Eleven Years of Google
When I found out that Google just celebrated its 11th birthday last weekend, I couldn’t help but think about how integral it has been to my Internet experience, and the experiences of countless of other users all over the world. I find myself using Google as my main online search site whenever I want to find something fast, and I am always amazed how much more extensive and precise the results of my web searches are compared to those performed on other sites. It is believed to be the most visited site on Earth, which should come to no surprise to anyone. Even the word Google is a household name because it is unique and easy to remember.
I use Google News when I am looking for the latest headlines, Blogger when writing for two different blogs, and Google Earth when I am interested in determining what the surroundings of any location in the world are. I also use Google Maps when figuring out driving directions, but this function alone has been problematic for me in the past, because I must admit I have gotten incorrect directions from it. As a safety and when I have time to look up directions, I check at least one other site to compare the routes and determine which I will trust and follow more. I am also a big fan of Picasa when sending and storing photographs to friends and family, which alleviates the fear of losing images forever if my computer or laptop crashes and I haven’t backed up all my data. I am avoiding the latter, just in case.
Looking back at the good, the bad, and everything in between, I have to admit that the Internet has been a very interesting place since Google was conceived and launched to an unsuspecting public. The online experience would be a very different place if it never existed, and that would not have been a good thing.
Google has been an integral part of my Internet experience, and as a search engine it is the closest thing to perfection I have seen on the Internet. If the company keeps doing what it is doing while striving to innovate and improve all of its services and programs, Google will continue to be on top for years to come.
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Save Time & Money – Leverage the expertise by using Design Patterns
Web designers & developers are constantly searching to find the best practices for guiding the user through completing a specific action or task on a website. And as more and more complex applications come online, and there is more and more user interaction with those applications, the problem to present information in a meaningful way for the user to interact with in those applications, becomes increasingly difficult.
But designers no longer have to work in a vacuum to figure out the solutions. They can now leverage all of the expertise, user behavior analysis, and best practices of the great user interface design patterns that are available online.
What is a user interface design pattern?
A design pattern is good design that has been vetted and tested for usability by designers, User Interface (UI) experts, and even the design community that have been proven to work well for very specific user situations and user issues. It is a package of proven expertise that informs the designer of the principles behind the design and what is known to work.
Using known and researched principles in your design will save you time and money and make your applications more intuitive for the user and easy to use.
All design patterns answer the following questions:
- What is the Problem we are trying to solve?
- What is the Solution?
- When and why to use the pattern?
Where can I find design patterns?
- Yahoo Design Pattern Library
Yahoo! breaks down their design patterns into five categories: Layout, Navigation, Selection, Rich Interaction, and Social. Within each category you will find an array of design patterns that not only answer the standard questions of What, When & Why they also provide real world examples, code examples, related patterns, and similar patterns from non Yahoo! libraries. They also have a community where you can discuss the design patterns with people who are trying to solve the same design problems. - Welie.com
The patterns on this site are grouped in a very meaningful way. The main categories are broken down into:
User needs which include navigating around, searching, shopping, making choices
basic interactions, dealing with data, personalizing, making choices, giving input.
Application needs which include drawing attention, feedback, simplifying interaction.
Context of design which include site types, experiences, page types - UI-Patterns.com
This website provides a good number of design patters but what makes it different is that they offer a lot of examples of actual sites that use good design principles via their screenshot collections and their resources. - Open Source Design Pattern Library
This is a community where designers, developers, and other people interested in patterns can come to reference material, collaborate on patterns and designs, and share their knowledge with everyone.
Do you use other resources that I haven’t mentioned? Let me know if the comments!
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Book Clubs for User Experience Professionals
I’m sure quite of few of you are already in book clubs, but I wanted to recommend one you might want to consider. In your current book club, you probably get together with your friends every so often as an excuse to drink wine while chatting about the plot and characters. But what if you had that same experience except you discussed professional books? Check out a new site the organizes book clubs for user experience professionals.
I work in online user experience for Barnes & Noble, so this is right up my alley. Plus, I’m always hesitant to join book clubs with friends because I can be a little particular about which fiction books I read. This is why the idea of a professional book club appeals to me so much. I have an ever growing list of fiction books I want to one day get to, but I wouldn’t mind a little help from my peers in choosing which books on user experience are the most relevant at this very moment. And I’d be thrilled if a group of peers wanted to read it at the same time and then link up to discuss—especially if it’s done leisurely over a glass of wine.
