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Web
Economizer: A Cooper service concept
People are looking for ways to economize in these uncertain times. We can all see the evidence of environmental crisis brewing alongside the economic downturn, and it's easy to feel powerless in the face of such global forces. With politicians and businesses seeking avenues to a sustainable future, Cooper wondered how design might help individuals cut costs while also encouraging behavior that was environmentally responsible.
This all started when Environmental Defense approached Cooper, asking us to imagine new ways to make it easier for people to save resources. We performed research throughout the Bay Area, then collaborated with Environmental Defense to model our findings and identify design opportunities. From this point of inspiration, we continued on our own, crafting a quick eco-friendly concept: Economizer, a service that helps consumers save money while making sustainable choices. The service consists of a core set of internet-aware services with optional components such as hardware data collectors, social networking applications, and dedicated smart phone interfaces.
Economizer: Scenario 1 on Vimeo
(Watch this video in fullscreen mode by clicking the icon in the lower right of the player.)
Folkware
In his recent article for TechCrunch, salesforce.com CEO and chairman Marc Benioff frames the web 1.0 revolution as “Anyone can transact” with great 1-to-many online transactional applications like Google and Amazon. The 2.0 revolution was “Anyone can participate” with a host of many-to-many online applications like LiveJournal, Flickr, and YouTube that really put the focus on user-generated content.
Google Chrome: The interface is beside the point
There's been a lot chatter around the office and internet about Chrome, the recently launched (or leaked) Google Web browser. I've got to say that much of it misses the aspect of the application that I find most inspirational. Google Chrome exists for one reason and one reason only: To provide a framework for web-based applications to look, feel, and act like desktop applications.
It doesn't seem that Google has real interest in replacing IE or Firefox as the dominant web browser. (The tech business press can't see beyond this point). Instead, Google wants to see the technological underpinnings of Chrome adopted by mainstream browsers. The Chrome team is explicitly inviting other browsers to use their code base — they've open sourced everything — and they have explicitly acknowledged adopting best-of-breed UI features from others.
So how does Chrome elevate web apps to desktop app status? Six ways: Separate processes for each tab; Google Gears for local storage, offline functionality and "native app" behaviors; application shortcuts; a modern JavaScript virtual machine; and minimal-to-absent browser interface, aka "chrome". Let's look at each one in more detail, with snippets from Scott McCloud's fantastic graphic novella product tour.
The airline industry needs to check their own baggage
I wasn't surprised to read that the airline industry was rated the worst in customer ratings. It seems like every week there's a news story about one of the major airlines raising their fees or adding another miscellaneous cost on top of their base ticket prices. I'm slightly sympathetic to the fact that the airlines are dealing with ever-increasing oil expenses, but not all airlines are dealing with their struggles in the same way.
I was pretty outraged when American, United, and US Airlines announced plans to charge an extra $15 per checked bag. This is already on top of the $25 for a second checked bag that they (and in fairness most other airlines) already charge. Why couldn't they simply add $15 to the price of their tickets? Because they can't compete on price with low cost carriers like Southwest and are feeling the squeeze from both sides.
Now more and more travelers will abandon checking luggage and cram all number of accessories into smaller carry-on bags, thereby causing long lines through security and long boarding times while they struggle to shove their bags overhead with little assistance. This will ultimately lead to delays and more misery.
The bottom line is that for flying, people mainly care about cost and if you've flown on Southwest, American, United or Virgin America there's not a great deal of difference in service — so why pay more? If anything, I enjoy flying on Southwest and Virgin America more because the employees tend to be friendlier and the personal entertainment on longer flights breaks up the time.
Until airlines like American can prove that their higher prices reflect a better and more enjoyable service I'll keep picking the lowest price I can find. I don't mind sucking it up even if I end up in a middle seat between two big burly guys with no elbow room. We've all been there.
Instead of these airline companies being creative with accounting, they need to get creative with designing better experiences like Alaska Airlines is doing or consider re-engineering planes to fly with alternative fuels like Virgin highlighted recently when they used 5% biofuel. I might pay $15 more if I think it's worth it but I definitely won't pay an extra $15 to have a more miserable experience when I know I can pay less elsewhere.
With any luck, one of the travel sites will be updated so that I can search flights and compare the full cost for my travel knowing that I'll be gone for two weeks and will definitely be checking one bag if not two. Then the larger airlines will maybe take note and change their travel plans.
