Making digital human
  
An innovation and design blog focused on creating better digital experiences


1 week ago
The home page is dead. Long live the home page.

Ever since the dawn of the Internet, the homepage has been the point of focus for website design, a front door of sorts through which visitors unlock all of the goodness within that we’ve built for them.  And quite a bit of web design is done accordingly: get the homepage design right, the theory goes, and the rest of the site will follow.

But as we continue diving headlong into a connected, social-media-aware, bot-crawled online world, the homepage is fading into irrelevance.  No longer do we surf the web by flitting from homepage to homepage, but rather by diving right into the depths of sites thanks to deep links from Google, page recommendations from friends, shopping aggregators … or even apps on our phones.

What’s happening here is an important shift in web design: your homepage is no longer your homepage.  Rather, anywhere a user might land on your site - be it from a Facebook link, a bit.ly link embedded in a tweet, or a reference on an obscure blog somewhere - becomes your de-facto homepage.  Every page needs to grab the user’s attention, give them a reason to be there, and a reason to stick around for a while.

Looking across our research and design projects, we’ve seen a few key ways to make every page a ‘homepage’:

  • Location: Every page should give a sense of location: Where am I on the site? What’s similar on the site, like related products or information?
  • Structure: Every page should expose the structure of the site: How big is it? What major features are there? How do I get around?
  • Big picture: Every page should quickly give the big picture, answering What is this site? What’s special about it? What can I do here?
  • What’s new: Every page should include something dynamic, even if it’s just a small widget in the corner, highlighting what’s new or interesting - and for ecommerce sites, what’s a deal, what’s a steal, and what’s on sale.
So what’s your favorite site where every page is a homepage?

1 month ago
Will the iPad save traditional broadcast media?

For years, technology innovation has been drawing audiences away from broadcast media, siphoning attention off into a land of free and non-monetizable content. But the advent of the iPad holds the promise to redefine how the world produces and consumes media, and may just bring us all back under the wings of the major media houses. Through parallel storytelling, shared experiences, and new social interactions around media, the iPad — and ideally many new devices to follow — can give broadcasters rich new ways to engage us, our friends, and our families in their media events.

Parallel storytelling

Take a look at the media we consume today: nearly all of it is in the form of a single stream of content. Stories told among friends, books, movies, and broadcast media are all constructed from a series of vignettes that combine to tell a story. However, reality is much more messy: multiple things are going on at once; there are subtexts and back stories. Even when movies explore time shifting (Pulp Fiction) or alternate outcomes (Run, Lola, Run), the underlying format is the same: a string of events. However, people have a thirst for multiple streams of information: think record album liner notes, DVD extras and director’s notes, and the 1990s hit “Pop-Up Video” television show on VH-1, which visually overlaid little snippets of information on top of music videos.

With the advent of the iPad, media producers will be able to capture this thirst for additional information and explore new realms in parallel storytelling. Rather than just sitting back and passively watching a TV show, for instance, people will be able to simultaneously explore the back story. Imagine leafing through coffee-stained pages of the CIA dossier on Jason Bourne while he hides in the Caribbean, or training a virtual spycam on Godot to see what the heck he was up to while Vladimir and Estragon were endlessly waiting. And this doesn’t necessarily have to all happen on the iPad itself; we’ll see the rise of simulcast media, watching the main story on satellite or cable on the big screen in the living room and interacting with this sidecar content on our iPad from the comfort of the sofa.

Read the rest of the story on VentureBeat.com


2 months ago
Building trust through experience quality

While in the field doing in-home research, we recently passed a new house on the market for US $2 million. From the street, it wasn’t possible to see if the structure was sound or the quality of the construction was good - but what we did notice was the house number stickers on the mailbox. They were the cheap stick-on type from a local hardware store, with each digit slightly askew. And that made a big impact: what else did they skimp on?

Websites work the same way: they are a direct and immediate reflection of the company behind them. We’ve seen consistently from our research that no matter how much social media, web 2.0 interactivity, and rich media you build into a site, it’s the little things that quickly add up. Poor website quality affects not only clicks or sales, but can also create a strong and lasting negative impression of a brand. Frequently, each individual issue isn’t that grave - users may not even consciously notice them - but in combination they erode the experience:

Amateur visual design: confusing page layouts and low-quality graphics, especially those with compression artifacts

Lack of alignment: no sense of grid or other visual structure to the page, making it difficult to parse and understand

Inconsistencies: lack of cohesive feel throughout the site, such as a button marked “Buy” in one place and “Purchase” in another

Outdated design: use of antiquated visual design styles or methods of interaction (aa.com comes to mind)

Difficulties finding: issues with finding content or features, whether on a specific page or across the site

Weak Copy: bland, corporate-speak, excessively long or content-free text that does not bring immediate value to the visitor

Lack of content: missing details on products, lack of selling messages (“Why should i buy this? Sell it to me!”), and lack of depth on company

Technical bugs and performance: layout and font issues, dead-end pages, poorly-designed UI widgets, and slow response times

What do you think?


