How tough must it be for Steve Jobs, Jonathan Ive and the other design-focused people at Apple to engage with everyday technology. Filling up their gas tank, getting cash from an ATM, using their car radio - all these involve interaction with often terribly designed pieces of technology. How will a gas pump’s user interface look like if Apple designed it? simpler. An ATM? cleaner. A car radio? beautiful.

Apple’s influence on product design is already significant, yet it’s reach has been very limited so far. Apple itself is not going to redesign every piece of technology or make their services available to others. Instead, the “Apple style” - simple, clean, and easy to use is going to gradually take over the desgin world. The reason: this style is so overwhelmingly better that by sheer evolutionary pressure it will inevitably propagate and win. This is a bold prediction as it deals with user experience in addition to the underlying technology. Unlike existing designs, this user experience style requires a substantial investment in design and manufacturing. Still, I believe that it will gradually push the old out.

The reason a strong player like Apple leads the way is simple - traditional design consultancy or in-house designers typically do what the customer wants: the customer being cost-conscious consumers or design-agnostic businesses. Apple is led by a fanatic, detail oriented, micro managing design bigot who makes all product decisions. This is not the case with any other major player I’m aware of. Small companies do innovate in this area, but only a few make an impact. One such company is Arc90 that created Readability, a program that turns messy web pages into readable articles. Arc90 did such a great  job that Apple integrated the open source version into Safari.

This better species had now reached a critical mass in the technology ecosystem and is rapidly eliminating inferior variants or transferring it’s genes to them. How long will it take for this superior species to kill off all the others? It might take a while, but the evolution is unstoppable.

In late December I was awarded US Patent 7,860,673 - Distance Measuring Device. I essentially patented the use of a parallax to measure distances from the user to a nearby object using a simple device that can be manufactured for a very low cost. First conceived when I was 17 years old, I kept toying with the idea and entertaining the thought of patenting it for years. A lawyer friend helped me write the patent application 5 years ago. It was a very interesting exercise in turning an abstract idea to a formal patent applications written in legalese, complete with claims, drawings, and calculations. Following a long review process and after hiring a professional patent attorney to fight a prior-art claim, the patent was finally approved.

What should I do with this patent now? not sure. Devices based on it can measure distances alright, but nowhere near the accuracy required for serious usage. I’m thinking about turning it into an educational toy and selling it online and at science museum stores. It can be a great tool for teaching the parallax effect and geometrical optics in general. Doing this will force me continue this multi-year exercise and complete the invention process by commercializing it. Should be an interesting ride.

Nokia’s new Silicon Valley headquarters in Sunnyvale are equidistant from Google and Apple’s headquarters. It’s just a coincidence, of course, but I’m sure the Finnish giant wishes some of the success these local companies enjoy in the smart phone market will rub off on it. The best way to get there might be by poaching engineering and management talent. By building their headquarters in this strategic location (and two blocks from a Caltrain station), they might be one step ahead in their quest to get a foothold in this booming market segment.

In a job interview a while back I mentioned the one word you don’t want to say in a job interview (especially when the interviewer is an ex-Googler): “intuition”. Interviewers want to hear about your analytical and well-reasoned thinking skills, not about nebulous concepts like intuition. The interview was the last in a series of eight, and was supposed to seal the deal.

The question in question was about my approach to product management, and more specifically, how I make decisions on tough issues with conflicting requirements. I rambled about “looking carefully at the data”, “analyzing customer input”, “evaluating feature profitability” and other serious sounding sound bites, and then said that at the end of the day after throughly evaluating all the inputs I make a decision based on my intuition. The interviewer paused and repeated: “intuition?” at that moment I new I lost that job opportunity.

So, was mentioning “intuition” a mistake? yes. Does intuition have a place in the workplace? absolutely; especially if you accept the following definition, attributed to Abella Arthur: “Intuition is a combination of historical (empirical) data, deep and heightened observation and an ability to cut through the thickness of surface reality. Intuition is like a slow motion machine that captures data instantaneously and hits you like a ton of bricks. Intuition is a knowing, a sensing that is beyond the conscious understanding - a gut feeling. Intuition is not pseudo-science.”

