TechDistortion

Principles on Pulling The String

Benjamin Alexander (whose first and last names are my 3rd and 2nd childs first names respectively) recently had me on his excellent new podcast “Pulling The String” where we talked at length about Twitter and modern interconnectedness as well as user interface design and bunch of other stuff too.

Design Reviews in Name Only

Milestones are often tied to customer design reviews, factory acceptance tests, site acceptance tests and the like. Having spent much of my career on the design side it’s been interesting representing a client and my perspective can’t help but be refined in the process.

Reviews are often considered to be onerous tasks that “have to be done” in order to meet an often arbitrary schedule milestone. They are regularly treated with contempt and those seeking changes are often muffled, given token concessions or even silenced completely. “Reviews for Reviews Sake” are thus essentially complete wastes of everyone’s time other than the designer (presumably also the meeting chair). Reviews are in place to ensure that the content is up to scratch not just to put a tick in a box, but budgetary and schedule pressures often make them ineffective.

The decisions about who attends and the format of the review are the keys to a reviews success or failure. There are two opposing perspectives surrounding these choices. Each shall be examined in turn:

Restrict the number of people attending

Cynic: Too many people means too many people to explain the design to. Too many people means too much feedback that creates unnecessary redesign.

Optimist: Clients (or other departments) often have multiple representatives and getting a clear view of what is ACTUALLY required will vary from person to person. It’s always better to have a smaller group of client representatives to act as a focal point for all feedback.

Restrict the experience of the people invited to attend

Cynic: We will invite attendees with less experience in the area under review but can still ‘represent’ some component of the area under review are less likely to have meaningful feedback of any significance.

Optimist: We will invite attendees with the right kind of experience in the area under review will have useful and helpful feedback and not just, “The grammar is incorrect…” type feedback.

Restrict the different types of feedback   i.e. We’re not here to discuss the colour scheme, the font etc.

Cynic: Reject all feedback that doesn’t fit within the established feedback guidelines as the point of review is about something specific and not about making the overall design better.

Optimist: Noting any feedback that may not fall within the feedback guidelines can make the design better but stops getting bogged-down in less-critical details during the review.

Minimal or closed reviews during early development stages

Cynic: Reduces outside influences during initial development and once the design is well-developed then inform those suggesting changes that it’s too late to change anything at this late stage.

Optimist: Early design development needs to be kept in-house early on to reduce excessive external feedback before the design is fleshed out enough for a meaningful review.

Effective Reviews

The best approach for an effective review must be considered from both perspectives: The Designer and The Reviewer.

The Designer

• Don’t call the review until you have a design with an agreed level of completeness that is suitable for review. If you haven’t gone through it thoroughly yourself and perhaps had at least one other persons informal feedback then releasing it for a full design review is likely to be premature and a waste of everyones time.
• Invite people to the review that have knowledge about what you’re designing. Be clear in the invitation that you’re trying to keep numbers down and that only those invited should attend. Be willing to accept alternatives if your “chosen” individuals are otherwise busy on that day, but keep the numbers on the small side.
• Circulate the design prior to the review amongst the attendees to allow them the chance to get caught up on the design under review.
• Organise a minute-taker that is knowledgable about the subject and preferably also involved in the design. If not, take detailed minutes yourself. Reviews need to be traceable in case future design decisions require rework and these changes must be identifiable at variations to the main contract.
• Acknowledge and accept all feedback as valid, initially. If some feedback is way off-base, politely inform them where you see the disconnect and note their feedback and your response in the minutes.
• Progress through the design in a methodical way. Solicit feedback on specifics one section/functional area at a time. Opening the floor up to just “any comments you like from anywhere in the design” is a recipe for a drawn-out review.
• Respect everyone’s time that attended. They are taking time out of their work schedule to attend and provide comments to make your design better.
• If it’s a long meeting then schedule regular breaks and stick to it. Not everyone has a bladder like a balloon and people can’t concentrate without a leg-stretch once in a while.
• If it’s a long meeting keep a bowl of mints or lollies in the centre of the table such that people can keep their blood-sugar levels up during the meeting. Low blood-sugar affects concentration and can affect peoples moods making them more/less critical.

