Experience
experience

The good experience

With the Web becoming a primary source for everything, from knowledge to buying stuff, classic marketing terms like point of sales and point of contact are steadily redefined. People experience your brand online and they transfer this online experience on their overall brand experience. More than ever before, creating a good user experience is crucial for brands, companies and sales.

Henning von Vogelsang, March 19, 2007
A home without windows

With all this talk about revolutionary Web applications, Web 2.0 and transitional Web, I am always baffled to find how many new sites, as good as they are looking, are running into classic design mistakes.

Take Mindmeister, for an example. Or Gifttagging or Apple. Technorati looks great, but the user experience is inconsistent. Wis.dm is not there yet, but they have improved greatly after I had consulted them a couple of months ago.

All these sites do something wrong, while Flickr, Twitter, Amazon and ZDNet Blogs are doing it right.

What am I talking about? The user experience. Namely, what is active and what not. Or in old-school terms, the links.

Click here

Links are much more these days than they used to be. The original HTML specification saw links as a core action element of hypertext markup language. Links are only one gear wheel in the whole set of Web functionality, but they are at the heart of everything. Without links, there is no action, no behavior, no “going somewhere” no “coming back”, no tabs, no context, no visitors.

If links are such a relevant element of the Web, crucial for good Web design, one would assume that anyone who creates a website (let alone a web application, which creates a lot more interaction), would have a decent look at links. But apparently that is not the case. Simply put, a lot of web designers and developers are sloppy about this factor.

The mantra

Let me be clear about this:

Designing a website and failing to incorporate interaction properly is like building a home and forgetting to put windows in it. Seriously, it is that bad.

You may use that when you talk to your designers, developers, project managers and clients. Just remember it. Use it as a mantra, stick it on your screen, put it on the backside of your office restroom door. Just think of it when you create a website.

But what does that mean actually? Incorporating interaction properly, sure; you know what that means, right? It is indeed quite simple. Which is probably one of the reasons why most people fail doing it right.

How bad is it?

What if you don’t do this right? Is it really that bad? Yes it is. But you won’t find out for a long time. Or maybe you find out through excessive user testing, but you are unlikely to find those flaws yourself. Simply because when you build something, you click on links and buttons for a thousand times. And you simply forget that little fact, that if you wouldn’t know where to click, you wouldn’t click there.

Links, buttons and anything that triggers any sort of action is what “incorporating interaction” is all about. There are hypertext links leading to a different spot on the site. There are links leading away from the site. There are links that open form masks to send emails or leave comments. There are buttons to confirm, send or post. There are buttons or links that trigger JavaScripts. If you make a list of everything that calls for action on a single web page, you might end up with a very long list. But luckily, there is only one thing you have to remember: Which are my action triggers?

Here is a step by step guide. It’s not all you need, as it doesn’t releave you from creating a concept that is clear about what your website or Web app is about. But it’s a great check list for your prototypes.

  1. Use one color for links, and one color only. For all your links, no exception.
  2. If you don’t want to use one link color only, at least use underlines as a significant design element to differentiate links from regular text.
  3. Make a difference between what is a link that leads somewhere, and what is a button that triggers a form action.
  4. Use only one kind of a button and use a consistent graphical language that makes apparent which are the buttons on your site.
  5. Choose link- or button colors that signalize activity.
  6. Use a clear and simple icon language that works self explanatory.
  7. Use arrows to indicate direction (you can go somewhere) and not only as a neat bullet point.
  8. Stick with your design choices throughout the site, and use them as a design pattern.

Trust me, as simple it may sound, sticking with this isn’t that easy. Throughout the design process you are always tempted to make something look just slightly different. You want to change the link color. You want to make it look less obtrusive perhaps, by dimming the colors a little bit. Or just to use a link instad of a button. Just because it looks neater, or you think it “works better”. It might look better, but it’s questionable if it actually works better for the users of your website.

User comes from “to use”

You always have to remember that your site visitors are users, who want to do something with your website. The main point of surfing websites is to do something with them. To get information, shop, go somewhere, return, or contribute with your own content. Today’s Web surfers are a lot less passive than they used to be a couple of years ago. The whole reason why there is a Web 2.0 movement in the first place is its users. It simply wouldn’t exist without them.

Sticking with consistent design patterns and providing clear indicators for interaction may not be important for contributing your design to CSS Mania. It may not even be noticed by your client, or even by most of your site visitors. And that is the best sign for good design, because that means it simply works.

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Henning von Vogelsang, March 17, 2007
Why Twitter works

Boy, did I want to write this post. For a long, long time. But I never got around to do it. If I wasn’t working, you guessed it, I was twittering.

Expect “twittering” to line up next to “googling” as a new word in the dictionary any time soon. It’s not just a new social Web app, it is a rocket booster of a pop phenomenon.

