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Here's a history of our activities since Obvious
Design was founded in February 1997. (See also project
history)
2008
2/08 - Philip is continuing his project with Big Tent. Josh is continuing his project with Autodesk.
1/08 - After nearly eleven years, Obvious Design has become Obvious Design, LLC
2007
12/07 - Philip is consulting on product design for Big Tent.
10/07 - Josh is conducting a design R&D project for Autodesk.
9/07 - Continuing work on an upcoming book about product vision.
6/07 - Spot consulted on a customer-facing online banking application with Digital Insight.
4/07 - Revamped StealThisIdea.com, Philip's website of articles about product vision and design.
4/07 - Consulted on the design of Stone Create v14, the great graphics & page layout program that Philip has been using for UI design & spec work for the last four years.
3/07 - Philip gave a talk to product designers and product managers at Yahoo entitled "Designing with Vision".
2/07 - Completed design work for MyCorporation.com in Calabasas, California. MyCorp helps small businesses incorporate or form LLCs more quickly, easily and cheaply than using a lawyer.
2/07 - Obvious Design celebrates its tenth anniversary since being founded in February 1997.
1/07 - ExpensePro enters beta testing. ExpensePro is the product Philip designed from scratch for Intuit in 2006. ExpensePro replaces the shoebox of receipts for ultra-small businesses: it automatically downloads transactions directly from all your banks. All the user must do is mark transactions as Personal or Business, and choose categories for business transactions. Then, at tax time, hand neat, complete reports to your CPA.
2006
5/06 - Starting work on our fifth project for Intuit, MyCorporation.com.
5/06 - Finishing up on the design of a 1.0 product for Intuit's tax division [ ExpensePro.]
1/06 - Began designing a secret, brand new product for Intuit's tax division. [That turned out to be ExpensePro, a product to help micro-businesses automatically track expenses. The capabilities were later blended into Quicken]
2005
11/05 - Launched Steal This Idea, a site of Philip's articles regarding product vision, strategy and interactive product design.
11/05 - QuickBooks 2006 launched, garnering fantastic reviews from C|Net, PC Magazine, About.com, and Amazon reviewers. Philip designed the new flowchart-style home page that elevates the top tasks, customized to the needs of each business. Philip also contributed to the streamlined setup interview.
10/05 - Conducted product vision & design work related to the Yahoo! toolbar.
9/05 - Finished product vision & strategy project with Autodesk relating to Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and civil engineering product lines.
7/05 - Began product strategy project with Autodesk.
7/05 - Completed work on Intuit QuickBooks that began 11/04.
2004
11/04 - Started a new new project
working on QuickBooks for Intuit.
10/04 - Consulted on the information
architecture & design of myownbag.com.
(MyOwnBags are fashionable, high-capacity bags that substitute
disposable grocery bags.)
9/04 - Our work on the Adobe online
store goes live.
5/04 through 10/04 - Did design
work for Intuit's QuickBooks
division (released to market 11/04)
5/04 - Opsware research project
is complete. Delivered presentation to Mark Andreesen and his executive staff.
4/04 - Starting
a new project for Opsware (formerly
Loudcloud).
3/04 -Consulted
on v2 of the Flytxt Direct
(Philip
designed the first version from scratch a year ago.) (Here is a Flash demo of Flytxt Direct.)
1/04 - 3/04 -
Worked on a redesign of the Adobe online
store, focusing on integrating up-sell and cross-sell into the
user experience architecture.
2003
11/03 - Product
strategy work for PalmOne.
10/03 -
More design work with Palm SG, now known as PalmOne. [on
PIM applications that appear in the latest PalmOne PDAs like the Tungsten
T3]
9/03 -
Philip authors a keynote speech for PalmOne
CEO Todd Bradley about
digital convergence for the ix2003
Conference in Singapore.
7/03 - More
follow-up design work for Flytxt [on
Flytxt Direct 1.0]
5-6/03 -
Consulting on product vision with PalmOne (was Palm
SG). [still under NDA]
4/03 - Philip
Haine spends three weeks in London designing a web-based app from
scratch for Flytxt [2/04:
The product,
FlyTxt
Direct 1.0 is released. Flytxt Direct is a web-based app used
by print, TV and radio organizations and advertisers to administer SMS text message
marketing campaigns to mobile phone users.]