Every decision we make is based at least in part on our intuition or “gut feeling”. People who lack the ability to intuit tend to get stuck when faced with reams of data. Analysis Paralysis is one of the worst enemies of effective execution. I’m not talking about the obvious cases, where data analysis leads to a clear decision. I’m talking about cases where 1) a decision has to be made, and 2) the data does not seem to point you at any direction. This is where people who can intuit shine. At a startup environment, this is particularly important; if you can’t act on your gut feeling, you can easily analyze yourself out of existence.

So what is the correct answer to that interview question? I’m still not sure. If an interviewer refuses to accept the canned answers and insists on digging deeper, I’m probably going to describe some convoluted thought process based on past experience, innate reasoning, and deep assimilation of analyzed data. Some people will call this intuition, but you didn’t hear it from me.

I was “commissioned” by my wife and her business partner to design a new logo for their business. I’m a big fan of clean and clever logos, like the those of Fedex and Amazon. Not being trained as a designer never stopped me from playing around with visual concepts and creating new designs from scratch. Having some off-time a while back, I started sketching up raw ideas. The first letters of their names are C and D and their business revolves around relationship and intimacy coaching, so I thought about imagery that will somehow capture these elements. After about an hour of doodling, I came up with this concept:

Next, I spent another hour creating a Photoshop draft:

My “clients” liked it a lot, but I thought that creating the final vector-based version was beyond my abilities so I decided to outsource it through www.99designs.com. Turns out this wasn’t such a great idea; although I received around 70 designs, none of them was better than my own draft (according to my “clients”, at least). 99designs stresses quantity over quality, so you end up spending a lot of time coaching aspiring designers from all around the world, a time you could have spent crafting your own design. After getting my well deserved refund, I set out to create a final version myself. I don’t particularly like Adobe Illustrator, and was looking for a better alternative. Somebody recommended Inkscape, a free software that is as powerful as Illustrator, and, in my view, is much easier to use. Here’s the end result:

Needless to say, my “clients” loved it.

I’ve been reading a lot lately about the benefits of writing and blogging even in the absence of readers. These ideas resonate well, and I’d like describe the reasons that drives me to write¹:

I blog because it’s one of the best ways to crystallize ideas, short of brainstorming with other smart people.

I blog because it’s the best (and arguably the cheapest) way to gain practice in productizing nebulous concepts, turning them into products that people may actually want to consume.

I blog because it’s the best way to practice summarizing² long and winding thoughts into short, readable nuggets.

I blog because it forces me to capture the essence of an essay in a short and catchy title.

I blog because it gives me a chance to practice writing in a language other than my mother tongue.

¹ “Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few” (Demotivators)

² “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead” (Mark Twain)

Synchronized green lights are designed to enable streamlined traffic flow in major traffic arteries. When you hit the green wave you know it - it feels like all the ­lights are turning green just for you. Nice as this may be for your ego, it’s just a coincidence. After commuting on a such a road for a while, I found a way for making this work almost every time. If you follow the simple explanation below, you’ll save a lot of time and boost your ego at the same time.

The trick is to pass each traffic light in the “middle of the green”. If you have, say, 60 seconds of green light, you want to pass through the intersection at the 30 second mark. If you manage to do so and go at the maximum speed allowed afterward, you are almost guaranteed to hit the next light in the middle of the green as well. Hitting the middle of the green takes some practice and experience. If you have to slow down, make sure to balance it out by speeding up. Here’s the perfect green wave traversal pattern:

If you don’t go fast enough, it can really hurt. You’ll hit many a red light and your trip will become much longer:

Speeding up might actually hurt you as well. While you may end up hitting a similar time overall, your trip will be a miserable stop-and-go experience, not to mention possibly getting cited. Here’s how it looks:

If the traffic is very heavy, no trick will help and you’ll eventually hit a red light. Another factor that might thwart your mastery of the green wave is road sensors that change traffic light patterns based on car presence. Barring these factors, surfing the green wave by trying to hit the middle of the greens is a fun commute activity that can actually save you time, so go ahead and start practicing!

