Top of the browser to ya… the shadowy toolbar trend

grab from top of compfight – a Flickr search tool

grab from New York Times – a Newspaper

Maybe it is part of the movement toward a browser-based OS or maybe it is just copycats, but the left side, top and bottom of the browser window are becoming a space for toolbars of all kinds. Now that screen resolutions are becoming larger and in the case of laptops, wider there is an opportunity to provide persistent controls for these site that are becoming more application-like everyday.

This is clearly the beginning of the trend since there is no defacto use for this area. Some use it for highlighting content – during the election Twitter used the top toolbar to provide a quick jumping point to the political searches and filters. New York Times uses it as the front door to its newest social networking feature. So it is more tool-like in that case. The Compfight example treats the toolbar as the primary navigation point for the site. With the introduction of Vista’s ribbon toolbar the control/tool-like pattern may prevail in the long term. For now there is no clear leading use.

Questions remain…
The left and bottom areas of the page are being utilized as well. Facebook introduced the persistent footer control panel. I am a fan of this since the idea got left on the cutting room floor for one of our projects. My being a fan however does not mean that It is a great pattern. I still have questions about the usability of such a pattern, especially given the discrepancy in its implementation. I can picture usability study scenarios where people glance right over the feature in search of more common and established controls.

But regardless of the questions and discrepancies, I enjoy that sites are exploring a better use of the space that is opening up for design.

Huh… Google customization and comments?

Screen clipping taken: 11/20/2008, 10:56 PM

Google surprised me today. Although I never know whether or not new features are the result of some plug-in that I downloaded (I go on a spree sometimes). I think this one is all Google. Apparently I can customize my search results by ranking stuff and putting publicly available comments on things.

I may warm up to this idea (change is hard even for mostly-early adopters). I’ll have to sleep on it. My initial reaction though is… Doesn’t Google already give me the most relevant results of any search engine? That was after I reacted with the headline ‘huh…’ Then I thought – Why would I muck with success? Am I really going to fix my Google results?

[Update: This is a feature that has been tested for a while but released at large last night. Here is the Lifehacker post about it - Google Launches SearchWiki for Custom-Ordered Search Results]

Video as an afterthought – why bother?

Screen clipping taken: 11/20/2008, 11:59 AM

Trolling through the internets (actually found a promising pizza recipe on delish.com) and came across an MSN affiliate that integrates some of MSN’s video content. Video has a place on the internet. The only trouble I see here is that the ‘place’ is a sidebar half-way down the page. It just doesn’t feel right. Video takes a while (this one is 5 minutes apparently). But my surfing behavior is very jumpy.

Where I am going with this:
Video and the internet go together. But, video either needs to be the hero and the focus (like hulu.com or as part of a story mosaic like cnn.com) or it needs to allow me to multi-task and tune-in and out as my attention span allows (like Yahoo!s TechTicker – Scroll the page and it ’sticks’. You can comment on a post or read other stuff while the video rolls and stays with you. The page refresh is troublesome, but the idea is right.)

Video is becoming too ubiquitous to be plunked into sites like a banner ad. It’s compelling, but the anticipated behavior is in contrast with other web behavior. The standalone player is a popular solution (like Brightcove’s Player), but the working assumption seems to be that people are going to consume video in a focused manner (even if they switch from video to video). That, or stick it in the background or on another monitor. But my hunch is that video will be better served as part of a multi-tasking, in-browser experience (with the option to pop-out).

My Follow-up
Going to search for some data around usage and see if there are any studies about the matter. If both of my readers have heard of any, let me know.

Nifty blog post actions widget

Screen clipping taken: 11/20/2008, 10:44 AM

What caught my eye
I like the interactivity within this panel above the posts on this site that I came across (via an entirely unrelated search). It struck me that it was more interactive than what you usually see. Seems like a control panel with some heft.

The Downside
The fact that it is not that common works for it and against it. The actions for each of the icons are unpredictable. Some open a panel (a la yahoo search help) while some, like the stars icon, take you to another page (ouch). I would have expected to be able to rate the post or to have seen the ratings details. Instead it takes you to a search results page of other 5 star posts. Only after coming back to the page did I notice that the “+ -” signs were for my rating… Oh wait. That’s not the case. They are “Digg”-esque ratings.

