Beyond Visio - Simulation Prototypes

Wireframes never really cut it for me. Creating static diagrams of very dynamic sites make it difficult to articulate interactions to developers...normally requiring hand-holding to ensure things are built as designed. Developers loooove hand-holding.

Before I start a new project I normally interview the developers that I'll be working with and ask them what they expect from my prototypes in order to do their job the best they can. Most tell me that they want everything defined to the point that there is no question what needs to be built. (Personally I prefer working with developers that have more of a hand in the design so that they're engaged and accountable for what they're building...but thats another article). With today's tools (like visio), this is difficult to achieve.

We need more from our prototypes...they still need to maintain lo-fidelity and rapid development, but need to contain all the interactions and work like the final product.

Welcome to the world of Simulations. Simulations were originally used by Boing to test drive features of the 777 before they were actually built. In the same way, they enable us to build a web application that we can test drive (and usability test!) before we build the final product. They allow us to create working tabs, forms, error handling, and can even make global changes.
Boxes and Arrows recently posted a comparative review on various simulation tools available today...

Axure RP4

The latest version, RP4 (there is actually a Beta of 4.3) has certainly added a number of new features compared to RP3. RP4 provides the ability to create a basic sitemap (indicating pages) and the ability to link these pages together. RP4 offers masters for rapid changes to an entire project. RP4 allows for basic annotations but doesn’t offer a robust requirements management solution. Of the products reviewed, Axure RP4 falls in the mid-range for pricing. With the addition of a true simulation engine, this RP4 could certainly gain ground against the higher-end products. However, at its current price, it’s a great entry point into the world of simulation.

Scenario Design: No
Page Design: Yes
Widget Library: Yes
Dynamic Display: Yes
Data Interaction: No
Decision Logic: No
Annotations: Yes
Centralized Server: No
Portable Distribution: No
Requirements Management: No
Enterprise Support: No
Export to MS Word: Yes

LucidSpec

Much like Axure, LucidSpec offers the capability to create static “prototypes.” The product does not contain an actual simulation engine, thus limiting the product’s ability to save and reuse data at a later time. The product allows the design to “describe behaviors” or specifications in annotative form. However, it does not offer a solution for tying a non-visual requirement to visual elements.

Scenario Design: No
Page Design: Yes
Widget Library: No
Dynamic Display: Partial
Data Interaction: No
Decision Logic: No
Annotations: Yes
Centralized Server: No
Portable Distribution: No
Requirements Management: No
Enterprise Support: No
Export to MS Word: Yes

iRise

iRise offers a real simulation engine that allows users to save, edit, and delete requirements data. Of the products reviewed, iRise Manager provides the most comprehensive requirements management solution. Studio generates a portable simulation known as an iDoc, which can be reviewed with the free iRise Reader. Shared Server enables collaboration and incorporates a model for check-in/out capabilities and synchronization with the requirements management server. The shared server also provides an alternative delivery method, allowing stakeholders to view the simulation by accessing a URL. iDoc Express is a cost-effective service offering, where companies hand over requirements and receive a comprehensive simulation at a fixed price. No product purchase or installation is required. This is by far the most mature product in this space, with the most extensive list of recognizable customer names.

Scenario Design: Yes
Page Design: Yes
Widget Library: Yes
Dynamic Display: Yes
Data Interaction: Yes
Decision Logic: Yes
Annotations: Yes
Centralized Server: Yes
Portable Distribution: Yes
Requirements Management: Yes
Enterprise Support: Yes
Export to MS Word: Yes

Serena Composer
Composer fits at the lower end of the higher tier products. It offers the ability to model business processes at a very high level much like MS Visio. It then extends that ability to creating activities and detailed page designs. Composer provides greater support for requirements management; it is probably closer to iRise than any other tool. The challenge with Composer is that all users must own a licensed seat to view anything created within the product; this really limits the ability to share with stakeholders.