The Reviewer

• It’s easy to be nit-picky when you’re not the designer (or perhaps not ‘A’ designer at all) so keep your feedback focussed and relevant.
• Respect the designer and their design where possible. Naturally if it’s a terrible design state the specific issues you have with it and why, however keep in mind that the designer is exposing their credibility and competence for all to see and potentially hack to pieces. Be kind.
• Take the time to review the design BEFORE the meeting and make notes to discuss during the meeting. Pre-warming your brain to the design makes a huge difference and means you’re not wasting everyone else’s time reviewing during the review when you should be listening and interacting with other people involved.
• Pay attention during the review meeting. Distractions such as phones, laptops and side-conversations mean that critical discussions may be misunderstood or missed entirely and this wastes everyone else’s time and reduces the overall effectiveness of the review.
• Be thorough with your review and review comments. Design isn’t easy and you were asked to provide input on the design. Your help can provide a better end result.

The BYO Body Equation

Having never owned an SLR or DSLR camera it goes without saying that professional photography isn’t in my repertoire. Truth be told in days past the preference for a solid, water-proof digital camera that was essentially child and life-proof was the winning option. Smartphones began to include cameras that gradually became “good enough” for most people, and since the phone was always on my person and always charged such that I could make/receive phone calls, it became the only camera I ever used. The compact camera went back on the shelf and before long gathered dust.

Even for a photo-newbie such as myself, it’s hard to ignore the difference in quality with jelly-motion video, fuzzy low-light stills and no usable zoom functionality on my smartphone and one is left wanting for the better quality stills and video that compact cameras can provide. The problem has changed recently and is now no longer just about the quality - we have become addicted to instant sharing. For most people there’s little question that posting an image to Facebook that was just taken moments ago, of the family bushwalking or at a party or a soccer game, is gratifying and creates a feeling of connectedness with your friends and extended family. Also backing up of photos to “the cloud” automatically such that if your device is damaged or lost, your memories aren’t, is invaluable (try that with a compact camera). Geotagging of photos was once a niche activity but now with phones carrying a GPS in them, it’s yet another way of indexing and sorting our ever growing number of photos and most compact cameras still don’t come with a GPS.

Enter the Sony QX10 and QX100 ‘camera accessories’ for smartphones. These devices are essentially a lens, sensor and mounting attachment with no viewfinder or camera body. They connect via WiFi/NFC to your smartphone and can take compact camera quality photos but use your Smartphone and all the aforementioned features (GPS, Cloud backup, Instant Sharing) for $250 and $500 respectively (recommended retail: USD). It seems like a great idea but let’s just hold back a second and think this through.

If you’re going to spend $500 on a QX100 why not buy any one of the approximately $500 DSLRs from Nikon or Canon that would deliver better performance and more long-term flexibility overall? For that reason, let’s focus on the lower-end model as it is the most likely to attract the non-professional or perhaps non-professional-asprining photographers among us (including myself).

The QX10 is essentially a Cyber-shot DSC-WX150 without its body so let’s compare its vital statistics, with the WX150 figures in brackets following the QX10s¹.

The QX10 has a 630 (same) mAh battery that’s good for about 220 (240) still photos or 25 (29) minutes of video. It records video at 1440 x 1080p @ 30 fps (1920 x 1080p @ 60 fps) and takes stills at the same resolutions. The QX10 lacks a flash (unlike the WX150) and the QX10 is about $150 USD cheaper than the WX150 was when it was on sale. The QX10 weighs 3.7oz [105g] (4.1 oz [116g]) and has dimensions 2.4"H x 2.5"W x 1.3"D [61.8mmH x 62.4mmW × 33.3mmD] (2.2"H x 3.7"W x 0.9"D [55.9mmH x 94.0mmW x 22.9mmD])

To summarise, the QX10 costs comparatively $150 less, weighs 10% less, is about 1/3rd smaller but also lasts 8-12% less time before the battery goes flat. It also doesn’t shoot at full HD resolution (width) or anything greater than 30fps and you begin to see what was sacrificed for the smaller packaging. If you’re resolved to carrying a second device in order to take better photos then why not go back to a compact camera? It doesn’t take up much more space, lasts longer and has fuller features.

