Hung Truong: The Blog!

U of M 2010 Mobile Apps Competition – FTW!

Continuing in my tradition of winning contests that I entered with very little expectation of actually winning, I got an email a week or two back about the University of Michigan 2010 Mobile Apps Competition that I entered in November. The competition is open to students, faculty and staff at the university. Since I’m working on a part time basis at the university, I figured I would enter a few of my apps. I chose Checkmate and ♥s Threadless, and made some awkward demo videos of each.

Checkmate ended up winning third place out of many many competitive entries (leaders and the best!), so I’m super happy about that. Here’s a story in the University Record about it. The HiJack project that’s been getting a lot of press was the grand prize winner. Props to those guys!

Winning a prize in this contest was a really nice way to start my year. It’s really encouraging me to continue doing mobile apps and exploring what’s possible.

When Interaction Design Goes Bad: Airport Terminals

I recently flew into the Detroit airport McNamara Terminal, and I made an observation that most of my fellow travelers probably made as well. That particular terminal consists of two long sides that branch out of the middle of the terminal. Our flight taxied to just about the farthest you can possibly be from the exit of the airport. Everyone had to walk across the furthest path (or take the tram) to get to the baggage claim and the airport exit. Why?

I read somewhere that airports used to get a lot of complaints about the baggage claim taking too long to get started. Travelers would have to wait at the carousel thing and probably got really bored. To fix that, the airports would drop people off at further gates, making them walk further. This longer walk caused the “wait time” at the baggage claim to be shorter, and they got less complaints. Perhaps that’s what happened to me and my fellow travelers.

I would argue that the particular “fix” I described probably shouldn’t be used anymore. Since most airlines charge people to check in bags, I think many don’t even need to wait at the baggage claim anymore (myself included). The fix is an interesting psychological trick, but it doesn’t actually buy anyone time, and it just makes me take longer to get out of the airport. I’d argue that this is interaction design gone bad, but I don’t have a way to confirm that this strategy is the reason we were dropped off so far from the exit. The flight was getting in at 10:30 and we passed numerous free gates, so I can’t think of any other good reason (maybe to save the plane some fuel?).

Impressions of Android From an iPhone User/Developer

I just got an Android phone, the HTC Hero, to play around with and perhaps develop on. It was only $55 on Ebay (including shipping) which seemed like a steal to me. I’m currently using it on WiFi without any phone service (the phone has a bad ESN, so that’s probably why the price was so low).

My first impression as an iPhone user is that the interface is really clunky. There just isn’t as much attention paid to detail. For example, there are often measurable delays between pressing a button and seeing something happen. This happens when I try to add a widget to the home screen or open an app that hasn’t been opened into memory. If I press a button and I don’t see something happen immediately, I will assume I missed the button and press it again. This is extremely frustrating since the iPhone animates immediately upon user interaction. The iPhone may not be any faster than my Android phone, but it at least gives the illusion of it (which is probably just as good in terms of usability).

Another thing I noticed is the lack of “back” buttons in the Android apps. Even Twitter lacks the onscreen back button. I assume this is following some kind of standard Android paradigm of favoring physical buttons over onscreen ones. It took me a while to get used to hitting the physical back button (and home, menu and search for that matter) instead of looking for navigation on the screen. While this is a different paradigm, I’m not sure I’m in a position to say it’s worse, better or on par with the iPhone. My suspicion is that the lack of onscreen navigation requires the user to go through more context switches (screen to physical button back to screen) which is disorienting. This is made worse by the fact that there’s seven fuckin’ buttons on my particular phone! I’m sure people adapt and get used to it, but I’m personally used to having just one button that takes me to the home screen (oh, and the volume and lock buttons, but they don’t serve dynamic functions in applications (unless they want to break the App Store terms)).

About the only positive thing I can say about the Android platform is that Google is integrating the shit out of it with their own services. I only have to sign in once with my Google account and I get Voice, Talk, Maps, Search, Goggles, Places, Latitude, Market, Contacts, Gmail, YouTube and probably some other things I’m forgetting. The voice commands are incredibly cool, though I wonder how many times I’d actually use them instead of doing things the normal way. Oh, another positive is that Angry Birds is free on Android, though my device is way too slow to run it.

I’m currently using a ROM with 2.2 on my HTC Hero, so that might account for some performance issues (though I thought it was supposed to be faster). I’m still kind of unimpressed by Android as a whole though, especially in terms of end to end usability. I originally got this device so I could test code on hardware, but I’m not so sure I even want to develop for Android anymore. I’ll probably end up writing some simple code, at least.

Does anyone with a newer Android phone want to debunk or argue with anything I’ve written?

Prediction for 2011: Death of the Phone

It’s January, which means it’s time for really misinformed predictions that will just look silly in hindsight! I’ve been reluctant in the past to use Google Voice because of integration issues, but I think 2011 is the year that I’ll start relying on it more, especially if I end up changing my real phone number (I’ll just give out my Google Voice # and forward calls).