Scenario Design: Yes
Page Design: Yes
Widget Library: Yes
Dynamic Display: Partial
Data Interaction: Partial
Decision Logic: No
Annotations: Yes
Centralized Server: No
Portable Distribution: No
Requirements Management: Partial
Enterprise Support: No
Export to MS Word: Yes

Enterprise Simulator
Simunication is all web based. This is most likely the product’s biggest advantage over some of the lower- and middle-tier applications. Its interface, however, is quite cumbersome for the non-technical user. It offers the ability to simulate data through a scaled-down simulation engine. The workflow is driven primarily by creating use cases, then designing screens around those cases. Delivery is simplified by its all-online approach—thus anyone with a web browser can access it.

Scenario Design: Yes
Page Design: Yes
Widget Library: No
Dynamic Display: Yes
Data Interaction: Yes
Decision Logic: Yes
Annotations: Yes
Centralized Server: Yes
Portable Distribution: No
Requirements Management: No
Enterprise Support: Yes
Export to MS Word: No

Sofea Profesy

Profesy is comparable to Composer in product maturity. It offers requirements management with a scaled-down simulation engine. Much like Composer, there isn’t an easy way to distribute the simulation outside of the tool/editor in which it was created.

Scenario Design: No
Page Design: Yes
Widget Library: No
Dynamic Display: Partial
Data Interaction: Partial
Decision Logic: Yes
Annotations: Yes
Centralized Server: No
Portable Distribution: No
Requirements Management: Yes
Enterprise Support: Yes
Export to MS Word: Yes

Benefits to the user experience professional
User experience professionals who leverage simulation technology are able to visualize projects much earlier within the development lifecycle, while producing requirements that are much clearer than those generated through traditional requirements gathering processes. In fact, two of these packages, iRise and Serena, were actually created to help business analysts visualize requirements when they didn’t have access to user experience professionals for that part of a project!

One key feature that static wireframes lack is the ability to interact with the interface; by using a simulation tool, this limitation is removed. Software interactivity and ease-of-use, in addition to the portability and reusability of the simulation, are key points to consider in choosing the right simulation software for your company. The next several years should be quite interesting as each of these products continues to improve, adding new features and offering tighter integration with third-party products.

Release early, release often

I recently posted about the Netflix recommendation system and their reaching out to make it better. I also mentioned how I think that Netflix is one of the best examples on the internet of a site that is both beautifully designed yet very usable. User Interface Engineering took a deep look into what makes Netflix such a great site by talking with the Netflix design team.

Here are some insights to their "Release early, release often" mentality...

Benefits of Fast Iterations

• Fail Fast A major benefit of fast iteration is you also fail fast. Failing fast means you invest less time in the things that don't work. If you quickly find out what works and what doesn't work, then you take action to turn it into something that does work.

  Ironically, teams that fail fast improve as fast, if not faster, than those who try to get it right the first time. The reason is simple: Teams trying to get it right the first time fail as often as everyone else does. However, when they fail, they fail really slowly and struggle to pinpoint problems because they've changed so much at once, making it harder to identify solutions

• More Experimentation The faster you fail, the more experimentation you can do. You can try out ideas that might not have a lot of support, but could be potential winners. This allows for an innovative environment.

  Perhaps you've heard of Google's 20% time? They expect their engineers to work 20% of their time on a personal project -- an experiment they find personally interesting. This program has the effect of bootstrapping experimentation, so it will happen more often.

• Learn Quickly We've all had the experience of sitting in meetings arguing whether something will work or not. Usually, both sides just don't have enough data to go on, and they end up going with their gut or with the loudest arguer (for better or worse). Fast iteration helps solve this problem by giving developers a platform on which they can test quickly, helping to collect data about any outstanding questions instead of resorting to opinionated arguments.
• Provide Continuing Interest In addition to improving your design, fast iterations may have a psychological effect on users. Those users who use your app with any frequency will notice the changes, and if the good ones stick, they'll appreciate your ongoing efforts to improve.

  The best teams not only design the changes, but design the process for introducing the change. They experiment with methods to overcome the users' natural resistance to change, providing migration paths and clear benefits for each improvement.

