that as a big deal.
It drives me mad when people talk about touch interfaces as being "intuitive". Once you get past "touch icon to activate" and "touch and drag to scroll", gestures aren't intuitive, they're a secret handshake.
I agre with you and I constantly get hammered for having this same opinion: gestures are inscrutable, difficult to discover, hard to memorise, and just generally an off-putting deviation from the ”touch/click items/icons/runes to do things” metaphor.
The OS X UX has demonstrably more discoverability than any other contemporary OS, and certainly much less "mystery meat" than Windows.
The shortcuts are consistent across all Mac apps, are discoverable (and completely modifiable) from System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts, or from Help -> Search in any app.
Trackpad and mouse gestures are shown, with videos in fact, in System -> Trackpad and System -> Mouse.
When I look at Apple's UI design, a lot of it seems to be about interacting with the device and not interacting with my task. Partly this is due, I think, to the amount and types of integration of apps into the environment (via Cocoa.) And partly, it's the fact that Apple's UIs/APIs aren't as generalized and engineered as Microsoft's -- which is to say, as an end user, you can do what you need to do, but there's generally fewer ways to do it and when you do it's much more defined.
I'll agree that using the OS X window manager is a serious pain sometimes, however there is little in this which reminds me of either OS X or iOS (aside from the icon set).
In many ways, it owes more to the Metro interface than it does OS X or iOS, for better or worse.
The problem is style of substance. The presentation,the design of the website is great, but the content feels like a bunch of random incoherent stuff put together with a catchy name.
Yes the webpage is beautiful, there are nice animations, but that's it, there is nothing else. It's an nice portfolio though, but there is nothing to discuss when it comes to UX/UI itself.
Because that's been done before; go lookup 10 GUI, and it will look remarkably similar. It's different from the accepted standard, but not actually a new concept.
There's nothing about UX design in the video either.
If he wants a job building marketing pages and videos for software, sure.
But if he wants a job as a UX designer, and I would go by the info on his sites, his design process consists of mockups and talking about it with his professors.
Seriously, if these are his skills, how the hell would he do UX design for an assignment when the target audience does not include himself?
I'm reminded of that run of "brilliant new design for <physical machine>" linkbait posts on tech sites a few years back, touting the incomparable benefits of some colorful, curvy piece of hardware over anything out there. The original source was always some design student's portfolio, and the "brilliant" design was never more than a colorful, curvy housing that didn't exist outside a rendering.
No, my observation was that those stories (and discussions) were similar. And they are, down to the spectrum of reactions in people talking about this design piece as if it were a real product.
If you feel some need to be defensive about that, I'm sure that has a parallel in those discussions, too.
> This website is a portfolio piece for a 21-year-old university student hoping to find an internship. In my opinion, it's an impressive demonstration of his design and technical skills. It certainly says a lot more than the average 21-year-old's resume listing what courses they've taken so far.
I'm actually a bit baffled. He's not just a student, he actually studies "interface design"!
"I am 21 years old and study interface design at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam."
Of course just a list of what courses you've taken so far isn't very sexy or interesting. You don't need to list them explicitly. But if you do claim to study a particular field or industry, you should at least demonstrate that you have taken some courses (in particular on the topics you're passionate about), did interesting projects to complete them (there must be, even tiny ones), what/that you learned from them, why they matter.
Doesn't need to be very explicit, but there's literally nothing on this page, nor on his personal website indicating what he learned studying interface design. Drop some names, terminology, textbooks, works, important research. Show us how "I study interface design" means more than "I'm working to obtain a piece of paper that lets me claim I studied interface design".
I work at a company where we hire people for exactly that kind of gig, with a heavy focus on building prototypes of your designs that are actually usable because that's the only viable way to design interfaces. Here's feedback as to why I'm not sending this website to my studio lead to schedule a phone screen with the designer:
1) reused assets from other companies (big no no, even for just a mockup) that are inconsistent with the overall visual style of the project
2) very implausible interactions that were clearly not prototyped (eg the 6 finger pinch... what?!)
