A good friend of mine is responsible for GTDInbox, an implementation of the GTD principles built on top of Google Mail. As a willing guinea pig, this has led to me learning about the GTD system and trying to implement it with my life. When I started my previous job, my boss presented me with a copy of David Allens book which I have read several times, and I tinkered with various ways to make it work for me.

Up until now Omnifocus was my tool of choice, providing a nice clean interface and also an iPhone client which meant I could carry around my task list and enter things on-the-go. The trouble for me however was that as nice as the application was, it was overwhelming – offering perhaps a few too many options (or hoops) when it came to categorizing, viewing and sorting your tasks. This tended to put me off entering tasks and using the iPhone application, the capture process is not quick if you want to stay organized.

Another thing which didn’t really work for me was the notion of context, a component taken directly from Allen’s methodology. Whilst for some it may make sense to group tasks by context or location, such as ‘home’ or ‘office’, when your laptop is essentially your home and office it all blends into one and you end up making ‘meta-contexts’ such as ‘email’ and ‘web browser’ to keep things organized. In addition, having a context for errands is all when and good, but when you are in this context, you are unlikely to be referring to your task list to see what there is to do!

I don’t want people to think that I am being harsh on Omnifocus or that it is a bad application – it is an excellent piece of software which has been lovingly developed by a very talented company, but unfortunately mine and its mental models don’t align.

Recently, I think I may have found an application which is right for me – Things by Cultured Code.

It has a wonderfully minimalistic UI, which adapts to how it is used. You want something simple? It looks like a to-do list. You want to go the whole hog with contexts, tags, projects? It looks more like OmniFocus. Much nicer to look at however you choose to work.

The other thing I really like is the metaphor of time used within the interface to prioritize tasks. First you list all your tasks out, tagging and adding other information if you desire. Next you categorize by time – so you group all tasks which are due Today and the rest are grouped under ‘Next’. The idea being that you restrict the view to today’s tasks, and then if you get those done you can move on to whatever is next.

This categorization also allows you to schedule recurring tasks and also put tasks into a ‘Someday’ folder, essentially saving them for when you have downtime. Projects can also be used to group things together, and tags to organize.

So far, this concept seems to work for me – it seems much more logical and the application itself seems on par with OmniFocus in terms of quality. I’m planning to try it out for the next week, along with its iPhone companion app, and see where it gets me. I’ll also be taking a closer look at how new tasks can be quickly inputted, which has been another pain point for me in the past.

This year has been a hectic one – on a personal note, I have moved to another country and gotten engaged whilst also tinkering with JavaScript, ActionScript 3.0, Oracle RTD, Rails and Processing – I even started to play with Django before deciding I didn’t like it! On a professional level, I’ve written a book, worked on a variety of interesting projects (which corporate confidentiality agreements prevent me from talking about in too much detail) and also have something really exciting on the horizon that I’ll be able to talk about in a month or so.

From a technology perspective, I think 2008 has been the year where things on the web have really started to change. Developers are starting to implement HTML5 and CSS3 features which have slowly been creeping into browser releases, Google has entered the game with Chrome and Microsoft are finally starting to up the ante with Internet Explorer 8 which is due for public release in 2009. In addition Silverlight, JavaFX and the latest enhancements to the Flash platform have also given fuel to RIA and multimedia developers.

This year I have seen fewer web apps taking the world by storm. The leaders, such as Gmail, have really focused on enhancements rather than anything radical. Facebook has undergone a dramatic redesign, but it is very hard to single out the “killer app” of the year. The key development that comes to mind is the release of services such as Google’s App Engine and Amazon Simple DB – providing the cloud infrastructure for developers to create apps with virtually no server/database overhead, so you only pay for the capacity you use. In 2009 I expect this to become even more important and also something which will begin to see major adoption within the enterprise.

As we look ahead into 2009, things look tough – the global economic crisis has already led to layoffs across many different industries, and consumer spending is an all time low. As customers tighten their belts, this is having a knock-on effect within the online-sector, making it even harder to fuel the business models of many freemium or subscription based services. Spend on online advertising is down, despite media budgets being directed from direct mail to the online channel.

As a result, I think the next year is going to be more and more focused on experience – as product development budgets are cut we are going to see less new features, but instead there will be a focus on profitability. As smaller companies struggle to survive, user experience is going to be the key differentiator between products and the driving factor towards increasing user-base and driving revenue. More on that to come.

Before I go, let me leave you with a little something. Created with Animoto and comprised of Boston.com’s top photos of the year, it provides a retrospective on the events of 2008.

