Actually putting the Fivefingers on is a bit funky; the toes (as you can probably tell) are separated. If your toes are really close together like mine are, you have to get used to spreading them out a bit when you put the shoes on. Once you get the shoes on, there’s a small strap in the back you can use to adjust the fit a bit. If you’ve picked a good fit for your foot size, you shouldn’t need much of an adjustment.

So how do they feel? Surprisingly like…walking barefoot! The bottom is thick enough to protect you from sharp rocks and hot asphalt, but still thin enough for you to feel the surface you’re walking on. Not to quote from the marketing literature here, but I do feel a bit more connected to the surface I’m walking on. With my hiking boots, there’s a half-inch of thick rubber and socks sitting between the bottoms of my feet and the environment. With the Fivefingers, I can feel the grass and the texture of the road. It’s certainly a different experience. I’m going to go for some longer (~3 mile) walks this upcoming weekend to see how they hold up under pressure. Vibram claims that they’re well suited for just about everything except seafaring and mountain climbing (for which there are other models).

If you miss the feeling of not wearing shoes, or would just like to get away from overbearing, padded shoes, give these a try!

The basic premise of the game is pretty simple. Everyone starts at level 1. The object of the game is to reach level 10 before anyone else does. You do this by fighting monsters and playing various cards that allow you to instantly increase your level by one. Each turn, you pull a card off of the “door” deck. If it’s a monster, you get a chance to fight it. To beat a monster, your level needs to be higher than the one listed on its card. But wait! How are you supposed to slay a level 20 Plutonium Dragon when your maximum level (before you win) is 9? Treasure! Various bits of treasure add to your level for the purposes of slaying monsters. An Extremely Impressive Title(tm) and a Flaming Broadsword of Unfairness later, and your level 1 character is effectively level 7. Defeating a monster gets you a level and a number of treasures, drawn from a “treasure” deck.

This brings about an interesting issue. Since you start with no treasure and most things in the game are above level 1, how do you defeat anything? By asking other players for help! This usually won’t come free; someone might offer to help you, only to demand first pick of the loot. Managing your relationships with the other players is the crux of Munchkin; it’s hard to win without other people helping you, but only one person can stand triumphant at the end of the game. Deciding when to help someone and when to hinder them (there are plenty of cards you can use to make monsters stronger or make players weaker) plays a large role in whether you end up winning. Of course, there’s a healthy amount of luck too (as any collectible card game player can tell you). You never know when someone is going to use a Transferal Potion to swipe your game-winning victory over a Potted Plant out from under you (Greg can tell you more about that).

It takes about an hour to finish a game, and if the D&D fantasy theme doesn’t jive with you, there are various other Munchkin sets modeled after science fiction, pirates, and Lovecraft-ian horror (to name a few). If you have a few friends to play with, you’re sure to have an entertaining time!

The Good

1. The proximity sensor is sweet. I’ve never used a phone with a proximity sensor on it before. The gist is that the phone can detect if it’s pressed up against your face. Combined with accelerometer and orientation data, the Pre managed to do some nifty things. Answering a call is as easy as picking up the phone and putting it against your ear. To hang up, just put it down (face up). Want to turn on the speakerphone? Put the unit face down on a table or other hard surface. It’s much easier than trying to find a soft-button on the screen.
2. The IMAP IDLE support for push email works well. I have my Gmail account set to “deliver messages as they arrive.” They show up on the phone at the same time they land in my webmail inbox. This is ever faster than my BlackBerry 8700g, which took at least a few moments to show new emails in its inbox.
3. Universal Search works a lot like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I really like how I can just start typing on a launcher or home screen to search for…well, just about anything. The Pre auto-matches contacts and emails, and allows you to search Google, Twitter, and Wikipedia by default. Some enterprising WebOS developers have figured out how to add new search providers on their rooted phones; I can only hope when the SDK becomes available that someone writes an app to make it easy to add new ones. I’d love a built-in reddit or Amazon search.

