10 Things CEO's Need to Know about Design

Jason Purtoti was lead designer for Mint.com. If you want to know the key design decisions that affect visitors and generate a 'call to action' then this is the place to start. The transformation of the American Airlines site is one of the best User Experience (UX) stories out there.

This presentation doesn't have sound, but take your time to think about what each slide is saying. For the best experience, click through to SlideShare.
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10 Things CEOs Need to Know About Design

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The Best Collection of Development Links I've Seen

The best current collection of links on developing a major project or website has come out of the OzIA conference http://project.cmd.hro.nl/cmi/hci/toolkit/index2.php. It is the beginning of a toolkit that offers an overview of the methods and techniques which can be used throughout the user-centered design process.

This is the first release of the toolkit, which is assembling the resources. Next we can expect more context information - but what a wonderful collection. For more information contact Bas Leurs (Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, b.l.f.leurs@hro.nl).

Can Yahoo be Saved - A Strategy for failure

Know what your website does .. and does not do. A clear Vision or sense of purpose is a key factor that separates websites that succeed versus those that fail. A clear vision underpins all our design decisions. It helps us decide what functionality to include or exclude. Just because [insert trendy web site here - Apple, Microsoft, Google or Digg] does [insert fancy widget] is reason to be aware of a capability, but does not make it essential. Conversely, there are things your website HAS to do to win over your target market. When you don't focus, you will regularly fail to recognise what's essential. This is the situation Yahoo! seems to have been for the last several years.

It saddens me to write about Yahoo! in this context. I've been a member since March 1998, and a paying member for most of that time. It's apparently unbelievable to new web adopters that Yahoo! was once one of the great innovators. "Once upon a Time" they were leaders in tools we now take for granted - task list on same page as calendar, synchronization of data with the phone (or PDA in those days) and they developed a brilliant desktop search tool (that indexed USB drives and maybe even network drives - but my memory is unreliable here - it was a very long time ago).

The decline has been obvious for a long time, the missed opportunities, cost cutting the wrong things. So what has prompted this outburst (and planned, painful separation). The final straw seems trivial perhaps: Plaxo (Plaxo.com) has stated that they will no longer synchronize their data aggregation tool with Yahoo! because it has become too hard.

So what? Well let's look at why I used Yahoo! for so long, what did a paying customer like me join Yahoo! for. I'm a consultant operating a small to medium business looking for a low cost online place to centralize my personal and business information. It needs to be available to my phone, and any other application that uses my core contact, to do and calendar information.

Yahoo! was originally ideal. Each contact page has a unique URL so I can place that in, for example, a project management tool - click on the name, up comes the contact details, use it in a mind map of something - click on the entry and I can dial/email without having to interrupt workflow. Same with Notes - click on the URL and I can update the annotation. No PC-based package can offer that.

Now ... see what I almost, but don't quite, have - a low cost CRM. All the components are there - calendar, Notes, Tasks with due date and Contact details - all with unique hyperlinks. All can be synchronised to the Phone. Plus email with aliases (for paying customers). A centralized, accessible anywhere, collection of the information I need to run my life and my business. All wasted because while Google worked and worked to make synchronization of their data easy and pervasive throughout the web, Yahoo! have been tardy in making our data available to us. All wasted because they dropped the focus on paying customers and failed to do the next stage of development and connect the systems they already had.

Today, it is much easier to be assimilated by the Google Borg than remain in the Yahoo! camp. Google has, with focus and dedication, made it easy. But why is it so? Ease of data exchange is a priority with anyone that has the disposable income to use a smartphone. Isn't that the demographic to aim for? Which demographic contains IT journalists, bloggers, those who make recommendations to new users? Now look at your own websites - have you ignored Smartphone users or made data hard to get at?

As a sidenote, this is not a universal truth - just a general one: I've sometimes had to design websites for Indigenous or Rural and Remote communities where Smartphones are just not a priority - as always - know your audience, know your purpose.

Desktop search was another sad episode. I don't know the full story, but it looked to me as if Yahoo! bought in a package. One that I tried a couple of times and uninstalled each time. One that wasn't as function rich as the original Yahoo! product. One that doesn't touch USB drives (last I looked, I gave them a second chance before I installed Google desktop - that's it). The USB function isn't just important for me. Lots of people would overflow their local drive. However, for me it is crucial - I have 2 Terabytes of supplementary material I want indexed - training courses, white papers, coding examples and - if it's my turn to cook - recipes. Google desktop on my Mac still is nowhere near as good as the old Yahoo! desktop search, but it's reliable. Yahoo! started to lose me from the moment I had to install Google desktop search.

Increasingly, I'm even using Google Search for work. I don't want distracting news items or social 'stuff' distracting me when I have a task to complete. Surely this is something that Yahoo! could let me personalize.

Yahoo! continues to do some excellent things in small areas. Yahoo! Pipes is a great tool. However, the bright spots of excellence don't seem to be treasured and disappear in the surrounding smog of directionless missed opportunity. I'll keep my email addresses - I've had them a long time - but my contacts have moved to - you guessed it - Google as my central repository. How the mighty are fallen. All we can do is observe, learn and apply to our own websites. The web is always dynamic, and there is no place for complacency. So .. is there really a clear vision for each of your sites? If not, prepare to lose your visitors. Even a Yahoo! can fail.

13 Points on why Startup Web Sites Suck - and 1 that's good

Scoble has visited the startups from Demo - and he doesn't mince his words:

"I visited each website from the list of Demo finalists.