So… there’s much to be desired functionally, but an interesting concept to make the tools so meaty.

[Updated] i get it now: why i’m hooked on blip.fm

Personal Soundtrack T-Shirt from ThinkGeek.com

[Update: It is possible the end is near for the fun on blip.fm.]

My Personal Soundtrack
holy crap. i get it now! this whole social media thing. the stuff with the updates and the tweets and the blips (“They’re *blinking* and *beeping* and *flashing*! Why doesn’t somebody pull the plug” Shatner from airplane ii). It was fun to broadcast what i’m eating and what i am toasting or overhearing. But combine that tweet-ability with music and you’ve got social media gold! I think (and hope really) that blip.fm is going to be a success… i also think certain forces will surely muck it up to some degree. But mostly I am rooting for this site to figure out what no one else has yet – How to make a music sharing experience with flow that doesn’t suddenly suck or get people arrested.

What I Like

1. The nostalgia is addictive: Our lives have a soundtrack. Hearing songs from the past turns out to be a great way to dredge up touch-base with the associated memories. add 140 characters of stuff and you’ve got a cool personal soundtrack building.
2. The community rocks: you instantly get 30 or so favorites so your stream is instantly filled. The props system is a terrific way to encourage connecting with others. Sure, Twitter has a star you can click for tweets, but on blip you are saying you like a song in addition to the pithy quip or reminiscent remark.
3. The music is largely there to discover: You are encouraged to upload stuff, but most searches return a series of results. The combination of search results and favorite djs creates a really rich and real-time feeling music discovery channel.
4. Know your friends tastes better than if you took a facebook quiz: favorite your friends or follow their updates in twitter and you may see a whole new side emerge. That or confirm what you already believed.
5. It’s free (shhhh. don’t wreck it.): I will click through and buy stuff. i won’t complain a peep if/when they splash it with advertising.  Attend concerts and buy concessions. Whatever needs to be done to not wreck a fun and good thing. At least the team running the show is thinking business model early on.
6. It gave Twitter a purpose for me: You can follow everyone’s updates within the blip.fm site. But seeing what my friends post via Twitter provides an instant filter, allowing me to follow a crap load of interesting djs on blip while bubbling up the ones i am most interested in following on Twitter.
7. i’m hooked: while my initial excitement will surely wane, for the moment i am hooked.
8. It’s a semantic smorgasbord: Music has never had such rich contextual information. on a song-by-song basis people are sharing associated thoughts, comments, memories, feelings, etc. Some sites allow you to star or favorite a song and maybe even comment on it. But none have drawn the basic song-to-comment association so simply and clearly.
9. It’s created for an international audience: It feels more than an American sharing site. The little flag beneath each user’s name lends to the feeling that blip is addressing the needs of a global audience (or faking it well).

what could be better

1. The listening experience is not up to par with last.fm or pandora
   1. volume control and normalization
   2. continuous play from page to page
   3. can’t pause the river
2. It could hook up with more sites – last.fm to import favorites (they do scrobble now), other purchasing channels, nostalgic merch to go along with the 80’s tune you add, etc.
3. better on-boarding and explanation: I honestly didn’t get it at first and ignored it after i registered. then i realized you could search for songs as well as upload. that opened a whole new door.
4. It’s at a good size now, but may eventually clog up twitter and even blip itself.

Thankfully the folks at blip appear to be listening and open to suggestions too. I look forward to seeing how the site evolves and the many sites that spawn off of it based on the data and semantic potential through the APIs (which are still in private beta as of this post).

Unintended consequence: humans love to ‘fix’ things

Big fish need little fish, which need plants.

