Week 1 out of class

   This week out of class I read two articles, What is a Product Designer  and Tarantioning our First App. The first article as its title suggests answers the question, what is a product designer? The author shows a product designer as a design jack of all trades. They're someone who knows UI/UX design, tradition graphic design, some coding, etc. They will over see a product from start to finish, and then even after finish into its actual life span. Another key point the author makes is that a product designer will not solve your problems as a company, but will instead solve your users problems, which will in turn solve your problems before they even become problems. The second article I read was about the author's experience with the first mobile phone application they made, or in this case failed to make. His first idea was a lecture recording app called Lec. Lec centered around the idea of being able to set key points in a recording to jump to, and his team fixed on a design that put these key points around a circle. The moral of story was that his team put style over user experience and the app was never completed for sometime. His team then made another simpler app that did fairly well, and with this new found knowledge they managed to finish Lec by focusing on simplicity for the user. The connection to Tarantino was that Tarantino started Pulp Fiction but it was too complicated so he made Reservoir Dogs, and then returned to Pulp Fiction when he was more experienced. Additionally outside of class I came up with thirty problems/ app ideas. My partner and I each came up with thirty ideas so we'll have sixty to choose from next week.

Most of my ideas come from small problems or things I wished I had. None of them are really profound or likely to shake up the market at all, but they are all things that I think might be useful to at least a few people. Some of my best ideas here I think are Commute time calculator, Yelp for Trials, and city architecture/facts buddy.