ERGOSIGN Blog

(Dieser Beitrag ist nur in Englisch verfügbar.)

One of the most passionate discussions in UI projects is how navigation should work in the particular website or application. Great resources are spent on articulating taxonomies and how deep hierarchies can be visualized in minimally intimidating ways.However it can be observed that the paradigm shift to rather search than browse for information or functionality is also finally embraced in projects more likely than it used to be. This is certainly due to how search engines transformed the way most people navigate in the web over the last years.

A great example how far this can go is highlighted by Cabel Sasser, one of the guys at Panic. Cabel just posted a fascinating observation he made during a recent trip to Japan in his blog along with pictures:

In advertisements the brand’s or product’s URL is not the main cue anymore and sometimes is ommitted totally. Instead it is visualized how to enter the respective name into a search box. This is of course to some extent based on the fact that this way is faster on the dominant mobile devices in Japan but if one pays close attention many “normal users” in the western world also use the (Google) search box as their main way of navigation.

Great food for thought also in terms of how crucial good search marketing becomes …

(Dieser Beitrag ist nur in Englisch verfügbar.)

Each year Avenue A | Razorfish compiles a lengthy publicly available report to help their clients understand consumer behavior in the digital world. This year’s report offers great insights e.g. on media spending, social influence marketing, the progress of (local) search and online video.In regards to user experience (UX) the following three chapters are especially interesting to read:

Does The Home Page Still Matter? (p. 34)

Avenue A | Razorfish’s research shows that the loss of the homepage as a central entry point is between 50% and 75% even for top web sites. As an additional key site metric the traffic distribution should be monitored and every page should be treated like the homepage.

From a UX standpoint this will have quite an effect since online advertising will have to move from the homepage to every single page occupying prominent screen real estate. It also makes it more challenging to keep a consistent yet flexible user experience across all fragmented artefacts like widgets (e.g. YouTube) or RSS feeds etc.

The Connected Class (p. 48)

Avenue A | Razorfish conducted interviews with 25 people between 18 and 34 with a high propensity for using a variety of digital platforms. For UX the following three findings are important to consider when dealing with community websites:

1.) Proliferation of the profile and the “Digital You”: People are willing to maintain multiple profiles on multiple platforms (or even on just one) to express different sides of their personality.

2.) Proliferation of the platform: People are embracing multiple devices serving specific purposes even if the capabilities do overlap.

3.) Proliferation of communication: People are choosing the communication method based on the (value of the) relationship forming a sort of social hierarchy.

The Social Technographics Profile (p. 103)

The report features a way of grouping people by their adoption of social technologies. Established by Forrester Research it basically resembles a ladder with (from top to bottom) the following six overlapping groups:

1.) Creators, who publish at least once a month (blog, YouTube, website, etc),

2.) Critics, who react to published content (comments, ratings, reviews, etc),

3.) Collectors, who save and tag bookmarks (de.li.cio.us, web RSS readers, etc),

4.) Joiners, who participate or maintain profiles (MySpace, Facebook, etc),

5.) Spectators, who consume self-published content (blogs, videos, etc) and

6.) Inactives, who do not consume self-published content.

Besides being a great classification system while working on community websites, there is also an interactive tool to drill down into the detailed data of the study. By choosing age, country and gender one can conveniently see the distribution of the particular online population into those six groups.

Die Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI) hat sich als eine gute Quelle für State-of-the-Art-Techniken zur Entwicklung von Rich Internet Applications mittels Java Script etabliert. Da die Sammlung von Komponenten und Controls mit vielen anschaulichen Beispielen (und einer vollständigen API-Dokumentation) versehen ist, können diese auch dazu genutzt werden, Kunden oder Entwicklern mögliche Funktionen ohne großen Aufwand zu erläutern.

In der letzten Woche hat Yahoo! nun eine Vielzahl von neuen Komponenten, wie beispielsweise einen neuen Layout Manager und einen Multi-File-Uploader (im Stil von „flickr“) veröffentlicht. Da die vollständige Sammlung unter der BSD-Lizenz veröffentlicht wurde, kann sie kostenlos genutzt werden. In dem beigefügten YUI-Blog geben verantwortliche Personen aus dem Yahoo! Team außerdem immer mal wieder einen Einblick in die Entwicklung der YUI Library.

ERGOSIGN sucht User Interface Designer mit einer Leidenschaft für interaktive Systeme, Kreativität und konzeptioneller Stärke sowie einer profunden Kenntnis des Software-Entwicklungsprozesses.

Sollten Sie Interesse haben, in einem sehr kreativen und professionellen Umfeld zu arbeiten, besuchen Sie doch einfach den Bereich Karriere auf unserer Website. Hier erhalten Sie nähere Informationen.

Wir hoffen, bald von Ihnen zu hören!

Da wir bei ERGOSIGN selbst gern auch Blogs verwenden, um uns über aktuelle Themen zu informieren und uns inspirieren zu lassen, dachten wir, dass es keine schlechte Idee wäre, einen eigenen Blog zum Thema UI Design zu starten. In Zukunft werden wir also an dieser Stelle aktuelle Informationen über unsere Aktivitäten, Gedanken und aktuelle Entwicklungen aus dem Bereich “User Centered Design” zur Verfügung stellen. 

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