AniBlurbs (Column)

CoTweet’s Creative Director and co-Founder, Kyle Sollenberger, has rounded up ten design fundamentals on User Interface Design over on Think Vitamin. Below you’ll find a small subtract of some of the key takeaways to keep in mind with UIX:

Know your users’ goals
“Obsess over customers: when given the choice between obsessing over competitors or customers, always obsess over customers. Start with customers and work backward.” –Jeff Bezos, CEO amazon.com

Your users’ goals are yours, so learn them… …Find out what interfaces they like and sit down and watch how they use them…

Stick to web-wide Interface Design conventions
Users spend the majority of their time on interfaces other than your own (Facebook, MySpace, news  sites, etc.): There is no need to reinvent the wheel…

Consistency
“The more users’ expectations prove right, the more they will feel in control of the system and the more they will like it.” – Jakob Nielson

Your users need consistency. They need to know that once they learn to do something, they will be able to do it again… …A consistent interface… …increases their efficiency.

Provide feedback
Always inform your users of actions, changes in state and errors, or exceptions that occur. Visual cues or simple messaging can show the user whether his or her actions have led to the expected result.

Don’t EVER punish your users
No matter how clear your design is, people will make mistakes… …Design ways for users to undo actions, and be forgiving with varied inputs; no one likes to start over because he/she put in the wrong birth date format…

Iterate, iterate, iterate
…It is often said when developing interfaces that you need to fail fast, and iterate often…

As Creative Director of CoTweet Kyle -“@iamkyle”- Sollenberger oversees all design activities—from the layout, appearance and usability of products to the representation of corporate identity. Be sure to check out Kyle’s full post and more examples on Carsonified’s Blog.

Weave Identity is a very interesting component from Mozilla Labs (of Firefox fame) and a possible disrupting one for the Facebook Connect’s, OpenID’s and OAuth’s of this world:

“Offering a single sign-in solution for the web is currently a hot topic. Google, Yahoo, Facebook, MySpace and countless other sites are all offering to host your identity for you. Many of these key players on the social web are also offering tools to allow third-party sites to let you log in using the identity you have hosted with whoever your provider is – Google through FriendConnect, Facebook through Facebook Connect and Twitter through its recently debuted OAuth-based system. But in the end, who knows how long any of those sites will last? It seems to make more sense to hand these duties off to something more permanent than the hot site of the moment.

That’s where Mozilla’s latest implementation of Weave starts to make sense. You can store your credentials anywhere, including on Mozilla’s servers or your own web server.”

Source: WIRED’s Webmonkey

If the Weave add-on is implemented as a standard feature in the next version of the 2^nd largest browser in the world, it stands a reasonable chance of becoming THE default Online Identity Manager/Social Media Passport; allowing you to safely and seamlessly log in to your favourite Social Networks, blogs and communities, across multiple platforms (Windows, Mac OS) and various devices (think Mobile, Netbooks, Thin Clients).

All the while giving you complete and FULL control over your online identity (you can even store your Weave login credentials on your own server!), which positions it directly opposite of the Walled Garden approach that Facebook is fast becoming notorious for.

The ease of use, combined with the fact that your average internet user hasn’t even heard of Google-, Facebook- and Twitter’s Online Identity Management solutions make Firefox Weave a serious threat to the aforementioned parties. After all: Wouldn’t it seem more logical and feel safer for her to let the browser take care of her online identity?

“Something that often goes unsaid in the discussion about online identity is that while most websites right now require usernames and passwords, many people actually use the password manager feature in the browser-effectively turning their browser into a limited identity manager.”

Source: Mozilla Labs

By offering this One-Log-In-To-Rule-Them-All^TM feature as a standard option in the browser, much like Yahoo’s- or Google’s toolbar, a lot of the hassle and security issues associated with web based ID alternatives are removed from the user’s table:

“User experience in general suffers as protocols for federation (e.g. OpenID) involve complex redirects which jump the user from page to page and leave them open to phishing attacks…”

Source: Mozilla Labs

And there’s another major USP that promises a bright future for the Weave project: Firefox is an Open Source initiative, and even though OpenSocial, OpenID & OAuth are Open Source projects as well, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Google and Microsoft are commercial parties with a deep interest into becoming your single sign-in partner, so they can monitor the sites you visit and the time frame in which you did: pure data mining for marketing purposes. In a time where privacy issues are within everyone’s crosshairs, this could become Mozilla’s trump card in the battle for your Online Identity.