3 months ago
LukeW | Touch Gesture Reference Guide
We’ve been watching the fragmentation of gesture-based interfaces for a while now, since some early work with the iPhone and with Synaptics.  Interesting guide by LukeW and team on gestures across popular platforms.

LukeW | Touch Gesture Reference Guide

We’ve been watching the fragmentation of gesture-based interfaces for a while now, since some early work with the iPhone and with Synaptics.  Interesting guide by LukeW and team on gestures across popular platforms.


3 months ago
When in doubt, tab, tab, and tab again
A lot of sites end up using tabs as a visual crutch when they don’t know what else to do with their IA. Take, for instance, earlier iterations of Amazon.com, which had a maddening array of tabs across the top until they finally collapsed them into the left-hand column.
But when you have three (count ‘em - three) sets of tabs across the top of your site, it’s time to take your architecture out back and shoot it.

When in doubt, tab, tab, and tab again

A lot of sites end up using tabs as a visual crutch when they don’t know what else to do with their IA. Take, for instance, earlier iterations of Amazon.com, which had a maddening array of tabs across the top until they finally collapsed them into the left-hand column.

But when you have three (count ‘em - three) sets of tabs across the top of your site, it’s time to take your architecture out back and shoot it.


3 months ago
Our CHI2010 booth in Atlanta
We’ve definitely got the brightest booth at CHI2010, probably due to the massive use of orange and our easy-on-the-feet fake grass.  If you’re at the conference, drop by booth 12 and pick up some of our mini cards with findings and tips from our product innovation work!

Our CHI2010 booth in Atlanta

We’ve definitely got the brightest booth at CHI2010, probably due to the massive use of orange and our easy-on-the-feet fake grass.  If you’re at the conference, drop by booth 12 and pick up some of our mini cards with findings and tips from our product innovation work!


3 months ago
It’s the subtleties that count
Complete the customer survey online, and get $5 off a family pack - which may inadvertently skew their survey population towards families.  If that’s the skew they want, that’s fine - but otherwise, it’s an important reminder to pay close attention to structuring research.

It’s the subtleties that count

Complete the customer survey online, and get $5 off a family pack - which may inadvertently skew their survey population towards families.  If that’s the skew they want, that’s fine - but otherwise, it’s an important reminder to pay close attention to structuring research.


3 months ago
The little things add up: Getting out-of-box right
Interesting bit on the ‘Flip-ification’ of the Cisco Valet router. According to Pogue, they’ve done a great job of making the router a much more approachable device, but it’s the little things that are getting in the way - like the “Plug in Easy Setup Key to get started” sticker on the back.
We noticed something similar recently when evaluating the Google Nexus One phone. The packaging was very well done, visually appealing with a nice unpacking sequence, but there were three things that really stood out: The box itself was hard to open for people with small hands, the power adapter had a poorly-printed sticker slapped on it at an angle, and the twist ties around all of the cables were the ‘cheap-o’ variety. Little things, sure, but they added up to sully the overall impression.
State of the Art - A Hot Spot Shortcut, Lost in the Weeds - NYTimes.com

The little things add up: Getting out-of-box right

Interesting bit on the ‘Flip-ification’ of the Cisco Valet router. According to Pogue, they’ve done a great job of making the router a much more approachable device, but it’s the little things that are getting in the way - like the “Plug in Easy Setup Key to get started” sticker on the back.

We noticed something similar recently when evaluating the Google Nexus One phone. The packaging was very well done, visually appealing with a nice unpacking sequence, but there were three things that really stood out: The box itself was hard to open for people with small hands, the power adapter had a poorly-printed sticker slapped on it at an angle, and the twist ties around all of the cables were the ‘cheap-o’ variety. Little things, sure, but they added up to sully the overall impression.

State of the Art - A Hot Spot Shortcut, Lost in the Weeds - NYTimes.com


We added a new feature to the Twitter web site that allows you to attach location data to individual tweets. This feature may not appeal to everyone so it requires that you activate it first in your Account Settings. Twitter doing privacy right.

3 months ago
What we’ve learned, for CHI 2010
We’re going to have a booth at CHI in Atlanta this year, and have printed up a batch of little cards with UX-related tips and tricks that we’ve seen recently in our client work. Take a look at our cards, and drop our booth for an orange soda if you’re at CHI next week.

What we’ve learned, for CHI 2010

We’re going to have a booth at CHI in Atlanta this year, and have printed up a batch of little cards with UX-related tips and tricks that we’ve seen recently in our client work. Take a look at our cards, and drop our booth for an orange soda if you’re at CHI next week.