Make it easy for people to learn about your product. Show them how it works. Don’t just tell them. Let them engage actively in the learning process and make it interesting. On the web especially, there are many ways to get people familiarized with the things you are offering them in more enjoyable ways than plain block text and a few static images. Resist including a lot explanatory copy when possible. Regardless of the amount of text needed to sell yourself, always make sure is high quality and relevant to the reader. Otherwise, as soon as it feels dull or pointless, they’ll be out of there and you’ve lost a conversion. Pretty graphics can be a step in the right direction, however they’re passive and therefore easy to gloss over.

People scan content on the web. But they’ll slow down and pay closer if there is content which actively engages them. Info-graphics, for example, begin to tell a story and give people more of a reason to begin participating. Video is another option, but make sure to offer people controls on the video player. If people have a certain amount of control over their experience it is less likely it will turn out poorly.

Product education doesn’t have to be visual necessarily, as long at it’s engaging. Some web sites include live chat with sales representatives. This involves just text, but it 100 times more dynamic than an old fashioned paragraph just sitting there for people to read. Personally I feel that offering more options for getting your message out rather than less is a good thing. The key word being ‘options.’ People like choice. The experience with your brand can go sour quickly as soon as you start forcing yourself on them.

These lessons should be common sense, but they bear repeating from time to time. All to often web pages are launched to show off a product or service and the user experience (UX) is absolutely terrible. Many times you get the feeling that Marketing, Sales, and Business teams had a heavy hand in the process and ‘design’ by committee was what resulted. This inevitably produces something that’s really good at satisfying internal company requirements and rarely pays attention to the details that make the message communicate effectively. Even if you don’t employ a UX Designer on your staff it is still critical to to remain user-centric when planning how to convert those people who become aware of your product into ones that believe in and chose to integrate it into their lives.

Further reading: Designing for the Social Web – by: Joshua Porter

But I feel compelled to address what might be considered the flip side to that position. That fact is that user-centric design usually includes many steps along the way that attempt to anticipate the user’s behavior and manipulate it a certain way. This is done for a variety of reasons but usually justified in the name of optimizing the experience on the user’s behalf. But as we all know this is not always the case. As designers, the user is not our only audience that needs satisfying. We also need to consider the client and their business goals. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this truth, there will come a time when the needs of both groups are polar opposite and one side will more than likely have to compromise as a result of the design decisions you make.

We’ve all probably been the victims of a software installer package that unleashes a few extra apps that we didn’t want. Oh sure, we could have unchecked the option in the Wizard but it was probably turned on by default, buried after a lengthy piece of fine print, and part of a multi-step process that we just want to speed through. By the time you realize what has happened it’s too late. Other times you might not even know that your experience (or at least a small part of it) has been ‘designed’ to elicit certain behavior. The website darkpatterns.org marvelously illustrates some of the more well known tricks out there as well as some of the less well known too.

The question that is raised is one of ethics. At what point does including subtle tactics of influence on the user become unacceptable? Remember, purposefully influencing behavior is not always a bad thing. In fact  it can be quite desirable. User’s for the most part look for familiar clues and conventions in designs to aid in the flow if their experience. In my opinion it comes down to how involved you are trying to be in the experience. Are you trying to tell the user what to do too often? The roll of ‘guide’ through the user’s experience is one that I personally like. While we could exercise a good deal of control through out design, ultimately it will be rebelled against. Your product should always remain subservient to the user.

The interface you design is a tool for you and your client to have a ‘conversation’ of sorts with the user. As with any conversation you ideally want it to be authentic. ‘Dark Patterns’ are a form of conversation which is not authentic. They may boost business metrics in the short term, but in the long run you will loose customers. People will exercise their option of choice and choose a different product to meet their needs.

For more on Authentic Conversations in design, read Joshua Porter’s book ‘Designing for the Social Web’

At this point, there are entire fields dedicated to the study and practice of addressing every step of the design process. Jesse James Garrett has famously illustrated a useful diagram which shows his idea of what the realm of User Experience Design encompasses. He describes each level in detail in his book The Elements of User Experience. The collective sum of this diagram’s parts, and how they tie together is what one might constitute as a ‘Designed’ UX.