Twitter

It is hard to tell when exactly that point emerges, when a product, person, brand or name reaches this point of critical mass. But it has typically reached that point when literally everybody is talking about it. It is that moment when you can read about it in mainstream media, and when your dad calls you and asks you if that is what you’re doing. That’s the moment when you know, something has been taking off really.

It was like that for terms like Web 2.0, Myspace, Google, Amazon and the iPod. And it’s undeniable now that all these names, companies, brands or things have settled deeply in the mindset of the average consumer. Ask anyone on the street, and they will know what Google is. They don’t need to own a computer to know it.

A number of smart people have already talked about Twitter, written articles and essays, and elaborated on what Twitter what Twitter is and how it works. Most conclude in unison that Twitter is easy to use and a lot of fun. But try explaining it until you really used it. You can try, but it will always be a blurry image of the actual experience. Twitter is a lot about the experience.

No one, not even Twitter’s founder, could possibly estimate or explain beforehand how Twitter would pull off, and why. My guess is, they just had a hunch about doing the right thing, and Twitter prove them right. If something is proven this way, by people using it around the clock, and numbers of users growing exponentially, what better way do you know to demonstrate this was a brilliant idea?

Twitter is not used by individuals only. You will find companies like Adaptive Path, Technorati and even the Bay Area’s BART have started twittering. Among its most famous adopters are Steve Jobs, Jeffrey Zeldman and iJustine.

Aside of all the hype, joy and simple fun people get out of Twitter, I made a couple of thoughts on my own. I too can enjoy Twitter without analyzing it too much. It simply works, and it works beautifully. But I wouldn’t be me if I wouldn’t want to know why it actually works. What makes this a brilliant idea?

  1. In my opinion, Twitter hits the nerve of what makes a good Web application. Why?
  2. Because I think for now, in our time, it is just the right balanced amount of aggregating, delivering and consuming chunks of information
  3. These chunks are consumable bites, small enough to create a constant flow of get and give
  4. With our habits and behavior patterns changing, maybe this alone won’t be enough for Twitter to remain attractive in future, but for now it is
  5. What makes Twitter work at its core is its unobtrusive push- and pull effect, which is carried by your existing network of real life contacts and friends
  6. Twitter doesn’t stick to a website, it is a lot more interactive than most social apps are
  7. It isn’t a social website that makes you fill out lengthy profiles or forces you to adapt to a given grid of content offerings
  8. It doesn’t define what you do with it, but restricts your data format to 140 signs
  9. It can do one thing only, but does this quite well
  10. It has an open interface that works with multiple communication channels and devices

In an interview at SXSW, Twitter’s founders made an emphasis about this point. Being open in all directions, creating connection points on multiple devices, is a crucial point to them. I think we will see a lot more happening in this direction soon, with websites leaving the Web, taking their capabilities beyond the browser and starting to get a foot in our daily lives. With Web 2.0, the Web has actually found back to its mission, its true meaning. It is all about connections. So the cell phone is just another interface, which doesn’t work the way it should now, but real Web apps haven’t really started yet to appear on cell phones. Leaders like Nokia and new kid on the block, Apple, are joining Google, Yahoo! and others to make your phone a more useful device. The key element here is to make the device work with your needs and habits, and not just focus on creating a better Web browsing experience.

I am also working on a concept that incorporates cell phones, which will take some of the functionality you know from websites and provide connection points in daily life, for real life situations.

You aren’t always sitting in front of your computer, but your cell phone is always in your pocket. It is about time cell phones run more than browsers and email, to do more than calling up movie times or train schedules. Cell phones are communication devices, and despite the fact they were bogging users down with superfluous features (like that useless Moto Midi sound mixer on my Motorola Razr), cell phones are now following the Web, entering a new age of change. One could well call it Cell 2.0. Do you think I should trademark that?

Resources

Twitter
Twitterrific

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Henning von Vogelsang, December 12, 2006
Writing for the good user experience

In 2000 I worked for a Swiss web company for a very short time, a couple of weeks only. It was a contract job, in between some advertising jobs I was working on. The web company had just found out that their Flash site wasn’t doing anything. Still, their customers wanted Flash sites, but it dawned to this company, that Flash wasn’t ideal to deliver real content. It was pretty, but that was it.

So they found their new credo. Right out of the Cluetrain Manifesto: Content is king.

Of course that wasn’t new, but it didn’t matter. The whole point for a lot of companies like this one was, they didn’t get it, and now they did.

If you’re selling yourself as a web company, you try to impress your clients with professionalism, experience and knowledge. You don’t shout out you didn’t get something. So that’s what most companies I watched started doing. They wrote “content is king!” on their banners, pretending it was what they had always known.

A List Apart covered this topic with a very good article. It’s funny to read, and it nails the whole point of why it is important what you write in your about page. It’s even more than that, if you read it right. The essence of the article is true for all web writing, and for the Information Architecture structure of your website.

