I usually don’t feel a need to write about personal matters, but this story is related to my advocacy for web standards, accessibility and design thinking.

I recently wrote a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook to let him know how much the accessibility features included in Apple products are a critical value to a minority group of people that rely on technology to help them connect to the world. These features are often a baseline that improve user experience for everyone.

My late mom’s cousin, David, suffered from blindness and other ailments his entire life. He was the only child of an English teacher and very innovative engineer.

As David’s symptoms got worse from age, my uncle offered to provide him a technological solution to help him stay connected to the world and express himself through writing. My uncle has been an Apple user longer than I have through his career in creative arts in education.

As a web UI/UX designer, my career path has guided me to become very familiar with web technology accessibility needs. Web standards and properly formatted HTML is very helpful for those relying on screen readers to present web content and page structures in a way that makes sense to the audience. The days of a designer hacking up a web page in a table to get things lined up is thankfully a thing of the past, though there’s still many who learn why they should come aboard the standards train. It’s a disruptive experience to hear web page content read out like it’s a data table when it really isn’t.

My uncle and I talked about accessibility features iPads have for the visually impaired. Siri seems like a good start for helping someone get a task accomplished. He gave David an engraved iPad and some Bluetooth-enabled accessories that would help him.

Unfortunately, the iPad didn’t quite meet his needs, and in contrast with a general policy to not accept returns on engraved items, the Apple retail store employees offered a full refund, even for items he didn’t keep in the packaging. It turned out that a Mac Mini would have additional features for accessibility he was looking for and was up for giving that a try.

Sadly, I received a call to learn David’s health had suddenly taken a turn for the worse and he passed away that week. My uncle wasn’t given another chance at enabling him.

However, when I heard my uncle tell me how thankful he was for the common sense and general kindness he experienced from Apple store employees, along with the product choices that help people do things they need and want to do in their lives, it reminded me of how important both accessibility and good customer experience management is. My uncle expected to suffer the financial burden of the cost of the iPad and was pleasantly surprised when he was told otherwise. If only all retailers were this respectful of their customers. If only all people were this respectful and kind. Of course the “kindness” is a long-game business strategy and only goes as far as what’s a cost-benefit for the company. This was far from a charitable effort, but it was refreshingly decent and creates an emotional engagement when expectations are met.

Beyond all the hyped marketing and salesmanship, there is a value to technology that is pure and not at all cynical or falsely self-important.

In the technology business, a ruthlessly competitive world that can be dehumanizing and treat users and customers as a disposable short-term relationship or a personal data product generator to sell to the highest ad bidder, it’s hard to find those trying to understand and actually help people with invention and not spending their effort chasing down a merger/acquisition lottery ticket from a bigger fish.

As a designer, I know it can be a struggle to sell clients on the value of quality design and user experience, but it’s worth the extra effort even beyond the reasonable, bottom line cost-benefit analysis, though that really helps.

I hope I get an opportunity in my design career that allows me to build something half as meaningful as a tool that enables a person to reach out to the world that would otherwise not have such empowerment.

Thanks to computers, the Internet and accessibility, there are more people communicating with each other right now who in other times in history would never have been able to.

The key to this working is making sure through all the chatter, we’re also listening.

The Economist blog talks about Windows 8 sales disappointment and explains the differences between these business struggles and Coca-Cola’s New Coke issue.

Microsoft tried to hedge their bets by applying a new, modern design solution to a variety of devices with different physical input methods and computing user experiences. This was a problem of repurposing the new Windows Phone design to something that it was not designed for. Repurposing can be a great cost-savings method and working within constraints sparks creativity, but you can only repurpose something so far before the less than ideal solution fails too much and lets people down.

Leadership didn’t recognize the problems that would occur by applying the software design formerly called Metro UI to all “Windows 8″ devices, trying to solve different problems with the same solution. They simultaneously applied the same solution for laptops with touchscreens and touchscreen-only tablets similar to an iPad.

Metro was a great title that they should have purchased the rights to from the current owner instead of hedging on whatever Windows-related title they settled on.

They could have used that new identity to let people know they were trying something new for the new touch-based interface tools of today and not force it on the traditional computers that the Windows driven by the Start button worked for.

