RMA-Silicon Trip, Day 1. Stanford, usability and news from the Apple Store
Our journey deep into Silicon Valley has begun! Arriving in Palo Alto, settling in the hotel and enjoying the palm trees and squirrels on the streets, we went to Stanford University.
So what do we know about Stanford? Not only the founding fathers of IT corporations Google, Yahoo !, Cisco, HP, but also politicians such as Alexander Kerensky (yes, the same one!), President Herbert Hoover and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice studied here.
It originated IT, in the form in which it is now. It was Stanford Industrial Park in the 1950s that gave impetus to the development of high-tech industries and high-tech companies in the Valley. Here are lectures on ALL "stars" of business - from Bill Gates to Guy Kawasaki. Stanford serves as the main base for young recruitment by companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Twitter.
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Stanford we saw bright and joyful. This is what the real American university has always been like - beautiful buildings, spacious audiences, joyful and at the same time proud students.
Stanford audiences are very different from the classical university audiences.
Even small coffee shops are proud of their Twitter channel!
We could not come empty-handed:
The Church of Stanford is common to all Christian denominations. Twice, as a result of strong earthquakes, it was almost completely destroyed. However, Stanford has many sponsors and friends who help to quickly solve such troubles, restoring the status quo.
There are more than 20 libraries on the territory of Stanford. The one on the photo is the main one. Despite the Saturday morning of the summer season, there were students in the library.
By the way, the cost of education at Stanford is $ 45k per year. For comparison, in the domestic Skolkovo education year will cost about $ 60k.
In general, a feature of Stanford is that the emphasis in education is not only on technology, but also on the business component, as well as creativity. This is the way of Silicon Valley - not to stamp typical solutions, but to introduce real innovations, build new businesses, implement crazy projects, say "no" to traditional management.
Forest Glick (Forest Glick), director of technology and design training, talked a lot about how Stanford brings up a startup spirit. One of the examples he cites is the work of the teacher Tina Selig.
So, during practice, Tina handed out two teams in an envelope with money, putting, at the same time, a prerequisite: after opening the envelope, within two hours to determine how to invest this money and make a profit. Opening the envelope, the students found there $ 5. Time has gone.
“If you failed with your first startup, that's fine. Now you know what you don’t need to do, you know the strengths and weaknesses of the idea, you got experience and, as a result, you can create a really strong business. ” This is the motto of the Valley and this is the approach that underlies the majority of successful startups.
Jeff Johnson, head of UI Wizards, as well as the author of books on usability and interface design, talked about how the features of the human brain affect the perception of interfaces. And how to take these features into account in order to design the perfect UI.
Here are the main dogmas that determine the characteristics of human perception:
- human color vision is limited;
- human peripheral vision is limited;
- a person cannot hold attention on one thing for a long time;
- human memory is imperfect;
- people tend to see what they want to see;
- human vision is looking for structure in various objects;
- people tend to focus on their tasks, and not on the tools to achieve them.
Jeff explained in detail how it is necessary to take these aspects into account when designing user interfaces, giving examples of how interface upgrades for perceptions increase sales, increase the number of registrations, and shorten the user's path from entering to performing a target action.
In general, summarizing the impressions of Stanford, I would like to say that the atmosphere of this place strongly motivates to study and infects with the “spirit of a startup”. All conditions have been created for development here: laboratories, some of the best teachers in the world, opportunities for networking with employers and investors.
PS The Apple Store in Palo Alto is traditionally beautiful and simple. Of course, it’s not as huge and transparent as the store on 5th Avenue in New York, but all the other Apple features are available: a large assortment of technology, high-quality interior design, friendly staff and clever technical support in Genius Bar.
iPhone 4 is very popular (which is not surprising) and, as a result, it is not available for sale yet, but we managed to do a lot of demo copy. But with the iPad there were no problems, many of our team bought it for themselves.
PPS One of Stanford's teachers delighted in laughter when he learned that in Russia sim cards are cut with scissors to be inserted into an iPad.
So what do we know about Stanford? Not only the founding fathers of IT corporations Google, Yahoo !, Cisco, HP, but also politicians such as Alexander Kerensky (yes, the same one!), President Herbert Hoover and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice studied here.
It originated IT, in the form in which it is now. It was Stanford Industrial Park in the 1950s that gave impetus to the development of high-tech industries and high-tech companies in the Valley. Here are lectures on ALL "stars" of business - from Bill Gates to Guy Kawasaki. Stanford serves as the main base for young recruitment by companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Twitter.
')
Stanford we saw bright and joyful. This is what the real American university has always been like - beautiful buildings, spacious audiences, joyful and at the same time proud students.
Stanford audiences are very different from the classical university audiences.
Even small coffee shops are proud of their Twitter channel!
We could not come empty-handed:
The Church of Stanford is common to all Christian denominations. Twice, as a result of strong earthquakes, it was almost completely destroyed. However, Stanford has many sponsors and friends who help to quickly solve such troubles, restoring the status quo.
There are more than 20 libraries on the territory of Stanford. The one on the photo is the main one. Despite the Saturday morning of the summer season, there were students in the library.
By the way, the cost of education at Stanford is $ 45k per year. For comparison, in the domestic Skolkovo education year will cost about $ 60k.
In general, a feature of Stanford is that the emphasis in education is not only on technology, but also on the business component, as well as creativity. This is the way of Silicon Valley - not to stamp typical solutions, but to introduce real innovations, build new businesses, implement crazy projects, say "no" to traditional management.
Forest Glick (Forest Glick), director of technology and design training, talked a lot about how Stanford brings up a startup spirit. One of the examples he cites is the work of the teacher Tina Selig.
So, during practice, Tina handed out two teams in an envelope with money, putting, at the same time, a prerequisite: after opening the envelope, within two hours to determine how to invest this money and make a profit. Opening the envelope, the students found there $ 5. Time has gone.
“If you failed with your first startup, that's fine. Now you know what you don’t need to do, you know the strengths and weaknesses of the idea, you got experience and, as a result, you can create a really strong business. ” This is the motto of the Valley and this is the approach that underlies the majority of successful startups.
Jeff Johnson, head of UI Wizards, as well as the author of books on usability and interface design, talked about how the features of the human brain affect the perception of interfaces. And how to take these features into account in order to design the perfect UI.
Here are the main dogmas that determine the characteristics of human perception:
- human color vision is limited;
- human peripheral vision is limited;
- a person cannot hold attention on one thing for a long time;
- human memory is imperfect;
- people tend to see what they want to see;
- human vision is looking for structure in various objects;
- people tend to focus on their tasks, and not on the tools to achieve them.
Jeff explained in detail how it is necessary to take these aspects into account when designing user interfaces, giving examples of how interface upgrades for perceptions increase sales, increase the number of registrations, and shorten the user's path from entering to performing a target action.
In general, summarizing the impressions of Stanford, I would like to say that the atmosphere of this place strongly motivates to study and infects with the “spirit of a startup”. All conditions have been created for development here: laboratories, some of the best teachers in the world, opportunities for networking with employers and investors.
PS The Apple Store in Palo Alto is traditionally beautiful and simple. Of course, it’s not as huge and transparent as the store on 5th Avenue in New York, but all the other Apple features are available: a large assortment of technology, high-quality interior design, friendly staff and clever technical support in Genius Bar.
iPhone 4 is very popular (which is not surprising) and, as a result, it is not available for sale yet, but we managed to do a lot of demo copy. But with the iPad there were no problems, many of our team bought it for themselves.
PPS One of Stanford's teachers delighted in laughter when he learned that in Russia sim cards are cut with scissors to be inserted into an iPad.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/101883/
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