Of course, there’s nothing stopping Google (note that they have 300 Million accounts!) from implementing such a feature in Chrome -it’s very own browser- using Friend Connect, or Microsoft from doing the same with their Live toolbar/Live Passport and Internet Explorer. The point is that the former hasn’t yet managed to get any serious foot in the browser market. And though the latter is the current incumbent in browser market share (for now), it has failed for almost 10 years to make it’s .NET Passport/Live ID efforts a true cross-web success, even as younger initiatives from the likes of Facebook and twitter have taken off in the past year or so.

All in all, it’ll be very interesting to see how the developments around Identity Hosting continue to evolve…

[Update: Netlog now accepts Google FriendConnect, more on TechCrunch.]

A very evocative TED presentation by David Merill on an innovative way to interact with computers.  (For those reading this in a feed reader such as iGoogle or Netvibes, please check out the video after the jump.)

It should go without saying that these Shiftables could be an amazing leap ahead for innovative educational tools & programs, and that the endless opportunities don’t merely lie in the smart cubes themselves, but are only limited by the possibilities of the software that powers them.

The iPhone and Wii have proven what revolutionary, intuitive control methods can achieve with regards to mainstream product penetration and adaption in niche market segments, in ways that were previously unimaginable (i.e. Smart Phones and Game Consoles).

Now, scientists like Merill and the R&D wizzards at Microsoft Labs are charging through and will hopefully do the same for mLearning.

What do you think about these kind of innovations? Will we see them implemented along with the OLPC and the future vision of Microsoft Office Labs to offer the next quantum leap in education? And when will we see this happen? As soon as 2012? Or will we have to wait untill 2019?

There’s an interesting e-mailing debate on the Signal vs. Noise blog. Now I mostly agree with some of the business philosophy of mister Fried and co., and I’ve got a deep respect for what they’ve achieved and the way they did it, but the idea of trying out new e-mail designs First before applying a design overhaul to the website based thereon is inane.

Though I can sympathize with the “Process-Breaking-Possible-Mind-Freeing” idea behind the post, there are two obvious pitfalls Jamie (the author) is unaware of, both stemming from a misguided thought pattern.

1. Conversion and Marketing Strategy
The author is putting Form over Function, Tactic above Strategy and Outcome before Process.

There’s a good reason why

“…emails have their conceptual birth in another medium altogether: a Catalog, an Advertisement, or the Website.”

And why

“The concept and strategy was already finalized before it goes to (the web designer). At that point it was all about production.”

Please read the whole 37Signals post and the discussion here for some more context.

Strategy ultimately leads to Production and not the other way around, for all the obvious reasons.

That being said, let’s try to break down the raison d’être of E-mail Marketing once more, starting off with a fundamental question: Strategy and communication plan aside,

Why send out an e-mailing in the first place?

Your sending out an e-mailing to stimulate your reader base to take action (on your website), be it either:

• Reading the latest news (gaining you the required eyeballs for advertising revenue);
• Signing up for a service;
• Filling in a survey;
• Updating their profile (both offering more accurate targeting = opportunity to add more relevancy);
• Buying a product;
• Booking a ticket or
• Simply just showing your appreciation for them being such loyal customers…

Whatever your primary motives may be, you’re mainly sending out that mail to communicate to your (potential) customers in order to generate higher conversion rates.

Make them click! That’s your core Sub-Goal*.

Your sole priority lies there, design details such as shadow and rounded corners are superfluous and should be geared towards supporting you in reaching that goal, not detract from it. Your main objective is not to go against all logical and proven processes by designing a fancy e-mail template as a way of alpha-testing a possible future website redesign.

It’s the message and the call-to-actions therein that count, and though it doesn’t hurt to have a neatly designed mailing, it’s a waste of your efforts if you spend too much time on art instead of investing it in sensible e-Copywriting. In other words: “Substance Over Style, please m’am”.

The only exception here is when you’re Crowdsourcing your website re-design and have a dedicated address list of people that are aching to be part of the drive testing(process) or if your regular subscribers have given you Permission to do so. If such is the case, don’t forget to add a feedback button in there as well…

This approach allows you to obtain valuable feedback because people are consciously paying attention to the careful alterations you make to your template, whereas in all other cases some people are bound to take notice of the gradual changes somewhere down the line and probably think you don’t have a clue about what your doing…

[* Note that I said "sub goal" deliberately, because an e-mailing is a part of your communication plan and thus should support your overall Marketing Strategy. Seeing a pattern here?]

