The machine, the one, the cloud

Ages ago I saw this video on You Tube called The web is us/using us. I thought it was a great video that neatly summed up the direction that the web is taking with web2.0. Its a great little video, simply put together.  It calls the system that is created wihen all data is linked up perhaps through the semantic web “The machine”

More recently I have been getting into TED. Last night I watched a talk by Kevin Kelly, publisher of the Whole Earth Review, exec editor at WIRED, founder of visionary nonprofits, and writer on biology and business and “cool tools.” The talk is called Predicting the next 5,000 days of the web. He is talking about the same thing, he calls it “The One”

I love TED and I love to hear ideas presented neatly. Even if the idea is not a new one, its great to hear stuff carefully sculpted to make it digestible and interesting.

I love the way TED categorises its content. It has great way of defining user ratings, having categories like “most jaw dropping”, “most persuasive” and “most beautiful”, amongst others. You can use facets to mix these user ratings with subjects like Technology, entertainment and design and then you can choose your preferred method of visualization either by list or using images. The images are presented at varying sizes (like a tag cloud of images) depending on your choice from the list of rating types. Or you can look at a more granular level at all the tags. Its a great thing to play about with. 

Move over TV and You Tube, I am going to be spending a lot more time on TED, so much better than BIg Brother.

 

IA for Tiny Things – Martin Belam

Martin gave an amusing and neat talk on designing widgets.

This talk examines what makes a successful widget from an information delivery point of view. It also looks at how information professionals can help develop more ‘playful’ ways of representing and structuring the information presented. These examples will illustrate how to develop a more engaging user experience, one that stands out from the all-too-common formula of ‘information feed + logo + home link = marketing widget’.

http://www.iasummit.org/proceedings/2008/ia_for_tiny_stuff_exploring_de

 

Search Patterns – Peter Morville

Peter Morville is collecting examples of search patterns on flickr. You can see them at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/morville/collections/72157603785835882/

He presented some examples from the flickr collection and explained his search categories at the 2008 IA Summit, presentation can be found here:

Search is among our most important and complex challenges. As the choice of first resort for many users and tasks, search is a defining element of the user experience. And, as a unique amalgam of content, metadata, technology and design, the search results interface demands intense cross-disciplinary collaboration.

In this fast-paced session, we’ll describe a pattern language for search that explains user psychology and information seeking behavior, highlights emerging technologies and interaction models, illustrates repeatable solutions to common problems, and positions us all to design better search interfaces and applications.

http://www.iasummit.org/proceedings/2008/search_patterns

 

Designing your reputation system in 15 easy steps – Bryce Glass

This presentation discusses some ways that reputations can be used in community sites to gain buy-in from users.

Leaderboards, Levels, Points, “Top 10 Reviewer”, Elite Status, Gold Member, Badges and Trophies—the options for representing a person’s reputation within a community are almost as varied as the reasons you might want to do so.  

Reputation can incent users to higher-and-higher levels of contribution, motivate them to stick around longer and form a deeper relationship with your product, but tread lightly: research and common usage have shown that specific reputation patterns lend themselves to some fairly specific contexts and—when used inappropriately—can harm your community dynamic. Ugly side-effects like increased competitiveness, lowered quality of contributions and petty squabbles may result. This talk presents 15 questions to take into account when designing your reputation system…

 

http://www.iasummit.org/proceedings/2008/designing_your_reputation_syst

 

IA Summit 2008, Miami

I visited the IA Summit in Miami on 12-14thApril 2008. As ever it was rammed with interesting presentations and conversations. I will post some links to some of my favourite talks. 

 

Silver surfers

I am currently trying to find out what issues, in particular, silver surfers face when using the internet. And the Lovefilm site in particular.  I understand that an accessible website is accessible for a large proportion of users not just the ‘disabled’. see my poster ‘accessibility is not about disability.’ What I have found so far is that: 

• Links need to look like links. Most silver surfers are quite new to the internet. If it doesn’t look like a link they may not realise that it is a link. This one will become less important over time as the market matures.
• Don’t use tiny text. And allow users to resize the text.
• Ensure contrast and brightness is suitable. This is one of my favourite pet peeves. Subtle colours look good but lack of contrast makes it hard to read.
• Design for a low screen resoloution, many silver surfers are using 800×600 (I know my dad does, it drives me mad) Older people tend to stick with the same kit they have had for years.
• Download something extra to see this site. No-one likes change, dont make users download extra stuff to use your site. Silver surfers are like the rest of us in this respect, perhaps even more so.
• Trust is very important to the silver surfer, especially if they are going to habnd over credit card details. What is your privacy policy and terms and conditions.

Some useful articles:Speaking freely  http://speakingfreely.wordpress.com/2007/01/22/site-design-for-silver-surfers/

 

The myth of the fold

This is not a new article but I only just came across it today.http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/blasting-the-myth-of    It talks about how it is a myth that people wont scroll on a webpage and proposes that the trick is to give them enough stuff above the fold that they want to scroll. It also suggests that the end of the page is an increasingly important space, after all the user stuck with it so far, scrolled as far as they could scroll. Now is the time to signpost them to some more content on your site.   All very sensible. It sums up quite nicely something I knew already. But more importantly, it reminds me about that valuable space near the footer. Which I had completely forgotten about. Got me thinking, we could do a lot more with our footer at lovefilm.

A podcast of an interview is also vailble here:

Jeff Parks had the opportunity to speak with Milissa Tarquini on her article, Blasting the Myth of the Fold. They talk about how this long held rule in web design is being de-bunked by web analytics and user testing, as well as how this will impact design and development processes based on screen resolution and browser compatibility.

http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/blasting-the-myth-of16

 

 

Hello world!

The picture on the header looks a bit like the Mersey Tunnel. Thats why i like it. I don’t think it is though. Mersey tunnel is much grubbier and they tend, in the main, to drive on the left .