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Category: interaction design

The Horror Revealed on a ‘View Source’

Published October 23, 2007 by cgerrish

Thinking of relation between surface to depth, surface to the underlying material. These are fundamental questions when thinking about visual design. The ink on paper designer has tremendous freedom to create whatever the imagination can conjure.

The fundamental materials are the printing process and the selection of paper type. Clearly a print designer can imagine things that can’t be produced in black ink on newsprint. Generally, an experienced print graphic designer takes print production methods into account when starting a visual design. It’s called designing into the production process. When you do this, things go smoothly when it comes to to fire up the presses and put ink to paper. When you don’t there’s panic at the press check.

Of course, the fantasy is that you can make the surface manifest just as it exists in your imagination— the physical world has no claim on the execution of design. This, to some extent, is the state of much of visual design on the Web. I blame photoshop. While it’s true that just about any visual design can be built for the screen— it’s not always a good idea to do so. The horror revealed on a ‘View Source’ tells you why.

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POSH & The Courts

Published October 14, 2007 by cgerrish

Not sure what this court ruling really means, but the Register and TechCrunch are reporting that California courts are “leaning” toward requiring Web site accessibility for the visually impaired. For the folks who build websites using progressive enhancement and POSH (plain old semantic HTML), this would not be a problem. (Thanks to Joe Tennis for the link to POSH)

For the most part front end presentation code has been either been patched together by backend developers, or created by visual designers using photoshop with no understanding of how their pictures relate to code. There are a few brave souls that continue to spearhead the concept of designing with HTML. While it’s hard for the front end designer/coders to set the strategic agenda, I think it’s time they did. Right now there are a few people who can fill that role, I’m thinking of Jeremy Keith, Zeldman, Jason Fried, Eric Meyer and a few others.

I wonder if it would be a good or bad thing if the courts mandated POSH and progressive enhancement? I’m sure some back-end developer will create some inflexible, horribly tortured way to meet the requirement by creating multiple versions of a Web site. And then some online journal will document it as a “best practice.” This really could turn into a case of the blind leading the blind.

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Web 4.0: The Official Definition

Published October 5, 2007 by cgerrish

Small Electronic Safe

Jason Calacanis has provided us with the official definition for Web 3.0 — smart people + Web 2.0 technology, a recipe that amazingly corresponds to his own Mahalo project. People around the blog-o-sphere were up in arms, gnashing their teeth, no one had realized that it was time to define Web 3.0. Bloggers quickly polished up their definitions, counter-definitions or attacks. Some claimed to have defined Web 3.0 sooner and pointed to prior art.

But when the din resided, they asked me, although we’re not sure what Web 3.0 is, and we’re not sure why it makes sense to assign numbers to the Web— what is Web 4.0? Surely if we are going to invest our blood and treasure in the Web, we should associate ourselves with the highest possible number.

So here it is, the official definition of Web 4.0: It’s Web 2.0 mashup/api/services technology + user-asserted identity + really private, important personal information. Smart people are in there somewhere, but really— that approach is soooo Web 3.0. You may ask, can we see any of these Web 4.0 companies? Sure, there are a few starting to emerge, take a look at: Microsoft’s HealthVault, whatever Google’s Health initiative turns out to be and on the financial side, things like Mint and CakeFinancial. Although on the financial side these companies aren’t really 4.0 yet. Look for a vault that contains all your financial data which the vendors with whom you do business will be obliged to deliver to you. You’ll be putting the digital media that you own in there as well. Oh, and throw Doc Searl’s idea about Vendor Relationship Management in there as well, you’ll store your VRM prefs there as well. Stuff you are, stuff you own, data about stuff you own, stuff you want, and of course, your attention data. But it’s gotta be secure and it’s gotta solve the identity problem.

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The Tipping Point of Search

Published October 2, 2007 by cgerrish

Fingers are used to typing “google” when the brain wants to find something. But the form of the results page is starting to innovate. Yahoo search has shown some new wrinkles. But it’s not the technology that tips usage one way or another, it’s what the fingers do independently of thought. If users start at my.yahoo.com, they’ll use yahoo search. If they start no where in particular, they’ll use google. But it’s good to see competition in this space. There may be a wrinkle that provides irresistable value. For instance, that’s what Mahalo is counting on.

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