More specifically though, if we’re not actually designing the experience for people, then what exactly are we after as UXers? For a person to master the UX discipline they would need to realize that there is a common ingredient all of it’s supporting practices share. In large part, success on any of the levels Jesse describes, means contributing to the user’s ability to engage in the phenomenon known as Flow. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi made this concept and term famous in his book entitled Flow. According to him:

…Flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. To be caught in the ennui of depression or the agitation of anxiety is to be barred from flow. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task…

At first it can be tough concept to grasp. But once it makes sense, your objectives as a designer can become much more clear. Designers can’t create Flow for users, but we can facilitate it. We can (and should) also minimize the chance of Flow being interrupted. In short, if a user easily achieves Flow while engaged in your system, you’ve probably succeeded as a UX Designer.

Let’s examine the following diagram from Csíkszentmihályi. It illustrates that to achieve Flow, a person must reach a balance between their skill level and the challenges being presented to them. The optimal range lies in relatively high challenges paired with relatively high skills to meet the challenges.

This can be incredibly subjective and vary greatly per user. It demonstrates how Design will never be an exact science. As you might imagine, it is easiest to cross over in to Flow from the adjacent feelings of either ‘Arousal’ or ‘Control.’ Likewise it is more difficult to achieve Flow the further away you are on the spectrum.

Suppose, for example, you were using a web site and things were going smoothly. You are in a state of Flow but suddenly you encounter a section that is very difficult to use and does not work like you were expecting. It makes no sense so your mood changes to a state of ‘Worry’ or ‘Anxiety.’ This scenario is one we can probably all relate to. Think back to how that experience likely changed your perception of the site you were using. Also, try to think about how it took extra effort to get back to the state of Flow each time you left it. It can be a hard state to achieve and an even harder state to design for. But nevertheless, it is a worthy goal because that is where  many of the best experiences lie.

Much has been written on the subject of Flow. I highly recommend reading the book and thinking about how the principle can apply to design if your job title relates to UX. I also recommend understanding the things that obstruct Flow. For more on that aspect, read the Marketing Experiments blog post which talks about the concept of a user encountering ‘Friction’ & ‘Anxiety’ and how it affects conversions.

Most businesses these days have social networks accounts they maintain. Likewise, so does just about every user out there. The goal for each is to stay connected by taking advantage of the social web and its two-way nature; sharing content as well as consuming content shared by others.

Naturally, clients want to exploit social channels by advertising them on their sites as well.  Oftentimes now, when you set out to design a site for someone, you have to take into account the presence of social web controls. At first is was probably okay to just fill in a bit of white space with a Facebook or Twitter logo somewhere on the home page as an afterthought. But with the social web being nearly ubiquitous now, it’s time to reexamine that approach. It is critical to take into account the context of the space your share/follow icons will live. Also, consider which affordances you will incorporate to let the user know weather they are able to take actions for share, follow, or both. Unfortunately, there is little consistency across the web so far in presentation and few standards for where and when to use your social controls.

Context is critical. You should give people a reason to so something social on your site. If you want them to follow your Twitter account, make that suggestion next to some great content and hook them while they’re interested. Context has the power to give deeper meaning to something. If you simply tuck  your social calls to action into 16×16 space down in your footer, you are not leveraging their full potential.

Next, consider affordances. Affordances are the subtle details that let a user know what is going to happen if they perform an action. Classic examples include underlining hypertext, altering the visual treatment of a button when you roll over it, or changing the arrow cursor to a hand cursor when you can click and drag something. These signals give us all a pretty clear idea about how elements on the site work even if we are new to the interface. But what about when a designer just plunks down a Facebook logo onto the page? Do we all assume the same things about it’s meaning. I doubt it. If you click it will you go to that companies Facebook page? Or will you be prompted to be their ‘’friend’, or indicate weather you ‘like’ something? Who knows without a proper affordance? Let your audience know what is going to happen before it happens. This will ease anxiety and hopefully result in more clicks.

Finally, in a perfect world, there would be some consistency in the icons used. A universal ‘share’ icon is suggested at this website: http://shareicons.com/ but has yet to catch on in a meaningful way. Interestingly, there is no mention of ‘follow’ icons. Share and follow are distinctly different actions yet they are closely associated because they are reciprocal to each other. It also does not help many web sites incorporate the same icon sets for both functionality types.

