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Content design with cojones
Or so I tweeted whilst watching the recent Apple keynote. A month later and I don’t think I could have been more wrong.Immediately after the iPad’s reveal, the interweb rippled with an argument between two tribes, those that want a computer that allows them to tinker under the hood, and those that don’t care about getting their hands dirty – they just want to email, surf, watch and listen. For me, this isn’t the interesting debate. It’s how the speed, screen size and controlled environment of the iPad now means that content design on screen can finally come of age and grow some balls. Big ones.
Or so I tweeted whilst watching the recent Apple keynote. A month later and I don’t think I could have been more wrong.
Or so I tweeted whilst watching the recent Apple keynote. A month later and I don’t think I could have been more wrong.
Immediately after the iPad’s reveal, the interweb rippled with an argument between two tribes, those that want a computer that allows them to tinker under the hood, and those that don’t care about getting their hands dirty – they just want to email, surf, watch and listen. For me, this isn’t the interesting debate. It’s how the speed, screen size and controlled environment of the iPad now means that content design on screen can finally come of age and grow some balls. Big ones.
Your content isn’t the same as my content
There are some sites that people check two or three times a day. BBC News is one of them for me. However, out of the 50 or so articles on their home page in the morning, I’ll probably only read around ten stories. As I check back during the day, there’s a law of diminishing returns, in fact every time I visit I usually end up reading half as many stories as I did the previous time.
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Discrepancy of scale: Ron Mueck
Recently while on holidays in Melbourne, I went to see an exhibition in The National Gallery of Victoria by hyperrealist sculptor Ron Mueck. Having heard about his lifelike but not life-size human sculptures, I was very excited to enter into his world. I was keen to see the way Mueck plays with scale and creates human sculptures presented at all stages of life.
As I entered the room, I encountered the first sculpture of the exhibition “Dead Dad”; a representation of Mueck’s dead father, naked, lying on the floor, only three feet long. The hyper-realism of the model was so striking that I could feel the fragility and the morbid temperature of the body. The fact that he was naked and exposed to the fully-clothed onlookers made him look extremely vulnerable, and I felt a slight discomfort looking at him.
As I continued my journey throughout the exhibition, i found that each sculpture had it’s own story to tell. Mueck’s depiction of different emotional states, such as isolation, fear and tenderness, made me feel like I was observing the human condition through a magnifying glass. I felt trapped in an enclosed space surrounded by emotions.
However the most powerful story was represented by the “Wild Man”, a nine-foot sculpture of a bearded man clutching stiffly the stool he was seated on. Despite the monstrous size of the man, he seemed so vulnerable and the fear and anxiety emanated from his eyes. It felt like as if he was terrified of us – the audience. I could strongly empathise with the feeling of intimidation that was brought to life so vividly by the sculpture.
Every sculpture looked so realistic that it was hard to resist the temptation of touching them. However as I got close and reached out my hand, security approached me immediately, and so my desire was left unfulfilled! I still wonder if they feel as real as they look.
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Time for a reassessment of the human-computer interface
A great blog post by Lukas Mathis has been floating around Twitter for a few days now. In it he talks about the removal of features in software development. Specifically:
If you don’t pay attention, what started out as an elegant, simple application that perfectly solves a single problem, can quickly turn into a huge behemoth of an application that solves a ton of problems, but solves all of them poorly.
This, and some other tweet comments, got me thinking about the iPad (who isn’t?) and how I believe it’s a glimpse of the future for how we interact with personal computers.
In the 35 years since the arrival of the personal computer we’ve been on a continuous upward trajectory of feature enhancement and specification bloat. It’s not just the software, it’s infecting the very machines that we run the bloated software on.
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Delightful punctuation
As an erstwhile pedant and ex-employee of a major dictionary publisher, I have had my fair share of run-ins with punctuation. So I chuckled to see this brilliantly illustrated explanation of how to use the semicolon.
By the way, if you’re looking for something to delight you on any given day, head over to Maria Popova’s site of wonder Brain Pickings (or follow her on twitter), which is where I stumbled across this little gem.
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Persuasive signup
Signup forms are always a pain in the arse. For a long time, the volume of email addresses captured (as if they could get away) has been a pointless little metric. It allows brand managers to own something – “so we can write to them in the future”. But with open rates and click-throughs so terribly low for emails and the cost of sending bulk emails so high (remember when sending emails was free?!), we’ve seen implementations of single sign-on more and more common.
