iPhone App + Bookmarklet + Website = Designing for the network
I just started using Instapaper, “simple tool to save Web pages for reading later” and I think I like it. I like the idea of it, anyway. Reason is that it’s a really nice, simple example of designing for the network.
Instapaper links information across multiple devices and platforms. It networks information: you read a blog post on your laptop at work, then on the commute home you can pick up where you left off and continue reading the blog post on your phone. It’s a simple idea, but has complex thinking behind it. I tend to live my days in fragments of time, doing multiple things over the course of a day and hardly ever having time to finish reading what I started. I have troubles managing information. This tool helps people digest and manage the abundance of information available in the network. It’s designed to consider many elements of the network (people, information, digital devices like mobile phones and laptops, widgets, physical space and time) and link them together in meaningful ways.
When we talk about designing for the network, too often it’s interpreted as designing for the Web. This is a great little example of how it’s about so much more than that.