Let’s consider some alternatives that could bridge that gap and give us the best of both worlds. If you already have a camera but want the instant sharing and connectivity advantages then the Eye-Fi Pro X2 costs $100USD and can be used in a multitude of cameras for connecting them to an iOS device for transferring photos and so on but not for camera control. The CamRanger is pricey at $300USD and it effectively does the same “bridging the gap” between iOS devices and DSLRs (Canon and Nikons if you’re already the owner of one of those). Then again if you are truly interested in having the best of both then this gives you the QX10/100 functionality without compromising on the quality of the camera. Just get your wallet/purse out because it’s going to hurt.

That’s well and good if you’re a higher-end photographer, but what about me? A pricey but not ridiculous option could be the Samsung WB800F Compact Digital Camera that has WiFi built in and also records in full HD, has excellent zoom capabilities and so on for $500USD. Sharing photos with any of the above options won’t be as straight-forward as if they were taken on the device itself or via the QX10/100 however, but it will work with no too much more effort.

The next question is how much better is the QX10/100 compared to leading smartphone built-in cameras? The two phones that are generally accepted as having the best image quality in the current marketplace are the iPhone 5 and the Nokia 1020. The recently announced (and shortly to be released) iPhone 5S camera looks even better again but it will still battle for it’s place at the top with the 1020. Apple have focussed on pushing the optics as far as possible in a small form factor, then using image processing and light wavelength matching flashes for image improvements whereas Nokia have gone for the more mexapixels in a slightly thicker form factor that allows for a usable digital zoom². There is no doubt that the optics in the QX10 will be better than these phone cameras, but the overall image quality won’t be significantly better³. The more photographers that test this, the more we’ll know in the coming weeks.

The problem with the QX10 and QX100 is simple: in order to be an attractive product their specifications and quality must equal or exceed the specifications of the leading smartphones to which they are attached and to at least equal the specifications of equivalent standalone cameras. If they don’t achieve this then they have no reason to exist. If you want better pictures and can’t afford/justify a DSLR then invest in a compact camera - you will get better value for money and image quality. If sharing matters to you, pick a compact camera with WiFi or use an Eye-Fi card - it’s not as well integrated but it will work.

If Sony improve their next generation of QX10/100s such that they can take full HD resolution video, have better battery life and perhaps include their own flash, they will become a more enticing option. For the moment and for the majority of people these ’lens cameras’ simply don’t add up.

Lifting Prints and Watching Codes

Fingerprint sensor technology is nothing new. It has been around for decades and yet when Apple chooses to put one of its past acquisitions sensors in its top of the line iPhone 5S, suddenly the subject of fingerprint “security” is all the rage once more.

Security systems are a component of my job and fingerprint scanners are something I’ve come across both personally and industrially. Biometric scanners are generally NOT used in industry as they are generally too easy to fool and can also be very unreliable (false rejections being quite common). The other problem is that once a fingerprint is compromised for an individual, it can never be changed. Hence the first breach of a fingerprint is a permanent breach forever. Of course centralised databases with approval/rejection lists can tackle this problem in closed systems however there is a great public anxiety regarding this information being available to non-government organisations¹ and Apple have chosen not to let it leave the device.

Rather than rehash the volumes already written in the last 48 hours or so, it’s more interesting to focus on the only part that matters: Just how hard is it to break into an iPhone using either a passcode or a fingerprint? Famously the Mythbusters showed that it could be done in Season 4, Episode 16. (It’s a great episode and well worth a watch if you have a spare 45 minutes). If you haven’t watched the episode, what follows a summary of the key points.

How The Mythbusters Beat The FingerPrint Scanner

The issue begins with getting a clean print. It’s much harder than people think to get a viable fingerprint in a normal living or working environment. You MUST start with a clean surface without dust or contaminants and how they did this in the Mythbusters episode was by handing Grant a brand new CD and then removing that CD after he’d touched it but before it could be contaminated by anything or anyone else.

