When I first started this blog in 2006, I wanted to make it as easy as possible to set things up. So I chose Blogger, even though I already had a WordPress installation running on my server.
Now I've finally taken the time to recreate the blog in WordPress, and get it its own domain. So today this blog moves to Conceptology.org. I'll keep this Blogger version up for some time still, but new posts won't be added here anymore. I've already also moved my RSS/Feedburner feed to the new address. Please let me know if you have any problems connecting to the new blog or the feed, and also feel free to comment on the visual look of the new blog. See you at Conceptology.org.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
IA now
I've put together a new, short presentation on what IA is now, at the crossroads of web 1, 2, and 3.0. The emerge of social media, new levels of information and interaction, and portability raise the need for new ways of working and documenting design architecture, but the new doesn't replace all of the old - the basics still apply. Great documentation is still needed, requirements gathering, wireframing, usability testing is still, of course, all relevant and needed. IAs just need to expand their toolkits to better plan and communicate the architecture of the rapidly changing online world.
You can view the presentation on Slideshare here.
You can view the presentation on Slideshare here.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Three Minds
Starting today, I'll have posts appear also in Three Minds, one of the two excellent blogs of Organic, which is where I work now. The first one talks about mobile microblogging services. In the post I highlight GyPSii, Plazes and Friend View, but there's of course plenty of others, Brighkite, Shizzow, and Yahoo's Fire Eagle, for example. I'll try to test as many of them as I can soon and maybe post a little review here later.
Sunday, November 09, 2008
The beauty of web form design
Couple months ago I bought a digital copy of Luke Wroblewski's book "Web Form Design - Filling in the Blanks". Form design may not be as sexy as designing the home page, but well functioning, usable forms are important to users. A badly designed form can easily frustrate users and even drive them away from the site - which may mean that they didn't sign up for your service, buy your products or answer your survey.Wroblewski's book is well written and offers many good examples, I highly recommend it to all IAs/UXDs. And I love the cover design of all of Rosenfeld Media's books. Lou Rosenfeld has just published an interview with Wroblewski on his site.
"Social networks were thought to be the way to outsource desire fabrication..."
"...to consumers themselves. To some degree they will do so. But in this age of individuality it will be the ego-centric wish that will be the more powerful driver of demand. “If I can dream it, I can have it." Wish-based consumables are ego-centric: they are about my impulses based on the pleasure principle."I like this post by Jokko, and I'm looking forward to seeing the visualization of this he plans to do. Read the full post here.
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Social interactions are not designed
Earlier this week I linked to Adrian Chan's great article on social interaction design in Johnny Holland Magazine. It made me think of a few points that I think are worth a post in my own blog.
First I think the term 'social interaction design' is misleading. Of course, in our context, in this industry, it means designing social software that allows users to interact and share data with others. The interactions between users, however, are not designed by designers and engineers - only the software, that facilitates the interactions, is. A discussion between two people is social interaction - any event in which people attach meaning to a situation, interpret what others are meaning, and respond accordingly, is social interaction. Software can be designed to enable, motivate and encourage social interaction, but what users then end up doing (or not doing) with it is up to the users themselves. The further development of the software then needs to follow the users and their interests. Like Adrian pointed out in his article, twitter, for example, is not used just for SMS-Web messaging as its designers originally intended, but for several different things that the users have started to use it for because it enables them to do it.
The need to interact with others is very basic, common to all of us. That explains why social interaction software has quickly become the most popular form of using the Web. I think of my own father, a 70-year old with a PC and a cell phone, who would easily say no to buying flight tickets online. Not because he doesn't think it's safe, but because he's not willing to learn how to do it. He says he'll rather go to a real travel agent - he actually think it's easier than going online, and he likes the human interaction he gets at a travel agency. But when I have showed him photos that I share online, used Skype to call him or sent him free SMS from a website, he's always wanted me to immediately show him how to do it himself. Communication services that the Web has enabled - VoIP calls, email, instant messaging, and now social networking and microblogging - are the digital services that have managed to quickly gain popularity among not just the young and savvy, but also older folk.
When designing software that facilitates social interaction, the basic rules of how to design a usable service still apply. If a program or service is not usable, it doesn't motivate users to use it, even if it, at first, interests users because it promises to let them do something they desire. After enough people start using software they find usable, they need further motivation and satisfaction that they can get from recognition (status), reciprocity (I share, you share), sense of efficacy, and/or sense of community (Kollock's framework). In social software, they can get many of those things from other users, but the software system itself also needs to provide them.
Social software design could really benefit from anthropological study that put together what we know now about online and offline social behavior. The behavioral patterns that we see in social software now seem like very basic human behavior, but without the backing of actual studies that interpret the world we live in now, many social software designers are left to come up with the necessary conclusions over time, through trial and error.
First I think the term 'social interaction design' is misleading. Of course, in our context, in this industry, it means designing social software that allows users to interact and share data with others. The interactions between users, however, are not designed by designers and engineers - only the software, that facilitates the interactions, is. A discussion between two people is social interaction - any event in which people attach meaning to a situation, interpret what others are meaning, and respond accordingly, is social interaction. Software can be designed to enable, motivate and encourage social interaction, but what users then end up doing (or not doing) with it is up to the users themselves. The further development of the software then needs to follow the users and their interests. Like Adrian pointed out in his article, twitter, for example, is not used just for SMS-Web messaging as its designers originally intended, but for several different things that the users have started to use it for because it enables them to do it.