This paradigm of large social media sites being omnipresent (even on other people’s sites!) is still a fairly new one. So it’s not surprising we don’t have it completely figured out yet. The old convention, ‘Design is in the details’, comes to mind. If you’re designing for a site, put some thought into your social controls. They deserve to be scrutinized and refined with just as much thought put into them as any other new twist that has come before them.

Last night we discussed Dan Saffer’s Book: Designing for Interaction: Creating Innovative Applications and devices. It was fairly well received by all in attendance. Overall the book is very concise and informative. We all especially liked the brief history of interaction design section, and there was spirited conversation over weather the function of Interactions Designers is to ‘’Make the world a better place to live.” It’s a 200-page overview consisting primarily of tools and techniques that Interaction Designers should be aware of and potentially using. Ideally this book would be found in a classroom or on the shelf of an ambitious student. Practitioners however may not reap as much benefit for the simple fact that the book outlines an extensive set of techniques that, as described, can only exist in a vacuum. They are neatly sectioned off for designers to consider using throughout their process. Sadly, there is little to no mention of the process itself, or of clients, or business requirements mentioned in the book. For purely educational purposes, it does a nice job of familiarizing readers with the nuts and bolts of Interaction Design practices, but might leave some wanting to hear more detailed accounts of how they can be applied in the real world.

On a related note: The club often hands out a copy of an upcoming scheduled book, and this time I was fortunate enough to win! I’m very excited to be reading Todd Zaki Warfel’s new one called Prototyping: A practitioners guide, slated for discussion at the end of June. Look for a review on that when the time comes and look for other book club meeting notes in the future.

If you would like to attend a meeting in person, check the UX Book Club Chicago website for times and dates. It meets at 350 N LaSalle Dr Chicago, IL

Being involved in the web industry, one event always comes to mind when talking about big conferences, South by Southwest. One of my New Year’s resolutions was to attend this event to see what it had to offer and to experience what all the commotion was about. I have to admit, SXSW was my first real conference, so I don’t really have anything to compare it to, but from what I have heard and what I experienced, it’s hard to compare it to anything in the first place.

Before heading to the conference I did not really know what to expect. I was very prepared with a full list of lectures and talks and knew exactly who I wanted to hear speak. On top of the learning I also really wanted to network and meet new people in my industry.

To begin, SXSW is held in Austin, TX. Austin is the capital of Texas and from what I gathered a pretty laid back and gorgeous town. Downtown Austin, where the conference center is located, seemed to be the perfect size for a downtown area and had a wide array of various restaurants and bars. Our hotel was about 10 blocks north of this area, so everyday (usually several times) we would make the hike back up to our hotel and get to see many of the awesome venues that make Austin the “Live Music Captial of the World.”

Ok, enough with the fluffy stuff, down to business.

So after we arrived on Friday and checked into our hotel we went straight to the conference center to pick up our registration badges. This was our first experience at the “hub” of the conference, and everything looked perfect. All of the talks and lectures were spread between 3 hotels and the conference center, which were all within a half block radius of each other. Inside of each building was littered with small “charging lounges” and table filled areas where people would congregate and refuel their various portable devices.

My first talk on Friday was Simple Steps to Great Webdesign, and featured Matthew Smith of Squared Eye. Matthew gave a great presentation showing subtle things designers and developers can add to sites to really make them stand out and be unique. He touched on simple things like grid layouts and typography, but also showed various javascript techniques and subtle flash animations that enhanced the site experience for the user. This topics of this lecture were fairly general, but it was great being in a learning environment and hearing someone show me good and bad practices, instead of having to search them out and find them on my own.

Unfortunately, because of a late check-in requirement at our hotel, this was the only lecture I was able to make on Friday, but I had a full schedule of events and talks scheduled for the rest of the days left, so after the talk we did some exploring around the Convention Center area and then went back to our hotel to get ready for dinner and a night on the town.

