ERGOSIGN Blog

Drawing upon the lines of an earlier blog post (”Search killed the address bar“), the search paradigm becomes increasingly popular — both online and offline — as the main navigation way to access information. So in which direction are search interfaces going in the next future?

Their future could be way more visual than now, about which searchengineland blogged recently. Two of the examples referred to in the article should be emphasized in particular for potential inspiration:

Searchme.com could be described as mashup of Google and Apple’s coverflow: After entering a search string the results are presented as a stream of screenshots of webpages, which can be skipped through either by a mouse slider or keyboard.

The qualification of search results is done nicely through colored highlights within the particular page and on mouse over a detailed description is displayed. Interestingly they also offer an optional additional text-based display of the results at the bottom of the screen. In regard to quantification the visualization fails, there is no clear indication on how many results are available (e.g. per category) or how high each keyword scored in a result.

This way of search results’ visualization and interaction is definitely worth keeping an eye on especially in the context of Document Management Systems (DMS).

oSkope.com plugs into web services (e.g. Amazon, eBay, Flickr and Youtube) and is especially noteworthy in two aspects:

The way to drill down to the information is realized very smoothly, based on the context of previous filters the desired search query grows progressively (e.g. search for “mario” in “amazon” > “amazon.com” > “Computer & Video Games” > “Wii”).

The search results can be arranged in multiple traditional ways (grid, stack, pile, list) and also in a graph relating the results to two service dependent axes (in Amazon’s case price and sales rank) which imaginably offers great potential for intuitive qualification.

This represents definitely a good inspiration when crafting search interfaces for repositories where the elements are highly graphical and thus quickly distinguishable.

A usability test conducted by inUse compared the iPhone to three other smartphones (HTC TyTN, Sony Ericsson W910i, Nokia N95) to see if it really lives up to the hype.

Evidently it does with one especially interesting observation: Participants called the iPhone an “Entertainment Machine” although it actually had the least features of all tested devices.

In the end three reasons for the enjoyability of the iPhone were derived:

1) Transparency - With one glance the user understands the whole range of available functionality.
2) Accessibility - The touch screen minimizes the level of abstraction.
3) Seduction - The attention to detail contributes to an outstanding visual experience.

Read more about the study at uiGarden.

“On March 15-16, 2007, a forum entitled HCI 2020: Human Values in a Digital Age, was held in Sanlúcar la Mayor, Spain, just outside Seville. Its purpose was to gather luminaries in computing, design, social sciences, and scientific philosophy to discuss, debate and help formulate an agenda for human-computer interaction (HCI) over the next decade and beyond.”

Initiated by Microsoft Research the report basically splits up in four parts:

1) Review of the last 20 years highlighting major changes in computing, living and society
2) Outline of how the nature of interaction gets transformed and what in consequence has to be addressed in the next 15 years
3) Proposal how HCI research and its community could move forward to focus on human values
4) Specific suggestions for the field of HCI to change

All in all a great read for all interested in interaction design: It motivates to step back from the current buzz (web 2.0 and iPhones) and ponder about the real long term evolution of this profession.

The report is available as a free download at Microsoft Research…

Representing the most important trade fair for the public sector in Germany, the KOMCOM takes place at „Neue Messe Karlsruhe“ from May 6th to 7th, 2008. In hall 1 booth D04 ERGOSIGN will present its services with a special focus on accessibility.

Since the introduction of the law for equal treatment of handicapped people (BGG), public authorities and facilities are obliged to design their information technology (e.g. their websites) in an accessible way.

ERGOSIGN supports you in the development of accessible IT starting with the analysis of potential barriers in respect to:
- BITV: Barrierefreie Informationstechnik-Verordnung
- W3C: World Wide Web Consortium
- WCAG: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

Based on the findings we either propose suggestions for improvement or develop new accessible solutions for the particular situation. Furthermore, we guide you through the complete process until the certification of accessible websites by DIN Certco.

Apart from the focus on accessible solutions, we will also be glad to inform you about:
- The design and evaluation of interfaces from simple to complex software
- State-of-the-art techniques in the fields of usability and user experience analysis
- Outstanding interface design solutions from a visual perspective
- Efficient applications of custom Look & Feel developments

We are looking forward to see you at KOMCOM!

ERGOSIGN received the award “Innovationsprodukt 2008″ (Innovation Product 2008) for the service “Benutzerzentriertes Design von IT-Produkten” (User Centered Design of IT-Products) in the category “Beratung & Consulting” (Consulting).

This year the initiative’s price was awarded in 33 categories pitching on 1600 submissions ranging from products and services to solutions. Consisting of researchers, industry experts and specialized journalists the jury looks for products standing out with regard to innovation and applicability in small and medium enterprises.

We very much appreciate the price which motivates for our future work.

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 …

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.

The Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI) is always a perfect reference for state-of-the-art techniques to develop rich interactive web applications by utilizing Java Script. Since the collection of utilities and controls comes with handy demos (besides a full-fledged API documentation) the YUI is usually a very efficient way to demo potential interaction to customers and developers.

During the last week Yahoo! published numerous new components like a new layout manager and multi-file uploader (flickr style) to their collection of utilities and controls.

Since the whole library is published under the BSD license, the use is free of charge and in the accompanying YUI blog the responsible team at Yahoo! regularly shares insights about the development of the YUI library.

ERGOSIGN is looking for User Interface Designers with a passion for interactive systems, creativity, conceptual strength and a profound knowledge of the software development process.

If you are interested to work in a very creative and professional environment and team just visit the Careers section on our website to receive further information.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Since we at ERGOSIGN are increasingly collecting information and inspiration via weblogs we thought it would be nice to offer the same convenience for you. So watch this place for “frequent” updates on our activities, thoughts and knowledge about current developments in all sectors of User Centered Design.

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