An excerpt from the article:

The real problem is a lack of attention to the user’s needs and the way that the organization’s communication goals can be met while serving those needs. The first and most important way to improve your About page is to think very carefully about what your visitors need and want from your About page. Personas are a useful tool for this sort of thing, but even a quick brainstorming session should produce results better than the ones we’ve seen above…

…Once you know what your visitors want, make it easy to find. Want to keep your “press room” in its own section? Fine, but link to it from your About page anyway. Don’t hide things or force users to respect your internal organizational divisions. Give them what they need.
It’s important to fulfill what you promise. If you write “learn more about us” and you don’t deliver, you add to the bad web experience of your visitors. And this isn’t something that becomes obvious in direct user testing groups. Looking at content with this kind of angle is something that comes out of natural web behavior. A user testing group is an artificial situation and it isn’t likely you will find out what’s wrong with your web content through usability tests. Your focus may be more like “do you get the navigation” and similar points.

I have been pondering how to set up a good user-testing environment. Gaining feedback over some time, not in an artificially set up group. A good way to collect experiences that go deep to this level, beyond clicks per page and basic usability. I haven’t found a good solution yet, but I’m working on it. Any ideas?

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Henning von Vogelsang, December 07, 2006
Movable Type, core style

The interface of my MT 3.2 installation was getting old. Its fonts were too small and it looked cluttered and cramped together on my 1280 px screen.

Movable Type, core style

Aside of Comic Sans, I would say Trebuchet is likely the worst web font available. So I first replaced it with Lucida Grande, followed by Arial.

The original idea was to adjust the overall size of the layout, to make it work better with the resolutions of current computer screens. I didn’t place elements differently; I just gave everything a little bit more space, adapting some of the look and feel of the core website.

It’s interesting. All of a sudden, removing some elements, cleaning it up and making it look less cluttered, can give the whole thing a Web 2.0 feel.

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Henning von Vogelsang, October 18, 2006
Social Bookmarking comes to core

In my effort to improve the usability of the core website, I have added social bookmarking to the articles published in Theory. You can now add your favorite article to your Google Bookmarks, your My Web from Yahoo!, or Del.icio.us, NewsVine, Digg and Furl. I had planned to add Magnolia as well, but the Movable Type plugin I use doesn’t support Magnolia yet.

Resources

Promote This

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Henning von Vogelsang, August 11, 2006
Improving usability of core Theory

Theory, the blog page of core, has been the #1 magnet of this website. I get a lot of comments from people finding core through Technorati or other websites. So far not many have chosen to leave a comment on articles, but I get some emails occasionally.

Why are only a few people commenting? Consulting my visitor statistics, I can see there are a lot more people visiting, but few are actually writing something. I think the answer lies in usability.

Probably not a few people found Theory overwhelming. It was simply too much, so they got turned off to read more. This goes hand in hand with what my brother pointed out a while ago, and which had been the starting point for major revisions of core.

When I started out with this website, I felt I had found a new edge, a different kind of perspective. I tried transferring the learnings from blogs to corporate websites, starting with my own, creating the first real Conversation Website. This effort has been going for a year or so now, and it is making great progress. The image of what a Conversation Website actually is has cleared up a lot, and meanwhile I managed to sell the idea to a couple of clients of mine.

If you’re reading this, you’ve already found the new Theory page. I think it’s less confusing, more on focus and more inviting. What do you think?

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Henning von Vogelsang, July 22, 2006
Compliant websites

It’s pretty clear for me that layout issues may have played a part in 9rules’ decision to not include core Theory in its recent update of accepted entries. These issues displacing boxes and creating visual havoc only appear in non-standard compliant browsers, namely Internet Explorer 6 for Windows. I haven’t had a chance to check it myself, but I heard that the pages display fine (also with PNG alpha transparency) in Microsoft’s upcoming update of Internet Explorer, version 7. However, I also read that Internet Explorer 7 introduces a number of new issues that haven’t been solved yet. While its developers are closely working with the Web Standards Project, it is unclear whether they will address these issues.

Of course I’m looking into fixing the issues on corebasis.com anyways. For one, it’s a matter of pride to have a fully standard compliant website that will also work with outdated browsers like Internet Explorer. But there’s more to it. Still, at the time when I’m writing this article, around 85% of web visitors use Internet Explorer 6, and this number is not going to change greatly after the official release of Internet Explorer 7. (You can see it is already changing slowly, but it will take a year or two to replace Internet Explorer 6.)

Over time, people will start downloading the new version, and of course every new computer they buy will have it pre installed. However, there’s a large group of users who might come across this site and who can’t update their browser, for whatever reasons. Some large corporations have strict IT-requirements, preventing automatic updates of programs (which is natural, if you look at Windows vulnerability).

The real question here is, “what does standard compliant website” mean? Standards are good, because in comparison to the whole web evolution, the introduction and manifestation of standards ensured that within a reasonable timespan, all web users will get the same great user experience. At least from a technical point of view — good web design is a different issue.