Flash forward to Saturday 8:00 am: Headed south on Red River St toward the events sporting my “hackpack” (basically my backpack which holds all necessary hacking gear: Laptop, Cell phone charger, camera, notepads, plethora of flash drives, etc..) My talks on Saturday included:

• Re-Inventing the Wheel: Sketching your own IA Process
• Pen & Paper Tools to Get From Research to Design
• CSS3 Design with HTML5
• Third Coast: How to Be a Startup Outside of Silicon Valley

My favorites of the day were: Pen & Paper Tools, which was a very interesting way to conceptualize information from the client, and to visualize the data and turn it into practical useable wireframes, and Third Coast: How to Be a Startup Outside of Silicon Valley, which was a conversation curated by Ross Kimbarovsky and Michael Samson, the two founders of CrowdSpring.  This talk was different from most lectures as it was rather intimate (around 50 people) and Ross and Michael really pulled the crowd into the conversation by creating an open dialoge between everyone.  They focused on ways small businesses can foster and create communities anywhere you are and also gave great tips on how small business can leverage themselves and collaborate amongst each other.

Sunday brought more lectures:

• Beyond LAMP: Scaling Websites past MySQL
• Your Design Process is Killing You
• Interactive Agency Workflow

After the weekend was done I had gotten a pretty good feel for how the rest of my time left in Austin was going to go, and I was already exhausted!  Between hustling to get to the next lecture, staying as focused as possible in each lecture, and lugging around all of my various necessities, I was beat!

One thing that was somewhat surprising, but I guess I should have expected it, was the amount of shameless self promotion. Stickers everywhere, flyers everywhere, tshirts, coozies, every form of sponsorship imaginable on a cheaply made drinking accessory.  It was annoying, but being surrounded by this much technology and geek-dom everywhere made it OK in my book.

As the conference went on, and I would meet more and more people, I started on seeing two obvious types of people who are at SXSW.  Group A would be people there to learn and grow as professionals.  When I would talk to these people they would discuss all the lectures they had gone to and new concepts they have learned and were excited to apply. Most of these people you could tell had a real passion for what they did and were at SXSW to meet new likeminded people to possible collaborate with in the future.  Group B was very different.  Group B consisted of people who were there to talk about themselves and their new latest startup or amazing idea.  Most of these people (who I talked to) did not really attend many of the lectures or talks, and many of them even joked saying that they should not have gotten a pass in the first place.  Group B should not be confused with anyone at SXSW who was promoting something, as many of the people who were promoting were actually passionate about their product and I enjoyed talking to them about it.  Group B people usually were not promoting anything specific, but were there promoting themselves and would reference startup X which was a “location based social media aggregator that was crowd sourced on an iphone app.”

After I found this clear distinction in groups of attendees I did everything I could to attend events that featured Group A type of people, because these people actually were there for the same reasons I there, and after talking when them I felt inspired to perfect my craft even more.

Monday came and went with more talks:

• Results Only Work Environments (ROWE)
• Expression Engine 2.0 : Total Domination
• Object C Crash Corse for Web Developers

Tuesday, the last day, I went to possibly my favorite talk of the whole conference.  It was titled Getting Better: The Designer’s Path from Good to Great.  Similar to the Third Coast talk I mentioned above, this session was an open dialogue between all participants and the two guys curating the talk, Ian Coyle and Duane King.  Ian, who I was familiar with from my time in the Denver web scene, founded (and recently left) an agency called FL2 and Duane has his own agency called BBDK.  The two both talked about their carrer path being a designer and various times in their career where they each felt like their work had been taken to the next level.  It was great hearing from both of these guys and seeing how they developed and matured what they loved into successful business endeavors but still maintained great integrity and passion in what they both do.  The topics they covered ranged from very generic questions such as, how to handle bad clients and also more complex questions like, being so involved with what you do – do you find that it distracts from other areas of your life?   All in all it was a great talk to end my SXSW experience on, as I felt inspired and invigorated, ready to create!

All in all SXSW was an amazing experience that I hope to attend every year.  The benefits of learning so much are obviously there, but the intrinsic benefits of meeting new people and being so excited to love what you do, made it all worth while.  I would highly recommend  to anyone in the wide interactive industry to attend and take it all in.