3) work heavily inspired from other research projects and designs (10 GUI, various tiling window managers, etc) without showing a clear unifying interaction model. This is more of a patchwork of loosely related ideas, and to me doesn't show clear, deep understanding of prior work (both academic and commercial) in the covered areas.
4) awkward copy that jumps from marketing-style speak to explaining interactions from an analytical point of view. This is the most minor of all points but just hurts the polish of the piece.
So this tells me that the candidate is not a strong graphic designer, not a strong prototyper, nor a strong researcher. He's looking for an internship so only one of the three with promises in the other two would be sufficient, but that's not apparent enough to me here.
Hope that's constructive - I see a fair number of such portfolios/resumes every month.
EDIT: lots of hate on my comment below. The main point seems to be "well you're not totally wrong, but he's a 21 year old intern". Sure, although that doesn't change any of my feedback. I am assessing the work as it stands on its own merits, independently of the designer's age. There is certain work on which 21 year old interns don't have a lot to contribute on, such as redesigning entire OS user interfaces. When it comes to assessing a designer's skills, I prefer to see a series of small, focused pieces rather than one large, sprawling one (the latter is much harder to pull of well unless you have tons of experience). I'm looking forward to looking at how his work has evolved a few years from now.
I don't believe your comment was intended to be constructive at all. It sounds much more like jealousy and looking for an excuse to tear down someone who's put in great effort.
The concept and presentation of it are definitely impressive, especially for someone who's only 21 and still looking for internship-level work. He's easily in the top 5%, probably top 1% of designers, in terms of being able to see a complicated concept through from ideation to execution.
#1 — There's nothing wrong with using assets from other companies like Amazon, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc. in a concept mockup. If anything, it's nice to see realistic assets being used instead of stock junk that won't actually work in real-world situations.
#2 — Yup, the 6-finger-pinch would probably be too convoluted, I agree. But that's easily replaced with a regular pinch. Easy to get little details like this wrong in the scheme of things, especially for the more minor gestures.
#3 — Who cares? If anything this shows that he knows about what's out there in terms of prior art, and is able to build on it in an inspiring way. That's a good sign in my book, not a deal breaker.
#4 — The fact that he was able to put together this page, with all of the marketing copy, and the well-design screenshots (with zooming), etc. already shows that for a visual and interaction designer he's way ahead of the curve in terms of marketing.
I'm not saying the concept is perfect, but it's definitely well presented, and well thought out. Add in the fact that the designer is 21 and looking for an internship, and he is an absolutely obvious candidate for a phone screen. I'd be surprised if he isn't able to land internships with any of the big tech companies (Apple, Google, Facebook, etc.) with this piece as part of a larger portfolio. He's clearly good at coming up with, polishing, and communicating ideas.
> I don't believe your comment was intended to be constructive at all.
You may have a different assessment of the candidate's potential value as an intern. The parent clearly stated "Here's feedback as to why I'm not sending this website to my studio lead to schedule a phone screen with the designer".
Making assumptions about the parents intent provides no value to the discussion.
It's not an assumption, the commenter also clearly stated, "I hope that's constructive". To some of us, it sounds belittling and dismissive, regardless of how well he knows his company better than us.
There is a big difference between "I don't believe you were trying to be constructive", (which make assumptions about intent) and "I found your critique to be un-constructive, here's why:"
The former adds nothing to the conversation and is pretty close to being a personal attack, the latter provides feedback and (may) prompt constructive debate about how to provide critique.
It's a resume piece and the parent works for a design company. He's not looking to start a discussion on the merits of the design and how to improve it, only his problems with it from a hiring perspective (polish, consistency, lack of research). It feels very constructive to me.
Then what separates constructive criticism from just criticism?
Parent comment supplied criticism – I'm not arguing that. But s/he did not at all help to reveal a path towards a better outcome. That's what would make it constructive.
Judgements on motive, while critical for investigations and character analysis, are obviously irrelevant to online tech discussions, famously impervious to baggage, ideology, and petty warble.
> I'd be surprised if he isn't able to land internships with any of the big tech companies (Apple, Google, Facebook, etc.) with this piece as part of a larger portfolio.
