PIXEL MAVERICK

I got an email yesterday that made me get choked up a little bit, and go “WOW!” in awe too.  The near tear was from fatherly love for my awesome son, and the wow moment was because what my 5 yr old son had done made me realize that the iPhone is by far the most user friendly device in the evolution of technology and it is singlehandedly changing how people will expect to use tech in their lives.

To set the backstory on this little event.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been spending a lot of time away from my family due to a client engagement I have through my work at The Martin Agency.  Thankfully I have a wonderful wife who is being extremely understanding …and somehow managing to stay sane while taking care of our energetic son as well as my crazy bad dog that I am pretty sure is mentally challenged.

So, I guess my son was doing his normal daily routine (…sticking to a strict eating regiment of cheese, frozen waffles, and an occassional nugget, daily workouts involving lightsaber battles with invisible bad guys, and turning on his “cute” whenever mom takes him to Target to ensure he leaves with a toy...) and it dawned on him that I had not been around in a couple days and he wanted to send me a note.

So, what did he do when he realized this and wanted to do something about it?  He did not ask mom for paper and crayons to scrawl out a “Lov Yeww Dadee” crayola note, and he did not ask if he could call dad.

He just by himself went and dug mom’s iPhone out of her purse, scrolled through the GAZILLION apps she has on it and located the one he wanted (a voice recording app), launched the app, successfully recorded what he wanted to say, saved the recording.  The only thing he could not do in this entire process was spell my name so he could email it to me himself.  His handywork is below – take a listen.

Press Play to Listen

The whole message is priceless and melts this proud dad’s heart, but the part I found especially ironic and humerous was how he ended the audio clip to me …with instructions to a mailmain to take this to Seattle.  Awesome.  So in his 5 yr old head even though he had just solo traversed some fairly complex technology on the most innovative device in recent technical history, he logically assumed that if he wanted to send something to daddy he should give it to a mailman.  The irony of email, cell phones, iPhones being the death of snail mail meant nothing to him, but I could not help but laugh at that a little.

I love being a dad.

I just watched the video review of the new iPhone app for Pizza Hut, and am so happy for the team at imc2 and Pizza Hut for such a great looking app after what I am sure has been a long process of creative, reviews, explaining the importance of iPhone specific UX design to a room of “huh?” faces, development, breakthroughs, delays, and late-game-twists.

As a former member of this team, I can say with 100% honesty that this app looks nothing like what we were originally brainstorming …and thank god for that because this is TONS better than we were thinking at that time.  I personally had nothing to do with this app, but as a former team leader for the imc2 PH team I am definitely proud of them and hope they get the credit they deserve for working their asses off while still managing to be brilliant.

Great work PH and imc2 Team!