Boy, do they suck. Really, really suck.

Does no one understand how to market themselves?

It’s amazing to me that not a single Demo website has learned from the lessons of Gary Vaynerchuk’s Winelibrary.tv. Now THAT is a Website that knows how to market! (Interesting that Gary runs a wine store that sells $50 million a year, yet no one looks at his style as a great way to market your service/product yet)."

So why does this matter? because we need to ensure our web site grabs the visitor straight away on landing, and leads the visitor in. So there is one that works: -

Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger » Blog Archive Startups: your web site sucks «

Ones that caught my eye?

1. Quantivo. Nice design, gets to the point. Uses video. Makes me want to click into the site.

Um, I visited every single company on the Demo list. Amazingly lame companies. Amazingly lame web sites. Is this it? Am I missing something? How did these companies get $18,000 to go to Demo?

So who were those finalists?

Accordia Group, LLC; New Rochelle, NY;

Adapx, Inc.; Seattle, WA;

Alerts.com, Inc.; Bellvue, WA;

Arsenal Interactive, Inc.; Mountain View, CA;

Asyncast Corp; Campbell, CA;

Awind Inc.; Junghe, Taiwan;

beeTV; Milano, Italy;

Best Buy; Minneapolis, MN;

BizEquity Corp.; Spring House, PA;

Blue Lava Technologies, Inc.; Honolulu, HI;

Cerego; Tokyo, Japan;

Cinergix, Pty Ltd.; Melbourne, Australia;

Clintworld; Boenningstedt, Germany;

CoreTrace Corp.; Austin, TX;

crowdSPRING, LLC; Chicago, IL;

DesignIn, Inc.; Marblehead, MA;

Dial Directions, Inc.; Alameda, CA;

DOCCENTER; Omaha, NE;

Enterprise Informatics, Inc.; San Diego, CA;

Familybuilder; New York, NY;

ffwd.com, Inc.; San Francisco, CA;

Fortressware, Inc.; Mountain View, CA;

Fusion-io; Salt Lake City, UT;

G.ho.st; Ramallah & Modin, Palestine and Israel;

Green Sherpa; Santa Barbara, CA;

Infovell, Inc.; Menlo Park, CA;

Intelius, Inc.; Bellevue, WA;

Invision TV, LLC; Bethesda, MD;

iWidgets, Inc.; San Francisco, CA;

Kadoo Inc.; Washington, DC;

Koollage, Inc.; San Jose, CA;

Mapflow, Ltd.; Cork, Ireland;

Maverick Mobile Solutions, Pvt. Ltd.; Maharashtra, India;

MeDeploy; Hamden, CT;

Message Sling; Worcester, MA;

MeWorks, Inc.; Taipei, Taiwan;

Microstaq, Inc.; Austin, TX;

MixMatchMusic, Ltd.; Burlingame, CA;

Momindum; Paris, France;

OpenACircle.com; Dallas, TX;

Paidinterviews, LLC; McLean, VA;

Paragent, LLC; Muncie, IN;

Photrade, LLC; Cincinnati, OH;

PlanDone, Inc.; Petaluma, CA;

Plastic Logic, Ltd.; Mountain View, CA;

Qtask, Inc.; Burbank, CA;

Quantivo Corp.; San Mateo, CA;

Radiant Logic, Inc.; Novato, CA;

RealNetworks, Inc.; Seattle, WA;

Rebus Technology, Inc.; Cupertino, CA;

RemoTV, Inc.; New Haven, CT;

Rudder, Inc.; Houston, TX;

Semanti Corp.; Alberta, Canada;

Sim Ops Studios, Inc.; San Francisco, CA;

SitScape, Inc.; Vienna, VA;

SkyData Systems, Inc.; San Mateo, CA;

SpinSpotter; Seattle, WA;

Telnic, Ltd.; London, England;

TetraBase, LLC; Boothwyn, PA;

The Echo Nest Corp.; Somerville, MA;

tikitag, an Alcatel-Lucent Venture; Antwerp, Belgium;

Toolgether; San Mateo, CA;

TravelMuse, Inc.; Los Altos, CA;

Trinity Convergence, Inc.; Durham, NC;

TurnTo Networks, Inc.; New York, NY;

UbiEst S.p.A.; Treviso, Italy;

UGA Digital, Inc.; Taipei, Taiwan;

Unity Solutions, LLC; Clearwater, FL;

Usable Security Systems, Inc.; San Francisco, CA;

WebDiet, Inc.; Henderson, NV;

Xumii, Inc.; San Mateo, CA;

Zazengo, Inc.; Santa Cruz, CA;

See for yourself how your own site measures up.

Mind reading technology becomes commodity

Project Epoc

This release for developers has appeared:

Based on the latest developments in neuro-technology, Emotiv has developed a new interface for human computer interaction.

Project Epoc is a headset that uses a set of sensors to tune into electric signals naturally produced by the brain to detect player thoughts, feelings and expression. It connects wirelessly with all game platforms from consoles to PCs. Project Epoc now makes it possible for games to be controlled and influenced by the player's mind.

Engaging, immersive, and nuanced, Emotiv-inspired game-play will be like nothing ever seen before.

Going to the site, there's a set of tools to use the input from this standard headset. Combining this with the Wii bluetooth handset can create a truly immersive gaming experience.

Minority Report type UI working

The interface business continues to grow in sophistication. This example is made by Perceptive Pixel.




be impressed - be very impressed!