But compliant means more in my book. It means you care about your brand experience. It means you recognize, comprehend and acknowledge the needs of your visitors, and you comply to them. It means you don’t give up aiming for the best possible usability, accessibility and you want to create a consistent experience, so the people visiting your website will reward you with returning to it more often. They come to your website looking for content, but they will only come back if your content delivers.

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Henning von Vogelsang, May 16, 2006
Conversation websites

It has been over a year now since I started out redefining web business as I see it. The result was core, my web venture in usability and experience design. According to Peter Morville, author of Ambient Findability, you won’t find too many people calling themselves “experience designers”, due to the fact only very few people on this planet combine skills of all fields involved. But it is exactly part of what core is about: an understanding of design that goes beyond the visible.

Growing from the core

Personally, I feel this is where I belong. Core has been difficult to start with, and it continues being difficult to run it as a business every day. The market I am working in is in flux, it is changing in pace with the Internet, and almost everything I do in this field needs a lot of extra work. The market for specialist companies like core is almost inexistent in Europe, let alone Switzerland, which always lags a little with every type of social development. It’s not technology that keeps things slow, it is the mindset of company heads.

I think there is only one way to be successful with this all. As experts, we need to educate this market and make it want what we have to offer, and that is through demonstrated excellence, through showing what we mean by doing it.

In many ways, I made this website behave and function like any ideal case I propose. I believe this is the way all websites should work; something I wholeheartedly recommend to any company in any business. Core is in the process of becoming a true conversation website.

What is a conversation website?

  1. It tastes fresh, just like fresh orange juice, which makes it interesting and a reviving experience
  2. It is a treasure chest, something I like to spend time with, because every time I come back I will find new stuff
  3. It is a playground, a place to be at, where I can connect and interact with others alike, through comments and trackback links

Before we had blogs with commenting, forums and bulletin boards seemed to be the ‘next big thing’ on the Web. They are not gone yet, but it has always been a geek thing. Commenting on articles makes people actually speak up and concur or disagree, they share their passions with you, and they can be inspiring, showing you different ideas or places around the subject of your post. Commenting is the currency that makes blogs more than what they are; it’s what makes them conversations.

Even more important and often under estimated are trackback links. I believe it was Technorati who introduced this idea to the Web community, back in a time when blogging was strictly geek territory. Six Apart defined the term “trackback”, when it made it a consistent part of its blog application, Movable Type.

Participation patterns

9rules published an interesting article about consistency in posting. I would say this sums it up neatly what I call a fresh website.

Participation starts when you make things interesting enough for people to say something about it. If your post is noteworthy, an addition to what is currently discussed on the Web, your readers will mention it to their collegues and friends. It is important to understand the principle behind this all:

  • Comments don’t work one way. They are about interaction, about discussions.
  • Comments don’t start or end online. The Web and your blog becomes interesting if it has relevance in real life.

Funny enough in this context, Larry Roth just sent me a note mentioning “Google-juice” When I am talking about a website like fresh orange juice, this is a perfect example. Coincidence? Not at all. A couple of days ago Larry had mentioned my article about tagging on his own blog. I found out about this through Technorati and wrote a comment on his article. A couple of days later he sent me an email and left a comment on my article as well. We had never met or heard from each other before this happened. It’s a real life example of finding similar topics of interest and starting real conversations about them. Both of us carried this conversation beyond the net, when we told coworkers and friends about this topic. The topic has relevance in our mindset of interests and it is important for our both jobs.

Brand experience today

A new way of understanding branding is emerging from this all. Brands are more and more about participation. It’s not like advertising, or traditional brand experience, which works one direction only. People only want to become part of something if they really share a passion or at least some level of common interest in what you are. And this doesn’t always restrict itself to what you have to offer, your “real deal”. It’s also about the meta question “am I like you, do I want to be identified with your personality, your ideology?”

What interests me and inspires me most with the Internet is not technology changing. It is beyond of what makes things change. It is about the change itself. I believe the Internet and the way we use it now is a lot more like humans are. It reflects our social behavior, but it frees us from location and physical restrictions. It is all about communication, which will be the topic of one of my next articles.

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Henning von Vogelsang, April 25, 2006
The difference between categories and tags

How do you navigate through a website? By logics or intuition? Are you only fishing for the one thing you were looking for, or are you the type who wants to be surprised? A little bit of everything? That is exactly how humans behave.

Contrary to common belief, categories and tags are not the same. I know a lot of people believe that, or use them in a redundant way. But the reason why both exist is, there is always a logical way to get somewhere and an intuitive way.

