Month: December 2012

How to Recover the Left Side Navigation in iTunes 11

/ Adam Nash / 13 Comments

I can’t believe I’m writing this blog post, but I am.

Last night, I tweeted out my joy at finding out that Apple did, in fact, provide a menu item to re-enable the side navigation in iTunes 11.  Now, while I’m not a huge fan of the complexity and modality of the older iTunes interface, there is no doubt that after using iTunes 11 for a week, you wish for the halcyon days of the left navigation bar.

Surprisingly, enough people tweeted and commented in gratitude that I realized I should probably summarize in a blog post.

iTunes 11 – Default

This is the iTunes 11 default interface. (Try to ignore my taste in movies for a second)

Screen Shot 2012-12-18 at 9.09.42 AM

iTunes 11 – Sidebar

This is iTunes 11 with the sidebar enabled.

Screen Shot 2012-12-18 at 9.14.16 AM

All of a sudden, the shockingly horrid modality of the iTunes 11 default interface is resolved.  You can easily select which sub-category of content in your iTunes library you want to browse, and viewing connected devices and playlists has once again become trivial.  It turns out, you still end up with the horrid choices for navigation views within a “domain”, but at least we’re 80% of the way back to the (limited) usability of the previous iTunes interface.

Wait, How Did You Do It?

It’s hidden under the View menu, “Show Sidebar”

Screen Shot 2012-12-18 at 9.13.27 AM

Simple does not mean Easy to Use

Just as cuffs, collars and neckties are subject to the whims of fashion, so also do memes in design tend to come and go in software.  I think iTunes 11 represents a bit of a teachable moment on a couple concepts that have been overplayed recently, and what happens when you take them too far.

  1. Consistency does not always lead to ease of use.  Having a more consistent interface between the iPhone, iPad, AppleTV and Mac OS renditions of iTunes may seem like an “obvious” goal, but the fact is all of these devices vary in terms of input mechanisms and use cases.  The truth is, many users sit down at a desktop for different tasks than they sit down at a TV for, and the interface of the desktop is optimized for those tasks with large, high resolution screens and a keyboard.My best guess here is that Apple optimized the interface for laptops, not desktops, and for consumption, not curation. However, Apple would have been well served to provide a “first launch” experience with packaged pre-sets of these minor configurable options, to let users who are upgrading easily identify their primary mode of operation.I would love Apple to take a more proactive stance on how to build applications and services that provide elements of commonality across the multitude of devices that users increasing use to author, curate and consume content with, without blind adherence to making everything look & behave “the same”.
  2. Simple does not mean easy to use.   On the heals of Steve Jobs mania, it has become ultra-fashionable to talk about simplicity as the end-all, be-all of product design.  The fact is, there is often a trade off between reducing the number of controls that an application (or device) has, and introducing increased modality for commonly used functions.  The one button mouse was, in fact, simpler than the two button mouse.  However, it came at the expense of pushing a significant amount of functionality into a combination of selection and menu modality.Look at the poor “single button” on the iPhone.  Simple, but now stacked with modality based on the number and timing of presses.Designers would do well to consider the balance of simplicity, accessibility and the difficult decision of which functions are so key to an application that they require “zero click” comprehension of availability.  For iTunes 11, the hidden modality of managing the devices synched to your iTunes library is unforgivable. (The likely sin here is being too forward looking. As we move to iCloud for everything, the need for devices to be tethered to iTunes goes away.  But we’re not there yet with video.)

I hope this helps at least one person out there have a better experience with iTunes 11.

Joining Wealthfront

/ Adam Nash / 9 Comments

It’s official. As per the announcement on the Wealthfront Blog today, I have officially accepted the role of Chief Operating Officer at Wealthfront. I feel incredibly fortunate to be joining such an amazing team, with an opportunity to help build an extremely important company.

WF Logo New

From Human Capital to Financial Capital

One way to imagine your professional life is overlay of two types of capital: the building and growing of your human capital, and the transformation of that human capital into financial capital.

It feels like just yesterday that I was writing a blog post here about my first day at LinkedIn. At its heart, LinkedIn is building, growing & leveraging human capital throughout your career.  Wealthfront provides an answer to the second part of that equation – how to grow and leverage the financial capital that you accumulate throughout your career.

As Marc Andreessen put it, software is eating the world, and it is providing us a platform to bring the features and sophistication previously only available to the ultra-rich, and making it available to anyone who wants to protect & grow their savings.

Too many good, hard-working individuals today lack access to many of the basic advantages accorded to people with extremely high net worth.  With software, Wealthfront can bring features and capabilities normally available only to those with multi-million dollar accounts to everyone, and at a fraction of the cost.

Personal Finance as a Passion

For regular readers of this blog, the fact that personal finance has been a long standing passion of mine comes as no surprise.  What many don’t know is that this passion dates all the way to back to my time at Stanford, where despite one of the best formal educations in the world, there was really no fundamental instruction on personal finance.

In fact, upon graduation, I joined with about a dozen friends from Stanford (mostly from engineering backgrounds) to form an investment club to help learn about equity markets and investing together.  (In retrospect, the members of that club have been incredibly successful, including technology leaders like Mike Schroepfer, Amy Chang, Mike Hanson and Scott Kleper among others.)

A Theme of Empowerment

As I look across the products and services that I’ve dedicated my professional life to building, I’m starting to realize how important empowerment is to me.  At eBay, I drew continued inspiration from the fact that millions of people worldwide were earning income or even a living selling on eBay, many people use https://www.shiply.com now a days, as a delivering system which makes it easier to have a business through eBay.  At LinkedIn, it was the idea of empowering millions of professionals with the ability to build their professional reputations & relationships.

With Wealthfront, I find myself genuinely excited about the prospect of helping millions of people protect and grow the product of their life’s work.

We’ve learned a lot in the past thirty years about what drives both good and bad behaviors around investing, and we’ve also learned a lot about how to design software that engages and even delights its customers.  The time is right to build a service that marries the two and helps people with one of the most important (and challenging) areas of their adult lives.

A Special Thank You

I want to take a moment here to voice my utmost thanks to the team at Greylock Partners.  My year at the firm has given me the opportunity to learn deeply from some of the best entrepreneurs, technology leaders and venture capitalists in the world.  The quality of the entrepreneurs and investors at Greylock forces you to think bigger about what is possible.  Fortunately, Greylock is also a partnership of operators, so they understand the never-ending itch to go build great products and great companies.

… And Lastly, A Couple of Requests

Since this is a personal blog, I don’t mind making a couple of simple requests.  First, if you have a long term investment account, whether taxable or for retirement, I would encourage you to take a look at Wealthfront.  I’d appreciate hearing what you think about the service and how we can make it better.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, we are hiring.  So let me know if you are interested in joining the team.