Take your time and do it right

There is a cost benefit to the level of quality achieved in design and how well the experience suits the needs of the users. To a certain degree the more time, effort and money invested the better the result. There’s a tipping point where risk is introduced by spending too much time without real market feedback.

…or keep it simple and launch quickly

On the other hand there’s a cost benefit to releasing a product sooner. Typically you will scale back features, simplify the solution and spend less money. This reduces the risk of project failures like scope creep and building features that end-users may not want. It also

I cut it three times and its still to short

When I was in high school I worked on houses in the summer. If you were going to cut a piece of wood you would measure and mark a pencil line with a square, hold it between your hand and boot and cut with a skill saw. If you were going to cut a palette of boards you may take some time to set up your work area and saw horses. You would make a template using a thin board cut to length with a block nailed to the end. You would perfectly align a dozen boards side by side and pencil mark the first and last. You’d then drop a chalk line across all the boards to you could quickly cut them. Like cutting boards UX problems require varying degrees of planning, preparation and process.

Doing it the “right” way

The traditional long-format approach would begin with research and stakeholder workshops, card sorting,  content maps followed by white boarding, sketch prototypes and/or storyboards. These artifacts would be use to get further insight and direction to create detailed wireframes, flowcharts and site maps or content matrices to represent every screen and use case permutation. This could be followed by further research with paper or HTML prototypes testing users representing each target user persona.

This approach is well suited for large projects with many stakeholders and a large constituency of benefactors as well as an enormous budget and long schedule. This applied to building complex systems such as electronic medical records or self checkout lanes for the supermarket makes sense but not for smaller more focused projects.

Agile Design

The agile approach goes directly from sketches to the HTML prototype. Using simple markup and HTML elements the interfaces are created and linked together using placeholder data. Often the data is in a flat file or XML document or even hand coded in the HTML. Using progressive enhancement design elements are build up to improve the visual display. Javascript and jQuery further enhances the user experience to simplify tasks and improve usability based on real-feedback. The application developers are building the functionality in parallel and as they complete features they integrate the presentation tier and work on pushing real data where placeholder data had been displayed.

This allows for the entire team, stakeholders and end-users to start to “click-around” and offer real insight into the solution. This approach made popular my 37 Signals Founder Jason Fried as he often remarks that they don’t have any information architects. They go from sketches on notepads, napkins and/or whiteboards to mark-up and code.

High-Fidelity Design

This approach leverages talented designers that are subject matter experts with deep insight into use cases, target users and success metrics as well as the latest trends in user interface technology and design patterns.  The design is informed by a list of features or story cards. All screens are designed as a pixel perfect simulation with real-looking content, the goal being to create the illusion that the project is already done. With minimal revisions the screen set is transformed into mark-up and integrated into back-end software.

Well suited for time sensitive marketing solutions and web applications this approach considers the time to market value can yield a higher return than quality issues resulting from the quick design.The goal is to go to market within 30 days with a clear plan for integrating and prioritizing user feedback and pushing iterative builds daily for the following 30 days. By getting the solution in market 30 to 60 days earlier and using real user feedback and web analytics to manage the evolution this approach holds the potential of yielding a much higher ROI. Especially where the project is time sensitive or in a highly competitive space.

What’s your approach?

Credits:

• The Right Way to Wireframe on YouTube, Will Evans of Semantic Foundry, @SemanticWill on Twitter.
• UX Sketches on Flickr by Janko Jovanovic

Content Prioritization Calculator

Brainstorming and Organization

As a team or by yourself make a list of every topic you want to create content for. Don’t over think it, put everything down. Once you have exhausted all your ideas look for logical categories for the content. This could be categories such as “Breaking News”, “Reports”, and “Research”. It could be topical such as “Diet”, “Workout”, “Stretching” and “Meditation”. Typically there’s an organizing structure that can group your content in a way that is meaningful to your audience.

Rating and Prioritizing

For any type of prioritization matrix you need to define business drivers or attributes that represent the potential value or success factors for what’s being evaluated. For content creation we are typically looking to share insights that add value to the target community and we need to produce content frequently. We want to create content that doesn’t exceed the budgeted time, that is interesting to our audience, that is interested to the producer of the content (hopefully) and that helps expand our knowledge, credibility and insights. Based on that I’ve chosen the following attributes for this simple calculator.

1. Effort: The less effort the better. The fact is most of us are wired to appreciate immediate gratification. When it comes to content quite often its brief insightful articles have far more reach that long winded scholarly reports. Less time and effort means the content can be published sooner, its more current/relevant and there’s less risk. When a task requires much work such as research, writing, interviews etc., the greater the time it takes to produce, the more contingencies, higher the likelihood the author may lose interest, may be less inspired, the topic become irrelevant and the greater the probability for failure.
2. Buzz: Buzz may seem like a self seeking attribute for prioritization but the fact is if its not worthy of buzz that it may not be necessary as a blog article or other shared content. Perhaps when you have nothing to do you can create this content for your memoirs. I’m often disappointed to realize that a topic I want to write about never makes the short list.
3. Fun: Sometime fun isn’t an option when producing brand related content. In the best scenario the person creating the content is passionate about the subject matter. If this is the case there’s a much higher likelihood for success should the writer be excited about the production. If its a topic worthy of publication then it will be difficult to exhaust the fun topic ideas but if you do you can move onto ones that are less fun. Chances are there are other distinct benefits to creating the piece or it wouldn’t be on the list.
4. Value: The overall value can be in terms of the benefit you receive from expanding your knowledge and sharing insights with your readers. It could be that the work will help you establish or extend credibility for you or your brand. It could be an article that addresses a topic important to your readers that has come up repeatedly and now gives you a written reference for clarification.