Categories:
Separation of information into groups and sub groups, creating a taxonomy tree that follows a certain category pattern

Tags:
Keywords associated with a certain topic, based on (relatively) free association chains

Let’s assume that an advertising agency created an ad campaign for its client, an italian pasta company. The campaign consists of ads in TV, radio, the web, print (magazines and daily press), billboards etc. So it’s a full blown advertising campaign, using all sorts of media. I saw an ad on TV and want to look it up on the advertising agency’s website. By clicking on a certain category name, like media, I am presented a list in categorical order.

Main category
Media

Sub category
Billboard, TV Commercial, Newspaper Ad, Magazine Ad, Web Ad (sub categories)

Alternatively, browsing through the same web site, something is catching my attention. I was not looking for wine, but wine is somehing I might enjoy with a dish of italian pasta. Maybe I was not looking for it, but all of a sudden I found this great ad campaign for italian wine. That way I might get from pasta, to wine, to opera and beyond.

Tags
pasta, italian life, lifestyle, way of life, amore, linguini, tomato sauce, basil, italian wine, montepulcano, opera …

Creating as many tags as possible to broaden the association chain does not help sorting things out. Hundreds of partially redundant tags have a tendency to confuse a matter. I see this happening on social bookmarking sites like Ma.gnolia, where the bookmark for Flickr, which I tagged with “folksonomy, photo” is tagged with “blogs, web 2, web design, pictures, grandma, fun, gallery, hype, photoshop” and so on by other people.

If applied carefully, tags can enhance the browsing experience. Tags let people dive intuitively through the information architecture of a website. Of course tags could as well be left away entirely. But their functionality is not necessarily redundant with the use of categories.

One way of going through a website is using your logics, another way is using your intuition. In real life, we do this a lot. Take a simple walk to a clothing store. Maybe you are entering the store with the idea to buy a pair of jeans. Chances are, you will leave the store with a pair of jeans, and a jacket, some socks, briefs, or two plain t-shirts. Why? Because you were surrounded with offerings that were not sorted by category but by association. You were allured by visual suggestions. That is the same like tags can work on a web site. They can draw you into something. Not because you were looking for it, but maybe out of curiosity.

Tags are a powerful feature. I know many people in the blogosphere use them as a category replacement. It’s not wrong, it might work well for them. However, using tags as an element for intuitive navigation has the power to add a lot of user driven dynamics to your information architecture. Applied carefully, tags will not only help you to find stuff (like categories do), they also have the power to make you stay a little longer, because you find awesome stuff you never knew you were looking for.

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Henning von Vogelsang, March 05, 2006
Just photos

This portfolio boils down to the simplest but most intuitive user interface. I am a fan of purist concepts, and in this case, I like how clear and direct the presentation follows its function. No wipes, fades, transition effects. No fuzz, no sound in background, just pictures and it is pretty clear what you do with the thumbnails below. In one sentence, it serves its purpose perfectly.

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Henning von Vogelsang, January 10, 2006
Looking for Web developer in XHTML, CSS, Javascript/AJAX

Important note: The following offer is a contract job, it is not about fixed employment. We are not looking for Flash Designers, Fireworks slicing, static table layouts! If you don’t know what Web standards are, do not apply. Please read the whole post and send your applications to core.

Company overview

Core is a Web- and usability company based in Zurich, Switzerland. Our vision is to connect people with products and brands and let users participate in the brand experience, making them an active and sometimes driving part of it. Core projects range from consumer- to B2B clients. Key expertise includes project management, concept, usability, user experience. Core websites make use of current Web standards to provide a smooth and consistent user experience. Core aims to create brilliant Web experiences with an edge, a high level of usability and interaction, often referred to as Web 2.0.

Project description

For a new project, core is looking for a Coder or Web Developer for contract hiring. Core will create all conceptual work, including its IA, design and functionality. Your job will include frontend programming, including XHTML, CSS and some Javascript and PHP. It will also be your responsibility to manage a seamless server/frontend integration on the hosting site (MySQL). The website to build is based on Wordpress and involves modules and conversation features. Our project management utilitizes Basecamp and a Wiki.

Client description

The client is a Swiss advertising agency, a member of one of the largest international advertising agency networks worldwide. Its Swiss branch has an acknowledged profile of creativity, recognized within the network as one of its most prolific members. The client has hired core based on core’s experience in usability and current developments on the web. Moving from a static portfolio website to a user experience driven website is a big step for the client.

Job requirements

  1. Experience with or knowledge of Wordpress
  2. Extensive knowledge of web standards in XHTML and CSS (PHP, Javascript, AJAX knowledge a plus), RSS-/XML feed integration. Basic knowledge and capabilities of Photoshop for Web design. Be up to date with current developments on the web, including Web 2.0 and AJAX
  3. Systematical and abstract thinking and working, goal driven, excellent job preparation. Enthusiasm and spirit to take up on a challenge, which will lead to a result that will make an excellent impression in your work portfolio
  4. Ability to work remotely, self organized, with steady contact to the core project manager (via phone, Skype, iChat or Yahoo Messenger)
  5. A vivid interest in usability and fascination about user experience

Compensation

This is a contract job. Please include your rates in your application. Send us your application in an email, including a list of URLs (only standard compliant URLs are of interest).