Words of Wisdom

• Don’t expect to attend every lecture your planning on, you just can’t do it.  At most I’d say 3-4 per day is do-able.
• If you really want to go to a specific talk, get there early, they fill up quickly.
• “Hackpack” is vital.  A solid bag that can hold all of your gear is amazing.  One of the best investments I’ve made.
• If your trying to get into a big sponsored party, get there early! Like 7:00-8:00…Yeah its early, but you’ll appreciate it when its an open bar.
• Pick a hotel that is not right next to the conference area.  We were about 10 blocks away and it was nice to get a good walk in to start the day and it let us see a little more of Austin than we would have not gotten to see otherwise.
• Bring business cards!
• Twitter, Foursquare/Gowalla, Facebook are awesome and are your friends. (I wish people everywhere used these like people were at SXSW)
  • With that being said, the aforementioned are great TOOLS, don’t be on them 24/7 or you will miss interacting with all the cool people that are there.
• Go to a variety of panels and discussions, not all from the same category (ie: design, development, business, social media).  Go there to expand your knowledge-base, not to become a master at one.
• Eat as much mexican food as humanly possible.

What I will say is that a little more progressive thinking would help cut out a lot of the senseless number of versions required for some companies running rich media ads and also (potentially) increase your margin for success. So how did I come to this conclusion? Through recent conversation with some ad partners and also jumping through a technical hurdle or two.

We recently completed an XML fed rich media ad for a client. The ad featured a small content management system that allowed the client to update that XML feed and thus create a new ad “on the fly” for as long as they were running their ad unit.

So, why does this matter? It obviously doesn’t seem like a radical concept (or I would hope not ). It’s a process almost all designers have used when building a website. Make something the client can not only use but also maintain. Why? Because it ads value to both the client and the agency.

1.) It cuts down on versioning.
2.) It gives content control to the client.
3.) It removes back and forth (you know, the 45 email chains).
4.) It ads flexibility to their ad campaign.
5.) It ads longevity to the ad.
6.) It softens mistakes.

If you’re asking how? You’re in luck (descriptions below).

1.) It cuts down on versioning - If you’ve ever created a rich media ad, you’ll soon begin to notice that there sometimes are 26 versions of an ad that accomplish the same goal. You’ll probably sit in photoshop or flash at some point and say (or possibly scream) “why am I doing this!?” and with good reason. A dynamic solution allows a designer to create one universal flash ad that updates in real time and then leaves 1 simple static ad (in the event flash cannot be delivered) for each iteration. Instead of doing 26 ads, maybe you can cut it down to 13. In terms of efficiency, that’s obviously huge.

2.) It gives content control to the client - Making the client an active participant helps ads value to what you do. It also ads ownership and accountability to what is ultimately their product. More often than not, that leads to a richer experience all around (which is never a bad thing).

3.) It removes back and forth (you know, the 45 email chains) - I don’t think I’ll explain this one. Why ruin the fun for someone who has yet to experience one of life’s miracles. /sarcasm

4.) It ads flexibility to their ad campaign - So what happens if you’re 5 weeks in to a 10 week ad campaign and you realize what (or the way in which) you’re advertising could be improved. Different wording, a larger percent off, an “hourly discount”, etc. etc. etc. Or what if you sold something that absolutely flew off the shelves and you like to replace another so-so sale, later in the campaign, with that same discount?

How is that going to happen if you have 50 versions of an add that all need updated by a designer, reloaded in to an ad portal and then relaunched individually? The answer is, it’s not.

How about if you have an XML feed that populates those ad units instead? and all their ad sizes (728×90, 300×250, etc., etc., etc.). Update a single text file, hit submit and all your ads just changed in real time. No contacting the agency or the ad portal. Simply update your CMS and hit enter. So why isn’t this design strategy happening more? Maybe it makes too much sense?

5.) It ads longevity to the ad - An ad that updates via an XML document (and not a designer) is not only cheaper over time but it also stands to last infinitely longer than a static ad. Did your campaign change? Are you selling a different product? No problem. Just update the CMS, relaunch the ad and you have now been able to recycle something that typically would have been thrown away. There’s value in that for everyone involved (a superior product, happy customers and ultimately more business).

