Il me semblait avoir lu que la version française était retardée à cause du système de floutage automatique, qui a pour mission de masquer les visages des passants et les plaques d’immatriculation notamment. J’ai donc voulu vérifier que ce système était bel et bien devenu infaillible, et il semble bien que non. Il ne m’a pas fallu longtemps pour trouver des piétons dont les visages apparaissent très nettement (avec un ou deux zoom), ou des fenêtres ouvertes qui laissent tout voir de l’intimité de certains logements.

Je me demande donc si les défenseurs français des libertés individuelles seront aussi remontés en apprenant cette nouvelle que les américains ont pu l’être.

C’est décidé, c’est commencé, la refonte de ce blog/portfolio est “dans les tubes”. Fonctionnelle, ergonomique, et graphique, il devrait s’agir d’une refonte globale.

A bientôt donc… j’espère.

via Stuffthathappens.com.

The eCommerce market

The beginning of the lecture listed some impressive numbers about the 2007 ecommerce results :

• 16 billions €
• 20 millions of clients
• 145 millions of dealings
• 35 % of growth
• 37 000 e-stores
• A new online store opens every hour

We can explain this strong growth by the broadband democratisation and the increasing market.

About the technical solutions ?

The quick technical point also avoided the usual questions about the compatibility between the rich technology (flash, etc.) and the business needs (ranking, web analytics, etc.).

• Shockwave is installed on a computer out of two
• JavaScript is supported on more than 90% computers
• Flash is downloaded by more than 98% of users

As we’ve been clearly told : the technique is just a means. Everything is possible in spite of money, time and skills. The “rich” layer brings a value added underlining the product (360°, 3D… = features which convert customers from traditional stores to e-commerce). It also brings a value added concerning UX (interactivity, etc.) in order to sell more (and better).

How to improve a store then?

Two philosophies have been explained last Tuesday. You can restructure the whole website using rich technologies, as it is the case for a full flash website, or for the Gucci site which is not recommanded because it costs a lot of money and it is not very efficient. Such a project can be interesting as far as the media are concerned : the whole buzz process about the lined up, but also because it enables a great user’s experience. Yet, a total change of the website is hasardous : you may lose a lot of sales. Contrary to institutional wesites, the commercial ones shouldn’t be restructured too regularly. Rich interfaces add technical constraints (loading time, latest plug-in version installation rate…)

However, it is highly recommanded to “sprinkle rich features on the website”. Indeed, it’s an easy task to optimize browsing the categories using an Ajax feature. The first step of such a project concerns the product page, to which you add rich functions to fill the lack of proximity between the product and its potential customer. It should go from a simple zooming to a 3D viewing, and to some sensorial experimentations. For instance, let’s see the Mercedes website :

On A-to-S.co.uk, you can see how the leather’s car will react under your fingers

Another good example concerns Amazon. As often, this e-commerce website is taken as example for its efficiency. Everybody knows the Amazon interface which corresponds to commercial codes that everybody understands. The difficult part is to preserve that store in order not to take any risk with the main sales and to provide a free API which enables the community to develop rich experiences (browsegood, blackdogair, etc.) over the traditional catalogue. There are two ways to reach the products for a growing target, and no business risk.

Classical Amazon.com

Amazon.com via BrowseGoods

The good practices

The lecture went on with a series of international best-practices. You have to notice that the luxury and automobile fields are particularly well represented (both quantitatively and qualitatively) especially the American ones. The ready-to-wear industry is also well represented.

Rich modules were presented, grouped in different categories :

• First person view
• The configurators
• The viewers
• The features comparators
• The advergames
• …

Study cases and opening

The lecture went on with two study cases. The Beauté Prestige International company shared its experience on the lined up of the Jean Paul Gaultier Perfume website store. They openly talked about the problems they went through (for example the choice of the latest flash player version just a few days before the official release), but they also talked about the successful points, highlighting the problems going with the luxury industry, with a rich store and with the sale of products for which the Internet is not appropriate (how to choose a perfume without smelling it?).

The second study case being quite confidential, I won’t talk about it into detail. Anyway, taking this example into account, the lecture concluded raising the question of the future of the e-commerce in 5 or 10 years. It’s more than obvious that the online sale should carry on getting its inspiration into the video game industry, a real innovator and nowadays excellent in terms of 3D, interactivity and UX. Just have a look at this screenshot from the game Test Drive Unlimited to realise how important it is for e-commerce websites to lean on video-game products.

The car configurator from Toyota Highlander

The car configurator from Test Drive Unlimited

See also

• Getelastic
• Richcommerce
• RIApedia

Photos crédits : LeBlogDeDenis.

Since then, I focus on usability and UX. I paid attention to the debate that occured last month on several French blogs : everyone argued in favor of their favorite prototyping tools (Axure, Powerpoint, Visio, or Illustrator).

I’ve only used Powerpoint for a real project, and I want to talk about my own experience in this post.

At first, I started with Long Zhen’s toolkit. I think it’s a good one, but I wanted to make it even more efficient. Then, I discovered Frederic Cavazza’s file but it was not precise enough and a bit old-school to do what I wanted. Indeed, one of the main projects I took part in required a high level of details. That’s why I decided to create my own toolkit and to share it with you today.

• NuTIC_PrototypingToolkit_v1.ppt (2,4Mo)
• NuTIC_PrototypingToolkit_v1.pptx (530ko)

Of course, you can use it as often as you want. I just want you to mention my name the way I did with the main sources that helped me to achieve this document :

• Long Zhen’s toolkit v 0.2 (.pptx)
• Cavazza’s wireframe toolkit (.ppt)
• Manuel Clément’s speech about microsoft office software design (require silverlight plug-in)
• Eric’s workshop and files about prototyping tools

I’m waiting for your comments and don’t hesitate to share your prototyping examples with us. I will probably not write a book like Henrik Olsen’s but I’m really interested in.

Every month is horrible - but in different ways that each illustrate a classic usability guideline. The calendar is only a pretext to highlight some guidelines you can use in your daily tasks (and also in the website you’re building).

Even Jakob Nielsen mentioned it in one of his newsletters, criticizing the European page size formats (which are unusable for American people). This year, Eidar makes fun of Nielsen’s useit.com design. 1 - 1

For 2008, they get some of their ideas from web 2.0 services like Facebook, Youtube or blog plug-ins. I also really appreciate the Fitts Law reference.

The calendar now has it’s own dedicated website: www.badusability.com, where it’s also possible to upload photos of the calendar in the wild.