Based on our experiences with this project, it is possible we will develop a steady work relationship with you for future projects. We are looking forward to hear from you!

Resources

Job posting at Creative Hotlist
Job posting at Craigslist

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Henning von Vogelsang, December 27, 2005
Creating Web 2.0 websites

In the past few months, a new term has emerged on the net. Do a Technorati or Google search for Web 2.0, and you will be swamped with blog entries and articles around the subject. The high number of websites trying to explain what Web 2.0 actually means, indicates that even experts aren’t very clear about the definition of Web 2.0.

There are two characteristics of Web 2.0 most people seems to agree with. One, Web 2.0 is more about experience and usability than it is about technology. Two, it is about people interaction.

“What’s the news” you will say, and you are right. Interaction is the very nature of the Web, and the user experience has always been important. And yet, it is the approach, a different point of focus that marks the revolution in Web 2.0.

From a technological point of view, many will agree that only now, the Web has emerged to the point where browsers offer a more or less consistent behaviour, based on modern standards (let’s exclude Microsofts Internet Explorer for once). Right now, modern technologies like Ajax (ironically invented by Microsoft), PHP, XHTML and CSS are driving the Web engine and improve the overall user experience to a degree never achieved before. Second to that, the consistent use of Open Source technology standards finally enables people with grey cells to not only plan better user experience, but also to pull it off.

So Web 2.0 is indeed about you and me, the average user, and not only geeks with powerful computers. It is about enabling people to communicate with websites, to interact freely and in most cases in real time. But this only works if the technology behind it is consistent in its expected behaviour and flexible in versatile application.

What makes Web 2.0 special — the very reason why someone gave it a name — is, it is marking a new era of understanding and establishment. It is as if someone had drawn a line under a kind of beta testing phase of the Web. It is remarkable that Web 2.0 draws so big waves, given the fact it does not really come with a true invention. It is basically a summary of existing technologies driving an improved, more stable and higher capable Web, resulting in a more satisfying experience.

In many ways, Web 2.0 sums up what core is all about since it started out as an idea on the sketch board. Core is about you, the average user. It is about the core of everything, the message, the truth in it and the brand — not only as a promotional tool but as something that lets people participate.

Every website designed by core, every consulting we do, each product we help our clients to give birth, contains a spark, the very core of what Web 2.0 emphasizes. In the end, our effort leads to a higher capable and more satisfying experience, by everyone involved: you, your clients and ourselves.

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Henning von Vogelsang, December 13, 2005
Firefox 1.5 Released

In Tidbits, Adm C. Engst writes:

“The Mozilla Corporation has released Firefox 1.5, the latest version of the popular open source Web browser for Mac, Windows, and Linux. Important new features include an automated update capability, improved navigation performance, drag-and-drop reordering of tabs, improved pop-up blocking, a one-step method of clearing private data, more-descriptive error pages, automatic RSS discovery, better accessibility, a wizard for reporting broken Web sites, enhanced support for Mac OS X (including profile migration from Safari and Internet Explorer), and numerous security enhancements. Firefox 1.5 requires Mac OS X 10.2 or later and is a 9.4 MB download.”

Firefox is the browser I recommend to all our clients. Unlike Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox is based on open standards and provides a safer and more consistent browsing experience. The technology behind Internet Explorer is totally outdated, it hasn’t been brought up to the current standards in years. But it is its low security level that is causing the greatest concerns.

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Henning von Vogelsang, December 03, 2005
Wow, Windows without restart

Microsoft Touts Vista’s Restart Manager Feature:

Microsoft Corp. is working on a significant new feature for Windows Vista, known as Restart Manager, which is designed to update parts of the operating system or applications without having to reboot the entire machine.
Wow. Considering the fact this feature has been part of the Mac OS in the past couple of years, you may ask yourself Isn’t that how it ought to be? Reading news threads like this I keep wondering why Microsofts Vista, if not highly anticipated, still is anticipated at all.

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Henning von Vogelsang, November 03, 2005
Things that work, and why

BBC News writes in The Secret Of Making Things Work:

With thousands of products and services to choose from, ease of use is still a bonus factor rather than a norm and those that possess this elusive quality often go on to dominate markets.

Google, Amazon and eBay are successful brands not just because of their financial models but the ease with which their users are able to achieve their goals on these sites, be they searching, buying or selling… …Such examples of good practice are invisible to most consumers, but the bad stick in the memory.

How many people, while trying to book a holiday online, have got one detail wrong on the form, only to see that it has deleted all the details and dumped them back to the beginning?