• Reduced Risk Quickly iterating helps reduce risk during design. If teams can make many small changes instead of a few larger ones, they mitigate risk because they know which changes have what effect. If a design team makes many changes at once, they have a harder time knowing which parts work and which parts don't. When you make only one or two changes at a time, you know immediately what effect it has. Reducing risk is a valuable outcome of moving to fast iteration.

Side Effects

These benefits don't come easy. There are significant changes design teams have to make to their core process to iterate quickly. It's not a switch a team can turn on or off.

• Culture Change Most designers are accustomed to long release cycles. Fast iteration and fast evolution of design creates a different kind of design environment. Gone are the grand visions of the redesign, where teams spend months retooling vast areas of the site. Replacing it is the idea that the site is a living, breathing design that needs constant care and attention. The team at Netflix calls themselves "compulsive data wonks". They rarely dream very far in the future. Instead, they're concerned with what's happening right now.
• Design Determinism When teams make the switch to fast iteration, it changes the site's testing methodology. Testing becomes ongoing. After a release, you test for a certain period of time to determine what to keep and what to throw away. Then you start the process over again immediately. And repeat.

  To some designers this sounds overly deterministic: Doesn't this take the fun out of design? If all the decisions are cut-and-dried, what does that say about creativity? What about longer-term effects? Is it possible that some features take longer to catch on than others, and that an early flop might not mean it's not a valuable feature? With fast iterations, if the feature doesn't work now, then it's not right for the site, no matter how creative it is.

• You're Either With Us... Netflix's Chief Talent Officer, Patty McCord, told us their process of fast iteration causes uncomfortable situations for some designers. Once, a designer had spent time and energy working on a feature that testing showed didn't work. When it came time for the team to remove the feature from the site, the designer was distraught. He had become too emotionally invested in his design, and it got in the way of his job. He ended up parting ways with the team and moving on. Unfortunately, the process of fast iteration affected more than the product itself.

Adobe open sources Virtual Machine technology to Mozilla

Adobe announced that they will donate their virtual machine software to Mozilla, to work on as an open source project. Mozilla will use it within Firefox (by the first half of 2008) and Adobe will continue to use it in Flash Player 9. The name of the open source project is Tamarin and it will be governed and managed by developers from Adobe and Mozilla. News.com calls it "the largest code contribution yet to the open source Mozilla Foundation". As Kevin Lynch, chief software architect at Adobe, told news.com: the move furthers the company's plan to allow developers to mix and match programming technologies, including AJAX-style Web development and Flash for media and animation. I foresee this as a bold move to the inevitable...making photoshop, flash, and dreamweaver web applications. Its a ways off, but I think that eventually all applications will be web-based. Heck, computers will likely end up being just an internet host...and all file management will be hosted (and backed up!) online.

Today is world usability day

Now in its second year, we celebrate world usability day today. This day is meant to bring more awareness to our professions, and to making things, well, more usable. I encounter websites, applications, and material things on a daily basis that aggravate me how difficult they are to use...which in turn inspires me and gives me hope for the future of usability. Theres a lot of work to be done!

With that, on pretty much the worst day for this website to go down, the world usability day website displays a bunch of code. I'm guessing this is not the intended display. Woops!

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UPDATE: The World Usability Day website is now back up and working beautisly.

Eye tracking study - Forms and label placement

UXmatters performed an eye tracking study on forms and label placement. The results conclude that non-bold text above the field and left aligned pose the least amount of eye work, hence a faster and easier user experience. Drop-downs should only be used when necessary and placed below the more important fields. Placing the label as the default option in the drop-down performed better than a label above the drop-down menu. Here are the conclusion bullet points from the study:

• Label position—Placing a label above an input field works better in most cases, because users aren’t forced to look separately at the label and the input field. Be careful to visually separate the label for the next input field from the previous input field.
• Alignment of labels—In most cases, when placing labels to the left of input fields, using left-aligned labels imposes a heavy cognitive workload on users. Placing labels above input fields is preferable, but if you choose to place them to the left of input fields, at least make them right aligned.
• Bold labels—Reading bold labels is a little bit more difficult for users, so it’s preferable to use plain text labels. However, when using bold labels, you might want to style the input fields not to have heavy borders.
• Drop-down list boxes—Use them with care, because they’re so eye-catching. Either use them for important data or, when using them for less important data, place them well below more important input fields.
• Label placement for drop-down list boxes—To ensure users are immediately aware of what you’re asking for, instead of using a separate label, make the default value for a drop-down list box the label. This will work for very long lists of items, because a user already has the purpose of the input field in mind before the default value disappears.

