In a nutshell Google Me is a social network that doesn’t have the restrictions that come with G-Mail like Google Buzz did. Other than what it doesn’t have, Google is playing it low-key and letting the speculation run rampant and spread word for them. All they are saying is that it will be a much simpler networking tool without all the games and spam messages. (Roughly the same thing Facebook said when they went up against MySpace.)

This would actually be Google’s third try at running a social network. The first try was way back in 2004 when Facebook was in its infancy. The Orkut caught on in Latin America but was a dud in the United States and Google Buzz was drowned out in complaints of privacy breaches and glitches that revealed private data. Of course you don’t get to be a company as big as Google without learning from your mistakes, right?

Google has had a habit hyping up their new products. Every year Google has a new and revolutionary product and sometimes that works in their favor and sometimes it doesn’t in the case of Google Buzz it just didn’t live up to its hype. As I said, this time Google is keeping quiet about exactly what Google Me is, preferring to let to build a groundswell by using sites like Wired. Com and G4tv to get people talking about what exactly what they have coming.

Google certainly learned the value of picking a good time to launch. Facebook has been getting some bad press recently for breaches in privacy and information exposing glitches. There’s even a movie coming out in the fall that could cause Facebook and the people behind it some headaches in the media (See trailer) If Google can spin Facebook’s bad press into good press for them this could be the break they’ve been waiting for.

So how does Facebook respond to all this? If I were their marketing wizard I would publicize the new privacy setting and talk about cracking down on spammers and bots.  I would promote Facebook like they did back when they took on MySpace.  They were the place to hold conversations, stay in touch with friends, and above all downplay all the bells and whistles that they’ve added over time and focus on the networking aspects.

One of the reason’s Facebook has been so successful is that it has shown a remarkable ability to adapt to what people want. When Twitter became a hit, Facebook quickly retooled their front page to assimilate with their ideas. If Google is going to beat Facebook it better do something that catches on quickly and surprises Facebook by doing something fairly innovative.  They said Google Buzz would be revolutionary but it turned out to be just another version of 4-Square using your G-Mail account.

Google has said they will launch Google Me later this year.   The odds are we’ll know pretty quickly whether or not it’s a success.   A massive launch like this is either a hit right out of the gate or it’s nothing and there are only so many times Google can announce they are taking on social networking before people stop listening so this could be their last shot at it.  As far as your own advertising dollars there could very well be a downturn in Facebook traffic as these privacy complaints pile up.  If internet privacy becomes a big issue Facebook will most likely find themselves doing some major damage control.  If Google Me can set itself apart from the rest it could be an interesting way to get your message out there.

news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20009159-265.html

edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/social.media/06/28/facebook.attitude/?fbid=EcJX7RW-7kT

www.inrumor.com/in/all/will-google-me-compete-facebook/

mashable.com/2010/06/30/google-me-rumors/

1. Userzoom (Sunnyvale, CA) provided the technology. They offer UX pros the ability to run online, task-based studies with geographically dispersed participants.
2. KeyLime Interactive (Miami, FL) moderated the sessions. They specialize in online web-based usability testing as well as traditional lab-based testing.

A little background about the study before diving into the results. Each Hotel site tested (Hilton, Marriot, Intercontinental, Starwood, Hyatt) were randomly assigned 50 different users to perform 2 tasks seperatly. Tasks took roughly 10 min in length to complete. Users were selected regardless of their prior affiliation with any hotel rewards program or familiarity with the site.

Tasks:

1. Finding a room on a beach at a particular time of year, particular distance from a landmark, within a set budget of $250.
2. Finding a hotel that provided parking to it’s guests

The web sites were evaluated on several metrics based on the tasks which users attempted to cary out (Overall success, Ease of use, Ease of Navigation, Clear where to start, Satisfaction with Time) and then are given an overall score (KLI score) by the moderating agency (Keylime interactive)

Data gathered from open questioning and Task 1 Results overview:

• Marriot, Hilton had largest groups of rewards program participants – and considered ‘most popular’ by users as well
• Hilton ranks best from a search perspective
• Hyatt ranks worst from a search perspective
• Marriot and Hilton brands scored well on ease of use and accessibility
• Hilton & Marriot score highest on success rate, Ease of Use, and Satisfaction. Hyatt scored lowest
• User satisfaction related directly to the time it takes to complete tasks

Data gathered from open questioning and Task 2 Results overview:

• Marriot scored highest on search, but most users had a hard time figuring out where to start clicking
• Hyatt & Starwood rank consistently low in all categories of evaluation within the task result

The KLI results from the 2 tasks were the aggregated for an overall KLI score

Executive takeaways

• All brands had varying strengths and weaknesses
• All brands have room for improvement
• All brands had a ‘negative’ score of with regards to the brand meeting end-users expectations (Hilton however was the ‘best’)
• No single brand or site should be picked on as being ‘bad’ in strict black and white terms. These results were simply the outcome of 2 tasks performed online. But it starts to paint a picture of the overall User Experience the various brands provide

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.

