Distilled

Chris Ross returns to the show to discuss skill building and muscle memory in VR. We asked ourselves if training in VR translates to tangible skill in the real world. The answers may surprise you!

Traveling to Japan changed his entire world view. This is a story of compassion, vulnerability, and rebirth. Follow along as Aubrey rediscovers his core passion while adventuring down alleys of neon mystery in Tokyo.

Junior software engineer Mimi Chenyao joins the show to share her story of uprooting her life to move across the country to work at a startup.

Emily Dutch, author and world traveler, joins the show to share stories about her master plan, ten years in the making. She stopped by our San Francisco studio on her way to Bali and beyond, on her quest to embrace synchronicity in all forms. A one-way ticket to the rest of your life!

Chris Ross returns to the show for a second round of verbal sparring, from muay thai training to shadowboxing. With BoxVR and Beat Saber and a heathy dose of mindfulness, you can see dramatic improvements in your skill. These games offer a compelling example of coaching techniques applied to a training routine in virtual reality. The real world results speak for themselves.

Chris Ross joins the show to talk about the intersection of exercise with virtual reality computing. BeatSaber is quickly becoming the best game in the Oculus Rift marketplace, since its release in early May 2018. We ask and answer the question: why buy VR hardware instead of a gym membership?

This is a story about the complexities of synchronizing time across connected devices, the perils of getting it wrong, and some theories on why system clocks suddenly change sometimes.

Aubrey tells a tale of building the CityHiker app and how adoption of Reactive Extensions helped accelerate development by focusing on user experience.

After almost 2yrs apart, Aubrey and Justin warm up for the show over the perfect coffee for a Saturday morning in San Francisco: extra boozy.

Justin Davis returns to the show after 2yrs to chat about his experience as a conductor on the Florida Startup Bus. A new flock of entrepreneurs pitch new ideas focused on the restaurant industry. Augmented/virtual reality training, AI-enabled hiring systems, and much more.

This week, special guest and user experience researcher, Melissa Hui, joins the show to talk about the ROI of design and how creativity and ideation play an increasing role in business.

Will the tools of tomorrow look anything like the tools of the past? Will developers and designers continue to build distinctly different native apps for various platforms? Or will we see a resurgence of browser-based mobile apps? What does the future hold for interactivity? In this episode, we ponder these questions.

Take apart the Apple Watch experience, and drill down to its core essence. You'll find more questions than answers. How do people feel about it? How will it change our world? Too soon to say.

Warming up for a great conversation about Apple Watch and wrist-based interactivity, Aubrey surprises Charles with an over-the-top Batman voice.

After several weeks of delays, we're back with a discussion of Amazon Dash, the latest on-demand service from your favorite online retailer. Ripe with fresh commentary about the evolution of the shopping cart in the 21st century, this episode is sure to deliver great value and more than a few laughs.

In this technical episode, we dig into the tools of the trade for UI designers. Whether you're on a distributed team spread across the globe or a small focused team in the same office, the tools you use fundamentally affect the process and the results. Choose wisely.

With the release of the Raspberry Pi 2.0 this week, it has never been easier to get into wearable technology. In this episode, we discuss the vast options available to the modern hobbyist.

In a world of food-delivering drones, with occasional news of yet another drone-based missile strike in a war zone, can we find middle ground for recreational personal ownership? Is commercial regulation plausible? Or is the risk of collateral damage too great to achieve balance through legislation? And what exactly do you call a group of drones, anyway?

Warming up for recording the Game of Drones episode.

In this inaugural event by Experience Design Guild, we invite members from our community to engage in heated philosophical debate. The goal is to represent skeuomorphism or flat design as a preferred solution in a set of scenarios. Each scenario offers a unique perspective on this age-old battle. Special thanks to Anki for hosting and providing great food and beer!

In this episode, we introduce our new co-host, Charles Gallant, and dive head first into a recap of CES 2015. We touch on some key aspects of the cutting edge of 1985 technology (Sony Walkman) and the latest 3D printing technology.

In this technical deep dive, we discuss the finer points of API versioning. Several options are presented, along with analysis of what technique might be best in each of a variety of circumstances. We couldn't fit it all into one episode, so we split it into two parts.

In this technical deep dive, we discuss the finer points of API versioning. Several options are presented, along with analysis of what technique might be best in each of a variety of circumstances. We couldn't fit it all into one episode, so we split it into two parts.

Use computers and cameras to track your fitness progress. Machines will one day be able to tell you how effectively your weight loss plan is going, simply by looking at you with a stereo camera. Here, we entertain some of the possible ways this might work.

This week, we recap the whirlwind weekend experience that is Startup Weekend. Twice a year, enthusiastic entrepreneurs gather to pitch their ideas, assemble into teams, and build a product, all in a weekend. We share some stories, from gory to glorious, and everywhere in between.

Detecting and diagnosing defective behavior in a distributed system with software components running in the cloud and on users' devices is challenging. In this episode, we talk about some of the pitfalls and best practices of mobile app diagnostics.

Michael Lynch, founder of TruckSpotting, joins the show to talk about the high tech product development on the bleeding edge of food truck management and promotion. Today, you can find and follow trucks in your area. Soon, you'll be able to order from your mobile device.

Gregg Hilferding joins the show to talk about an excellent summer fun event, called World Water Fight, happening August 9th 2014. Get together in the park and fight your friends with water guns. And because we're geeks, we're taking it a step farther and considering concepts for modifying drones to be self-targeting water bombers. Check out http://worldwaterfight.com for more info.