A company’s “brand” does not just mean their logo or icon, but the gut feeling a customer gets from their products. This gut feeling is communicated by many elements including what the company says about itself, its advertising and, of course, the ease of use of its products…

…Positive experiences with products and advertising seek to remind you of a brand’s good qualities, and this responsibility has shifted away from marketers and advertisers, thanks to work done years ago by the pioneers of usability.

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Henning von Vogelsang, July 24, 2005
Design patterns help developers and users

The Nielsen Group announced the User Experience 2005 Conference, which will run the same program simultaniously in Boston and London. One of the more interesting of the listed topics is How design patterns can increase usability.

Regarding my ventures with core, this is particularly interesting. In 1998, when I started out developing for the web, I studied and utilized modular elements for information architecture and design. Getting more involved in usability and the user experience, I began to understand that these design patterns not only help the developers of a website by eliminating redundant work, they are also useful to users of websites, because in the end, it is patterns on which humans rely on, as defined in cognitive science. Today, pattern modules are a core element of web creation with usability in mind. The Nielsen Group described their feature on the User Experience 2005 Conference this way:

Experienced interface designers depend upon a vast repository of knowledge about “what works” in a given situation. Design patterns, then, allow such knowledge to be captured in a standardized form, making it more accessible to new team members, less-experienced designers, or non-specialists such as writers, marketers, or managers. Individual design patterns are also collected into pattern languages—structural and conceptual frameworks that organize and link related patterns—to help designers generate high quality solutions.

Resources

User Experience 2005 Conference
The Nielsen Group
Wikipedia: Modularity in Cognitive Science
Wikipedia: Design Patterns

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A wearable web experience

wearable_07.jpg

While American Apparel is making efforts to become the new GAP, small venues like Defunker do more with tees made by American Apparel. T-shirts that make you happy is their slogan.

It’s unclear to me what American Apparel wants to be. It’s like a brand with an identity crisis. American Apparel’s brand design reminds me of the purism of London based designers: slick, cold and very reduced. But the brand experience you get by visiting their site and when you’re actually buying something online, is way different: Lots of cluttered elements crunched into small space. There is no consistent use of elements, no design language (icons compete with links in different colors) and it’s confusing to get video with some items and only pictures with others.

There’s more to the problem. American Apparel products are as dull as it gets. Some call them boring, others say they are refreshingly simple. It may be part of the success story that clothes by American Apparel can be combined with everything. But not all of it is equally boring. Some of the items feature nice cuts and interesting combinations of colors and materials. It seems obvious that American Apparel is a label that wants to break out of its own dullness. It’s almost like a couple that’s been together for a while and now they want to freshen up their sex life.

A closer look at American Apparel’s website reveals severe problems with usability and user experience:

  1. 11 global navigation links
  2. 35 marketing entry point links, that is 32 too many
  3. 1 site map link
  4. Slide shows of Bangkok bikes and Hong Kong housing mixed with fashion shoots are sexy to art directors, but confusing to customers

I think American Apparel could use a Brand Manager, or a Creative Director with background and experience in usability and user experience. Someone who helps them to develop a conceptual direction and who starts building a brand structure and a visual language for the young company that is based on user (read consumer) research. It just doesn’t look like they’re aware of this need.

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After Amazon’s successful book store concept was expanded to include consumer electronics and apparel, more consumer fashion labels dared to jump over the GAP between consumers who are not going to their physical stores but their virtual counterparts. And not surprisingly, users of the net behave the same way they do in the real world. So they’re essentially expecting the same kind of shopping experience they get in a physical store. While almost all of the bigger brands get online sales right technologically (or at least functionally working), only few companies realize the importance and relativity of an online shopping experience and browsing through racks of clothing.

When you enter a clothing store, you are allowed to act intuitively. Every kid knows how to pick up a tee and try it on. But how do you try on a piece of clothing on the web? Early pop ups of the brief but intense dot-com era died because of this problem: the lack of user experience. The web can be anything you want as it seems, but can it replace a mirror?

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I can see Flash designers rising their hands, waving their fingers eargerly, pointing out you can just hook up a webcam and with a little Flash tweaking and a heavy duty database in the backbone you can create the ultimate user experience. Sure you can, once people have all the same screen with the same resolution, using the same intuitive interface (hint, it will have an X in its name but no P, and it won’t be Asta la Vista either—just kidding), and they all have web cams built in their computers. But until we are there, our t-shirt shops have filed insolvency.

What does it take to make the selling experience an actual fashion store experience online? Most sites are kind of getting there, but they don’t seem to get it yet. Usability is something that has gained recognition only in the past two, three years. It was the foundation for earlier generations of designers (remember “form follows function”?). Now the economy finally awakes, realizing that user experience translates to business.

Start looking at your customers, your users. Sure, they want just to buy a simple t-shirt, or a pair of jeans. Sure, they want an easy shopping process. But they want to get the feeling for it too. Make them forget they don’t look at a mirror. Don’t confuse them too much. Let your website be smooth, soft and silky. Make it wearable.