You can use as many rating criteria as you like. You can rate 1-5 or 1-10 where the item scores higher when it meets the criteria desirably. For a blog that takes a great deal of effort the value should be low because we want the content to be produced affordably in the best case. If the score is two or less than we should consider turning this into a full blown research project; and not listing it with regular production content.

Always focus on your highest rated content; if you get it all down move down to the yellow items I’d suggest you continue to add new topics and ideas and always reevaluate your list. If you can divide your tasks into “high-priority” and “all the rest” the trick to being really successful is to only work on the “high-priority” items.

Download the calculator and try it out for yourself. I look forward to your thoughts.

• Zip with Mac Numbers Version & Excel (Checkboxes and formulas may not work in excel)

• Google Social Search (YouTube demo) shows search results from your social networks when you have a Google Profile.
• Google Image Swirl lets you search images and displays a faceted map so you can find images grouped by image attributes. Check out this search for the Eiffel Tower.
• Google Googles which lets you take a photo of a landmark or store and it provides search results on your Android phone.
• Google Language Tools and Translate are focusing on improving search so that it can search other language using native language queries and return search results in the native language; so if you search Wine Tasting in Paris; it can return return results in English from French language web pages; allowing those pages to come up first given they are more relevant than say a wine tasting in New Jersey.
• Google is partnering with iLike and Lala to provide greater music depth in search; so you can listen to music, see ratings and richer information from music searches.
• Google Voice Search sounds promising; this is simply the ability to search from you phone by speaking. Allowing users to search by key words, locations, movies, restaurants and showing the correct results. The big challenge here is machine automation with the variety of accents, dialects and languages.
• Google’s Agency Relations focuses on helping agencies and brands better utilize search engine marketing (SEM) including paid search, display, video, featured YouTube content etc., and still doesn’t help support search engine optimization; although the SEM tools are very useful for SEO analytics.

All in all it was a great presentation; Lisa Green was very engaging and knowledgeable. Be sure to check the Google Blog every Friday for “This Week in Search.”

SEMPO is the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization; a global non-profit focused on providing education, promoting the industry, generating research, and creating a better understanding of search and its role in marketing.

Great news

Why is this such great news?

For web professionals the need to make sure everything we design and build functions and displays properly in IE6 has created significant challenges. This increases the time and cost of projects and often requires sacrifices in terms of user experiences. For us IE6 is a dirty four-letter word. As we imaging how cool the project could have been – not only the reduced effort but the higher quality and additional features the extra time and money could have been invested in.

A sign of things to come

The fact that Google has decided to no longer support IE6 means that web professionals will have a stronger argument to follow suit. In the past as popular brands have adopted technologies like Flash, Ajax and RSS feeds it always validates the project recommendations (God forbid the client listen to the people they hired to do the work). I predict this change will dramatically reduce the anger and use of profanity by web developers.

Quality of Time Spent by Developers

Google Email Announcement

Here’s the official email announcement received by our Google Apps administrator.

Dear Google Apps admin,​

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology.  This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5.  As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010.  After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser.  We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience.  We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

Thank you Google Apps Team!

Do you have any IE6 horror stories to share?

Consumer Services

1. Club Cooee
2. Cooliris
3. Eventful
4. FameCast
5. imeem
6. IMVU
7. Jinni Media
8. Livekick
9. MyYearBook
10. Or Die Networks
11. OV Guide
12. Project Playlist
13. Quick Hit
14. Raptr
15. Slacker
16. Sprout
17. World Sports Network
18. ZillionTV

Content Delivery Platforms

19. Auditude
20. BitGravity
21. Cast It Systems
22. Clearspring Technologies
23. Fliqz
24. Gigya
25. iWidgets
26. Kyte
27. Mogulus
28. Ooyala
29. Pandora Media
30. ReverbNation
31. RocketOn
32. Roku
33. Tunecore
34. Tvinci
35. Ustream.tv

Digital Content Publishers

36. 60Frames
37. Big Fantastic
38. Boom! Studios
39. boxee
40. DECA
41. Generate
42. INgrooves
43. lala
44. Lumosity
45. MRC Digital
46. MyHollywood.com
47. Real Girls Media
48. Revision3
49. Strike.TV
50. Tapulous
51. Topspin

Enabling Tools, Applications, & Services

52. Band Metrics
53. CrestaTech
54. Delivery Agent
55. Digitalsmiths
56. Ensequence
57. Genkii
58. ImageSpan
60. Jetcast
61. Kickapps
62. Laser LIght Engines
63. MediaUnbound
64. Peanut Labs Media
65. RipCode
66. Rotohog
67. TubeMogul
68. Twofish
69. View2gether
70. VMIX
71. Vobile
72. Zenverge

