“Usually, applications fail because they (a) solve the wrong problem, (b) have the wrong features for the right problem, or (c) make the right features too complicated for users to understand”. Read Jakob Neilsen’s Top 10 Application-Design Mistakes.
Journal
Context and designing applications
While we work on complex web applications, such as for CBD/TPdb or Faculty of 1000, we have to consider the balance of ease-0f-use and creating context for users so that they can understand what they are looking at. Cathy Shive discusses ‘Computer Administrative Debris’ in applications (found via John Gruber).
Obama vs. Clinton, a question of design
The New York Times (login required) compares the relative website design of US presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, to the debacle between Macs and PCs.
You are reading this right now
The U.S. is going through a period of concern about literacy in the young, but it is not all as it seems. Steven Johnson in The Guardian talks about how many people are reading more than ever.
Microsoft vs. Yahoo! vs. News International… vs. Google
Things have moved incredibly quickly since Friday morning when, in heavy-handed fashion, Microsoft announced they wanted to buy Yahoo! for $44.6 billion. Not only has it led News International to scramble around to get an offer in, Google has weighed in presumptuously offering help (Google clearly see themselves as the ‘good guys’, even now) and all-in-all very few people relish the idea of the internet institution getting swallowed up by the still-powerful but unloved Microsoft machine.
The deal throws an enormous amount of questions in to the air – questions the legion of voices on the web have been attempting to answer over the last few days. Just one example: the two companies have profoundly different ways of using technology. Yahoo! is a firm supporter of open-source, whether it is through their use of PHP/FreeBSD/Linux or the sharing of their own technologies, while Microsoft use their own proprietary software. When Microsoft bought Hotmail the switch over from open-source to Microsoft technologies was a long and painful process. Will the same happen again for Yahoo!’s multitude of products, a much more complex switch-over?
What is most depressing about it all is that this does not feel like an exciting deal that will lead to new innovation and business ideas, but is instead two companies struggling to understand and deal with their ongoing lacklustre performance on the web. This is a situation that will excite Wall Street, but few other people. That said, Yahoo!, with a new CEO, a restructured organisation, and still huge amounts of design and engineering talent have a very good chance of recovery - which would not be realised if they bow to the pressure to sell.
The internet is not a cloud
The internet is often thought as being a vast virtual ‘cloud’ that spans the world, built primarily by software. It is then somehow a surprise when you are reminded just how physical the infrastructure the internet is built on actually is. Whether it is by the recent news that a single cable in the Mediterranean broke so Asia and the Middle East had to do without their MySpace fixes, or maps such as this that show just how we are all connected.
“But how good is the work?”
Adrian Shaughnessy for the Creative Review visits Wolff Olins, the company he was critical of due to their Olympics 2012 logo… and has his expectations confounded.
Edward Tufte on the iPhone
“Small screens, as on traditional cell phones, show very little information per screen, which in turn leads to deep hierarchies of stacked-up thin information–too often leaving users with ‘Where am I?’ puzzles. Better to have users looking over material adjacent in space rather than stacked in time.” One of the leading lights of the design world, Edward Tufte, has casts his eye over the iPhone and how it deals with information on a small screen.
Christian’s day at Terminal 5
Our airport and aeroplane loving colleague Christian recently spent a day at Heathrow’s new Terminal 5.
Global DataPoint corporate site goes live
We’re pleased to announce the launch of Global DataPoint’s corporate website. Global DataPoint are the supplier of the most comprehensive events database in the UK, and are now expanding their operations to data feeds of international arts events. This is the third element of our ongoing work with the company - the first being an overhaul of their brand, and the second being an overhaul of their event search user interface (screenshots of which can be seen around the site). We have developed the site from the ground up from initial design concepts through to a full CMS backend. Many thanks to everyone who has been involved in putting it together.
User Determined Computing
‘User Determined Computing’ is the rather clunky Accenture created phrase for the situation where people are fed-up with their work-based technologies as their home-based technologies are easier and better.
The robots really are taking over
How the cheap and plentiful technologies that power ‘Web 2.0’ may be leading to a drop in the job market. The early paranoid fear that computers and robots are taking our jobs might finally be coming true. Between 2001 and 2007 “online employment had actually dropped 29%”. This is Nick Carr’s thesis as explained in The Guardian.
Things we like: New York Magazine’s events interface
Recently on our CIH Housing and Global DataPoint projects we have been investigating best practices for presenting and explaining events - a deceptively complex issue. Via the 37 Signals blog we came across New York Magazine’s Agenda interface.
New BBC homepage… update
The BBC has launched a beta version of its new homepage, and we at FoxLand Towers are quite excited about it. We love how you can customise the information it displays and then move your “info widgets” around the page. Some of us aren’t so sure about the use of a large Verdana font and the buttons may be a bit too Web 2.0, but the general concensus is that it looks great. And those of us who are old enough to remember get a twinge of nostalgia from the retro clock. Shame they couldn’t find room for the noughts and crosses playing test card girl…
CIH Housing: building communities…delivering more
This week saw the launch of the CIH Conference and Housing Exhibition site we created for the Chartered Institute of Housing. The event - taking place in Harrogate next June - boasts a strong line-up of speakers, including Rt. Hon. Michael Portillo, Diane Abbott MP, David Smith – Economics Editor of the Sunday Times and leading US Economist David Shepherdson.
The CIH is the professional body for people working in housing across the UK and its conference and exhibition is the UK’s ultimate housing event. With Gordon Brown announcing an £8bn investment in housing in his first spending review, the conference will look at how the sector can deliver the government’s objective of decent and affordable housing for all.
Working closely with our partners at Zebra Crossing, the site was built using WordPress and includes online booking functionality. More exciting functionality will be added to the site as the event draws closer - so watch this space!