2008 Retrospective from Chris Korhonen on Vimeo.

Happy Holidays and all the best for 2009!

If I was asked the question “How do you prototype your Web apps?” then my answer would be simple – it depends!

Designing Visual

In my professional and personal design work it really varies, mainly down to what I am developing – if it is a site where design is most important then I tend to jump into Photoshop and begin thinking about design elements; taking inspiration from various sources such as Smashing Magazine, interesting photo’s on Flickr and artistic styles. This helps me put together a creative direction in my head which I can then refine and experiment with.

Often in these cases I would spend a lot of my time in Photoshop (and/or Flash if we have interactive elements) refining the concept before following the traditional approach of cutting graphics and building my XHTML and CSS. I find this tends to work well for sites where you are trying to do and communicate visually, and when you are working with a page/system which already has well defined layouts for content – so for example when you are re-skinning a blog or designing a product landing page.

Designing Process

If I am working on an application which is either transactional or data orientated, I’ll often take a very different approach to my design and prototyping.

Many applications have a finite number of states, so for example on a very basic level Amazon has category landing pages, product list pages, product pages and the checkout flow. I would first try and list out the set of states for an application, and then create a rough ‘napkin-sketch’ of each, either on the back of an actual napkin or using a quick and easy wireframing tool such as the excellent Balsamiq. This helps to get thinking about the components of an application up front, ensuring that you have covered all of the use-cases and hopefully prevents the situation where at the end of the design you realize a feature has been missed and you need to go back and try to retrofit it into the application.

From their I tend to move straight to XHTML/CSS, getting the layout setup and beginning to focus on the ‘feel’ and interaction a user has with the page page. This I find, especially when designing a transactional process, helps to stay focused on the underlying goal of the page which is often to support a user in completing a task or driving an actual conversion.

Working direct with XHTML/CSS really emphasizes the interaction portion of design – at an early stage you can see how a user will move through the process and identify any bottlenecks or any opportunities.

This is also the stage where you can also start thinking about behavior – how can you use JavaScript (or Flash) to enhance a transaction? This may be as simple as prototyping how an Ajax auto-completer could be applied to a form field, to visually experimenting with how a page is displayed.

By adopting this high-fidelity prototyping approach, you also generate reusable code which can be worked into the final design in addition to artifacts which are often more value when it comes to presenting to clients and usability testing.

Aside from an additional layer of visual richness and interactivity, web publishers are increasingly relying on video and audio in order to connect with visitors on both a rational and emotional level.

Broadcasters and news agencies have long been the pioneers in this space. If we take the BBC as an example, their online services have evolved from RealPlayer clips attatched to news articles, to streaming radio, to the iPlayer, a web or desktop based means of streaming radio and television programmes after they have aired. As technology has evolved, the BBC has also followed, recently adopting Flash as the delivery mechanism – a much more ubiquious and flexible solution compared to the ever-so-slightly-old-in-the-tooth RealPlayer. In fact, today audio/video is the only way some news stories and features can be experienced – a sign that this is becoming a mainstream expectation among users.

Part of what has been responsible for this mainstream acceptance of video is in no small part due to social sites such as YouTube – growing communities around the concept of creating and sharing video content. Television networks and movie studio’s have also embraced this medium both for making regular content such as TV episodes and trailers available, producing web-only interviews, documentaries and “webisodes”; and by specific viral marketing campaigns.

Marketers have embraced the likes of YouTube as an additional marketing channel, where one can generate buzz around a product.

What all this goes to show is that with the careful combination of the visual and the aural, incredible experiences can be created and user engagement can be taken to the next level. It can compliment existing content as is the case with BBC News, or it can often stand on its own.

Technology has also been an enabling feature – once in an environment of several competing and non-compatible plug-in technologies it was frustrating just to begin the process of watching a video or listening to a piece of music. Today, this is less of an issue with the majority of web video being made available using Adobe Flash or Quicktime – both boasting a high install base and seamless integration with the web browser.

Sound: The Red-headed Stepchild

In many ways, this is paradoxical given the rise and very rapid fall of one “feature” of the web. Does anyone remember back in the 1990’s when you would visit a website and be greeted with an exceptionally loud sound, jingle or other device. Usually it would scare the hell out of you, sending you scrambling for the mute button. Most companies soon got the idea and realized that this kind of “sonic branding” was a bad idea (and others are living in blissful ignorance).

Why did this fail when at the same time multi-media took off? There are several reasons, the first being that in many ways surfing the web is a private, contemplative, experience – it is akin to reading a book. The user is often in a focused state of mind, and to interrupt them is a jarring experience similar to how interruptions during the working day have been proven to have a negative impact on productivity.

Imagine if you were forced to listen to a soundtrack as you read the latest Harry Potter novel! Or the sense of intrusion which you get when your favorite iTunes track is interrupted by a web page with obnoxious theme music.

The user does not want to be surprised, and this becomes even more important when we consider the context as to where people are using the internet – more often than not at work, where it could cause embarrassment if co-workers knew what they are up to. Perhaps they are at home, with a sleeping child, where it would cause frustrating if a virtual marching band caused the child to wake up.

Even if the initial surprise was acceptable, online audio branding faces another challenge – how does the user feel on repeat listening? If someone is visiting a website on a regular basis, it is a sure bet that over time any “theme music” may become annoying and become a reverse-branding play.

Another more recent problem is the user being unable to associate the sound with the web page (or brand). All modern browsers support tabbed browsing, leading to the behavior of many users to queue up several pages in multiple tabs and then processing the content. If a page in one of the closed tabs starts to play audio, the user will either associate it (and all their feelings toward it) with the currently open tab, or engage in a frantic game of hide and seek as they rush to kill the offending sound.

Following this theme of disconnected audio, another thing to watch out for is misassociation with advertising banners or other elements which may also be animating on the page and causing the user to draw the mental connection.

When does it sound good?

Recognizing some of the fundamental usability and user experience issues associated with a musical web, are there any times when it is appropriate? The answer is yes.

Audio and Video – A Match Made in Heaven

Obviously, audio goes hand in hand with video content. When a sound is played, it is natural human behavior to associate it with moving objects (animation or video) or the most current interaction (opening a page, clicking a button).

Good, Sound, Experience Design

When you are not dealing with video content, it is important to consider how sound is going to integrate with an experience – will it be synced with animation, or triggered when a user clicks a button? Its important to avoid simply adding a sound to a page without considering how it will be perceived, and what events it will be associated with. For example, simply tacking an MP3 onto an onLoad event will likely not present a good experience.

Notifications

Sound can be a powerful tool when it comes to notifications, as can be seen by its use within the operating system – whether to signify a system error or an incoming email, it can instantly communicate changes in state to the user. On the web this is certainly still the case, with Google Mail and Facebook’s chat facility providing excellent examples of this. A short, distinctive beep is used to alert the user to a new message.

When using sound for notifications on the web, it is worth taking a step back and considering what you are notifying a user and if it is really necessary. Is it an event which demands the user’s immediate attention, or can it wait until later? For example, do you really need to notify the user that they have just clicked a button? There is a limit on the number of short distinctive beeps one can process, and they should be kept for signifying activity which occurs whilst a user may have their browser window in the background.

Giving Back Control

Going back to why websites tend not to have theme tunes, many users dislike not being in control and dislike unexpected surprises. Whilst a user watching a video on YouTube expects to hear sound, someone logging onto their bank’s website may not.

Where possible, best practice is to ensure that all audio (and visual) content is user initiated.

A Kill Switch

Whilst many of these strategies may help you best add sound to an experience, there is still the chance that the user may not want or desire it to be part of an experience. This is more often the case when we consider theme music or notifications.

Always provide a mute button.

Sanity Check

Finally, ask yourself, how does audio enhance the user experience of my website? Alongside video this may be a no brainer, but if you do not have a compelling answer then that should be an instant warning sign.

Could a sound be misinterpreted? An example might be using a ka-ching sound on the checkout page of an e-commerce site. Whilst it may evoke the emotional feelings of a transaction, it could also convey the undesired feeling that someone is being ripped off.

In the case of theme music or notifications, does the audio have the potential to sound annoying? How about if you had to listen to it hourly?

I’m now nicely settled in New York City, and have furniture in my apartment! All in all, the transition has been quite smooth, and I’ve found everyone to be friendly – obviously, I’m sure my charm and English accent has also played a part!

Last Wednesday I went along to Flash Coders New York, which was great fun, with an excellent presentation by Seb on the Arduino board, which allows you to do a bit of home electronics hackery, controlled by Flash.

In other news my book, Creating Mashups with Adobe AIR and Flex 3.0, has gone off to the printers and should be on the shelves come April 28th. More on that over the coming weeks, but in the meanwhile, I would heartily recommend that you go and check out Adobe AIR.

More soon…

Its a move I have been toying with for a while, mainly because I have not been impressed with Mephisto as a blogging platform at all. There was a lot of promise, but development seems to have stalled, leaving users without basic and essential features without getting knee deep in Ruby code.

Wordpress so far has been a dream in terms of setup and configuration, and I am already impressed by the amount of quality plugins available, coupled with the ease of installation. My only gripe has been that all my posts seem to have lost their text formatting, making me look like a dumb monkey who has never been introduced to the concept of a paragraph! I’m working on that!

Coming in the next few weeks is a pretty redesign, replacing the Wordpress theme, and some other bits and pieces…

2007, a look back

One of the big things that has happened this year was of course the announcement and launch of the iPhone. If you have managed to miss that one, then I can only imagine the amount of beer you must have been drinking to dull the outside world!

The iPhone

I have one, its a sexy phone, and in many ways I think has got people thinking about different ways we can interact with our technology, rather than relying on old conventions. The iPhone has also, I think, started to really drive a shift in how network operators look at data. In the US it has let to mobile operators taking the first steps towards embracing the concept of ‘unlimited’ data; whilst in more advanced European markets we are seeing greater competition between operators and also a push towards creating ubiquitous wifi access plans for customers.

Its not the best phone in the world, with no support for things I have been used to, such as MMS. Plus, it has a really rubbish camera compared to my previous Sony Ericsson Cybershot, but its sheer usability would make me hard to take that step back.Hopefully, this will be the catalyst for more cool and innovative devices over the next year.

Operating System Wars

February marked the release of Windows Vista, which no-one seemed to notice.

With many early adopters going back to XP, it seems as though Microsoft tried to bite off a bit too much with this one, ending up delivering an operating system which sucks resources and alienates existing users with its new features.

October marked the release of OS X Leopard from Apple, which a few more people seemed to notice.

With many early adopters going back to Tiger, it seems as though Apple perhaps let this cat out of the page a bit too early, delivering an operating system that adds many fantastic incremental enhancements but at the sometime has managed to alienate existing users with a slew of annoying bugs.

The Social Geek

One of my personal highlights has been the explosion of geek events over the past year – from the usual skillswaps and networking sessions to wine and cider tastings. I’m not sure if this has just been a Brighton thing, but it is fantastic to be working in an industry with so many diverse, skilled and interesting people.

Another Bubble?

Its been like the late nineties all over again, with massive investments in technology and innovative web applications springing up left right and center. Too be honest, I think its a serious problem as soon there will be no domain names left! We already have web applications dropping vowels ll vr th plc, Shakespr would turn in his grave!

One thing I’ve noticed is that innovation still seems to be in place, but this time around many of the business models seem to be a lot more conservative. Hopefully because of this, we are not on the brink of another crash.

Micro-whats?

Last year, one of my predictions was that microformats would be one of the next big things to hit us this year. Looking back, I seem to have got that one a bit wrong. Whilst many sites have implemented them into their markup, I think various community issues and the lack of any decent applications which consume them; has really hit hard.

Although they serve a worthy purpose, putting a semantic structure around complex data types and this making them easier to parse and detect, I don’t think they are going to be the next big thing. For a start there is very little consensus around many of the specifications in development, hindering their adoption and leaving developers to go and mark up their data in their own way. Instead, the next big thing I think is going to be data detection at the OS level.

One of the cool things about Leopard is how you can hover over an e-mail signature and automatically import a person into your address book, with excellent accuracy. No strings or hCards involved! Rather than relying of developers to standardize on a markup sub-format, lets put more energy into recognizing data. I would expect Apple’s data detection technology to work its way into Safari and other applications soon enough.

2008, the year ahead

So what about 2008, lets have a look.

Browser Wars

The recent legal challenge to Microsoft, by Opera Software, over Internet Explorer’s poor standards compliance is an interesting one. I think ultimately it is a bit pointless, but we should also realize that Microsoft are in a position to do something substantial with their browser.

For a start, IE8 has a new rendering engine which passes the Acid2 test – that in itself is an big win for web developers everywhere. What could really be game changing is if that engine was in fact Webkit – lets stop it with proprietary rendering engines each with their own quirks and embrace common platforms, giving web developers of the future a few less things to worry about!

AIR Heads

Q1 will see the release of Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), which I have been excited about for a while. Mainly because it offers a viable and straightforward route for web developers to create widgets and applications for the desktop. With the ubiquity of the Flash player, and the many exciting developments this year and on the board for the Flash Platform, I can see AIR doing well.What makes me so positive about this is the open relationship Adobe are forging with the development community. Proactively seeking input and critique of their software and strategies, and at the same time releasing things such as Flex and AMF as open source. Things have definitely changed for the better.

Personal Stuff

On a personal note, 2008 should be interested for two reasons. The first being that I have recently accepted a new role, one which should open the door for some interesting projects and technology work. Sadly, it does also mean I will be leaving Brighton (I’ll be back!) for the shiny lights and hustle of New York City – a nice adventure!

The second item has been on the cards for most of the past year, I have a book coming out later in the year dedicated to Creating Mashups with Adobe Flex and AIR which I have been writing with my good friends David and John. Quite exciting, though Amazon continually seem to be discounting it, which may not be a good sign! Get your pre-orders in today!

Also on the drawing board is a blog redesign, which I have been working on for a while… watch this space!

Now before everyone thinks that I have decided to become a management consultant, let me explain… I have just spent the past few days at Flash on the Beach learning new things, meeting interesting people, crashing speaker parties and generally being inspired. It was really a tremendous conference and a big thanks to all the organizers and speakers for making it what it was.

One of the speakers who inspired me in particular was Chris Orwig who wowed us with some amazing photography and some inspirational advice. He used the example of two photo’s, both of the same object – a person and a car set against the backdrop of a beach. The difference was that one photo was taken at eye level, and the other whilst kneeling on the ground. This brought a totally different perspective to the scene, a different feel, and a sense of scale. Whereas previously the man appeared larger than the car, now he was dwarfed by it.

Such a small thing made a huge difference, and I think especially in my field of interactive design and development this is especially true. Lets face it, these days it is easy to build a web app, but it is increasingly difficult to build an amazing web app.

If we look at some of the more special sites, we can see what makes them special – they have been built considering a different perspective – the developers have knelt down and look at it from a different angle, which ultimately feeds and defines the user experience.

From now on, I am going to make a concerted effort to kneel and I would encourage everyone reading this to do the same.

I didn’t do too badly, making it onto the final table through a strategy which weaved elements of strategy, cunning and sheer luck! Unfortunately losing to a pair of three’s in a slightly misguided assumption that the other guy was bluffing, and simply leveraging his huge pile of chips to intimidate! I was also slightly intimidated when someone else pointed out that one of my fellow finalists was actually a professional poker player and not a Flash developer as I had previously assumed. Oh well, on the bright side, at least I didn’t get knocked out on one of the early rounds with a pair of aces. I like to think I brought some glory to the Brighton contingents valiant efforts.

The install process was totally painless, taking around half an hour to upgrade the existing installation of Tiger on my MacBook. Once complete, the machine rebooted and that was it. Totally painless, no problems whatsoever, and I was left on my new desktop.

Now my new desktop was very much the same as my old desktop, with a few notable differences – the menu bar no longer had rounded corners and was now semi-transparent and my dock was now a bit more 3D, with a few extra icons. Nothing too major.

In fact, one can be forgiven for being a bit underwhelmed by the upgrade – unlike upgrading versions of Windows, things still looked and functioned in what appeared to be the same way. Its not until I started poking around that I began to see the extent of the changes within Leopard.

than anything large, it is the little things which make Leopard worthwhile – Stacks in the dock make it easier to keep your desktop tidy, the many enhancements to Finder (notably CoverFlow and QuickLook) greatly enhance the experience of browsing and managing files and Spaces helps you to manage virtual desktops. You can now also create ad-hoc widgets from within Safari – which is quite neat, and which I will be blogging about later this week.

As of yet, I haven’t had a chance to try out the Time Machine, though I am hoping it will get me into the habit of backing up files.

Other enhancements seem a bit more superficial – stationary in Mail, for when you have that urge to send HTML emails, and visual effects in iChat – probably not the kind of features I will find myself using.

So, is there anything which annoys me? I will probably add to this list over the next few days, but at the moment the main annoyances seem to be visual for me – the new window chrome seems a tad dark, and I’m not too keen on the ridiculously huge drop shadows and translucent menu’s – wether they will grow on my still remains to be seen.

Is there anything which is incompatible? So far I have only found a single application which doesn’t seem to work – Aventail Connect VPN Client – which is slightly annoying. If anyone has a solution, please leave a comment!

Worthwhile? For all of the UI/UX experiences, probably. As many reviewers have said, Leopard is not revolutionary, however it is evolutionary and provides some welcome new features – most of which may not be immediately obvious, but which hopefully make the day to day experience of using a Mac more enjoyable.