4 ways to better communicate design concepts

Communicating design ideas is one of the most important skills that a designer or information architect can have. Lets face it, to be a good designer, you also have to be a good seller. You could have the best concept in the world, but unless you can clearly articulate why its the best concept in the world to your stakeholders, it will never see the light of day. For most of us, these skills don't come naturally...they are developed from experience and discipline. Here are a few tips that can help you develop these skills (with a few excerpts taken from the Cooper newsletter) Have a good story to tell

Human beings think in stories, and contextualizing the proposed design solution with a story helps your collaborators imagine what the eventual user experience will be like.

Only put as much detail into the design as the idea or concept allows.

It is harder for people to evaluate high-level concepts when their eyes and attention are drawn to the multitude of details. It helps to use Lorem Ipsum for your text, a low fidelity sketch via Visio or PowerPoint, and fake data. This helps people only focus on what's important to you. Make sure to constantly stress that its a "high-level concept" to keep people thinking the same way about it as you did when you created it.

Get all the decision-makers together in the same room

I cant stress how important this one is. Walking a design around to different stakeholders individually will get you completely different results than if everyone is in the same room together...normally causing endless tweaks to your design. Unless everyone can be there, I would highly recommend you re-schedule for a time that works for everyone. Though it may delay approval a bit, it will save you time and decrease iterations.

Carve out time in the schedule for design communication

Communicating design does take time, no doubt about it. But it will save a lot more time by reducing the thrash that occurs when developers don't have a clear understanding about what it is they are supposed to build. Get developers involved early in the design process...their input is invaluable.

Digital Voting

Here in Denver, the voting process was quite a mess. New digital voting machines were in place, and in many locations it took 2 hours of waiting in line to cast your vote. Lots of people did not get to vote because they were pressed for time and couldn’t wait that long. I voted early and did not feel the effects of this problem. I felt that the voting system was efficient, and the voting machine was extremely easy to use (granted that i am a tech savvy geek).

The voting process as I experienced it:

Check-in: 5 Minutes There were 2 booths. At the first booth I signed my registration card in front of an election official. I then brought the card to another booth where someone scanned my card and typed some stuff into a computer. She then handed my card to a person next to her that typed some more stuff into another computer and then printed my voter access code for me to use at the booth.

Voting Machine Training: 5 Minutes The assistant educated me on every detail of how to use the voting machine and what i will expect for the review and submission process.

Voting: 5 Minutes I then went about casting my votes. Once i was done, i hit a big red button to submit my votes. I then came to a review page, where i could go back and make changes. Once I reviewed and approved the review pages, my selections printed out on a device next to the machine, and the machine asked me to verify each page of the print outs. I could also go back and make changes there. I then came to a screen that was the final, final, final page and said clearly that once i hit that red button again, that was it. I hit it and walked out.

Factors that are more likely to have caused the long voting lines:

• This time there were only 50 or so voting places in CO, last time there were well over 100.
• The ballot was the 2nd largest in history
• Many voters are not computer savvy, so the learning curve was likely more steep for them

The voting machine interface: The voting machine interface consisted of a numerical pad (to input your 4-digit voter access code), a knob-wheel (to scroll though the ballet and highlight a candidate or Yes/No answer), a select button (to select/deselect your choice), and a “cast your vote” red button for the final submit. I was given 3 chances to review my selections and edit to ensure accuracy. The digital screen was very large and extremely easy to read.

I am curious to hear from some of the volunteers that dealt with all of the voters to see how people struggled with these machines…thats where I would start to troubleshoot the problem. The mayer has vowed to ensure the problem never happens again.

