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This week I attended to the first ever Adobe MAX in Europe. It was held in beautiful Barcelona, which is a reason on its won to visit MAX of course. I was joined by two of my co-workers at Lost Boys, we had a great time attenting to the various sessions. The two things that are still on top of my mind now that I’m back in The Netherlands, are AIR and Thermo.

Regarding AIR, I have to say I underestimated the technology upon hearing about it for the first time. When it was first announced, I got some rather unpleasant Macromedia Central flashbacks, but after seeing the various demos and playing around with it for myself, I’m convinced that AIR may have a bright future ahead. Sure, the runtime still measures 10 megabytes at the moment, but Adobe has been smart about the way that install can be triggered; through the (browser embedded) Flash Player (from version 6.0.65 and up). Also, the ability to drag files/links/data/etc to and from(!) an AIR application has great potential. Especially the mixing of desktop applications and online services and websites offers some very interesting perspectives. You can download the beta version AIR from the Adobe Labs site.

The other application that really stood out goes by the codename of Thermo. Thermo allows designers to quickly trow together a clickable demo of their artwork. After importing for example a Photoshop file, it is relatively easy to convert parts of the design into functional components that actually respond to user input. What’s more, an application or demo created in Thermo can be loaded into Flex Builder, as Thermo generates Flex code. Then, a developer can further improve upon the elements the designer already put together. This may allow for a much smoother workflow, although Thermo has often been perceived as a demo-creation app, not as a collaboration tool. Adobe though targets Thermo as an app that would actually allow the designer to create an initial setup of an application, which is then finished by a developer. I’m not sure if this is really going to happen, but Thermo is most definitely a very interesting technology to watch closely. More about Thermo on Adobe Labs.

Apart from these two highlights, MAX 2007 has been great. As always, Natzke’s presentation was fabulously inspiring and I also very much enjoyed the sneak previews on some of the new technologies like seam carving that Adobe is working on. If you didn’t make it this year, make sure to attend next time there’s a MAX event near you!

Last week, Armin of underconsideration.com wrote about the new Adobe Photoshop logo as introduced by Adobe’s John Nack. After looking at it, I honestly thought it was a joke. See for yourself:

What is it? A speech bubble? With a hole in it? Some people even suggested it closely resembles E.T. Unfortunately, it is already being used on adobe.com, so it is not at all under consideration, it is official.

And it isn’t just the logo, the tagline is horrible as well. “See what’s possible”… Why would you need a tagline at all? Photoshop is way beyond that…

Andrew Berkowitz from Sparkplug wrote a nice article on how they have been working on multiple iterations of a single screen for their Teamsnap application. If you’re in interaction/experience design, this is definitely a must-read.

To me, the most important point he makes is that, often, wireframes just don’t capture your imagination and ideas well enough. Besides, clients tend to treat wireframes as a final document: this is how everything will look in the final design. Leaving virtually no room for improvement or new insights along the way.

Here at Lost Boys we’re currently experimenting with other ways to show clients what we have in mind for them. At the moment Getting Real seems like an interesting approach, although this doesn’t always work, especially for big projects. Also, your client must be willing to trust you enough to start working (and thus spending their money) without having completely spec’d what you’re going to do.