In order to create usable experience you can’t try to make order out of chaos, you’ve got to find the order within it. That’s my elevator speech for what i do. Otherwise the act of ‘helping’ or ‘fixing’ will undoubtedly result in unintended consequence. I am reminded of this when folks call for a redesign of amazon.com to make it more usable. The site that has survived the first crash and is holding up under the weight of the second one. Let’s fix it. (it could use a few tweaks here and there, but bottom line is it is doing what better designed sites try and fail to do – make money)

I post this because several articles/posts have emerged in my rss feeds that mention this phenomenon:

“from the funny-how-that-works dept

Overhyped Fear Of Child Predators Leading To Real Concerns About Child Privacy“

“from the unintended-consequences dept

Blu-ray Working Great, For Pirates“

We need to understand the forces at work when we make changes and accept that there will be unintended consequence to our actions. We can never just fix one experience or one site. We are always altering a broader ecosystem of stuff and things. The only way to ‘control’ fate – accept this law, be aware of the consequences and continuously adapt.

(over)Exploring a metaphor to test its meddle…

I’m exploring (hey, that’s a metaphor too) an exercise where I (over?)extend a root metaphor to see just how well it could help me tell a particular story. The story is about a client engagement from a User Experience perspective. I’m trying to thread together a discussion. here goes:

Cruise ship as project…

• Goal: Get from point A to Point (n)
• Change of direction is hard and slow going (obvious one)
• Launch is always a party
• The navigation system is key to maintain the course
• We get onboard with the client
  • Sometimes we board while at sea
  • Sometimes we have to finish the ship before we can launch
• Hope to not sink
• Hope to not hit something really big
• Get involved with the activities on board
  • A shuffleboard game could build a key relationship
• Our challenge is to plan the course, usually while we are already cruising
• You can only take so many shots to the hull before it bursts
• Sometimes pirates take over the ship
• Something about there being no one at the helm
• Something about Isaac from Love Boat
• Some journeys run out of gas and are left adrift
• Some sink
  • Even the wreckage can tell a story

Other general nautical metaphors:

found on Wiki-pedia. Thought starters to extend further –

“Thanks to the historical importance of seafaring in British culture, the English language is rich in related metaphors from the age of sail. Some examples are:

• Taken aback
• Batten down the hatches
• Clear the decks
• Loaded to the gunwales
• Back and fill
• On one’s beam ends
• Awash
• Nail one’s colours to the mast
• Flying the flag
• Plain sailing
• With flying colours
• In the doldrums
• All hands to the pumps
• Take soundings
• Weathering a storm
• Swinging the lead
• All set
• Left high and dry
• May the wind always be at your back and may you have following seas”

Other finds:

• A Schedule Is A Moving Object
• Book: Metaphorically Selling (Paperback)
• Book: I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like: A Comprehensive Compilation of History’s Greatest Analogies, Metaphors, and Similes

Has legs, but i don’t know yet if i’ll run with it. only sea legs (rim shot).

Share everything… Unless youre presenting

By now I assume we must be wired to share and broadcast. Facebook is a revolution based on the extreme adoption from all walks of life. Despite the risks and the big brother talk, we share on to the world.

Strangely this trend has not really carried over to a lot of the presentations I’ve seen lately. Very rarely are the presented from a personal point of view. They frequently generalizations and stats and such. The best presenters I’ve seen are fabulous story tellers. They frequently open with an engaging story that encapsulated the vision of the talk. Jared spool is a great example of a great story teller.

The point:
I saw a presentation the other day that was a very personal retrospective about the journey toward becoming a tech geek like myself. The entire presentation was an introspective account of the presenters life. It was the kind of tale that make one realize just how similar we are. It was full of great inspirations and influences that shed a very clear light on why we seem wired to dive into the world of the web.

By looking back it is clear that human nature does not change, but the medium of expression evolves.

In short, it was refreshing to attend a presentation so full of ‘me too’ moments and ‘that’s what we’ve been trying say’ revelations.

I hope she posts a version for me to link to, but better if you get a chance to see it live.

Screen clipping taken: 11/13/2008, 11:00 AM

 
 

Screen clipping taken: 11/13/2008, 11:00 AM

 
 

This is a clipping from oneNote. I think I have finally found the perfect flow for posting snippets of web pages and chit chatting about them. Gonna post now. Here’s hoping.