6.) It softens mistakes - So you spelled a word wrong? (unfortunately been there and done that). What next? Well, it obviously needs changed (my head is starting to hurt thinking about this) and ASAP. In a dynamic ad, 90+% of people are seeing the flash unit. Having the ability to immediately wipe out that mistake for nearly every user in about 60 seconds is HUGE. Log in to the CMS, update the XML and the spelling error is removed. You’ll obviously have to make changes to the single accompanying static ad (if the same error was made) but you’ll SIGNIFICANTLY reduce the pain of a small correction.

So my question is, why are people NOT making more ads that are dynamic, flexible and client friendly?

If you’re shouting “We are! We are!” then I might have just wasted your time……well, while validating your work. I hope you consider that an even trade.

If you’re shouting “Why aren’t we doing this!?” Well…….Why aren’t you? Ads need love too.

As I already mentioned, there are new mediums and devices coming out that are abstracting the web and displaying the content in other more unique forms. Instead of the typical user sitting down at his/her work station and loading up Generic Browser X to “surf the web”, they are opening their Twitter client, geo-locating friends in an iPhone app, and soon to be reading books on their iPad.

Without trying to sound to cliche, the internet – and the data that supports it – is infiltrating our lives and dictating how we communicate amongst ourselves. Maybe “dictate” and “infiltrating” are harsh words, but when thinking about it from a newspaper publishers point of view, those words don’t sound harsh enough. It’s no question that the internet has hurt traditional print media publishers and the primary reason many of these companies have gone out of business. But my question is what aspect of the internet actually led to the demise? The answer is not that mind-blowing, but is simply, the accessibility of information became so abundant we no longer needed to pay to see the same content elsewhere.

At this point you might be saying “Wow, great concept, Bryant… ‘Accessibility’ – welcome to 2010,” and I will also agree that this concept is rather outdated, but it is also the exact point I am trying to make. Instead of saying “welcome to 2010″ you should have been saying “welcome to 2006.” Accessibility of information is what has already shaped the internet and is what made it into this giant creation that we use today. The frontier that is now being conquered, and is the root of the “abstraction” process I have refereed to, is making the web more usable.

When you look at some of the first products that “abstracted” the internet, such as Rich Internet Applications (RIA), it’s very clear that they wanted to take the content of the web and make it a more enjoyable and usable experience. Why is the internet not a usable and enjoyable experience? Ha! Well that can be answered several ways (and also very sarcastically), but in short it is because of the infrastructure of the internet. At that point in time (which we are arguably still living in) HTML and web browsers were not advanced enough to handle some of the interactions and display patterns designers wanted to use to display content. Because of this technological limitation, developers created RIA, which can grab the content of the internet and harness the power of a localized application to deliver it to a user in a much more versatile, running environment.

As powerful as some RIAs are, the main drawback is that it was not running inside the browser, the main component of using the Internet. However, with the adoption and implementation of new web standards into modern web browsers, browsers would soon be able to handle all of the same interactions and display patterns that RIA currently did.

Flash forward to today (You didn’t know we were in a flashback mode, did you?) where most modern browsers support forms of HTML5 + CSS3, and paired up with the canvas element, there are javascript techniques out there that will rival Flash. What is the next step? Well, it’s taking the usability and accessibility of the web and delivering it in a product smaller, leaner and more tactile than looking at it on your desk monitor….wah-lah – the iPad!

Now, I don’t consider myself to be an Apple fanboy, though it may seem like I am one when I talk about the iPad. But what I am really trying to explain is the concept and execution of the iPad. I don’t think any company has nailed the tablet concept quite like Apple – although I do think other companies definitely have the capacity to do so. Anyway, the reason I believe the iPad to be so revolutionary, is that it takes the accessibility of the internet, adds in usability features found on modern web browsers and couples the whole thing in a nice, lean well-designed mobile product. It’s the type of product that you look at old 1980′s movies and see futuristic people with flying cars using, except the main difference is that it’s actually here. Does the iPad not have multiple applications running? No. Does it have Flash? No. Does it deliver its most important asset, the internet, in a new portable textile medium? YES! And it seems to deliver that extremely well.