The Web, Information Architecture, and Interaction Design
The impact of digital technology—from the Web to mobile phones to the silicon in your toaster—has meant a proliferation of terms for the work people do to define digital products and services. People talk about "customer experience," "user-centered design," and so forth. This talk can confuse even people who do that work for a living, as you often find different people using different terms to mean the same thing—or using the same term to mean very different things!
Many people say that this reflects a breakdown of disciplinary distinctions in designing for the new world of the digital. "It's all just design." I disagree. I see a few major types of problems in the digital world, and I believe that each of these has its own set of tools and methods that work well to solve that type of problem.
Common Myths about Web Design
The hype that surrounded the Web and its concomitant New Economy led to many popular myths concerning the design of Web content and Web-based applications. We can forgive this kind of mythology, which is typical of most popular technical innovations. When commercial and industrial use of electricity became a reality at the end of the nineteenth century, it was commonly believed to have miraculous powers not only to transform business and society, but also to cure almost any conceivable ailment by "restoring the life force." Like electricity, the Web has transformed our society to some degree, even in the relatively short time span since its introduction. However, it took 50 years for our use of electricity to mature, and it will doubtless take as many years for us to realize the full benefits and socioeconomic ramifications of the Web.
Some of the most common myths about Web design follow. These myths have found their way into business and technical organizations, and are—to some degree or other—taken at face value by management, marketing, engineering, and sometimes even Web designers themselves. The sooner you can disabuse your organization of these myths, the better.
Not All Web Sites Are Alike
With the Web now completely ubiquitous and familiar, and the frenzy of getting on the Web for novelty’s sake long past, companies routinely turn to the Web to address many types of challenges. A Web site can offer a simple brochure for communicating with customers, a way to disseminate information to people within a large organization, a tool for running complex business processes, and much more. Because different sites try to address different problems, creating them requires different kinds of planning and development.
Although it may sound like a truism, many people have a hard time talking about the distinctions between different kinds of Web development, which makes it difficult to decide how to proceed. This article offers a quick survey of various Web projects and of the techniques that address them.
Learning From the Mistakes of Internet Banks
Retail banks are realizing that Internet banking is not living up to the hype that surrounded it a few years ago. At that time, analysts predicted that demand would follow the trends in general Internet usage and grow to hundreds of millions of users by the middle of this decade. Some brave entrepreneurs were even betting that the age of the branch-based deposit institution was over, and that upstart "Internet-only" banks would be able to capitalize on hot new technology to steal all the customers. Yet adoption rates are low, and customer interest is flagging. Why? Online banking is a good example of how bricks-and-mortar institutions can stumble when they try to solve new economy problems with old world approaches.
Navigating isn't fun
The artless Websites created during the Web's infancy were of necessity built only with simple HTML tags, and were forced to divide up their functionality and content into a maze (a web?) of separate pages. This made a navigation scheme an unavoidable component of any Website design, and of course, a clear, visually arresting navigation scheme was better than an obscure or hidden one. But many Web designers have incorrectly deduced from this that users want navigation schemes. Actually, they'd be happy if there were no navigation at all.
Beating the Checkout Blues
Your online store is a good example of the breed. You've got good products at good prices, the site navigation is straightforward, the product information is rich, appropriate, and easy to find, and everyone likes the clean, uncluttered visual design of the site. So why do more than half of your customers abandon their full shopping carts?
Depending on which research report you read, roughly 25% to 75% of online shoppers abandon their shopping carts before consummating the deal. Despite the disparity in numbers, all the research firms agree on one thing: that's way too many.
The Iteration Trap
High-tech companies are in a hurry—as well they should be—but many hurt themselves by trying to move products out the door too quickly. I often hear executives repeat homilies like "Ship early, ship often," and "Launch and learn." They assume that there is no penalty for simply slapping something together, shipping it, and then upgrading their product or site in a rapid iteration cycle. Unfortunately, there is a big, hidden cost associated with this tactic.
Rapid development environments like the World Wide Web have promoted the idea of simply iterating many versions of a product or service until something works. Arguably, the Web is in its nascent stage and companies are still experimenting to see what works and what doesn't, yet this should not be an excuse for iteration without planning, nor should "speed to market."