Tracy Ingram joins the show to talk about wearable technology and personal medical data in the cloud. Tracy and his team have advanced to the second round of the Xprize challenge to build handheld medical scanning technology, much like Star Trek tricorders.

Pre-show antics with Tracy Ingram

If you've ever taught a class, you know how hard it is to engage students for more than a few minutes. Online courses have their own challenges. This week, we discuss some of the nuance of explaining to someone else things we know innately.

JJ Roberts of Tampa Bay Innovation Center joins us to tell stories of his startup endeavors, including an insider's view of Y Combinator. What does it take to build a sustainable ecosystem where startup companies of all kinds can thrive? Leadership in a culture of collaboration.

This week, we recap Ignite Tampa 2014, an event where twenty people each share their story in 20 slides, each auto-advancing every 15sec. The goal is to make you think, make you cry, and inspire you to take action to improve your life and the lives of others. Aubrey spoke about vulnerability as a lifestyle choice, not as a position of weakness, but as one of strength through adaptation, openness, and perseverance. Both Aubrey and Justin have spoken at past Ignite events.

Pre-show antics, raw.

As mobile technology dominates the digital landscape, we are now starting to see evidence that application design is taking second place to service design. Interactions are no longer bound to a single isolated experience. Instead, they span multiple platforms, from laptop to mobile to wearable device across time and space.

The wonderful folks from Goose Island Beer Company sat down with us to sample some beer and tell stories. They're in Tampa as part of their Migration Week tour, buying people beer and giving out swag, promoting their excellent beer. Make sure to pick up some Goose Island next time you're shopping for craft beer.

This week, we recap the amazing experience that was Give Day Tampa Bay, a 24hr fund raising event where we raised over one million dollars for local non-profit organizations.

We are joined by special guests Mitch Neff, Saxon Baum, Ned Pope, and Taylor Wallace for a comprehensive recap of OneSpark, a crowdfunding event held in Jacksonville, FL. It was a huge event this year, with nearly 300k attendees. Tampa Bay was represented well, with Justin promoting Drawer (http://getdrawer.com), Saxon and Taylor engaging with users to improve WeVue (http://wevue.com), Mitch representing Startup Bus (http://startupbus.com), and Ned championing Florida Next (http://floridanext.org). What can we learn from this event, and how can we build upon its success? Find out in this lively episode.

After a month hiatus, while Justin traveled to Tel Aviv, we return in this hilarious episode about the uncanny parallels between conversational interactions and the interactions between lovers. The cycles of behavior in how we talk and how we love are strikingly similar. Though seemingly academic in nature, the discussion opens with Justin regaling us with stories of Israeli prostitutes and their business cards.

With the launch of Wit, a natural language toolkit for the internet of things, mobile app developers and interactivity designers are empowered to add voice commands to their product offerings. Soon, you'll be able to leverage all the power of your mobile device without ever touching it. Truly amazing!

Hold onto your hats! In this ghost episode, salvaged from what was left of the recording, Aubrey and Justin discuss the absolute nature of buy-in behavior. Focus your efforts on those who are excited about you and your product. This same thing applies to personal and professional situations. Fair weather friends and casual customers are not worth your time. Build Loyal Relationships.

Every year for the past several years, groups of eager entrepreneurs board buses, making their way to Austin, TX for SXSW. Along the way, they conceive, design, and build companies. When they arrive, all the teams pitch for prizes and glory. Justin recounts his hilarious, excellent, and tragic experience with Startup Bus Southeast this year.

In this technical episode, we discuss techniques for building apps with consistent design and interactivity across multiple platforms. By designing skillfully at the interface level and structuring platform-specific implementations in namespaced folders, we can standardize behavior with minimal code replication.

Justin schools Aubrey on how to balance risk against client satisfaction using fixed price contracts. Weigh the pros and cons of both sides, we come to an objective understanding of why fixed price is the clear winner in most situations.

Sometimes, we build features. Other times, we build products. Occasionally, we build businesses. Anyone who takes on any of these endeavors would be wise to know when a feature is really a product and when a product is really a business. We explore some of the various scenarios you might find yourself in along the way. Hopefully, we help you avoid the pitfalls, too.

Aubrey sits down with Ron Ben-Zeev, CEO of World Housing Solution to discuss their temporary housing product. Using composite materials, modular construction, and a distributed manufacturing strategy, Ron and his team enable disaster response organizations and military to reduce cost of deploying reusable short-term structures to those in need all over the world.

Aubrey walks Justin through the inner workings of OAuth. If you're looking to integrate OAuth into your existing system or want to know how to leverage OAuth for authentication and authorization in your API, this is for you. We also discuss concurrently supporting web and native mobile clients.

Failure is something we face regularly in life. Whether we accept it or not, we are destined to fail on our way to success. In this episode, we embrace the experience and learn how to identify good failures, those that inspire us to grow. We also offer some possible solutions that might have a significant impact on our individual ability to prevent failure using assistive technology.

This week, we discuss the subtleties of the social and personal significance of various social media actions, such as like, favorite, and retweet/share. What seems simple on the surface may be quite a bit more complex.

In this episode, we consider the impact of compassion and empathy on the user experience of a digital interaction. By tailoring your product to account for the personality traits of each individual user, you can deliver a more rich and emotionally compelling experience.

From 3D printing to BitCoin to exciting new mobile/technology products, it's been an amazing year. We make some predictions for 2014, which we hope to be wrong about. Thanks to our listeners for a great year!