They tried a basic scanner and then a professional security lock. First they tried paper, then they used an old printed circuit board etching technique to photo-resist then etch a raised fingerprint and then used a silicone mould of that. The cheaper fingerprint scanner didn’t recognise their first attempt, but after they manually enhanced the fingerprint samples and they re-etched the board and tried again: it worked. Trying to break the professional lock merely required a thinner moulding applied to a persons thumb, licked (to simulate sweat/conductivity) and they beat the scanner (19min 45sec in if you’re impatient). There were a few steps they didn’t screen however it’s likely that the trick may lie in the material used for the improved, thinner moulding.

In the real world one would have to carefully plan how and where to extract a print without being detected; then extract the print using a vacuum/super glue/fingerprint powder mixture, enlarge the image, trace it, etch it, create a mould from the etch, then apply that mould to someones thumb to break in. The possibility of 3D printing a fingerprint is interesting and may cut down some of the work, however this would only replace the etching steps. You still need a viable print and you still need to mould it properly.

A common misconception is that it’s easy to “lift prints” off a multitude of different surfaces. That simply isn’t true. Door handles are terrible because they will have dozens or even hundreds of partial, overlapping prints on them. Walls, Desks, Keyboards and mice are all a mess of smudges and a bit of powder or dust is a big problem. Go to the bathroom and wash your hands well and dry them and most residue is removed for a period following that. When my house faced a break-in attempt a few years ago the police reminded me that CSI has little bearing on real life - good prints are hard to find. They came up empty handed on multiple points of entry.

Obtaining the prints to one side, the Mythbusters episode was screened in 2006 and in the intervening years advancements in fingerprint scanning technology have surely been made. The sensor Apple acquired is likely to be more advanced that the ones the Mythbusters cracked however we can’t be sure of that yet. The final judgement of whether these techniques will work on Apples sensor will have to wait until it’s released to the general public in a few weeks time.

The Traditional Passcode

The alternative to the fingerprint scanner is the traditional passcode. You can select longer codes but my observation is that most people prefer the simple 4-digit code especially if they are constantly unlocking and relocking their phones all day long. There are 10^4 = 10,000 possibilities and the cracker has 10 attempts to get it right before they are locked out. The most likely possibility for breaking a code is to surreptitiously observe the user entering the code. When people are entering their code in public it’s actually quite easy to see what they’re entering as it’s difficult to obscure what you are typing in (unlike an ATM where there are privacy guards fitted around the keypads of many ATMs). Most people are holding the device in one hand whilst typing in the code with the other. Perhaps they are using their thumb on the hand that is holding the phone but then they can only shield one side with their other hand.

FingerPrints are Harder to Crack but once they are, it’s over

Between the two methods it could be argued that it is easier and less likely to be detected by simply observing the user entering the code than in trying to obtain a clean fingerprint by removing an item they have touched or if it can’t be removed, dusting for a fingerprint in a public place.

Still, if one goes to the considerably greater effort to extract a fingerprint then they could have access for life, whereas a passcode can be changed at any time². Either way, neither method is truly safe but for entry-level crooks, the fingerprint is much better as it raises the difficulty of cracking it higher than the passcode can.

That’s Not The Point

As fun as this has been, let’s stop for just a moment. Perhaps seeing the fingerprint scanner as an improved security measure isn’t the point of it at all. Think back to the keynote (56min 05sec) where Phil Schiller explains that approximately 50% of their users did NOT set a passcode³.

If we accept that both passcodes and fingerprint scans can be beaten with varying levels of effort, then it’s obvious that Apple aren’t just implementing the fingerprint scanner for those of us that use a passcode all the time - they’re trying to get the other 50% of users to start locking their devices by lowering the barrier of entry. Without having to worry about setting a code or setting one then worrying about forgetting it later, a fingerprint scan makes securing your device a no-brainer⁴. If those of us already using passcodes are happy to live with a fingerprint scan even though we know it’s not infallible then that’s a bonus.

Apple know that a secured device that keeps out the majority of casual thieves is one that will keep customers happier if they lose their device or it is stolen. A fallible but present security measure is better than no security measure at all. With the iPhone 5S Apple have done what they always do: take an existing technology and integrate it in such a way that it makes it easier and more useful for the average person to enjoy. If it proves popular, expect to see it appear in all of their other products, desktops included, at some point in the future.