It looks like I’m not the only one excited about this idea. UX Book Clubs have sprouted in Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, the Middle East, and all over North and South America.
Boxes and Arrows, which features articles on information architecture and design, recently had an article profiling UX Book Clubs. In the article, the founder, Steve Baty writes, “In early Nov 2008, I started to talk to a few people about the idea of a book club in Sydney to discuss User Experience (UX) books….And then something surprising happened, people liked the idea so much that they started doing things to make it happen.”
Even if you don’t have one in your area, or if you can’t attend, you can still benefit. Each group gets an individual page on the site to post its mission and the list of books the group has read. Not every group has a robust page up yet, but still the rest of us can get ideas by digging through the various lists. It’s also interesting to see what the hot UX topic is in different parts of the world.
Here’s how the group describes itself on the website:
The UX Book Club seeks to enhance the abilities and knowledge of user experience professionals from information architects and interaction designers to visual designers and usability specialists to augment their understanding for excellence in UX practice, ixd design theory while building a passionate local community. Subjects of interest to this club span design theory, design research and user experience research practices and processes. The books include the strategy and business of design, UX design theory and history, methodology, usability research, and the ethics of UX professionals, while networking and having some fun….
And if you don’t see your city on the list, go to the UX Book Club site to start your own!
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Best New Tool for User Testing: The Flip
You probably know someone with a Flip, the pocket-size camera that lets people shoot a video with the push of a button. It’s small enough to carry with you at all times, and it has a USB plug built in that lets you quickly upload content to the web. I’ve heard people refer to it as the “YouTube Camera” because this small device enables any average joe to easily get content published for the world to see.
I recently discovered a wonderful new use for the Flip: user testing. The small device allows user experience professionals to effortlessly capture user tests while allowing them to go to the participant. Until now, I’ve found it cumbersome and expensive to record any sort of usability session. But now, for around $200, you can have a portable video recorder to bring with you—in your pocket. This lets you go to the user and observe them in their natural environment—something that has previously been challenging.
When I was at IBM’s Silicon Valley Lab about four years ago, we had a usability lab with a not-so-inconspicuous “tree cam” that supposedly made people less conscious of the fact that we were filming them. Like participants didn’t notice a big fake potted plant with a 10-inch camcorder and wires hanging down! (I’m sure they’ve upgraded since then.)
I’ve also been on teams where we’ve rented out usability labs with sophisticated equipment that recorded both the participant and the screen itself. That nifty set up is great for us researches, but I’ve heard users say that it makes them uncomfortable because so many large device are pointing at them and recording their faces.
Last week while we were observing shoppers on Barnes & Noble.com, all we had to do was sit the phone-sized camera on the desk and aim it at the computer screen. The most AV set up we ever needed to do was to prop the camera up on a book if we needed to raise it an inch to better capture the screen.
You just push that big red button to start recording, and then you push it again to stop. Only the participant’s voice, not face, was captured.
I was skeptical about the quality of the video. One warning is that you’ve got to remember to speak up and keep reminding your participant to speak up. The mic isn’t the best. But the screen was clear to see. And we also were able to capture when people pointed at areas of the screen, (something I’ve lost in the past when the screen is recorded by software). Here’s a screen cap from what we recorded during testing:
This small and relatively inexpensive device has removed most barriers that have inhibited us from doing more user testing in the past.
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Better Experiences for Online Games
Online gaming is huge. I tried to find out just how huge is huge, but I had a hard time getting up-to-date statistics. According to an article on BNET about online gaming statistics, 200 million people were playing online games in August of 2007. Most of those people were playing action/adventure/roll-playing games, puzzles, and sports.
But with so many companies climbing on board to produce games, many end up with sub-par user experiences. Mark Hurst of Creative Good started a list of games with great user experiences. It’s a lengthy list of games ranging from 2005 to present. He has even taken the time to jot down if the game has a long or quick playtime.
There are of course the classics, like Hearts. But Mark has taken the time to identify his favorite version of online Hearts: Yahoo! Hearts. But Mark has also found odd games like Fishing Girl. As the site describes, in this game you get to “[r]eel in those fish one by one as you attempt to save a boy who’s trapped on the other side of the ocean.” Here’s what Mark says about this game: “Very nicely designed fishing game with a clever payoff.”
For anyone thinking of following the trend, take a look to see what sets some online games apart.
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