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Category: interaction design

Everyone and No One

Published August 19, 2007 by cgerrish

In this new media world, Jeff Jarvis thinks that “everyone” can provide the necessary checks and balances to the conscious or unconscious editorial bias on Mahalo’s edited search page results. He calls the idea of an Ombudsman very Old Media.

There’s a sense in which Mahalo is very old media. It employs editors to filter the Web and determine what’s important and what’s not. It’s not a Wiki and it’s not a UseNet Group— the public can suggest editorial content, but the editors make the decisions. Mahalo appears to be structured like a Wiki, but it’s operated by paid professionals on our behalf.

Jason Calacanis commented recently that Mahalo wasn’t a product built for the leading edge of users. It’s a service that aims for the early majority, not the innovators and early adopters. This is one of the reasons that leaving the task of challenging editorial bias to “everyone” probably won’t work.

Of course, challenging editorial bias on Mahalo only becomes an issue if the company and the service is successful. If Mahalo itself is in the margin in the world of Web search then the Web itself provides the counter argument.

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Larry Keeley at IIT Strategy 2007

Published August 10, 2007 by cgerrish

Joe Tennis sent me this link. While I’ve made an extensive study of Web design, I haven’t really thought much about industrial design. Looking at Larry Keeley’s presentation and some of the others on the Strategy 2007 Web site shows me there’s a strong connection. And this is especially true of practicing Web design in the corporate context—where your Web site is primarily an application.

When I think industrial design, I tend to think of Jonathan Ive or John Hutton. But there’s a whole world out there and it’s available through the Web. I’m having a great time exploring Core77.

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Quo Vadis? In Praise of the Sloppy Web (HTML5)

Published August 9, 2007 by cgerrish

For the longest time I thought that the future of the Web page was XHTML. If you read the literature about standards-based HTML coding, it seems like XHTML is the presumed next step. The more I investigated HTML Document Type Definitions and how they invoke different modes in browsers, it became clear that no current Web browser can deal with XHTML. HTML 4 is the current standard, and you can still go “strict” which is what the “standards-based” crowd is looking for.

The difficulty in moving HTML forward is that the HTML engines in Web browsers need to agree to include the new standard and then users need to upgrade their browsers. The next step in HTML also needs to work in older browsers. XHTML doesn’t do that. Recently I’ve started hearing about HTML 5 as the next step. The proposals around HTML 5 have started with a group of Web browser companies. That’s a great sign that standards will be adopted. And as usual Microsoft isn’t part of the group.

We’re living through a relatively good time for standards-based coding. There are still lots of Web browser differences, but the Web page has really moved forward. The rise of CSS, AJAX and unobtrusive Javascript/DOM scripting has really created a dynamic and creative period for the Web page. HTML 5 would provide even more stability, standardization and some great new mark up elements.

So I’ve been asking myself, if the Web browser companies move to HTML 5, what happens to XHTML? HTML 5 is still very forgiving, it still understands sloppy code. XHTML is strict and breaks if not properly validated. The success and rapid growth of the Web was based on browsers rendering sloppy code—they are very liberal in what they accept. If we must choose between a sloppy and strict future, put me down on the side of flexibility and sloppiness.

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The Phone is Dead

Published January 13, 2007 by cgerrish

The blowback from the iPhone introduction is in full swing. If one posits that all publicity is good publicity, it’s been quite successful. One of the more interesting threads discusses the Closed Box aspect of the iPhone. Developers are upset that they can’t put their code on the iPhone. I wonder how upset they’d be if some other developer’s code caused OS X to crash on their phone just as they were expecting an important call? But of course it’s always other developers who write buggy code.

While I don’t think all computers should be closed boxes, I think there is an argument to be made for that position. If applications are primarily Web-based and Safari can sufficiently support the growing complexity of Web-based apps, then there’s a possibility of a different kind of openness. One of the worst things about computers for the average user is adding software, upgrading software, defending against unwanted software, making sure software is compatible, etc. If you can create a stable closed box based on a rock solid Unix operating system, you remove a large part of the noise in the user experience. Openness through Web apps and widgets might appear to be a step back for those who grew up during the personal computer revolution. It appears to be a victory for the client-server side. The fact is that both sides in that battle have transformed beyond recognition. Where client-server initially existed because of scarcity, and the desktop computer was the only reasonable path to abundance. Now the Network offers unexpected abundance and the personal computer is limited by disk size and a plague of maintenance duties.

Dave Winer complains that a product introduction should not be confused with news. I agree with this. It’s up to thoughtful bloggers to see through the hype and see if there’s anything new here. I see a couple of things. I see Unix on a small form factor device and a change in the KVM user interface.  This may be the beginning of the virtualization of the physical input device. Certainly it’s been done before, but never at this scale. Will our hands learn touch scrolling, pinching and the rest of these gestures? Typing seems to have suffered the biggest loss, it’s been reduced to a poor form of “hunt and peck.” The news seems to be that a standard user interface (keyboard and mouse) is not appropriate for all applications, and that a virtual physical interface opens up the possibility customizing the point of human/computer interaction for the particular function. For instance, ask yourself why gamers use joysticks and other input devices instead of keyboards.

Despite it’s slick looks, the iPhone is a device in its infancy. The news is that the phone is dead. Long live the, poorly named, iPhone. Software makes a computer anything, any application you need it to be. The iPhone can be a phone, but a phone is a function — not the thing itself. A computer is not a typewriter, and an iPhone is not a phone.

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