Todd Dominey describes a Flash app he wrote for the PGA:
As part of PGA.com’s presence at the event, I developed and designed a Flash application that could run on multiple 42” plasma displays stationed throughout the 500,000 square foot convention hall. The challenge, for me, was to create a reusable application in Flash that could dynamically load and display news from the show, general news from PGA.com, photos from the show floor, and a rotating schedule of events. The concept, in a nutshell, was to load the app once on each screen and leave it alone for the duration of the event, while providing visitors a constant, rotating stream of fresh information (similar to the monitors you see at airports).
Very cool use of Flash and RSS (used to update the content displayed in the Flash app). It looks to be similar to the system that fellow iSchool alums James and Nina worked on at Seattle U's Law School. Both seems to be great uses of technology, although not every organization can afford to deploy a fleet of plasma displays...
Two interesting items that advocate consistency in web design:
Merholz has been going through Henry Dreyfuss' 1955 book Designing for People. The book, written by a noted industrial designer, has a number of good lessons for designers of all stripes. Dreyfuss lists some really nifty examples in the aforementioned chapter 4. Read the post and pay attention to the image of the book. Merholz pulled out the key concept: "At the expense of forfeiting originality, and it is a great temptation to hide locks and access panels, we try to make things obvious to operate, not only in airplane interiors, but in everything we do." Hmm...lets hope web designers take some of these (50 year-old) lessons to heart.
Meanwhile, Herasimchuk makes a similar point in his article. He uses the MovableType interface as an example, pointing out eight different UI conventions. While the MT interface is neither the best nor the worst interface I've seen, eight button/link styles does seem excessive. Again, the solution is consistency and simplicity.
InfoWorld reports on Microsoft's change in how IE handles usernames and passwords in URLs. Until this change, you could use urls like this:
http://username:password@www.site.com/
Granted, this isn't super secure. The username and passwords are passed in clear text, making it easy pickings for anyone who really wants access to you site (and knows what they are doing). Rather, the method is best used as a deterrent to keep out prying eyes.
The method was pretty useful. I've used it to send URLs to clients for our password-protected client site. But, the technique has be abused by spammers to create URLs that look like they're coming from legitimate sites (e.g., http://www.amazon.com@www.evil.com/). And I've been seeing some pretty creative spam in my inbox, including ones that look like Amazon order confirmations and Earthlink tech support instructions. Nasty stuff, and I won't mind if those go away.
Jess McMullin has posted a nice list of user experience books from 2003. I've only managed to read two of the books on the list, and there are at least a couple that I'd like to get to in the next few months.
One of the more difficult things about developing complex web applications is testing them. Most of the time, testing means having a person manually going through the system looking for stuff that breaks. This, quite obviously, isn't too efficient. An automated process would clearly be better.
Kevin sent me a link to Canoo WebTest (the front page isn't too helpful...start with the white paper). Basically, the system lets you write tests in what looks like a fairly simple XML syntax. You can fill in forms, click links, and more. Definitely worth a further look.
Nick Finck and Ross Olson have put together a nice little list of Web Power Tools for a recent presentation. From their introduction:
These tools may be the tools that you have never heard of before, but once you realize their potential you may never go without them again. It's all about being efficient for a high return with little investment. These tools can make a 200 hour task turn into a 1 hour task.
Simon Willison has written a nifty article on Simple Tricks for More Usable Forms. To quote:
Web developers loathe the task of building forms almost as much as users loathe having to fill them in. These are both unfortunate facts of the Web, but some smart JavaScript and intelligent CSS can go a long way to remedying the situation.
As someone who builds lots of forms, I'll second Simon's sentiment. And, I'll try to incorporate some of Simon's hints in my next form-heavy project.
XML forms the heart of many Content Management Systems. But, most people author content in Microsoft Word. As a result, you'll often need to convert from Word to XML. Michael Gross outlines some of the pitfalls you can face when doing this conversion. In sum, garbage in, garbage out.
Bill Trippe posted the content of his 2002 EContent magazine article on how relational database vendors support XML. The article is interesting, and worth a read. Trippe says he is re-examining the conclusions. I look forward to seeing what he says on the topic.
When I last investigated this issue (last summer), I ran into a number of roadblocks. I was mostly using Microsoft's SQL Server 2000. Overall, the XML support was clunky, and it felt like the afterthought that it was. My biggest problem (for the application I was working on, that is) was with updates. There was no way to update parts of an XML record. You had to read the entire XML snippet from the database, parse it, make the changes, then store the record again. Not exactly efficient. I'd love to be able to just write a single SQL statement that could do the update. It would maybe look like this:
UPDATE tablename
SET xml(columnname,'/xpath/query/to/data') = 'value'
E-consultancy has a pack of downloadable templates that can be used in various stages of web projects, including:
John Gotze has posted an interesting-looking supplemental reading list for a course on Enterprise Architecture. Check it out.
The latest version of A List Apart features Ian Lloyd's article on creating "The Perfect 404." The article outlines a number of useful ideas and strategies, complete with plenty of JavaScript code for the taking.
One approach that he didn't mention is to automatically redirect users to the correct page. This takes some server-side programming, database work, and elbow grease, but it could be quite useful for site redesigns.
First, you need a database (MySQL would be a nice choice) table that includes both the old and new urls. In other words, if you moved had a page at /foo/bar.html and you moved it to /bar/foo.html, your table would include look like this:
| old | new |
| /foo/bar.html | /bar/foo.html |
Then, in your scripting language of choice (ie, PHP, ASP, CF, Perl, Python, etc.), add code to your 404 page that hits the database looking for the offending page. If it returns a new page, then just redirect the user directly to that page. If you really want to be nifty, send along HTTP code 301 (Moved Permanently).
