Today we have Simon Siu, founder of Hong Kong taxi app Flytaxi who has years’ experience in leading mobile projects. Simon is a passionate entrepreneur in solving daily life problems. Recently he’s trying to solve this daily problem of calling a taxi in Hong Kong.
He is in charge of leading development team, negotiating deals with drivers and rolling out promotional campaign for customers. According to Simon, up to now 1,500+ HK taxi drivers have downloaded flytaxi driver apps.
Last month I happened to meet two people who have different problems in using their iPhones. This is not the first time that people have asked me about iPhone’s hidden features though, it did make me think about what is behind this and what I can do about it.
The problems they reported were both related to the concept of affordance in product design. According to Donald Norman, the author of the book The Design of Everyday Things, affordance “refers to the perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used.”
For instance, a text box affords writing and a button affords clicking on a web form. You don’t need to provide instructions like “please fill in…” or “please click…”, and people will know what it’s about. This is how affordance can be illustrated in everyday life. In this article, I would love to share some problems my friends had met in their daily use of the iPhone and my thoughts on the application of affordance in design.
Where there is need, there is a way.
More and more co-working spaces are coming to rescue the ever-growing Hong Kong startup community. Last week a brand new co-working space just opened in San Po Kong, Kowloon East.
It’s called The Loft, occupying a sprawling 8,000 square feet office space that provides relaxed atmosphere for peoples in creative industrials.