2. Consistent Authentic Branding
The second pitfall was correctly pointed out by a comment in the thread from none other than Seth Godin himself. 37Signals has a reputation of having a very unique and dare I say intimate bond with their customers/users.

Part of their reputation, appeal and charm lies in the passionate and practical way they look at how to improve a business process and how to get rid of excess weight, so to speak. And more often than not, the sluggish corporate way of doing business is at the receiving end of their rants and riffs.

Unless your target audience is expecting it from you, suddenly adding a standard Corporate styled e-mailing in the communication mix isn’t going to strengthen that relationship. On the contrary; you’re actually running a huge risk of erecting an invisible wall between yourself and your clientele.

Other than that, this operation could turn out to be a “me-too” approach for 37Signals: Since they’d be stopping with communicating in a personal (and their very own Getting Real) way, the receivers might unconsciously end up getting a change of attitude towards them; leading to a loss of sympathy over time, which ultimately leads to less loyalty and brand connection. Stay authentic, be consistent.

Have I already mentioned that the suggested Inversed Strategy approach isn’t conversion centred?

When I’m subscribing to a newsletter I expect (nay, want!) a clean and simple, (mobile device friendly!) swiftly-loading mail in my inbox, communicating a focused, relevant and -in this particular case- personal message. That’s the way I got charmed by & connected with your brand in the first place.

It’d be a waste to ruin the expectations and experience of your target audience and clients by giving in to a (misguided) personal desire for creative freedom.

If it’s more creative freedom you want, it’d be much wiser to start thinking about rearranging your career, instead of rearranging a proven process or something as fragile as your E-mailing Brand Equity.

Every once in a while something comes along that just… Works.

It can be a product or a service that manages to captivate you just for its sheer brilliance. Not by throwing around zillions of options and other complicated stuff, but by being functional and simple.

Really simple.

What’s even more rare to discover is a concept that is -in your eyes- so special that it needs to be heard, seen and talked about. Directly.

That something just came along for me a few minutes ago and I just had to share my thoughts on it and what this means for you, your product or service and your organization.

In this case it’s a website for people that like to dabble with producing (electronic) music, either as a bedroom-producer or as a pro. As some of you may or may not know, I’m quite the audiophile, so when I read about SoundCloud.com and their waveform-annotation concept on SignalvsNoise (37Signals Blog) this afternoon I just had to go and check it out. #Serendipity soon followed :)

Note that I was at first purely and only interested by the waveform comment stream idea, wherein you see a visual of a WAV-file and friends or collaborators can leave time based comments on the spot, so the artist gets feedback on exactly which parts of a song sound cool and which parts need, say, a little more mastering to make the bass come out louder etc., etc. This can be shared privately or made public. Already big EDM names such as Funk D’void are using this service and having worked in this industry myself I can assure you that it will be picked up very soon by their respective followers.

What struck me as a huge surprise was not only the user friendliness of the site, both in design and in UI, but also the way the site communicates with me as a prospect / first-time user.

If I was a person who happened to be inexperienced with browsing the internet or using apps, this site would be happy to just gently guide me through the whole process, from the beginning. The funny thing is, the very core audience of this service is very tech- and web savvy!

Where to begin? The size of the fonts are big so I don’t need to squint to see them clearly, the color scheme and lay-out are clutter free and “logical”; the user is guided through a flowing process. In short: the usability is tops and I haven’t even started to use the service that this site was built for! (Sometimes you don’t need to or simply can’t rely purely on data; in such cases some common sense & gut feeling can help a long way)

Now the thing that really was the icing on the cake for me was that when I went to my account preferences, it gave me two relevant fields to fill in: My Discogs.com account and my MySpace artist account.

Bang! “The devil is in the detail”. These guys and girls are “in the know”. In that instant moment you just know that this site hasn’t been made or thought up by cynical marketers in conjunction with focus groups, but instead that it was crafted by people who’re obsessed with music just like me and with a lot of LOVE and attention to detail.

Aesthetically and conceptually everything fits together. Make no mistake; insiders recognize this kind of dedication and true devotion from miles away: in other words it’s authentic.

Take away: You can’t create authenticity by pushing a button or hiring a nifty PR spokesperson or consulting firm. You either are perceived by an audience as authentic or not, despite the fact that some marketers and self-proclaimed gurus would have the more gullible amongst us believe otherwise…

If you already know this, then why is that you’re still doing the opposite?