Javier Canada has come up with a nifty little idea. He's plotted (somewhat subjectively) many of the concepts, resources, and people in the user experience world. The chart is quite useful for getting a feel for how the different concepts relate to each other. Worth a look.
Donna Maurer has a nice article discussing five ways to improve intranet usability. To quote:
Marketing and promotion activities are wasted however, if staff return to the intranet and find that it doesn't help them to do what they need. Before telling staff why the intranet is useful for them, make sure that it is both useful and usable.
The issues covered include:
Of course, the methods she discusses would be useful in non-intranet situations as well...
A few days ago I pointed to Phil Windley's mention of a new web-based authentication system for the state of Utah. As I mentioned then, I think these identification and authorization systems play a key role in any organization's information management strategy. I'm going to flesh the concepts out a bit more here.
In short, an authentication system provides a single username and password for users that can be used in multiple places. The advantages are many:
The key disadvantage to these systems is that they become a single point of failure for the organization's IT systems. If the authentication system goes down, or is compromised, every system that relies on it is now in trouble.
Most of my experience with these systems comes as a user. The University of Washington, where I attended graduate school, has a very nice system. The UW NetID is used for a wide variety of services, from email to employment records (full list here). They even used it to protect resources posted on course websites. The system allowed them to tie together all sorts of disparate systems into a useful portal. In an environment like a university, often each department and group is off doing their own thing. There are probably hundreds of different systems, including commercial, open source, and homegrown systems, running on the campus. By tying everything to a central authentication system, it provides the illusion of a unified system to the users while continuing to allow freedom for the systems.
My other experience, as a developer, is at a much smaller scale. I've built a number of web-based systems for a local school district. Rather than duplicating authentication systems, we decided to tie into the district's Active Directory installation (using LDAP calls). Because the user management parts of the site are already taken care of, we can add new systems in less time and money than it would take to build stand-alone systems. Elsewhere, I've also rigged up a much simpler authentication system that ties into the organization's email system. A POP request verifies if the username and password match on the system, then the user gains access to the protected parts of the intranet. By tying into an existing system, we were able to bring this online very quickly and easily.
Phil Windley has talked about the IT Hierarchy of Needs. The third tier from the bottom (following Base Infrastructure and Storage Management) is Identity Management. Everything I've been talking about so far falls into the this category. I'd imagine that lots of organizations are still struggling to work their way up the hierarchy to this level.
The oft-excellent A List Apart has released a couple of good new articles:
I've come across a couple of good articles for you metadata-heads out there:
The University of Minnesota Duluth has a great Web Design References page. Looks like a nice starting point for pretty much anything web design related.
Christain Crumlish has published a nice post on weblog strategies for non-profits. Its a fairly lengthly weblog post, and he includes a variety of interesting ideas and approaches that could be used by non-profits (or other organizations).
I'm going to skip over all of the good ideas (you can read them for yourselves), and quote one of the slightly pessimistic comments he made:
For example, I'm on the board of directors of a literary nonprofit calledWatchword Press. As I was getting very excited about the possibilities in this area, I was talking to the publisher of Watchword and as I started regaling her with these ideas, I could hear her eyes glaze over (we were on the phone). It was that blog thing I'm always going on about... So these ideas won't be relevant for everyone, at least not right away, but the general steps outlined above are worth investigating for any organization.
I've been working with the concept of weblogs in a non-profit for about two years now, and I think I've seen a fair amount of the glazed eye's Crumlish refers to. Most of the people I've talked to don't exactly get the power of RSS and weblogs. And among those who do "get" it, many aren't interested in diving in and doing it. I've been struggling with the motivation question for a while now, and I don't really have a solution. Except that those who have been successful seem to be doing it because they get something out of it. I've found that writing about the various topics that interest me provides me with a great record of the resources I've found, and that I enjoy writing. I've also found that feedback helps. It's nice to know that people are reading what I write (the RSS feed for this blog is one of the most "hit" files on psesd.org, and I occasionally check Technorati). The comments feature hasn't really taken off yet (and, we've been getting more and more comment spam), that's okay. Although the general weblog project has been a mixed success at best, I have found great uses for the technology in the project management arena. Okay, enough rambling.
Human Factors International's December 2003 newsletter has a nice summary of "Key Research Findings Related to User-Centered Design (2002–2003)". Its a great way to get quickly caught up with a whole bunch of relevant web usability research.
I've been reading Sir Tim Berners-Lee's book (he invented the WWW), Weaving the Web, and he mentions that the original incarnation of the web browser could both read and write HTML. The web, as he envisioned it, was a read-write medium, not a read-only medium. But, most of the popular browsers that emerged focused on reading, not writing.
Giving users access to edit web pages is a vitally important part of any web publishing project. "Through the Web" (TTW) editors are often seen as one of the best solutions, as they often do not require additional software on the client side, and they are often easier to use than traditional deskop editors (Dreamweaver, et. al.). But, there are dozens of options, ranging widely in capabilities, quality, and cost, in the TTW space. Bristol University's Paul Browning has written a report on TTW editors. The report is aimed at the UK education market, but the information contained can be easily applied to most other markets. Its an especially useful read for anyone undertaking a content management project.
I've been out of town for a few days, and upon my return I was faced with hundreds of RSS posts in my newsreader. I thought I'd list a few of the notable links here:
Enjoy!