The Designer's Guide to Web Applications

UIE has released a new e-book, "The Designer's Guide to Web Applications", and as a promotion for the new book, they have released the first chapter (10 pages), "Structure & Flows" for free as a pdf. The free chapter explains how to use Hubs to help architect an application structure.

Table of contents (the italics section is free): 1 Skeletons ....................................................1 1.1 The Hub ...................................................2 1.2 A Hub With No Data .................................5 1.3 The Interview ...........................................7 2 A Real Application: SupportSuite ..............9 2.1 A simple hub and spoke—or is it? ...........10 2.2 An interview appears! ............................12 2.3 Hubba hubba .........................................13 2.4 A hub for hubs .......................................16 2.5 Finishing touches....................................17 3 Revealing Structure in the Design ..........19 3.1 Tabs ......................................................21 3.2 Menus ...................................................23 3.3 Tab Menus .............................................26 3.4 Breadcrumbs ..........................................29 3.5 Links ......................................................32 3.6 Titles .....................................................36 3.7 Progress Indicators .................................37 3.8 Knowing which element to use ................39 4 Designing the structure ...........................40 4.1 Command Architecture ...........................40 4.2 Seeding the structure ..............................41 4.3 Enter the users .......................................42 4.4 As we learn more, more changes .............44 4.5 There are many possible structures ..........48 5 Creating a Winning Design ......................49

Resources:

• Free First Chapter Download
• Book Page

Free e-book - "Getting Real"

37 signals has released their book, "Getting Real" for free. The pdf still costs $19, but you can read it online for free. I would highly recommend this read to just about anyone that works on web apps, it may change the way you think about the web application development processes. Heres an excerpt about the book from the 37 Signals website:

Want to build a successful web app? Then it's time to Get Real. Getting Real is a smaller, faster, better way to build software.

• Getting Real is about skipping all the stuff that represents real (charts, graphs, boxes, arrows, schematics, wireframes, etc.) and actually building the real thing.
• Getting real is less. Less mass, less software, less features, less paperwork, less of everything that's not essential (and most of what you think is essential actually isn't).
• Getting Real is staying small and being agile.
• Getting Real starts with the interface, the real screens that people are going to use. It begins with what the customer actually experiences and builds backwards from there. This lets you get the interface right before you get the software wrong.
• Getting Real is about iterations and lowering the cost of change. Getting Real is all about launching, tweaking, and constantly improving which makes it a perfect approach for web-based software.
• Getting Real delivers just what customers need and eliminates anything they don't.

Resources:

• Read the book

MusicRainbow

Music Rainbow is a simple user interface to discover artists. The user controls the interface with a knob which can be turned (to select an artist) and pushed (to listen to music from the selected artist).

The demonstration is based on a collection containing 558 artists. The artists are projected onto a circle. Artists whose music is similar are placed close to each other. The similarity is computed by analyzing the audio contents of their songs. A "traveling salesman" algorithm is used to map the artists on the circle.

Colors encode different styles of music. Words describe different regions of the rainbow. These words are automatically extracted from web pages mentioning the artists.

The right side shows a magnification. The selected artist is highlighted in white. The box in the lower right summarizes the selected artist with words and colors.

MusicRainbow was developed at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) as part of the CrestMuse project. The user interface was built with processing by Elias Pampalk. The knob used in the demonstration is a Griffin PowerMate.

Resources:

• Demo Video
• Website

Create a better reccommondation system, win 1 million dollars

I have been using Netflix for several years now, and while I believe it to be one of the most usable and cleanly designed websites on the interent, its algorithm to recommend movies to me has fallen way short of my expectations. I have rated roughly 600 movies on Netflix, which is more than enough to give them a good idea of what I'm in to...yet nearly all the movies that they recommend to me I dislike. The ratings they display to you are based on how you rate other movies...which means that "The Divinci Code" could be rated as 5 stars to me, yet 3 stars to you based on how you (and others with similar ratings as you) rate other movies. This seems like a really smart way to build a rating system, but it sure doesn't work for me. Personally I would rather view overall ratings of movies rather than an algorithmic one...that way I know I'm looking at real ratings vs. ratings a computer generated for me.