The Bad

1. Notifications stick around forever until you dismiss them. I’ll echo Kevin Tofel of jkOnTheRun on this one. It’s great that the Pre’s notifications are relatively unobtrusive when they come in. But, to use Kevin’s words, the Pre is “…like an elephant, though: It never forgets them until you dismiss them.” Would it be so hard to watch to see if I had checked my Inbox since a New Mail notification came in, and then dismiss it automatically? Why do I have to manually dismiss every alert that comes in?
2. The App Catalog has a depressingly small number of applications. I’ll blame this squarely on the fact that Palm hasn’t released their Mojo SDK to the public yet. Come on guys, the platform is brand-new and you have people itching to start developing for it. Get us the tools we need and we’ll fill up that catalog!
3. Copy and Paste only works in editable fields. More importantly, actually figuring out how to copy and paste is an exercise in futility. I finally figured it out (hold the gesture area and press C, V, or X), only to find that you can only copy stuff out of editable text fields. 99% of the tme, I would like to grab a snippet from an article or some such. As it stands, I can’t do that with the Pre.

Most of my issues can be fixed in software, so I’m confident we’ll see improvements in the near future. In fact, rumor has it that we’re going to see an update shortly…

Things got much better in 3.0 and 3.5, where the old systems were tossed out and rebuilt to be much easier to understand. Every action in the game turned in to a check; one would roll a d20 plus some sort of modifer based on your skills and stats). Keeping track of your abilities was still a pain though. How does one keep track of a power with “X uses per day” when the flow of time in the game world and the real world is so different?

4.0 fixed that problem, although the changes drew outcries from D&D “purists” that claimed the game had been “WoWified” (a derogatory reference to Blizzard Entertainment’s popular World of Warcraft). The game’s focus shifted to streamline things; instead of tracking individual powers, everything was reclassified as “at-will” (infinite uses), “encounter” (once per battle), or “daily” (once in between extended rests). In addition, the list of skills (formerly enormous) was pared down. Things like Spot and Listen (skills that few people took) were combined in to skills like Perception. Not only did this grant one’s character access to a larger range of skills, it made performing skill checks (comparing one’s ability to do something with its difficulty class, a number representing how hard it is to succeed at something) much easier.

So far, I’m enjoying the revised system immensely (as the one running the adventures!). It’s far easier to keep track of player and monster statuses in combat, and I don’t have to spend time running all sorts of confusing calculations just to see if Katt’s arrows hit the goblin in the corner of the room. My players seem to be enjoying it too; the less they have to focus on the “metagame” (keeping track of the game in order to play it), the more energy they can devote to thinking out their actions and role-playing their characters.

If you’ve played Dungeons and Dragons (or any other tabletop RPG), what sorts of experiences have you had between editions?

As the years went by the standalone PDA faded from the public eye, replaced by the “smartphone” (the Handspring Treo was one of the first to become extremely popular). Palm as a company also slowly faded from the public eye, its devices hampered by an aging OS platform and dated hardware (they eventually switched to Windows Mobile).

Fast forward to CES 2009: Palm announces a new smartphone running its fabled “Palm OS 2,” now dubbed WebOS. Sporting a slick interface, brand new Texas Instruments processor architecture, and some very cool cloud-based syncing technologies, the buzz generated was (I would say) on par with that on Apple’s iPhone announcements. I was interested enough to switch to Sprint for the phone, and as of this morning I’m holding one in my hands! So far, it’s been nothing short of awesome.

First up, some pictures!

Hardware and Build Quality

The first thing out of my mouth when I opened the box up (nice Apple-esque packaging, Palm!) was “Wow, it’s so tiny!” Compared to my gargantuan HTC Kaiser, the Pre is slim and svelte. I seem to remember reading that a stone worn smooth by a river was the inspiration for the design; the actual handset isn’t too far off. It looks an awful lot like a pebble,  fits really well in your hand, and feels just right in the weight department. The build quality is excellent (for an all-plastic body), although you’ll likely find the iPhone (being made of metal and glass) a bit sturdier. As far as external controls go, on the left side you’ve got a volume rocker switch. On the front, a chrome center button and the keyboard (which I’ll get to in a moment). I only have a few complaints with the industrial design:

• The sliding mechanism that covers the keyboard is tough to open. Because I’m pushing the top of the unit up but grasping the edge in one hand, I’m fighting myself to work the slider.
• There’s an exposed bottom edge sharp enough to cut cheese (thanks Gizmodo). Depending on how you hold the Pre while you type, this may be a non-issue.
• Guys, could you have made it any more difficult to remove the MicroUSB cover on the right side of the phone?

“But what about the keyboard?” you ask? The Pre’s keyboard has the tiniest keys I have ever used on a smartphone (I’m told Centro and BlackBerry Curve users have similarly sized keys). I’m used to the much larger keys on handsets like the Sidekick and the BlackBerry Bold, so I wasn’t sure how much I was going to like typing on the Pre. I work a bit more slowly, but I’ve noticed I make fewer mistakes. The actual keys are hard, but they have some sort of gummy gel-like coat on top that helps your fingers “stick” to them. All in all, it’s not the best, but it’s workable.