Gaming

73. Bigfoot Networks
74. Exponential Entertainment
75. Fluid Entertainment
76. Gazillion Entertainment
77. Heyzap
78. Live Gamer
79. OMGPOP
80. OnLive
81. Outspark
82. PlaySpan
83. Social Gaming Network
84. Sulake
85. Virtual Greats
86. Watercooler
87. Zynga

Mobile & Wireless

88. Azuki Systems
89. Buzzwire
90. Flurry
91. FunMobility
92. Greystripe
93. Mozes
94. ngmoco
95. PlayFish
96. Playphone
97. roundbox
98. SendMe
99. Trilibis Mobile
100. Vidiator
101. Viximo

Do you know of more to add to the list? Looking forward to comments.

Lets face it, if tomorrow you were going to create a new email client you would just start brainstorming and sketching. You would carefully look at Gmail, Apple Mail, Outlook, and make sure you are including all the expected behavior.

I have been invited to many business requirements brainstorming meetings where the participants haven’t done research. In most cases the solution has been done many times and vendors would be glad to demonstrate their products. Perhaps they are too expensive or more than needed but it will help the problem solving be 100 times more effective. The same goes for when a UX designer solves a problem for a user to complete a task or a business owner reviews the UX designer’s solution for client acceptance. Researching design patterns gives us perspective and insight beyond our direct experience and memory.

Here are 10 great resources for design patterns. This is a great way to get ideas for all kinds of user interactions such as user registration, tabs, navigation, pagination. You name it.

1. Welie.com: Martijn van Welie has a Ph.D. in Human Computer Interaction and works as an interaction design consultant in Amsterdam. He has amassed a great collection of design patterns.
2. Little Springs Design (mobile): Mobile UI design resources, patterns and devices provided free by user experience consulting, Little Springs Design.
3. Open Source Design Patter Library (OSDPL): The Open Source Design Pattern Library is a place where individuals and organizations can share, collaborate, and discuss design patterns.
4. UI Patterns: The work of Anders Toxboe – a Danish web developer seeking to categorize what has before seemed like ad hoc approaches to developing web applications.
5. Yahoo! Design Pattern Library: A great resource for design practices, just added a collection of Reputation patterns to their growing collection of social design patterns.
6. UI Design Factory: UI Pattern Factory is a mix of user interface design pattern library and UI gallery.
7. Tom Ericksons Design Patterns: An interaction designer and researcher in the Social Computing Group at IBM’s Watson Labs Tom Erickson has a valuable collection of design patterns and other content.
8. KONIGI: Konigi is a community for user experience designers with great design examples.
9. Pattern Tap: Another UX community with a great collection of examples and inspiration.
10. Boxes and Arrows (interview): Will Evans, founder and Principal User Experience Architect for Semantic Foundry, interviews Erin Malone, Christian Crumlish, and Lucas Pettinati to talk about design patterns, pattern libraries, styleguides, and innovation. Erin, Christian, and Lucas are leading a workshop on design patterns at this year’s Interactions in Vancouver; and, Erin and Christian are writing a book on patterns for designing social spaces for O’Reilly.

There are many more resources out there. Would would love to hear any tips and comments.

Cambria Consulting to create a promo spot for the National Association of Corporate Director (NACD). For the annual 2009 NACD Corporate Governance Conference they wanted a promotional video that featured their seminars and training. The Flash loop that could be used in the large conference room, as an attract loop at the trade show booth and late be used on the web. This piece has a scaling background to fill any screen.

NACD Flash Promo - Click to Launch

Here are some benefits of Flash content over streaming video.

• With Flash we can create short compelling presentations, demos, icebreakers that initiate the conversion process.
• Flash content support vector based graphics so its easy to create content that can be played back at any size without losing quality. Flash text has no limits of how large or small it can display and still look good. With video or graphics they loose quality, look fuzzy or display image artifacts as soon as you scale from the original size.
• Dynamic test allows personalization, easy updates and session based variables. For example you can create a presentation that have a registration form after the first scene to get to the in-depth content. On the next visit you can retrieve information from a browser cookie that says “Welcome back Steve” and no longer requires registration.
• You can always create video from Flash content for distribution on video sharing sites like YouTube.

Sorry for taking so long to post.

Moderator: Jeff Cram – Co-Founder, ISITE Design

Panelists: Cappy Popp – Principal and Co-Founder, Thought Labs; Greg Slama – Manager, Contextual Marketing, One to One Interactive; Mike Volpe – VP, Marketing, Hubspot; Dean Whitney – President, Garfield Group Interactive

Discussion points included:

• Free or low-cost search, social media and analytics tools
• Successful examples of marketing on a shoestring
• What you can and can’t get with free/low cost tools – What are the pros and cons of free tools?
• What factors do you need to look for when evaluating the various technology options?
• Emerging technologies & the future: Are we moving towards a complete free, scalable “service” model?
• What do you need to know now to make your business ready for the future of technology?

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