I’ve seen my father struggle with the hand-eye coordination required to learn how to mouse around a desktop computer screen for the first time, but for most, that’s become a strong learned behavior. I’ve seen many people struggle with managing the windows that get cluttered behind other windows.

The iPad works better for him because of the simplicity of direct interaction, but he wouldn’t be confused by the Metro UI of Windows 8 on a touchscreen device either. He has no attachment to the Start button or the concept of different “windows” running different applications. Neither does my 3 year-old daughter.

The windows concept can probably work on large touch screens, but it needs to be optimized for that interaction method. The Samsung devices that multitask with small windows on 5″ device feel forced. How much highly usable and valuable information and interaction areas can you show in windows on a small device?

Bringing the Start button back will smooth things over for those who are used to it and attached to it, but it’s a patch on an underlying problem.

For every new technology device type that surfaces, they each require a user interface that is designed for the context for which it will be used.

This is something good designers know and their clients are best served when they accept the professional advice:

The success of a design solution that helps solve one problem is rarely a “one size fits all” that applies to all problems.

Even if the problem appears to be similar, researching the problem is worth the time investment. Applied research generally pays off in the long-term.

Maybe it will help avoid the myopic view of seeing every problem as a nail when all you have is a hammer.

LTE is a huge leap in data transmission speed over the 3G and the non-LTE “4G” networks. While Android device makers scrambled to be first to market with “4G” labels on their devices to help carriers market their “4G” networks, “4G” has always been a soft marketing term to describe a variety of services that range in quality.

Apple adapted the AT&T signal indicator in the iPhone 4S to allow a partnership with AT&T to market the 4S as a “4G” phone, just as Android device manufacturers were starting to sell 4G LTE devices.

The greatest cost of going to LTE 4G network performance is battery life.

Android devices adopted LTE 4G first, but the first LTE phones burned through the battery much faster than users would prefer. It took an iteration or two of the LTE models to get a day of battery life on normal usage.

Something I’ve noticed since switching to the iPhone 5 is that, yes, I get about a day of battery life under normal usage and conditions. Battery life could be always be better, which is a feature we’ll see improvement on every time lithium batteries get better and a driving business factor for mobile device manufacturers to see continued sales success. I’ll upgrade my phone when my contract is up every time just for improved battery life alone.

Something else I’ve noticed is how incredibly fast the Lightning connector charges my iPhone 5. My wife has noticed it too since upgrading. While there was backlash to ditching the 30-pin connector Apple has relied on since the iPod, it was long in the tooth and didn’t charge my iOS devices as quickly as this iPhone 5 charges.

So while LTE burns battery fast, at least Apple devised a new cable that seems to offset that negative experience with a more rapid charging method, so you’re not waiting long to get back to work/play. As I write this entry with about a 10% charge on my iPhone 5, I plug it into my car adapter and by the end, I have 40%. I did this while the kids nap in the backseat, my wife runs into Target for a few things and I remain parked outside, so about 30 mins to get 30% increase in charge while writing on the device in the Drafts app.

The Lightning connector came at a cost. All your old accessories are somewhat obsolete, or you buy an adaptor to get the old accessories to work with the new phone, another perceived nickel and dime Apple Tax cost. You’ll be unhappy today with that cost, but Apple’s accessory partners are happy to have something new to sell you.

Beyond the rapid charging, the functionality of inserting Lightning connectors from either side is a user experience improvement over mini-USB that’s often used as a standard on other devices. That’s something most people probably aren’t aware of. A minor hassle to put a small cable in the “right” way? Sure, mini-USB is nothing to really complain about. But why not make it better if you can? Why not try?

It was clear since the iPad 2 that that 30-pin was old tech which didn’t work well on that tapered body edge and felt very clumsy. It felt like a compromise and stopgap measure and not a deliberate design decision. That’s not like Apple.

Another question to evaluate is if mini USB, the standard most devices use for a charging cable, is conducting power to the battery as fast as a Lightning cable. Was a 30-pin connector charging as fast as a mini USB? It was certainly a physically larger connection element, taking up more physical space on increasingly shrinking devices. So that was a problem.

If Lightning cables conduct recharges faster, Apple is offering a better recharge user experience by providing a short-term solution to the battery life problem with LTE with faster replenishment and by allowing the user to insert the cable without worrying if it’s upside down.