Tag Archives: technology

Suggestions for iPhone folder icons

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About the user interface for iPhone folder icons …

With app icons on the iPhone, we have nice big visual cues. With folder icons, they all look the same, and they have one line of very small text at the bottom as the main thing that differentiates them.

Suggestions: It would be great if the text you chose for the folder filled the icon itself. Maybe we could even scale and crop the text, like we scale and crop a wallpaper image, so that just the letters we want fill the icon. And what if we could also choose a color for the icon, or even choose a photo or some clip art for the icon? The iPhone suggests categories when you make a folder, so maybe it could also suggest an image for the icon. Maybe the icon also gets bigger, so a folder icon takes the space of two or four app icons.

How would I describe these suggestions in some proximity thinking terms?

  1. These changes would honor the integrity of how our eyes work. That’s the whole point of icons in the first place. You can distinguish something at a glance when it’s a good icon.
  2. These suggested changes are an example of the ProxThink Core Idea, which is: In a situation, change elements, relationships and the proximity to better relate to each other. The situation is the challenge of telling the folder icons apart. Our eyes, our vision, the iPhone screen, technology and readability-at-a-glance are elements and relationships, among others of course, in the proximity of this situation. The suggestions above change elements and relationships (text in icon, scaling, cropping, color, photos, clip art, icon size) for the icons. These change our user relationships to the icons, and in the process also change the proximity of this situation to the extent that perhaps it’s no longer a situation!

Press Release: How to Create a Sustainable Proximity

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

How to Create a Sustainable Proximity

A short guide called “How to Create a Sustainable Proximity” offers a new approach. People can use it for an area, home, park, neighborhood, community, region, context, environment, business, group, organization, etc. If we create many sustainable proximities, they will start to overlap. People are free to use this guide. It is based on the ProxThink sustainable proximities approach. It allows people to relate to a proximity they care about in a new and more direct way. It leverages technology and networks in a different way by applying a new growth model. “How to Create a Sustainable Proximity” is available at the following link:
http://proxthink.com/blog/2009/12/24/how-to-create-a-sustainable-proximity/

—— (end of release) ——————–

NOTE: Should you have any trouble with the link above, you can also get there by going to the ProxThink.com website (http://proxthink.com). Once there, you’ll see links to “How to Create a Sustainable Proximity” in the upper right, and also in the bottom center of the page.

Leveraging Technology plus Liking What You Do

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(r] proxthink.com

The power of technology is the leverage it provides. It means that a few people can create and/or maintain what many people need.

And, those few people can even like what they do. They can like it, as it engages them.

So let’s try a system where, for some proximities, a few such people use the sustainable proximities approach to coordinate and collaborate, in order to create and/or maintain technology which supports and sustains a proximity.

What would other people do? They would do the same thing, if they want to, for that proximity or other proximities. (Remember, proximities overlap.) And if they don’t want to, they can do other things.

Let’s try it with things that are simple. Then repeat, improve, and try harder things.

Proxri Deal: As you find our relationship rewarding, proxri with the proximity in mind.

Networks offer possibilities for greater variety, vitality and liveliness?

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(r] proxthink.com

Networks and technology can leverage the efforts of a few. This can create a lot of value. I’m not the first to say this, of course.

Wikipedia is created and maintained by a tiny fraction of the people who use it.

In freemium-supported websites, the whole site is supported by a tiny portion of users who pay.

Further, the people who create and maintain Wikipedia like doing it. And, the people who pay on a freemium site see the value of paying. In both cases, networks and technology leverage the efforts of a few, and create much value for other people in the process.

How many more things can we apply this approach to, in the process freeing up more time and resources, and improving the quality of life?

Part of the secret is technology allows people to leverage their time so much. Even among the small number of people contributing to Wikipedia and other group-created efforts, it usually doesn’t take all their time. It’s not like a full-time job.

Maybe networks and technology make, or can make, the notion of specialized work dominating your life less common. And being bored less common.

This is related to another thing about Wikipedia. How many worldwide, free, online encyclopedias do we need? One may be enough.

So what if we didn’t focus on making money so much as creating vibrant contexts, environments and proximities within which to live? Proximities in which the focus could be more on variety, vitality and liveliness? Isn’t that a big part of why people want money anyway? They want to be able to do a variety of different things. Maybe technology and networks offer new ways to create contexts and proximities within which people have that.

What is holding us back? Perhaps we need a new framework to think about this problem, and to structure new approaches. That’s what the ProxThink framework offers, I believe.

Proxri Deal: As you find our relationship rewarding, proxri with the proximity in mind.