2002
12/02 -
Product design work we did on PalmOS
5 reaches the market within the high-end Sony
NX and NZ series of PDAs. Tall-screen palms now have a flexible "active
input area" with
a status area that can be tailored to the capabilities of each
device. Philip wrote the PRD for this architecture for Product
Marketing then switched to the design group and did the interaction
design work, ultimately resulting in a UI spec.
12/02
- Making
the Web Work - Designing Effective Web Applications by Bob
Baxley has just been published. Philip was an "unofficial
tech editor" of several chapters of this book.
10/02 -
Consulting with PalmOne on
the design of future products. [on PIM applications
that appear in the latest PalmOne PDAs like the Tungsten
T3]
9/02
- We've moved! See our contact page
for details.
4/02 - Philip Haine begins work
on a book about product vision.
2001
11/01 - Work continues with PalmSource (was: Palm Computing). Philip Haine stands in as the director of
the newly formed HI group at PalmSource Inc. as it spins off from
Palm Inc.
6/01 - Work continues with PalmSource (was:
Palm Computing) working on several designs for the human
interface group.
2000
10/00 - We begin working with PalmSource (was: Palm Computing) product management defining product vision
and requirements for upcoming products.
8/00 - Design work for Akamai Forum from
Akamai is complete. [Akamai
Forum is a hosted web application that supports professional studio-grade
TV programming to be administered and broadcast over the web,
allowing for audience feedback and extensive reporting.]
1/00 - Our client Network24
Communications is acquired by Akamai
Technologies .
1999
6/99 - We begin working with streaming
media applications software company Network24
Communications [on a UI overhaul of a sophisticated hosted
application later know as Akamai Forum.]
5/99 - Philip Haine completes information
re-architecture work used by Gap
and Old Navy online stores.
[This work is later cited on several pages
of Steven Krug's excellent book about common-sense design, Don't
Make Me Think]
1998
10/98 - Our design work for the Gap,
GapKids and BabyGap web sites goes
live. Visitors may now shop at the three stores interchangeably,
add products to a combined shopping bag and direct gift shipments
to multiple recipients.
8/98 - We completed design for Alibris e-commerce web site
for out-of-print & rare books.
7/98 - Palm Organizer, formerly Claris
Organizer, is awarded
Best of Show at MacWorld exhibition. Palm Organizer is also
lauded in a August
1998 MacWorld feature article
5/98
- Claris Organizer, the PIM Philip Haine designed for Claris was
selected
by 3Com (now PalmSource) to serve as the Palm Pilot's desktop
companion for the Macintosh. (10/00 update: This product
is now included with most Macintosh computers and is bundled with
Mac OS 9.)
3/98
- Philip's article entitled, Five
Most Serious Web Design Errors was published in HP's E-Business
magazine.
1997
8/97
- Philip's paper entitled The
Design of Claris Organizer's Contact Card is available on the
web. This paper was published at the ACM CHI '97 conference on computer-human
interaction. It describes the design process behind a particularly
constrained design problem.
4/97
- Interaction design complete for GTE on SuperPages Best
Buys web site, a consumer product buying guide.
3/97
- Interaction design complete for GTE on SuperPages AutoGuide
web site, the first comprehensive buying information resource on
the Web.
2/97
- Philip founds Obvious Design, as a division of Studio32
Incorporated (then known as ITC Consulting Group) in San Francisco,
California.
Prior to founding Obvious Design:
94 - 2/97
- Philip joins Claris Corporation, becoming the
lead interaction designer of the Interface Design
Group. At Claris, Philip designs ClarisImpact 2.0, Claris Organizer
2.0 (which became Palm Desktop), oversees the design of Claris Emailer
(later re-incarnated as Outlook Express) and several other projects.
6/91 - 94 - Philip works for GO
Corporation, designing, prototyping and engineering UIs
for pen-based computers and the PenPoint operating
system
6/91 - Philip completes a co-op
B.Math degree from the University of Waterloo
with a minor in psychology. In the course of the co-op degree Philip
does three internships at Microsoft
Corporation working on MS Word and WinHelp
(part of MS Windows 3.0) as a software engineer and program manager.
Prior to that Philip did software engineering internships working
on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) at GeoVision
in Ottawa, Ontario and at the Forest
Engineering Research Institute of Canada (FERIC) in Montréal,
Québec.
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