August 17, 2010 at 14:31RMA-Silicon Trip, Day 1. Stanford, usability and news from the Apple Store
Our journey deep into Silicon Valley has begun! Arriving at Palo Alto, settling in a hotel and enjoying palm trees and squirrels in the streets, we went to Stanford University.
So what do we know about Stanford? Not only the founding fathers of the IT corporations Google, Yahoo !, Cisco, HP, but also politicians such as Alexander Kerensky (yes, that one!), President Herbert Hoover, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice studied here.
IT was born here, in the form in which it is now. It was the Stanford Industrial Park in the 1950s that gave impetus to the development of high-tech industries and high-tech companies of the Valley. All the "stars" of business are lecturing here - from Bill Gates to Guy Kawasaki. Stanford serves as the main base for recruiting young people from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Twitter.
We saw Stanford bright and joyful. This is how the real American university always seemed - beautiful buildings, spacious classrooms, joyful and, at the same time, proud students.
Stanford audiences are very different from classic university audiences.
Even small coffee shops are proud of their Twitter channel!
We could not come empty-handed:
Stanford Church 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 quickly resolve such troubles, restoring the status quo.
There are more than 20 libraries in Stanford. The one in 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 training at Stanford is $ 45k per year. For comparison, in the domestic Skolkovo year of education 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, director of technology and design training, talked a lot about how startup spirit is brought up at Stanford. One example he cites is the lesson from teacher Tina Selig.
So, during practice, Tina handed out to two teams an envelope with money, setting, 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, students found there $ 5. The 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, gained experience and, as a result, you can create a really strong business. ” This is the motto of the Valley, and it is precisely this approach that underlies most successful startups.
Jeff Johnson, director of UI Wizards, as well as the author of usability and interface development books, talked about how the human brain affects the perception of interfaces. And how to take these features into account to develop the perfect UI.
Here are the main dogmas that determine the characteristics of human perception:
- color vision of a person is limited;
- peripheral vision of a person is limited;
- a person cannot keep his attention on one thing for a long time;
- human memory is imperfect;
- people tend to see what they want to see;
- human vision seeks structure in various objects;
- People tend to focus on their tasks, and not on the tools to achieve them.
Jeff spoke in detail about how it is necessary to take these aspects into account when designing user interfaces, giving examples of how upgrading an interface to perception features increases sales, increases the number of registrations, and shortens the user's path from entering to performing the target action.
In general, summarizing the impressions of Stanford, I want 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: laboratories, some of the best teachers in the world, networking opportunities with employers and investors.
PS The Apple Store in Palo Alto is traditionally beautiful and simple. Of course, it is not as huge and transparent as a store on 5th Avenue in New York, but all the other Apple brand features are available: a large assortment of equipment, high-quality interior design, friendly staff and smart tech support at Genius Bar.
iPhone 4 is very popular (which is not surprising) and, as a result, it is not on sale yet, but we managed to freeze a demo copy. But there were no problems with the iPad, many of our team purchased it for themselves.
PPS One of Stanford's teachers laughed admiringly when he learned that in Russia SIM cards are cut with scissors to insert into the iPad.
So what do we know about Stanford? Not only the founding fathers of the IT corporations Google, Yahoo !, Cisco, HP, but also politicians such as Alexander Kerensky (yes, that one!), President Herbert Hoover, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice studied here.
IT was born here, in the form in which it is now. It was the Stanford Industrial Park in the 1950s that gave impetus to the development of high-tech industries and high-tech companies of the Valley. All the "stars" of business are lecturing here - from Bill Gates to Guy Kawasaki. Stanford serves as the main base for recruiting young people from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Twitter.
We saw Stanford bright and joyful. This is how the real American university always seemed - beautiful buildings, spacious classrooms, joyful and, at the same time, proud students.
Stanford audiences are very different from classic university audiences.
Even small coffee shops are proud of their Twitter channel!
We could not come empty-handed:
Stanford Church 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 quickly resolve such troubles, restoring the status quo.
There are more than 20 libraries in Stanford. The one in 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 training at Stanford is $ 45k per year. For comparison, in the domestic Skolkovo year of education 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, director of technology and design training, talked a lot about how startup spirit is brought up at Stanford. One example he cites is the lesson from teacher Tina Selig.
So, during practice, Tina handed out to two teams an envelope with money, setting, 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, students found there $ 5. The 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, gained experience and, as a result, you can create a really strong business. ” This is the motto of the Valley, and it is precisely this approach that underlies most successful startups.
Jeff Johnson, director of UI Wizards, as well as the author of usability and interface development books, talked about how the human brain affects the perception of interfaces. And how to take these features into account to develop the perfect UI.
Here are the main dogmas that determine the characteristics of human perception:
- color vision of a person is limited;
- peripheral vision of a person is limited;
- a person cannot keep his attention on one thing for a long time;
- human memory is imperfect;
- people tend to see what they want to see;
- human vision seeks structure in various objects;
- People tend to focus on their tasks, and not on the tools to achieve them.
Jeff spoke in detail about how it is necessary to take these aspects into account when designing user interfaces, giving examples of how upgrading an interface to perception features increases sales, increases the number of registrations, and shortens the user's path from entering to performing the target action.
In general, summarizing the impressions of Stanford, I want 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: laboratories, some of the best teachers in the world, networking opportunities with employers and investors.
PS The Apple Store in Palo Alto is traditionally beautiful and simple. Of course, it is not as huge and transparent as a store on 5th Avenue in New York, but all the other Apple brand features are available: a large assortment of equipment, high-quality interior design, friendly staff and smart tech support at Genius Bar.
iPhone 4 is very popular (which is not surprising) and, as a result, it is not on sale yet, but we managed to freeze a demo copy. But there were no problems with the iPad, many of our team purchased it for themselves.
PPS One of Stanford's teachers laughed admiringly when he learned that in Russia SIM cards are cut with scissors to insert into the iPad.