I recently bought an Android phone and was thinking of what I could use it for. With Google Voice and Skype, I could make “calls” and send text messages wherever I have an internet connection. If Google eventually enables making voice calls over wifi (like in Google Chat, and I predict they will some time this year), I think the big phone companies will start hurting, because people will want data-only plans so that they can call with Google.

This “cable cutting” has already happened with landlines (my Mom has a dedicated phone device that does VoIP) and cable tv. So it makes sense that wireless phone providers will soon feel the effects as well. I’d really love to set up the HTC Hero that I ordered as a dedicated “landline” phone that I use with my internet connection at home.

Of course, most people will still probably continue to use the standard bundled minutes + texts (+ data) phone plans, but I feel early adopters are just itching to pay one monthly data bill for all of their infrastructure needs. It’ll only be a matter of time before the mainstream begins to head in that direction. I think that the phone as we know it (how ridiculous is it to pay a phone plan based on the number of minutes in the plan?) will begin to die in 2011, with more emphasis on bandwidth as the infrastructure requirement.

2010: A Hung Truong Year In Review

Looking back at 2010, this year has been one of change and growth for me. I’d like to take a post and look back at what I did this year.

January and February were kinda uneventful. I was pretty nose down trying to become a good PM at Microsoft. Oh, and I was busy making troll posts about how the iPad was gonna suck and I wrote a lot of book and music reviews.

In March, I attended SXSW and moderated a panel that I had submitted the year before on Student Startups. I met many of my friends who I hadn’t seen in a while and met a lot of cool new people. It was from that experience that I decided I needed to stop doing what I was currently doing and change course so that I could do what I was “meant” to do. Also in March, I was rejected from the one PhD program I had applied to. In hindsight, this was probably a good thing. I’m used to rejection anyway!

In April I officially resigned from Microsoft as a PM after only about 7 months (and 5 managers!) on the job. I knew this was a serious decision. In hindsight, I’m glad I did it. Quitting let me focus on other cool stuff that I was meaning to get into, like iPhone (now iOS) development. In the same month I finally released an app to the iTunes App Store, something I had wanted to do for years.

In May, I moved back to Ann Arbor to be near to my GF, which required me to pack all my crap into my Corolla and drive the whole way. I also flew to New Mexico for a wedding and got to hang out with my family. This probably explains why I have no blog posts for May 2010.

In June I mostly basked in the glory of my funemployment and took it easy (read: I marathoned Lost). I also tinkered with my existing iPhone app and enhanced it a bit, building up my Obj-C chops. I interviewed for some jobs here and there to test out the waters, but none ended up being fruitful. The incompetence of HR departments never ceases to amaze me, but I suppose that’s a topic for a different post.

In July I looked for some more opportunities to work with other companies. I didn’t end up teaming up with anyone, but a conversation I had during an “interview” led me to start development on Checkmate, my second app for the iPhone. I spent a fair amount of July developing and testing Checkmate. I also took a cool part-time gig with the coolest boss in history.

August saw the release of Checkmate, which was featured in a story on Mashable! Thanks, Pete Cashmore! While Checkmate wasn’t (and it still isn’t) the perfect app, I learned a ton from developing it and gained a lot of confidence as well. I also discovered the NPR news story of that time I went on a chocolate factory tour in Seattle!

My September was mostly spent improving Checkmate and learning about how to handle a paid app in the App Store. Doing a paid app is a quite a bit different than a free one. I also spent some time looking for an old printing press and finally scored one on craigslist!

In October, I started working on another app that eventually became ♥s Threadless. This was the biggest undertaking I’ve done so far on iOS, and it also required me to do more complicated work in App Engine than I had done before. I also spent October tracking down supplies for my Letterpress machine, and ended up doing my first prints ever: Giraffe Coasters!

I split my November into days where I’d work on getting better at printmaking (and coming up with stuff like these letterpress business cards) and days where I’d work on the Threadless app. I finally ended up releasing the Threadless app at the end of November. The reception of the app has been great! So far the app has 6 perfect reviews and one 4-star review. That makes me incredibly happy.

This brings us to the current month, December. I started another app engine project that’s not quite ready for public beta yet (though I feel it will be really soon). Because of the app, Threadless was super cool and invited me to their Chicago headquarters. I finally realized one of my lifelong dreams of becoming a Threadless t-shirt model! I’ve also been hanging out in Albuquerque and spoiling my nephew rotten for a few weeks.

And that is my 2010 year in review. One surprising thing is that many times during 2010, I was really down on myself. But looking back, I actually accomplished some neat stuff! I think it boils down to the fact that there’s still a lot of uncertainty in my life, and that’s hard to manage. But I think I’m getting better at managing it every day. In retrospect, 2010 was a great year, maybe even the best (so far).

Looking at 2011, I see a lot of opportunity. I’m going to continue to remind myself that minor setbacks are just that. I’ll push through them and accomplish even more than I did in 2010! My role model for 2011 is this guy:

Hopefully I’ll have some good stuff to report in a year or so!