Netflix must be aware of this flaw, because, according to the New York Times, they've started a contest offering a million dollar prize to anyone who can improve their rating system by at least 10% (hopefully they'll use a better system to measure improvement than they use for ratings).

The winning solution (if there is one) will not only be useful to Netflix, but useful for all recommendation algorithms out there...and just may result in pushing the internet to the next level.

Poor usability imposes significant costs on product producers

Research and Markets will be releasing a new book in November 2006 on usability success stories. There seems to be some enlightening information based on the overview, table of contents, and experienced writers involved... "Poor usability also imposes significant costs on product producers. Companies that make hard-to-use products incur higher support costs, spend more on rework, and have less satisfied customers. "

People spend increasing amounts of time and effort interacting with complex hardware and software products. Some of the products we interact with are easy to learn and easy to remember. Some are even a pleasure to use. Others are hard to learn, hard to use, and frustrate us at every turn. But it is not just the user that pays the cost in such cases.

These outcomes can be avoided by applying the techniques of usability engineering and user-centred design (UCD) during product development. This book shows how usability and UCD practitioners do this by studying users needs and abilities, designing the product accordingly, and verifying the design through additional testing with users.

Despite the positive return on investment for usability engineering activities, many organizations view usability engineering as a non-critical part of the product development process. This book seeks to change this by relating a number of cases where usability engineering contributed significantly to the solution of a business problem. Evidence is drawn from experiences within a range of private and public sector organizations showing how usability work can best be organized and executed within a business environment. The organizational factors that facilitate or impede the application of usability engineering are also discussed. The book clearly explains the barriers to be overcome as well as highlighting the factors promoting success.

A wide range of applications are covered, including web-based e-commerce, medical devices and software, process control management systems, financial services applications, consumer desktop applications and interactive voice response systems. Usability Success Stories provides a valuable guide for business managers and technical staff as well as for practitioners within the field itself.

Table of Contents:

An introduction to usability and user-centered design, Paul Sherman

Tracking ease of use metrics: A tried and true method for driving adoption of UCD in different corporate cultures, Wendy Castleman and Kaaren Hanson

Tales from the trenches: Getting usability through corporate, Hank Henry

Redesigning the United States Department of Health and Human Services web site, Mary France Theofanos and Conrad Mulligan

Creating better working relationships in a user-focused organization, Elizabeth Rosenzweig and Joel Zif

Using innovation to promote a user-centered design process while addressing practical constraints, Leslie Tudor and Julie Radford-Davenport

Changing perceptions: Getting the business to value user-centered design processes, Adam Polansky

UI Design at Siemens Medical Solutions, Dirk Zimmermann and Jean Anderson

Collaborating with change agents to make a better user interface, Paul Sherman and Susan Hura

Learning from success stories, Paul Sherman

Google maps + public data = Neighboroo

Neighboroo created a mashup between google maps and a bunch of public data to create heatmaps of the data. You can view heatmaps for several different data types, such as Politics, Crime Rates, Tax Rates, Household Income, etc...

Its a very interesting little tool to play with.

Screenshot:

A new way to view your google calendar

The Ambient clock combines a typical clock interface with the event data from your google calendar so you can see a simple view of your scheduled time vs. free time at a glance. The background color changes if you have up-coming events as a additional identifier. With a quick glance you can determine:

• How long until my next event?
• What time is my first event?
• What time does my last event end?
• What is my ratio of free time vs. scheduled time?

Additionally, if your google event has location information added to it, the Ambient clock will estimate your commute time to that event and display it as dots preceding the event.

None of these physical clocks are in production yet, but you can get a google homepage version. They claim that the physical version would only need AAA batterys and connect via Ambiant's nationwide wireless network.

Ammunition for that 30-inch display you've been wanting

Apple's Marketing and PR departments have gotten quite clever in their old age. They know that for someone's company to fork over $2000 for a 30-inch Cinima HD monitor, they better have some damn good ammunition and reasoning behind something like that.