I must say that I was very disappointed when I learned that the iPad didn’t have a forward-facing camera. Furthermore, I think the price structure of the various iPad units suggests a bait and switch approach ($499, yeah but who is going to buy this without 3G?). But when it’s all said and done ,I would be more than willing to pay $650-ish dollars for a device that delivered the Internet to me in a portable, book-sized container.

And now, finally, back to the publishing industry. It would seem that with all this technology they are destined to go the way of the Dodo Bird, but if you take a closer look (at least at the iPad) you can see the iTunes store paradigm fitting in perfectly. iTunes itself has grown to be the world’s largest music retailer, and an argument can be made that people only download music that is easy to get, no matter if it’s free or .99 cents. Bringing this sales approach to the magazine and newspaper publishing industry would be a win-win….win. Publishers will still be able to provide their premium content to virtual subscribers and not have to worry about printing physical copies. Users will be able to access rich “print” media on new user-friendly devices that enhance the reading experience. And device manufactures will be able to create these new devices and push the bounds of technology even further.

Whew… that was a lot of writing, and maybe my conclusion is a little optimistic. But in the face of seeing a major industry collapse on itself, it is refreshing to see an outlook change and be reinvigorated by the advent of a new cutting edge piece of technology.

I believe a big part of being an active member of any community, such as the “people who build websites community”, is to give back and provide people with the opportunity to learn and grow.  On top of giving information and showing how things can be done and built, every now and then you come across work that is a notch above the rest.

Recently, I was browsing a popular design/dev website and came across this playground, built and maintained by Zurb, out of San Fransisco.  The playground has many innovative ways to use HTML5 and CSS3 and  combined with some javascript they have come up with some very awesome stuff!  Please check out these examples and take note!

Lately, the like/dislike method, aka – ‘vote to promote’  is establishing itself as a preferred method of rating by users. So why, when presented with a more robust ratings option do people tend to prefer a simpler one? Perhaps any method of streamlining the information overload we experience online these days is the biggest factor. On nearly any given site, one has to spend a considerable amount of effort managing the fire hose of incoming data. The ability to concisely and quickly process data is emerging as king these days. Like it or not people tend to show signs of preferring “fast and to the point” design. Even though a more granular option such as the 1-5 star system might seem like a better offering, people are saying they just want the ‘meat and potatoes’ so they can do their business and move on.

An interesting observation about the like/dislike model is how it’s geared towards the perspective of the reviewer. For the reader of a review it must be later interpreted what intent was actually being communicated. If you say you ‘like’ something, or give it a ‘thumbs up’ or whatever, people are left wondering how to apply that bit of data to themselves. I think most people probably ‘like’ something because they feel it was worth their time, effort, or money or validates them in some way but who knows? My point is that reviews are a two way street so whatever system you end up going with it should enable the reviewer to get in and out quickly and effectively with the ability to tell not only if they like something, but also why.  Until now, the way we tell people why we like something is through a blank text field which the user is left to fill up at their digression. But people want meat and potatoes, right? A long-winded review may be truthful and unbiased, but it is also granular, like the 5 star systems. Perhaps it’s time for something new to emerge?

I don’t think this is a closed issue by any means. I do think we are in the midst of a state of flux. People will invariably want some sort of granularity in a rating system from time to time. This is a good thing. Ratings have the potential to offer a great service within software. Your best bet is to get to know your user base as well as you can and understand what kind of opinions they are yearning to express as well as receive.

Here are other links on the topic:

(Thanks to IAI-member Christian Crumlish for compiling this list in a related email thread)

http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/social/objects/feedback/rating.html
http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/social/objects/feedback/votetopromote.html
http://www.designingsocialinterfaces.com/patterns.wiki/index.php?title=Thumbs_Up/Down_Style_Ratings
http://buildingreputation.com/writings/2009/11/5-star_failure.html
http://buildingreputation.com/writings/2009/09/first_mover_effects.html
http://buildingreputation.com/writings/2009/09/time_decay_in_reputation_syste.html
http://buildingreputation.com/writings/2009/08/ratings_bias_effects.html
http://buildingreputation.com/writings/2009/02/corporate_ratings_abuse_and_wh.html
http://mashable.com/2009/12/15/ratings-reviews/