I’m looking forward to them. I’ll discuss the ideas and techniques in my book in a little more detail with some new examples and tips.

But it’s the creativity and curiosity of the people who take part in my presentations that I love the most. So there’ll be a chance to talk to people all over the world about their questions, ideas and experiences. (So if there’s anything you’re busting to find out about let me know.)

I’ll keep you posted as I put the webinars together. Meantime, here’s a photo of that awesome microphone:

Sometimes dressing up software in this way is useful – it makes it approachable, fun or easier to understand. But in this instance it clashes badly with the rest of OS-X which takes a minimalist approach. The leather-effect is distracting and out of place.

Fortunately, fixing this is fairly simple – just a matter of changing a few graphics files hidden inside your Mac.

What might go wrong

First, a word of warning. Alongside the graphics files you will have access to files that can have a profound effect on iCal. If you follow the instructions you should be fine. But if you accidentally move, rename or delete those files, iCal might stop working properly or you might lose data from your calendar. If you’re the kind of person who accidentally deletes files, don’t try this.

I’m not providing any technical support around this hack. If you choose to try it, it’s entirely your responsibility if you lose any data, waste time, need to re-install iCal or purchase any software or services to fix things.

How to get rid of the leather theme in iCal

You’ll need an administrator password. For most people this is the password they use to log on to their Mac, but if someone else administers your Mac (meaning you’re not allowed to install software and so on) then you’ll have to ask them for help.

1. Make sure iCal is closed and that you have a backup of iCal.
   You can do that by creating an empty folder on your desktop, selecting iCal and dragging it into the folder whilst holding the ALT key. If you do this, you’ll see a little plus sign in a green bubble when you drag it. Make sure you do it this way, otherwise you won’t copy the iCal properly, you’ll just get an alias. 
2. In your Applications folder, click on your original copy of iCal while holding the CTRL key so you get a pop-up menu and choose ‘Show package contents’.
   This lets you see ‘inside’ iCal and look at some of the files it’s built from.
    
3. Open the folder ‘Contents’ and then within that, open the folder ‘Resources’.
   Inside, you’ll find the icons and background images which are used to draw iCal on your computer’s screen. 
4. Download ical_lion_silver.zip, open it up in your Finder and Select All.
   These are plain grey versions of the background and buttons you will use to replace those that Apple shipped with Lion. 
5. Drag the files into the iCal: Contents: Resources folder.
   You will likely have to authenticate this action (i.e. enter your password). You’ll be asked whether you want to ‘Keep both files, Stop or Replace’. Click ‘Apply to all’ and ‘Replace’ then enter your password.
   
6. Close the ‘Resources’ and ‘Contents’ folders if they’re still open, start up iCal and hey-presto! you have a plain silver theme.
   

And that’s it. Good luck!

(PS I’m not the first, or the only person to do this – MacNix has done the same thing for Address Book and  Stu has a choice of red or silver themes at his website.)

Cushion remote?

I don’t quite understand Brookstone’s thinking on the cushion remote. I guess it goes something like:

‘People are always losing remote controls behind cushions, so if we make a remote control that is also a cushion, we’ve solved that problem. High five!’

I have to admit that even though I know Brookstone is full of gadgety junk, I can’t walk past their stores without wanting to go in. They speak directly to the seven year old kid inside me who wants to watch a big TV and get served dinner by a remote control butler.

BIG remote

Another way to make something hard to lose is to make it so enormous that you can see it from space. On the other hand, maybe this isn’t a big remote. Maybe the guy holding it is just really tiny.

Big, but it’s Art

Russian designer Art Lebedev is always coming up with designs that bridge the gap between clunky and cool. If you’ve got too many channels on your cable TV, I guess this is for you. There are only 103 buttons, though. If you need more options than that, this remote looks long enough to poke the TV.

Dance, dance, revolution

Creativity often comes from combining two seemingly unrelated ideas to make something completely new. So what happens if you combine a dance mat with the device that’s supposed to stop you from having to get up out of your seat?

In the dark?

I’d like all my remote controls to be backlit – it’s such an obvious improvement. But I can’t help feeling that a stick-on pop-up torch is the worst of both worlds.

Magic!

The magic wand might actually be quite good fun. Wave it in various gestures to change channel, adjust the volume. Just make sure the curtains are drawn!

The orb

The thing about a circular remote control with a touchscreen surface is you’d have trouble in a dark room knowing whether you were holding it the right way round. Fortunately there’s room at the back for one of those pop-up microlights. Problem solved.

The product managers at SanDisk decided that memory sticks were boring and that they needed to make them more interesting. So my memory stick comes with software that ‘adds value’. When you plug it in to a PC it fires up a little app that is supposed to help you organise your music and make it easy to copy files.

That takes time, so the memory stick ends up being slow to use.

It takes learning. So the memory stick takes mental effort to use.

