Novel Interactions

I started my career as a software engineer working on a lot of data visualization projects. After a couple years I switched to working primarily on backend services, and then after doing that for almost 8 years I had the opportunity to start working on frontend projects again. Since switching back I pay more attention to my digital experiences and notices the ones that surprise me or stand out. I wanted to share some of those experiences from 2021.

Apple Pencil + Adobe Fresco + Watercolors

Toward the beginning of last year I started drawing again and came across Fresco on my iPad. While the whole app is impressive the water colors really surprised me. There was something about the first time I chose a water color brush and could see the colors diffusing on the canvas while I was moving my pencil that was really intriguing. Add to that the pressure sensitivity and I continue to find this really interesting.

PokPok

This is a game that my daughter likes to play on iPad from time to time and it really feels like a digital toy box. One of the play areas is a town map where there are tons of interesting interactions. You can move cars, people, animals and have little interactions with the mail, car wash etc. It feels really well made, and like it was made to encourage kids to use their imagination. There are no objectives or dark patterns, just play and it’s great.

GitHub CoPilot

I’ve spent a lot of my career building tools and services for ML projects which has lead me to be critical of many “AI” projects. This year when GitHub CoPilot launched I was able to get into the beta and found out it’s actually a pretty powerful tool. Yes you can find examples of how it can be wrong, and you can find plenty of tales of woe about the bugs it will introduce, but I’ve actually found it to be a really useful coding assistant to the point that I miss it (but can still do my work) when I don’t have it. While it does make some useful code recommendations it also does a great job of helping me write the docs which is worth a lot to me and future team members.

GarageBand on iPhone

I remember getting my first MacBook (white clam shell) and spending a lot of time playing with GarageBand. I was blown away that this was built in for free and could do so much coming from Windows and headless Linux. I had a lot of fun with it, but then slowly I was doing less with music and hadn’t touched GarageBand in years. This year I took a musicianship course with UC Berkeley (through Coursera) which required ear training throughout the week. I used a lot of tools for this, but one that I found to be really fun and interesting was GarageBand on iPhone. After installing it from the AppStore I was able to load up a keyboard that let me practice intervals with some nice sounding samples. From there I went on to explore the various digital instruments and track options. It’s pretty wild just how much is available for creating and interacting with tracks on my phone.

XCloud

Does anybody else remember MSN Zone? I do, and I also remember getting kicked off the dial up connection halfway through a match of Star Wars Battlegrounds because somebody would call the house. Fast forward 20 years and I was able to stream games on my iPad while Rachael and I were in Chicago. Game streaming has been a thing for a while but I really was amazed with the overall experience of the XCloud app. Logging in on the go and loading up Halo Wars 2 in HD with no issues for a couple matches was awesome. Add on being able to see a bit of what was going on with Redux when I did the same thing on my desktop browser and I continue to find XCloud to be really neat.

Spatial Audio

We switched to Apple Music from Spotify last year when they announced the addition of Dolby Atmos/Spatial audio. I remember listening to Hybrid Theory (Linkin Park) first and was blown away. This was an album I had listened to on repeat for years, first with my Sony Walkman disc player and then my RCA MP3 player after that. I felt like I was hearing sounds on tracks for the first time and I continue to go back and check it out week after week. Now I search around for albums I had heard in the past to see what new sounds I might hear while also enjoying what people are doing with spatial audio in games and other mediums.

Listen to Jonathan x Friends - Best of Dolby Atmos + Spatial Audio by Jonathan & Friends on Apple Music. So last year had quite a few new and interesting digital experiences. Hopefully this year has just as many for me to share.