The need to interact with others is very basic, common to all of us. That explains why social interaction software has quickly become the most popular form of using the Web. I think of my own father, a 70-year old with a PC and a cell phone, who would easily say no to buying flight tickets online. Not because he doesn't think it's safe, but because he's not willing to learn how to do it. He says he'll rather go to a real travel agent - he actually think it's easier than going online, and he likes the human interaction he gets at a travel agency. But when I have showed him photos that I share online, used Skype to call him or sent him free SMS from a website, he's always wanted me to immediately show him how to do it himself. Communication services that the Web has enabled - VoIP calls, email, instant messaging, and now social networking and microblogging - are the digital services that have managed to quickly gain popularity among not just the young and savvy, but also older folk.
When designing software that facilitates social interaction, the basic rules of how to design a usable service still apply. If a program or service is not usable, it doesn't motivate users to use it, even if it, at first, interests users because it promises to let them do something they desire. After enough people start using software they find usable, they need further motivation and satisfaction that they can get from recognition (status), reciprocity (I share, you share), sense of efficacy, and/or sense of community (Kollock's framework). In social software, they can get many of those things from other users, but the software system itself also needs to provide them.
Social software design could really benefit from anthropological study that put together what we know now about online and offline social behavior. The behavioral patterns that we see in social software now seem like very basic human behavior, but without the backing of actual studies that interpret the world we live in now, many social software designers are left to come up with the necessary conclusions over time, through trial and error.
Thursday, November 06, 2008
What ever happened to Fidg't?
KillerStartups and several other sites featured Fidg't, developed by the LA-based company Protohaus, as a very promising new tool last year. Fidg't is a "social networking address book" that promised to help users to aggregate all of their social networking sites and group them into meta contacts. In other words, put all your friends from different networks together, on one account.
And then, with the Fidg't Visualizer, users could bring together all of their contacts' media and explore recently posted media files on everybody's accounts. And with a Fidg't-supported mobile phone, you could chat, upload photos, and browse through your network.
Sounds great, huh? But a year later, Fidg't still supports only a handful of social networking services: Flickr, Last.Fm, AIM and MSN Messenger. The list of supported mobile devices is also short, and includes only a couple of Nokia Nseries phones. For users who set up a Fidg't account but then want to delete it, the only way of doing so is by sending an e-mail to Fidg't. With a service that looks so undeveloped that sounds a bit dodgy to me, after giving all my user account data to the service.
Too bad. It's an interesting service that could go much further. Hopefully the development team will still pick it up and and continue their work one day.
And then, with the Fidg't Visualizer, users could bring together all of their contacts' media and explore recently posted media files on everybody's accounts. And with a Fidg't-supported mobile phone, you could chat, upload photos, and browse through your network.
Sounds great, huh? But a year later, Fidg't still supports only a handful of social networking services: Flickr, Last.Fm, AIM and MSN Messenger. The list of supported mobile devices is also short, and includes only a couple of Nokia Nseries phones. For users who set up a Fidg't account but then want to delete it, the only way of doing so is by sending an e-mail to Fidg't. With a service that looks so undeveloped that sounds a bit dodgy to me, after giving all my user account data to the service.
Too bad. It's an interesting service that could go much further. Hopefully the development team will still pick it up and and continue their work one day.
More ways to go green
Canada's public broadcaster CBC has joined the green forces, interestingly teaming up with Cisco (Canada) to launch a national environmental movement, One Million Acts of Green (OMAoG) (why do I hear Dr. Evil's voice in my head every time someone starts to say "one million...") The OMAoG site joins the list of other, similar Canadian sites like David Suzuki "sponsored" powerWISE and the Ontario Ministry of Environment's Add It Up. The David Suzuki Foundation is one of the partners of OMAoG as well.I haven't had time to properly go through the OMAoG site yet, but it looks quite similar to powerWISE in its community building efforts. The layout looks slightly cluttered, but the user base seems to have started building up very quickly and I like the messaging on the site. CBC's role in promoting the movement, according to an article in this month's Strategy Magazine, is to feature teaser ads and 30-second spots with "celebrities and green experts" (of course - but is Mike Myers one of them? "One million dollars... I mean acts"). If only we could now get the newly elected Conservative government of Canada to do more to build more modern, cleaner infrastructure to help Canadians curb their emissions...
Monday, November 03, 2008
Social interaction design
Quite a brilliant, benchmark article by Adrian Chan in Johnny Holland Magazine today! Writing about social interaction design, Adrian states that "If the task of conventional software is to provide successful interactions, to inform the user that his actions worked, then what of social media? ... Social interaction design works by respecting the psychological and social, the ambiguity not the clarity, the unintended not the intended. The best a designer can do is set up a social architecture that structures and organizes participation well enough that users know what’s going on, and therefore what to do. Social interaction designers start not from user needs but from user interests." Read more...
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