And it means my memory stick has a bunch SanDisk’s files on. They aren’t mine and I can never delete them.

I can sympathise with the product managers at SanDisk. They have a product that is a commodity and they want to differentiate it. They could have looked at the size, the style, the speed or the capacity.

The problem is that they’ve tried to add features and make the product ‘more than just a memory stick’.

A memory stick should be large in capacity, small in size, quick, uncomplicated and personal. Those are the basic values of the product. The pleasure of a memory stick lies in its ability to solve the problem of moving stuff simply.

SanDisk’s new features undermine three of those. Every time I use it I’m reminded that SanDisk makes products that are slow, complicated and that they mix their files in with mine.

When ‘value add’ undermines the basic values of the product – even just a little bit – then it damages the product.

More features and extra capability can mean less value.

Early on, I sorted through my library looking for inspiration. Often, books about computing try to be approachable by using sub-headings, sidebars, callouts, icons and captions. However, I found many of them were disjointed and ugly. They didn’t feel simple, they felt confusing.

Some books, though, stood out. Looking again at what the authors had done gave me some ideas that I tried to put into practice in the design and writing of Simple and Usable.

One of the first books I reached for was Harry Beckwith’s Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing. The book is broken into short chapters of around 300 words. Each explains just one idea. As you read it, you find yourself pausing to think: how could I use that? It’s a practical, inspirational book.

I wanted to give people the same experience – a book they could read in one go or in bite size chunks that they could apply immediately.

So I decided to write the book as a series of single-page ‘chapters’. This turned out to be a tough discipline – but it forced me to cut the waffle and focus on what was important.

Whenever I flick through Bob Gill’s Forget All the Rules You Ever Learned About Graphic Design: Including the Ones in this Book I find myself sitting down and reading it from cover to cover.

It’s out of print now, though you can easily get copies second hand. Each page is an example from Gill’s portfolio of designs, posters and illustrations accompanied by a few words which explain one principle of design and how Gill used it to answer his brief.

Gill’s images are striking, surprising, and humorous. Following his lead, I used an image on every page, to bring the ideas to life. Wherever possible I used stories to show how the ideas could be applied.

I love the writing in Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think; but it’s impossible to be original if you’re mimicking someone else and I’m glad that knew better than to try that.

Still, the authors I enjoyed were often the ones who seemed to be speaking, rather than writing. Their books also tended to be easy to read aloud. Roald Dahl is a good example. Whether it’s The B.F.G. or Going Solo, Dahl’s books are seductively easy to read. Each sentence flows naturally to the next. As I was writing, I found that reading my drafts out loud would immediately show me what I needed to cut and simplify.

That sounds straightforward, but it was probably the hardest thing to do. My editor, Margaret Anderson, was patient, helpful and positive throughout what was for me a gruelling process. My first few pages took forever to write. Later, when I looked back at them, they seemed stilted and forced. None of them made it into the final book. Once I’d found my rhythm, though, the pages began to flow more freely and writing became a welcome challenge, rather than a painful chore.

While I was learning to find my voice, I was also working with Mimi Heft, the designer at New Riders on turning my ideas about structure into a design. Here are some early concepts I sent through to her:

At first glance they are close to the final format of the book. But each iteration simplified the layout and made it stronger. My clichéd font suggestion of Helvetica was gently edged out by Mimi in favour of Whitney by Hoefler & Frere-Jones, which is modern, simple and pleasant to read.

Something that troubled me was which side to put the text. My instinct was to put it on the right. On the screen the text looked better on that side. Fortunately, a couple of people, including Jason Cranford Teague, author of Speaking In Styles, warned against this and I took their advice. It was only when the printed copies arrived that I saw how right they’d been.

Holding it in my hands, I’m delighted with the outcome of all that hard work. What counts is the feedback I’ve been getting from the first people to read it in its final form – and they’ve been saying that it lives up to my original aspirations of being simple, practical and inspirational.

Have you ever been in a meeting where someone was talking about designing for a naive, foolish user? Chances are they began with the words: ‘My mom always…’

I’ve often wished I could meet those moms and see (a) what they really do and (b) how they feel about being talked about like that.

If you feel the same way, then vote for my SXSW presentation ‘Simple and Usable? The mom test’ where I’ll be interviewing real moms and (hopefully) blowing open a few myths about what designing for ‘my mom’ means.

I’m planning on talking to the moms of some well-known interactive designers. This could be your chance to make them cringe.

Do you want to see another panel on social media? Or do you want to make your mom proud?

As usual competition is tight – your vote counts!

Vote now: Simple and Usable? The mom test.

It’s full of useful stories describing how people have created simple designs – from set top boxes to websites. In the coming weeks, I’ll share some of those stories on this website as well as a few good ones that didn’t quite make it into the book.

You can get a flavour of the content from this Slideshare presentation: