Multipurpose Room

Brave New World: Usability Challenges of Web 2.0

UIE.com: We’re a think-tank more than consulting firm. We also take a very long view and so we are at the beginning of the research.

What is Web 2.0? Lots of different ideas.

How Design Mutates through three phases: Technology Design focuses on getting the technology to work. then, Feature Design where you add features.  Then Experience Design. Commodization.

Features: Wang WP. Boo.com Microsoft Word got into the feature trap. Amazon has added blogging. Why?

Experience design is not graphic design. See craignslist. MySpace is even worse for visual design.

Web 2.0: Designed around user experiences. “Small pieces, loosely joined.” Share common design attributes: APIs (mashup), RSS, Folksonomies, Social Network (“Wisdom of Crowds”). Poster child is flickr.com.

APIs –  RSS is a huge component

Challenges: APIs: chicagocrime.org. But how do we build good design into an API? Look a date dropdown in chicagocrime.

How do we create seamless experiences when multiple sources for the code?

RSS: What happens when everyone is designing interfaces? CNN RSS feeds.Not something your grandmother is going to use. Just explaining how it works is tough.

Can we come up with a way to explain how RSS works? Subscribing is complex. Interactions are unpredictable.

Tagging: consumating.com Dating site that uses tagging. Kitchen cabinet problem: try finding a glass with the lights off in someone else's house. So tags may not mean the same to others.

Social Networking: Netflix  has it built into it. Wisdom of crowds.  Reviews only for your friends.

Long Tail: Power curve noticed with usage of English words. Chris looked at revenue the long tail that bricks and mortar can not stock. 800,000 pages at Microsoft have never been retrieved. 98% of users at Microsoft come from only 2% of the content. What do you do for the interface to the test of the content? Worse with user generated content. How do we handle the longtail issues?

Data entry causes experience problems – example flying to which Seattle with online travel site.

Brave New World

We’re designing for Experience;

E-zine: UIEtips. 

posted by Ray @ Wednesday, August 16, 2006