Sure, but perhaps I'd be more surprised if that internship had to do with UX/interaction design. Maybe marketing, or webdesign.
If I were to make a drawing of a house, even a detailed rendering, and made a website about why I would like such a house, why it would be a nice house, that wouldn't make me an architect.
Your point about the larger portfolio is an important one. Where is it? At 21 he must have been studying this field for 2 maybe 3 years?
The site does look very neat and well-polished. That is impressive, no matter what. Clear indicator of talent. Whether that talent is UX design (people keep talking about "design" in this thread, as if it's some general thing), he does not demonstrate: no tests, no design documents, no research. Except he does claim to have focused on research, yet no word about what this research entails, the process, how it went, what he found out.
So I'm going to say, he's got great talent, for marketing shiny things to the general public. And if you think about it, it makes a lot more sense that someone great at marketing reaches the top of HN, than someone great at UX design? ;-)
>So this tells me that the candidate is not a strong graphic designer, not a strong prototyper, nor a strong researcher.
I'm not a graphic designer nor do I hire them, but your conclusion seems overly dramatic. Perhaps this prototype does not meet your high bar, but that does not mean that the candidate overall is not qualified. It just means that this particular work did not demonstrate these skills to your satisfaction. The candidate might have these skills and dismissing them after one prototype seems to be setting yourself up for many false negatives.
If he's in charge of some super high level design boutique charging millions to customers that everyone is murdering kittens to get into, then I can understand his position.
4 critiques is not bad for a student/internship piece. Most students simultaneously do not have deep knowledge of prior work and are also (one of) strong designer or prototyper or researcher because those things simply take time/experience to get.
His bar to me seems like "entry-level position, 12 years JavaScript experience required" but for UX/UI
I think he's qualified to be an intern, I don't think he's strong in any particular area.
However that's not an issue, since he's a student. Experience, and further learning will make him absolutely exception in a single area or multiple ones.
However that's speaking in comparison to everyone else in the world.
In comparison to other students, he's done a fairly good job.
Yeah this is ludicrous. There are thousands of designers making a killing in tech who don't show this level of refinement, effort, or robustness in their thought.
Of course design people* don't like good concept art for a tiling wm. It's not "modern", emphasizes work instead pointless high rez stock photos, and acknowledges the desktop.
1. I'm actually a big fan of tiling WMs, I use xmonad on my personal archlinux laptop.
2. "concept art" for a tiling wm makes no sense, because as you point out, it is first and foremost something that is work focused. This is why you build functional prototypes.
You have some fair points. Personally, I would not discount the conceptual sprawl of the piece – I think it's in some ways an unavoidable part of a solo project to re-think something as broad as a general-purpose computing UI. When I was working on 10/GUI, I don't think it quite occurred to me just how disconnected the hardware / pointing part and the window management part were. At the time, they seemed largely inseparable because I had this big idea of how the whole system should work, and it wasn't until I started reading feedback that I realized just how readily the window manager part could be adapted to stand on its own.
DesktopNeo has some more promising ideas (there's some really good thought iterating on full-height window workflows) and some less promising (some of the more awkward gestures), but it's a strong showing overall.
Touch seems great on a phone or tablet, but I absolutely don't want it on my desktop or even laptop computer (I have a Thinkpad with a touch screen). Small gestures work well on a touchpad (well on Apple touchpads at least) and bigger gestures could be picked up by the camera. But I have no desire to drag my fingers across the screen. Fingerprints on a monitor are the worst.
So he can quote the creator of 10/GUI, "DesktopNeo has some more promising ideas (there's some really good thought iterating on full-height window workflows)... it's a strong showing overall."
"Here's feedback as to why I'm not sending this website to my studio lead to schedule a phone screen with the designer:"
Just curious ... how many of the folks that you have sent to your studio lead have had their project at the #1 spot on the front page of HN with 100+ comments ?
I've had personal work reach HN with lots of votes and comments that went nearly nowhere. I would have killed (metaphorically) to get concrete criticism like this; that's way more valuable than the votes.
> the candidate is not a strong graphic designer, not a strong prototyper, nor a strong researcher.