Well, just recently, Apple has provided you with the ammunition.

They hired a consulting company to do a benchmark analysis on using a 30-inch vs. a 17-inch monitor for certain tasks...and I'll have to say, the results are convincing...

Major Findings

• High-resolution displays such as the 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Display can result in measurable productivity and efficiency gains.
• Productivity gains were present in not only professional design and publishing, digital imaging, and digital video, but also in general productivity and office applications such as word processors and spreadsheets.
• Cumulated productivity gains linked to a large, high-resolution display can lead to a return on investment (ROI) of several thousand dollars per year.

They also proceeded to break down the ROI based on productivity gains, concluding that buying this monitor can save you up to $23,000 per year! Ha!

Resources:

• Download the entire study (PDF) ...and forward it to your boss :)

Google Website Optimizer

Google is about to release yet another analytics tool for all Adwords advertisers...Website Optimizer. This new tool allows you to dive deep into a/b testing of specific elements on a given landing page in order to discover what combination of elements performs best.

With the optimizer tool, you can test multiple versions of images, call to action, marketing text, buttons, ect... on a given landing page. The Website Optimizer tool will then show you which combination of elements performed the best in order to retain customers, increase conversion, and increase your ROI.

Resources:

• Demo
• Documentation

The internet is not the devil

The other day I was watching a Texas governor debate (there was nothing else on ok?!)...and one of the guys in his closing speech said "I think the Internet is the devil". At first I thought, "this guy just sealed his own coffin!"...but after further thinking... "humm, perhaps many of the people of Texas haven't caught on to the Internet revolution yet and what he said just might have won him some votes". I believe the Internet is going to change everything...not in a satanic sort of way, but in a rate of human evolution sort of way. Looking historically at our evolution for just the past 100 years, we have accomplished amazing things. Even the rate at which we evolved during that time significantly increased.

I believe that the rate at which we evolve is determined by 2 major factors:

1) Population Increase 2) Knowledge and Information Accessibility

In the past knowledge and information has been accessible by libraries, teachers, professors, and your peers. Most of which you pay for, either with tax money or collage loans. This has been a somewhat fixed level of knowledge and information available to us.

The internet enables us to learn anything we want instantly, accurately, and free. Best of all, it is evolving at the rate that we contribute to it! The Internet removes the barriers of knowledge between countries, religions, languages, and cultures.

What this means to me is that we will see an exponential evolution rate in the years to come, much more than we've seen in the past 100 years. We can now learn from the mistakes of others around the world...pushing us forward faster.

I see a future where structured learning is no more and that we will only be taught how to teach ourselves...leaving the rest up to our own personal pursuit. We will spend more time specializing and less time generalizing. You wont hear..."All that useless stuff I learned in school"...useless knowledge will be your own fault.

I am very excited to be a part of the internet revolution, and something tells me I wont be going straight to hell for it.

Google Reader v2

I've been using Bloglines to aggregate my 100+ rss feeds from around the Internet since I discovered the wonderful world of rss about 2 years ago. When Google Reader v1 came out, I was at first impressed with the slick ajax UI they came up with...it was very smooth, had lots of bells n whistles, etc. However, unlike most google products I use, Google reader v1 fell way short of satisfying my rss thirst for knowledge. I could not categorize feeds and it was difficult to quickly browse articles. It was a classic example of where "cool" did not sync with "functional". Here's a screenshot of Google Reader v1 beta:

Recently, Google launched version 2 beta of their Google Reader...and after trying it out for a couple weeks, I've officially made the switch from Bloglines. Why? Because it finally lives up to the wonderful user experience that I've come to find in many of Google's other products such as Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Analytics.The

Pros: My favorite feature of the new reader is the ability to toggle the way you view the feeds from a list view (very similar to gmail) to an expanded view (similar to bloglines). I use both views frequently because some feeds (like craigslist feeds for example) are much quicker and easier to view as a list while other feeds that have long articles I tend to read regularly make the expanded view the most practical.