The camera is a 3.2 megapixel, LED flash, no autofocus job. It takes okay photos, as you can see in this shot of a flower vase on our kitchen table:

Interface and UI

Clean and vibrant, the WebOS UI revolves around a concept Palm is calling “Cards.” WebOS supports actual, honest-to-goodness multitasking, so when ever you press the chrome button on the front, you get a screen that shows each running application in a small rectangle (a live preview, by the way). Flicking back and froth switches between cards, tapping one pulls it to the forefront (so you can work in it), and flicking one up and off the screen closes the application. It’s actually kind of fun to use. Palm needs to do some work in the memory management department though. I got a nasty error message when I had six apps open and tried to launch another.

The actual “interface” portion will be intimately familiar to anyone who has ever used an iPhone or a Palm OS device. You’ll feel right at home with fat, finger-friendly icons and a very iPhone-ish set of UI controls.

The other half of WebOS revolves around gestures. You might have noticed, but there are no “Back” buttons in WebOS applications; to go back a level in an application’s hierarchy, you drag your finger from right to left across a small black strip under the display. Similarly-themed gestures (that work a lot like the iPhone’s) are available for zooming (pinch) and scanning through items (quick flicks up, down, left, or right). Flicking from bottom to top pulls up the Launcher, which is used to open applications. A small qualm here: there’s a “quick launch” bar the opens up with the Card interface (the one you use to switch between apps), but it only holds 4 items. I wouldn’t mind a fifth!

As far as responsiveness goes, the Pre isn’t lightning fast, but it won’t have you tapping your foot waiting for applications to load. It does a good job of showing you little progress indicators when it’s busy trying to perform a task. Because the processor the Pre is using is brand-new, I’m going to predict that future software updates will speed things up a bit. In any case, transitions are smooth and there’s little lag to be felt.

Synergy, Contacts, and Mail

Synergy is Palm’s contact synchronization and linking technology. The basic gist is that you can pull in contacts from multiple sources (Gmail, Facebook, and Exchange right now), and the Pre will combine information from all of those sources in to one contact. For example, I have my Gmail and Facebook contacts synced to my Pre right now. It’s pulling all of the pictures and address data from Facebook, but the email addresses and telephone numbers from Gmail. Needless to say, it works extremely well (and has the added benefit of always keeping your contact information up to date)! My only complaint is that the process is all-inclusive; you can’t pick who gets synced over from a source you add. It brings over everyone. Yes, Facebook users, that means every person you’ve ever friended. GMail users, this includes everyone in your contact list, not just the “My Contacts” section. Do a little manual cleanup beforehand and you’ll thank yourself later.

What I like best about the Contacts application is its integration with the rest of the system. Tap someone’s address and see it mapped out on Google Maps. Tap a number, it dials. Tap an email address, it fires up the Mail application. It’s small touches like this that make the Pre a joy to use.

Messaging and Mail have some cool features; the Pre will aggregate conversations you’ve had with a particular person, pulling in SMS, email, MMS, chat, and phone calls in to a sort of “all in one” view. This makes it easy to view correspondence you’ve had with someone. Mail will set up separate folders for your Gmail labels (and supports both labeling and starring of messages). Other than that, it’s fairly basic.

Browsing and Other Preloaded Applications

The Pre’s browser is based on Webkit (just like Safari on the iPhone), and runs at a good clip. In my brief tests, it loaded pages a full 2-3 seconds faster over Wifi than my iPod touch. The browser supports the same zooming and panning features that the iPhone does, and the word on the street is that Flash support is coming as well. Besides the Browser and PIM apps, the Pre comes loaded with a bunch of other nifty applications:

• Photos (seemed to handle the standard gauntlet of PNG, JPG, GIF, and BMPs I threw at it)
• Music (which syncs with iTunes, anything that’s not DRMed at least)
• Videos (haven’t had a chance to check this out yet)
• A cool Memos application that automatically titles your notes for you
• Google Maps (a solid, speedy implementation that’s faster than the iPhone’s at rendering map tiles)
• A Calculator (morphs into Scientific version when viewed in landscape)
• Office 2007 and PDF viewing support
• Sprint Navigation (which I haven’t tried yet)

There’s an application store as well, but it’s pretty sparse at the moment. Of the available applications, Tweed (a Twitter client), Pandora (of internet radio fame), and Fandango (for movies) are the most solid of the bunch.