Sony’s major announcement was that they had finally developed an interactive controller, the Playstation Move, but unlike the Wii’s controller this one is made to take advantage of the new 3D TV (Coincidentally made by Sony; You‘ve got to love that synergy) Sony’s announcement comes just a few months from the E3 Expo, a consumer video game convention where most companies traditionally unveil their newest gizmos and gadgets. In a smart marketing move, Sony is getting a jump on the competition by announcing their major developments early instead of trying to push through the competition. They now have a news cycle all to themselves. In every market, but especially markets like the tech sector, if you can take advantage of a slow news cycle you can make a lot of money. That’s not the only place Sony learned from its past mistakes.

Not only have they learned the value of being the first out of the paddock, but they’ve also learned how to play off their niche audience. The advantage of having a core audience of young men is that you have virtually every medium in which to spread your message. (How often is a press conference for a video game broadcast on national television and the internet?) The downside is that that market doesn’t always have the spending money others do. The marketing strategy with the old model, when they come out with a smaller version and lower the price a year after the initial release, didn’t really work like it did in the past. That’s due mostly to a more competitive market. With the announcement that the Playstation Move will cost less than $100, they have shown that they really know the lifestyle of their core audience.

The biggest thing that Sony took away from their previous mistakes is that they learned how to capitalize on their advantages. In the one week that they’ve started to push The Move they have used the internet more than they did the entire campaign for the Playstation 3. They’ve learned that they can’t just let their reputation carry them because they have some very stiff competition now. Most of all they’ve learned that when dealing with the tech sector being last can cost you a lot. Great marketing departments learn from their mistakes so that next time – and the time after that – you don’t need to go into damage control.

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/22063.cfm
http://www.qj.net/qjnet/playstation-3/sony-playstation-3-marketing-campaign-renewed.html
http://games.venturebeat.com/2010/03/10/sony-new-motion-controller-is-on-the-move/

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.

You can check it out here: http://www.highschoolsports.net/nike-delicious-is-contest/

This is a good idea for 37signals (the company behind the product) as it potentially places them squarely in the middle of that intersection where design agencies and companies in need of interactive services meet. But, one wonders, is it good for the agencies?, the prospects?, or even the web design industry as a whole?

What we’re not so keen on. One thing that resonates as a negative for the industry as a whole here is the obvious commodification of design and perhaps the introduction of yet another middleman. Good design is difficult to place a value on. One thing we all agree on is that it affects the bottom line online. Yet when multiple agencies are placed side by side on a grid with their main qualitative information being their price range, then ‘complex interface design and development capabilities’ begin to take on the appearance of a Yellow Book page on engine repair. I quickly found myself comparing prices of listed agencies since that was mostly all that was offered on the list page. Further, those participating agencies were given only a few price ranges to choose form. Further still, it is somewhat counter-logical that an interactive agency will tell a prospect the price of their services without first hearing what the prospect needs.

What do we like? The site is slick and possesses the signature ‘friendly usability’ that we’ve come to expect from 37signals products. It is simple to enroll in the listing program and easy to upload content and images associated with your agency. We also like that they’ve employed the time-tested model of all successful SaaS start-ups: offer a lite version of the service for free. (We did this for Meer Meer) This is great for the developer of the SaaS because it increases participation in the subscription service and it allows prospects to test drive the service before subscribing. For agencies (who would be subscribers) the free mode allows them to ‘join the gang’ and be seen without having to call a meeting and discuss the investment.

In the two weeks we’ve been watching Haystack, we have seen a marked increase in agency listings there, mostly free. But for those who pay a monthly fee, the listing displays multiple panels of their work and pushes them to the top of the listing page in each city. 37signals definitely has national reach and their participating numbers probably will not disappoint.

Is it working? Well, it’s a young destination and 37signals has some responsibility to promote the site as a service to its agency subscribers. Jason Fried claimed in his Tweet of last week that he’d already received a lead from his listing in the site. We, as of this writing, have not. As one colleague put it, “Right now, it’s just an empty room where all of the agencies in our city are looking at each other.” Another noted, “It’s a job board by another name.” To my mind, it’s a little of both but we do expect this will become a fairly trafficked marketplace for companies and interactive vendors in the future. As we have a few friends in the company, we’re certainly rooting for them!