List View Screenshot:

Expanded view screenshot:

You can now categorize your feeds and organize them how you wish (similar to bloglines...only without the frames).

Another great differentiator from Bloglines is that google can display only feeds/folders that have new posts...which makes my list of 100+ feeds not so long and above the fold since i read them regularly.

Google reader is also smart enough to know the difference between a new post and an updated or modified post...therefore google will only show you new posts (if you tell it to)...where bloglines always just re-displays the same post every time its updated.

The Con (yea just one):

UPDATE: Just a couple of days after posting this review, google added the auto refresh in there...so this con is gone :)

My only gripe is that Google doesn't automatically update your feeds like bloglines does...instead, you have to refresh the reader to get your updates...not a show-stopper for me though :)

Keep track of your competitors with Competitious

Competitious recently launched a service that helps you easily keep track of your competitors. I can see this coming in very handy for those of us who do competitive analysis on a reguar basis. In their own words:

"Having accurate information about competitors is vital to your company's ability to maintain its competitive advantage. With a structured way to gather competitive intelligence, your company can maximize opportunity in your market while minimizing the threat of current and potential competitors. Competitious is an easy, confidential way to discover and share competitive information globally across your organization, and stay up-to-date on the competition."

You start by creating a project like “Ajax startpages” or whatever field you are interested in. You then add competitors by home page URL. Competitio.us hits the web and brings back each company’s blog, recent blog posts, related blog posts from off site and detailed traffic data from Alexa.

Each competitor page has an Ajax drop down to build a feature list. When one competitor on a project has a feature added, a check box for that feature is added to all the other competitors’ pages. You can then view all of the competitors and features in a full page matrix.

Blog posts are displayed (via the Google Ajax Search API) on the same page as each company’s information and can be sent to the clippings section with one click. When you add something to clippings you’re asked for comments and whether you want to email the clipping to the rest of your team.

There’s also a browser bookmarklet for adding news to clippings from off site. That bookmarklet brings up fields for related project, competitors and comments.

All of these clippings from a team of users can be subscribed to through a secure RSS feed. Any number of enterprise social bookmarking services are slowly emerging but this single feature in a relatively lightweight service makes it really valuable.

A team can work on any number of projects, each with different permission levels for individual users. Recent activity is listed on the sidebar so you can quickly check in on the newest discussion about your competitors in one place.

Get the full article at TechCrunch

UI Enhancement Guideline

This is a guideline I created a while ago with a former coleauge to ensure that we've thought though how a new feature will impact the application from a usability perspective. It has helped to minimize post release modifications. Next time you're making enhancements to a complex UI, this guideline may come in handy for you... General

• What is the objective?
• What is the solution?
• Does the solution meet the objective from a consumer point of view?
• Is this the right strategy for the right project?

Flow

• How does the solution affect the page and related pages (as an Entry page)?
• How does the solution affect the pages leading to the modified page?
• How does the solution affect the pages that the modified page links to?
• How does the solution affect other components on the modified page?
• Does the solution require additional or modified error handling?
• Do we need to update any documentation as a result of this solution?

Users

• How does the solution affect the User experience?
• What user needs is this solution satisfying?
• What types of users (personas) will find this solution helpful?
• Are there questions about the solution that a usability test or user research can answer?

Peers

• Who in our group has expert knowledge on the subject, product, or feature? Have they weighed in on the solution?

Reporting/Tracking

• Does the solution affect analytics or reporting in any way?
• Are there any new reporting requirements for the solution (like additional analytics tags)?
• How do we plan on measuring the effectiveness/success of the solution?

Standards

• Are there site conventions that the solution should follow (colors, font, type, grammar, hierarchy, button placement, etc…)?
• Should new standards be created to compensate for the solution?

Accessibility/Internationalization/Localization

• Is there any contextual help or documentation necessary to assist the user with the solution?
• How would multiple languages affect the design/layout of this solution?
• Does the implementation seem transferable to multiple sites and languages?
• How does the solution relate to localization?
• Does the solution compensate for accessibility standards?
• Screen Readers
• Mobile Mediums