The candidate is 21 years old and looking for an internship. Would you really expect them to be strong at any of those. It seems he/she does have some strengths doesn't it? Would it not be useful to focus on those and see how the others could be developed?
Your reply really doesn't come off as an attempt to be constructive. It comes off as someone with a bit of knowledge about the field wanting to demonstrate that for strangers on the internet by tearing someone's work down.
The ability to just pull a project of this scale to completion is something that virtually no 21 year old has. That alone is worth something to a company with some sense.
There's obviously a strong foundation for the hard skills (like visual design or prototyping or copywriting) that can be easily built upon in the field. That's the whole point of an internship: find a hard worker with a good foundation, teach them how to succeed in your company.
Not sure what the hell parent comment's problem is.
> The ability to just pull a project of this scale to completion is something that virtually no 21 year old has.
Undergrad final year projects demand a similar investment of time, effort and view of the big picture. It's something we do in the UK - not sure about the US and others.
Seems like you have the bar set pretty high for what you consider to be a good designer. Would you mind sharing some of the work your studio does?
I am by no means a designer, but from an outsider's perspective(after all designs are consumed by regular folk like myself, not necessarily other designers) Lennart's work seems pretty well done. Especially considering that he is at the very start of his career.
>So this tells me that the candidate is not a strong graphic designer, not a strong prototyper, nor a strong researcher.
Oh please, he's certainly a strong graphic designer, by the looks of the website he certainly has web development abilities, and if you want people with so much previous experience, I don't see why you even feel the need to rip this guy apart.
I have my own complaints with parts of the design, but overall it shows a lot of hard work, a lot of great ideas, and a hell of a lot of creativity. He'd be incredibly valuable for any company lucky enough to pick him up.
As someone who have also seen my fair share of portfolios (used to run a fairly large design agency in Denmark) I am trying to understand what part is of your critique is constructive.
It basically boils down to. You are no good enough. This is hardly constructive criticism at all thats just criticism.
I will gladly forward his portfolio to anyone looking for an intern. It should be fairly easy to assess in an interview whether this guy is the real deal or not. And if he is he got a great future in front of him.
+1 for #2. 6 fingers for what will likely be a fairly regular action is clunky at best. The way it's illustrated makes me think it was more along the lines of a board you stand at and not a desktop.
>4) awkward copy that jumps from marketing-style speak to explaining interactions from an analytical point of view. This is the most minor of all points but just hurts the polish of the piece.<
This is important, and often separates the good from the bad...can't count the number of websites I've visited, or products I've considered buying, where I was stopped short because of marketing that appears to have been hastily constructed, or that undervalued consistency in presentation...
That always puts my head on a swivel--are the ideas being presented, the product being sold, etc., of actual value, when the front-end appears thrown together, or carelessly edited?
You don't do an admitted novice a favor by pulling punches...they deserve honest feedback...they can aggregate opinions, and come to their own conclusions as to how to move forward...that's crowd-sourcing in a nutshell, right?
I'm perhaps in a minority here, but Jon Ive isn't that great. I mean my iphone should have a notice/indicator light on the front. It wouldn't have been that hard to put an LED behind the glass so that if I leave my phone in the other room and I receive a message or something, then simply walking past my phone, the blinking light will catch my attention.
I had this feature in my old blackberry. It sounds like a good idea but it ends up making me tense every time I see the thing blink. I much rather like checking my notifications on my terms by turning on the screen.
>
It seems like a lot of people skimmed without reading the top or bottom of this site:
This is the nature of Hacker News recently: people post as soon as possible to demonstrate their knowledge on a related subject. I've twice recently had articles posted on HN where a commenter loudly ranted about the article missing something that's covered explicitly in the first 3 paragraphs.
It's not a company. It's not a product. You're not being asked to buy it or buy into it, just to discuss the concept if you'd like.
This website is a portfolio piece for a 21-year-old university student hoping to find an internship. In my opinion, it's an impressive demonstration of his design and technical skills. It certainly says a lot more than the average 21-year-old's resume listing what courses they've taken so far.