I came across a page on lifeblob.com via search results which required me to log in to view the content.
It’s a little annoying that it asks me to sign in to see content that is displayed in search results, but ignore that for a second. What I like here is the hierarchy of the three services, placing lifeblob’s own below the rest. The reason for this will become clear.
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Pictory – A beautiful example of online editorial design
I’ve talked before about exploring different ways of navigating and consuming content online.
I first came across Pictory a few weeks ago and absolutely loved it. But as it starts to fill with stories and topics I feel provides some beautiful and elegant ways to gorge yourself on content and is really forging a path into new areas of content layout and navigation online.
Their line ‘Your best photo stories’ explains what it is nicely.
Let’s look at the evidence.
Lovely, big images. Navigation via a keyboard which allows me to skip from piece to piece simply by pressing the left/right arrow keys. A balanced mix of captioned images and short stories pulled together to create a rich textured viewing / reading experience. Real-life stories which often cause an emotional stir in the reader. And the designer in me loves the use of Typekit fonts.
I think it’s an example of crowdsourcing at it’s absolute best. A nice tightly worded brief but open enough for interpretation by the viewer. (Aren’t all the best briefs like this?)
Being ultra picky. A full-screen view would be nice.
Anyway, I think it’s best if you go there now and lose the next hour of your day.
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King banner
Like so many, I completely tune out ad banners when I’m viewing the web. It doesn’t matter what format or size they are, whether it’s an animated spectacular or basic text links, I simply don’t pay any attention to banners any more.
This worries me, as when you start ignoring something it’s a short step to holding it in contempt. Something that’s all too easy when sites resort to obtrusive overlays: having to fiddle around with a flash banner covering up your content wasn’t the reason I came to your site (regardless of how you need to fund it).
Which is why seeing some of the new formats that sites like Slate and the New York Times are using is such a delight. These aren’t ads that get in the way of the content, they’re a piece of content in themselves. They’re also monumentally huge. So big that you can’t possibly ignore them. In fact they’re so big you almost can’t believe that anyone would have the balls to put an ad banner that enormous on the page.
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We’ve sorted the UX. How about the EX?
I think I can stick my neck out and say that *most* web industry professionals are pretty solid on user experience these days. The heuristics of web usability have become engrained in our brains over the years. When planning a site we often reach consensus on discussions around interaction touch points and navigation hierarchies very quickly and get on to writing the next user story.It wasn’t always like this. I can remember observing, and even occasionally conducting, usability tests on site prototypes and early design mock ups as recently as three years ago. It all seemed a bit low rent TV police drama but it worked. Voice and face recording, one-way mirrored glass observation rooms, scripts and lists of questions. A really compelling way to settle arguments between clients / developers / account management / designers.After doing this tens and tens of times you start to get a good understanding of how people approach looking for stuff on a site. The natural gravitational pull to the top right when looking for search. The twitch of the hand to point the mouse to the top left of the screen when wanting a home link. All quite predictable.I know there are still shocking usability examples out there on the web. In the same way that you’ll always get crap food in some restaurants and shonky service from estate agents. There will always be room for user testing on some level.But I think there may be a new avenue to explore. What about the emotional experience of using a site? How do we measure this? Is there any form of measurement for something so intangible?Following on form Isaac’s post about surprise and delight in service and product design, what are the metrics for a great emotional experience online? Just having a site that is easy to navigate is one thing, but what does joy look like? Is it the measure of ‘OMGs’ in Twitter mentions with bit.ly links?In short, what are the things that make a ‘normal’ web user love a site? Content, conversation, dripping with smooth jQuery loveliness? What do you reckon?I think I can stick my neck out and say that *most* web industry professionals are pretty solid on user experience these days. The heuristics of web usability have become engrained in our brains over the years. When planning a site we usually reach consensus on discussions around interaction touch points and navigation hierarchies very quickly and get on to writing the next user story.
It wasn’t always like this. I can remember observing, and even occasionally conducting, usability tests on site prototypes and early design mock ups as recently as three years ago. It all seemed a bit low rent TV police drama but it worked. Voice and face recording, one-way mirrored glass observation rooms, scripts and lists of questions. A really compelling way to settle arguments between clients / developers / account management / designers.
