After a hard, but very rewarding year…it’s live! I couldn’t be more excited about the work we’ve done.

Now go segment your search engine traffic and see what keywords have the most ROI and them make sure to optimize your landing pages for increased CTR.

Wow, it’s been an interesting year.

I was digging through my blog and found a post Anil Dash wrote about web development trends for 2006. It was interesting to read this almost exactly one year later.

[Update]
Anil revisits his web development trends one year later.

Sorry, it’s been a while. I think I have some good excuses though. I recently graduated from the Institute of Design, had a baby boy and started my new full-time job. And if that wasn’t exciting enough, we’re getting ready to move out to California. Anyone know of a good place to live in the bay area?

In order to survive crossing the streets of Chicago (or any large city I suppose) one must anticipate not assume approaching cars are going to stop at red lights. This, I thought, is a good way to explain how I as an interaction/interface designer try to design things. When designing something I think it’s a good idea to try to anticipate what and how someone may use what I design not assume how they are going to use it. The difference is assuming turns a blind eye to alternative possibilities, whereas anticipating sets a initial direction but acknowledges that users may have a totally different way of approaching something. It may be subtle but very important. For example, suppose I’m building a project management application. I notice that when people make to-do lists, they often categorize those to-dos by project…”these to-dos belong to ProejctXYZ”. But when creating an interface I don’t assume that every person will want to classify to-dos under a category called Projects. Rather, I anticipate this behavior but acknowledge that some may use this categorization as something completely different…”these to-dos belong to my Urgent category!”. This perspective has a significant impact on how the interface looks and how the interaction works. This anticipation makes for a more flexible and therefore more accommodating interface that users will grow to appreciate.

Technorati Tags: Interaction design, interface design

I read Raymond Lowey’s book Never Leave Well Enough Alone. Raymond Lowey, for those who don’t know, helped products move from the stark, bland assembly line type product to products that you would proudly show off in your home. He was a master at taking anything from refrigerators to trains to cruise liners and made them not only look really good, but also made them “feel” really good. You could say he helped put ‘design’ in industrial design.

This got me thinking about the parallels of industrial design history and the history of web design. If you trace industrial design back to it’s earliest days “the prime objective was to make the contraption - whether a coffee grinder, or lifting crane, or a steam engine - work.” The result was “the country became flooded with products.” Sound familiar? Remember what the web was in the mid-1990s?

Then, for industrial design, came “well-meaning” artists. As the book describes it, “with total disregard for the fundamentals of the problem, i.e., the improvement of the product itself, they started on their task of embellishment”. Some of the results of this era in industrial design were trains covered with garlands of roses, steam rollers with pink angles and stoves covered with quails and butterflies. As Lowey describes it, this marked the the age of “decalcomania”. Wow! It’s almost scary how similar this sounds to when web design was considered graphic designers mocking up a skin for a website in Photoshop and pasting the JPGs into table cells. Talk about decalcomania!

Then there was Raymond Lowey. He used design to make things people enjoyed having in their lives. The products he helped design were overwhelming successful, both in sales and in the response of the people who were using them. Just look at some examples. Lowey fought his whole life to make products not only look amazing but to feel just right and work just like people wanted them to. Are we entering the Lowey Era of web design? Is this what Web 2.0 is? I hope so!

Technorati Tags: web design, industrial design, raymond lowey, web 2.o

Measure Map is now part of Google. What a ride, what a team, what a product. I couldn’t be more excited as I begin my work at Google. See Jeff Veen’s post on the Google blog and the Adaptive Path announcement . And the journey continues….

Technorati Tags: Measure Map, Adaptive Path, Google

Patrick Whitney , director of the Institute of Design states nicely the value of design.

discovering users’ needs before your competition does, finding patterns in seemingly chaotic data that links user value to economic value, visualizing innovations early in the development process, and creating interrelated systems of solutions.

This description states nicely the difference between the old way of looking at design and the new way of looking at design. Old design is implemented at the end of a development cycle to make something look/feel/sound good. New design is implemented at the beginning, middle and end of a development cycle to make something look/feel/sound good but also to help make something that people want, is profitable, innovative and works with other things in the world.

Technorati Tags: design, design thinking, institute of design

I often find myself coming back to sites that have what I would call an “addictive” interface. A visual representation of data that keeps me coming back for more. I’ve recently been thinking about why certain interfaces are addictive and what elements make them addictive beyond the standard elements, like typography, layout, color and of course meaningful content. Here is my initial list.

The Ability to Manipulate Data
Interfaces that allow me to adjust ranges, check and uncheck variables or drag-and-drop different elements to new locations. Those that allow me to slice and dice data in lots of different ways.

Examples: Measure Map, Kayak, Amazon Diamond Search

Encourage Exploration
Interfaces that let me carve out my own experience and encourage exploration. Interfaces that show me what I expect to see but at the same time surround my experience with little clues and suggestions for exploration.

Examples: Flickr, NetFlix, Amazon

Facilitate Meaningful Interactions
Those elements in the interface that respond to my behaviors and let me be a part of the interface. Elements that let me move things around, add content and change content. Interfaces that seem to be “working” with me, that know what I trying to do and responds in meaningful ways.

Examples: Etsy, NikeID, Google News

Immediate Results with Endless Possibilities
Interfaces that make a good first impression. I “get” what the interface is telling me almost immediately. I know what to do, I know where to look, I know what it can do for me. However, when I’m ready the interface communicates clearly all it has to offer.

Examples: Pandora, Technorati, Bloglines

Technorati Tags: Interface, design

One distinciton I see in design is the what vs how. The what is about deciding what to make the how is figuring out how to make it. As an interaction designer, it’s important to be able to move fluidly between both the what and the how of design.

One way an interaction designer can help define the what is by prototyping. The ability to prototype interfaces and interactions quickly is critical when trying to figure out what to make. Key stakeholders and users respond much more precisely when they see an interface or interaction rather than trying to mentally put together what it might look like based on a 30 page spec.

Interaction designers must also be able to communicate at some meaningful level the how to developers and engineers. When developing a prototype, interaction designers must not let technology limit their ideas, but they must be mindful of the technical implications their ideas have when it comes time to develop their ideas.

To me, this is why being an interaction design is so fun. One day you could be creating prototypes in Flash, not worrying about database optimization, strict coding principles or any of that stuff. And then the next day, you might be exercising your ability to technically translate your ideas so that you and/or engineers can figure out how to make it.

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