This is more about ideology than it is about the design process. Sure it’s important to brief your web shop designers right. Of course it is about good information architecture as well. Testing groups are a decent way to evaluate results. Trouble is, if you lack the philosophy and can’t resolve what is important out of what isn’t, then you don’t know how to transform your testing results into an improved user experience and you won’t need any programmers or designers.

wearable_02.jpg

So if you’re an online clothing vendor, you have a product line of clothing. In real life, no other product comes that close to skin of your customers. Books can touch me inside, but clothing actually is touching me on the outside. And as a user of your stuff, I’m taking great care in only letting touch my skin what is worth it and represents part of me. Your clothes, in other words, are my expression as a user (always remember formerly called consumers are now users since they’re using the web and expect the same quality from a web experience they expect from your products).

If you’re a clothing vendor, you know I will let your product touch my skin. It may sound like a given, so we don’t have to think about it in daily business. But if you think about it, that’s as close as it gets. Quite an intimate story between fashion vendor and user.

In a store, in real life, I will browse through your racks anonymously. A sales person may ask me if I find what I’m looking for, but that’s about it. I want privacy when I’m looking, I want to be able to focus and I want to find surprises among your racks. Even when I’m looking for a jacket, I wouldn’t say no to a nice top if it hits my eye.

Thinking like this, analyzing the store browsing experience may lead to the creation of a better web experience. There are some things more or less online stores have in common, but the list is short. In general, browsing for clothes, for fashion, is an entirely different experience than going to shop for groceries, especially online.

Resources

American Apparel
Defunker
Neighborhoodies
Threadless
KD Dance
Webcredible.co.uk: Ten ways to improve the usability of your ecommerce site
Jacob Nielsen’s Alertbox: Usability —Empiricism or Ideology?

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Henning von Vogelsang, July 23, 2005
Ajax, the new kid on the blog

You may know this feeling. You’re at a house party and you go to refill your glas of wine. When you’re back the people you were talking to are gone. You look around and join a new group of people. And they look at each other and go silent.

It’s not your odor or your tipsiness. It’s because you’re late. They were talking of a hot topic, but no one wants to introduce you to it, give you a short summary of what they were talking about. But hey, it’s just a house party. It’s all cool.

Sometimes when I read about new trends on the net I feel like being late to the party. It’s like everybody else already knows what they were talking about, only I am asking questions. Being the geek I am, despite my efforts to dissolve that image, this is something that bugs me. I admit it. It’s less the fact nobody told me about the new hot topic. It’s more like “How could I not see it coming?”. Because of course I did see it coming. I was just not paying attention. If you’re going with the flow on the internet, if you dig really deep into it, then it’s almost impossible to not notice any movement in the developers scene. Still, you may oversee something that’s going to be the next star, especially when you don’t know what it actually is.

Ajax is the new kid on the block. It’s just like that with Ajax: on every blog you read, everybody who is talking about it already seems to know more than you. Some act like they are experts, but don’t look for links in their blog entries. Frankly, some of these experts have no clue what they’re talking about. I told you, it’s just like on a house party.

So what is Ajax? The Amsterdam soccer team? A swiss car? Is it the lesser or the greater Ajax in the Illiad by Homer? Kitchen bleach? Or a fictional company in Mickey Mouse? Ajax may have had many meanings in the past. In future however, it is likely these other meanings of the word will be overheard. At least among web developers, information architects and designers, Ajax serves a different purpose. Ajax is a new hype to be, as more and more big companies are actually adopting the technology. Consequently, blogs are tumbling all over pointing out smart usage of Ajax.

Calling Ajax a technology by itself may be a little bit too much. It’s more a smart combination of existing technologies within a set of robust rules. It is a common pattern in web evolution: While big players like Adobe and Macromedia (or now Adomedia or Macrobe) are spending a lot of time, marketing and financial efforts to establish and tigthen grounds for their proprietary technologies, it is the webs nature of evolution that finally comes up with a solution that actually works, using existing technologies, without a plugin.

Programmer Mat Hertel in Germany writes a blog about Ajax. He defines it as follows:

Ajax = Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (+ DHTML) Ajax programming is an interesting way of bringing real interactivity to web applications by using the proven internet technologies HTML and JavaScript.

You can find some Ajax demos on Mat’s website. If you’re more experience driven than interested in digging in code, go check out Googles Earth- and Moon-map projects or Amazon’s Diamond Search engine.

Resources

Technorati search on Ajax
Ajax = Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (+ DHTML)
Ajax demos
The Amsterdam soccer team
Ajax, a swiss car
Ajax, King of Salamis in ancient Greece
Ajax, a kitchen cleaner containing bleach
Ajax, a fictional company in Mickey Mouse cartoons
Adobe bought Macromedia
Google earth map and satelite pictures
Google moon map
Amazon’s Diamond Search engine

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