Touchstone Charger

While not a part of the standard Pre package, I thought it would be interesting to touch on their inductive charger, the Touchstone. A combination of a replacement back cover for the phone and something that vaguely resembles a hockey puck, the Touchstone allows you to charge the Pre wirelessly. A few magnets help properly align the phone on the puck, and there’s a mid-tack restickable adhesive on Touchstone’s bottom that allows you to position it virtually anywhere. The back of the Pre gets a bit warm charging this way, and the Touchstone charges the phone more slowly than a straight cable. However, it’s all worth it to not have to pry open the ridiculously-difficult-to-open MicroUSB port door on the side of the phone.

I really hope inductive charging takes off; being able to just toss your devices on a charging pad would be nothing short of incredible!

Conclusions
I’ll echo what some other reviewers have said: the Pre is a superb effort by Palm. Especially for a generation one product, I think this is one of the best smartphones I have ever used. Nothing has come close in terms of ease of use (the Cards metaphor works really well in this context), and the Synergy technology that aggregates your contact information (with some minor caveats) works really well. If you’re not too keen on joining Sprint, Verizon and AT&T should have the Pre sometime next year.

If anyone has questions, please leave them in the comments! I’ll put together a Q&A post!

As you might image, these quick development cycles don’t leave a ton of time for user experience research. Luckily, we have users from most of our clients who are happy to take a look at mockups and participate in interviews. They’re the experts!

I’ve found two services from Optimal Workshop (the makers of the incredibly useful card sorting webapp OptimalSort) that have proven invaluable in collecting “quick and dirty” feedback from our users. The first is ChalkMark, which operates on an interesting premise: provide a task and a screenshot, then ask people to click on the first UI element that they think will help them complete the task. It’s fantastic for figuring out how effective a particular UI layout for completing a task, and I use it frequently to check variations on a particular design. Users walk through the tasks, accompanied by scanned-in paper prototypes, and a heatmap is generated based on where people clicked. It’s not a substitute for honest-to-goodness user testing, but it provides useful information all the same.

The other product, called Treejack, is more oriented towards information architecture. You create a site map and a list of tasks, then ask people to navigate to where they would go first to complete the task. It can help you identify where people think certain features belong in our navigation (which also helps you figure out how well you’ve laid everything out). I’ve been using it to test alternative navigation layouts; it’s been invaluable so far.

The only issue here is that these tools are complements to things like field research and usability testing, not substitutes. “Fitting” UX/usability research in to Agile product development methodologies continues to be a topic of debate. We have to challenge ourselves to find ways to fit them together!

Commencement’s in two weeks; I can’t wait!

If you need a simple, free (for non-commercial use) VPN, Hamachi works really well!

Car manufacturers: please tell me how you expect me to determine where my volume, airflow, temperature, and tuner knobs are supposed to be “pointing” on their scales when I am driving. As it stands, I have to turn one all the way in one direction until I hit the end of a “scale” in order to get them pointed with any certainty. Also, it’s next to impossible to differentiate one knob from the other, since they all feel identical. My ten-years-older-than-your-car Volvo S70 did a much better job. Observe:

The little slider under the far-left knob controls airflow, with all the way to the left being “off” and all the way to the right being “full blast.” The two knobs on either side control temperature; pointing down for cold and pointing up for hot. The knob in the middle is the ambiguous one (at least while you’re driving and not looking at it); it controls various vent open/vent closed configurations. I’m not saying the Volvo’s dash is perfect, but it’s a lot better than my decade-newer automobile. I would have figured that the car manufacturers would have moved a few steps forward in the dash design department…

How is your car’s dashboard? Usable while driving, or do you have to look at it?

The bandwidth requirements aren’t bad; you need a 1.5 megabit connection for 480i resolution (~640×480), and a 5 megabit connection to do 720p (~1280×720). The company also plans to release a set top box with HDMI, Ethernet, a few USB ports, and optical audio so that you can play titles on your television. The content model looks to be subscription-based (everyone seems to love annually recurring revenue these days), but few details are avaialble other than to expect the service in “Q4 2009.” If this works, the console as we know it is effectively obsolete, as is spending large amounts of money to keep a gaming PC up-to-date. We’ll see how it all plays out!