We all suffer through boring, endless, useless meetings but no one is doing anything about it. Here’s a very effective method for reducing the amount of time spent in meetings. In order to work, this will have to be done with the one or two people who really make decisions in your team/group/department/organization/company.

Step 1: Raise hell about time wasted in meetings. Put a dollar amount on it to make it look really painful.

Step 2: Call a meeting to discuss (this will hopefully be one of the last meetings you’ll attend) with the decision makers (and no one else.)

Step 3: Draw a matrix on the whiteboard - rows for required meetings, columns for required attendees. Forget about optional attendees; they are a distraction. Fill up the table, marking a cell only if this person is absolutely required in that meeting.

Step 4: Eliminate meetings that aren’t absolutely necessary, and participants that are not expected to contribute anything. Passive listeners can always get meeting summaries by email - no need to waste their time and yours.

Step 5: Decide on frequencies - not every meeting has to happen on a weekly basis. If you end up with monthly recurrence or longer, the meeting is probably redundant.

Step 6: Have the decision maker(s) announce the change formally and make sure the new schedules get implemented immediately.

Step 7: Enjoy your newly freed time.

On my bi-annual visit to McDonald’s the other day I noticed this sign posted on the drive-thru window: “Two Apple Pies: $1. One Apple Pie: $0.95.” The first thought that crossed my mind was: Is it possible to deduce the actual cost of a single pie from this data? On the lower end of the scale it can be only 5 cents – in which case they make a huge profit on the first one, and sell the second one at cost. On the higher end it could be 50 cents, earning them a large margin on single pie sales but none on doubles. If many customers buy singles, they strike gold. However, it’s almost totally irrational to buy only one when the second one is only 5 cents more, so let’s assume that almost all customers buy two. So why does McDonald’s part with their precious pies in pairs? Probably because this is a good way to move inventory and make good profit. Let’s see how.

There must be enough irrational, diet conscious, or reading-challenged people to guarantee a large percentage of single-pie purchases. Let’s estimate this number at 20%. Even at the high end of the cost curve, at 50 cents, this would guarantee a 9 cent average margin. Assuming a lower cost of, say, 30 cents, the margin soars to 45 cents on average. Pretty nice! If you compound the psychological effect making people buy more because this deal is “too good to pass on”, I bet this store is making loads of money.

The way the sign looks, this is a local initiative and not centrally mandated policy. If the profit margins are indeed so high, they should seriously consider offering this deal chain-wide.

Science Olympiad is a competition for middle and high school students who get excited by math and science. These are the geeks and hackers of our future; the kids who are good at math and are not ashamed of it. Last Saturday I attended the Bay Area competition, where 500 or so kids competed in events like Science Crime Busters, Ornithology, and Mousetrap Vehicle. Plenty of excitement and love for math and science seen in broad daylight on a weekend; not a common sight.

The picture above is from the closing ceremony. What do we see here? the future of Silicon Valley. Look closely – who do you see in the picture? Happy kids and families from Asia, mainly China and India. This is a self selecting group of people who demonstrate their love for science and math through their deeds, not their words or good intentions. And where are the Caucasians and other ethnicities hiding? They aren’t hiding, they simply didn’t bother to show up. An event like this would interrupt their busy Saturday schedules, and besides, it’s so un-cool. The entire crowd had maybe 10 non Asians.

Why does it matter? It doesn’t, really, but isn’t it amazing that they amounted to about 2% of the crowd, an order of magnitude less than their makeup in the Bay Area population?

I risk sounding racist here, but nothing is farther from the truth. I’m writing this out of sheer admiration to the Asian parents who encourage their kids to participate in the Science Olympiad. Largely an immigrant generation, they made it to the US by virtue of their education, not through a birthright. These brave people arguably understand the value of education far better than the “natives”. Being enterprising newcomers, they leverage the excellent schools and the volunteer workforce to better their children’s future.

I’ve seen the future of Silicon Valley, and I’m happy to report that it’s multicultural, passionate, and hard working. I’m so glad that at least one group of people cares enough about science and math, as this is the greatest hope for this area and indeed the entire country.