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Less and more. Not so much
Dieter Rams is big at the moment. His ten principles of good design seemed to explode around the interweb when the new Vitsoe site launched. He’s been profiled by the V&A as part of last year’s Cold War Modern exhibition. And Apple can’t launch a single product without Jonathan Ive’s name being linked to Rams’ time at Braun.
Reflecting the moment, London’s Design Museum is now showing an exhibition profiling the design ethos of the man himself.
It’s a great exhibition and, as a fan of Rams’ work, it’s wonderful to be able to see so much of his work in one place. Certainly being able to see his designs as physical objects (rather than simply photos in a reference book or blog post) gives a different perspective and appreciation of what he managed to achieve in his time at Braun.
Scattered throughout exhibition are quotes from Rams. The first time that I read some of these I was slightly awe-struck at how much of his design ethos could be applied to service and interaction design:
A product must not claim features – more innovative, more efficient, of higher value – it does not have.
Whilst it’s great to get people excited about features coming tomorrow, those features aren’t a panacea for having a service that doesn’t work today. Transparency and honesty in design can go a long way in helping to create something useful for users from day one.
Because it is certainly unpleasant and tedious to be confronted day-in, day-out with products which are confusing, which literally get on our nerves, and with which we cannot relate.
Usability has always been a key part of interaction design, however, the ability to relate to the user is perhaps even more useful. It’s not just about designing something to be as simple as possible to use. It’s about being to empathise with the end user and knowing what their measure of simplicity is.
More can be found in Rams’ 10 principles of good design:
Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design makes a product understandable.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is long-lasting.
Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
Good design is environmentally friendly.
Good design is as little design as possible.However, the more that I walked around the long, regimented lines of radios, stereos, shavers and kitchen appliances the more I felt that something was missing.
Passion.
Not passion for creating the most useful, honest and understandable products. But passion as a response to actually using a Braun appliance.
Yes, of course it’s great to have something that just works, that fits in your hand just so. That does everything you expect it to do. But that’s where these designs seem to end: they do everything you expect them to do and nothing more. Whilst that’s undoubtedly a big part of being honest, I can’t help but feel that there was something missing.
Going that little bit further. Surprise and delight the user. Don’t just be beautiful through utility, create passion by crafting an experience that quickens the breath just that little bit. The little intake that when you hear it you know that you’ve got someone hooked.
I know that several of my friends would dispute that Braun products don’t elicit a passionate response. One friend in particular purrs like a contented kitten at the thought of owning a T1000 World Receiver. Though I suspect that this response is heavily based upon what Rams’s work now represents rather than the experience of using such a design classic.However, now more than ever, creating an experience that quickens the breath – whether it be a product or a service – may be the only way to creating brand loyalty and a relationship that lasts. After all, other than toothbrushes, who buys Braun now?
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Why Twitter could do with a shhhhh button
After initially disliking the new retweet functionality on Twitter, I’ve grown to like it. It’s rediculously easy to retweet someone else now. It’s literally 2 clicks, only 1 if you dare remove the overly protective ‘Are you sure you want to retweet this?’ confirmation that some twitter clients are keen on.
But that also means that people you follow are retweeting far more.
Before, retweets looked fairly discreet, they just had RT at the beginning within the tweet itself. Now though, if you choose to use the new ‘baked in’ retweet, the tweeted tweeter gets their avatar in your stream. This seems nice because it gives prominence to people that give good tweet. Thereby helping people to discover more people to follow. But then, some people aren’t as judicious with the retweet button.
Scobleizer is one of those industry pundits that I’ve followed, unfollowed and followed again a couple of times now. It’s usually some kind of passive self-important tweet that gets me reaching for the unfollow.
And today, I came across this nice little feature on the main web client.
So, when you visit the profile in question, you see this.
There’s a couple of reasons this doesn’t totally appeal to me. Firstly, if I start blocking retweets from one person and I have nowhere to see them all in one place, it feels a bit messy. I personally need somewhere to get an overview of this kind of thing. It feels like my setting would be too spread out. But that’s fairly personal. Secondly, that little icon is the same as the button that’s actually used to retweet. It seems counter-intuitive that you would click the same button to stop retweets as you would to actually retweet them. Picky I know, but these little things are important to us.
What I’d really love is a way of not quite unfollowing someone but just taking a bit of break from them. I want to say ‘Shhh Scoble, that’s enough, it’s not you, it’s me, I’ve just had my fill of gushing and over-excited tech coverage for one day”. It would be like some kind of purgatory you could send people to. Like taking a break.
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