Zappos.com Redesign: Happy Cog

Zappos.com Redesign: Happy Cog: "The problem was that their business growth had outpaced the slowly-evolving aesthetic of their website. While the site enabled customers to make their purchases quickly, it didn’t capture and embrace the hallmarks of the Zappos.com culture. The site lacked the personality that customers were used to seeing with other company touchpoints."

I wanted to share this tidbit because not many companies really understand this vocabulary. Yes, appalling and true. Companies that can speak this language will be open for innovative design. Its amazing how draconian CEOs and companies adhere to what they have just gotten used to. They can cling to old designs and what has become comfortable. This is also an indicator of how the company does business. If you are a designer I think its important to use this design-speak and if it falls upon deaf ears, keep on walking.

NIST at work on EHR usability | Healthcare IT News

NIST at work on EHR usability | Healthcare IT News: "Efforts to improve the usability of EHRs are widely recognized as key to achieving widespread adoption and meaningful use of these systems, according to NIST. A recent report prepared by the HHS Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) identified gaps in the processes and practices used by EHR vendors to ensure the usability of their products. One key finding from the report highlighted the lack of standard approaches and formats for testing and reporting usability of EHR products across the industry."

Toshiba Unveils First Solar-Powered E-Reader | Fast Company

Toshiba Unveils First Solar-Powered E-Reader | Fast Company: "Move over, Kindle, iPad, and Nook. A new e-reader is inching in on your market. Toshiba's black and white Biblio Leaf is the first solar-powered e-reader. The catch: for the moment, at least, it's only available in Japan."

This is a great example of a portable device whose designers had the forethought to consider that its not going to be plugged in often. I do not know why more devices wouldn't incorporate some sort of solar powering technology. This would be invaluable if you lived in remote areas.

PalmPre: FAIL. Rubinstein makes a near-sighted excuse.

AppleInsider | HP's Jon Rubinstein slams Android, takes on Apple's iPad: "Why webOS failed at Palm

Asked what he thought caused the downfall of Palm as an independent company after the 2009 launch of the Palm Pre, Rubinstein answered, 'I think that we did have many of the elements needed to be successful. We had a great team, we'd built a great operating system, we had a great product pipeline, we had relationships with carriers, a growing developer base. We had a half billion dollars in cash.

'But I think the market moved too fast, as far as the competition went,' Rubinstein said. While seeing 'a very clear way to get the company to profitability and continue on as an independent company, Palm 'didn't see a way to get to scale,' given the competitive landscape involving Apple, Google and Microsoft."

After owning several Palm Pre phones, I can tell you why it failed: It was a piece of shit!

The quality of the phone was so poor that the most amazing OS in the world could not compensate. The mobile world is one in which hardware matters as much of not more than the operating system. Yes we demand fast, dependable applications and connectivity, but we also demand a product that does not break in a shirt pocket, that is not made of cheap, brittle plastics and screens that become unusable with fingerprints or scratches.

Palm missed the mark because they put too much emphasis on the operating system and not enough consideration to the actual device. Mobile user experience is much more dynamic and diverse that you have to consider the myriad of distractions, tactile and contextual factors involved that are just not the case when you are sitting in the comfort of your own home or office in front of a desktop computer.

Hardboiled CSS3 Media Queries | Stuff and Nonsense

Extremely useful css technique.

Hardboiled CSS3 Media Queries | Stuff and Nonsense: "Since I started using Media Queries extensively over the last few months, I’ve revised the queries several times for each project, so it made sense to build a boilerplate to use as a starting point. These hardboiled CSS3 Media Queries are empty placeholders for targeting the devices and attributes I’m interesting in making responsive designs for right now."

How To Use CSS3 Media Queries To Create a Mobile Version of Your Website - Smashing Magazine

Having built my first web app for mobile, I definitely think that flexibility makes the most sense. It saves development time and a is forward compatible as it leverages the most widely used document authoring techniques: HTML/CSS.

How To Use CSS3 Media Queries To Create a Mobile Version of Your Website - Smashing Magazine: "CSS3 continues to both excite and frustrate web designers and developers. We are excited about the possibilities that CSS3 brings, and the problems it will solve, but also frustrated by the lack of support in Internet Explorer 8. This article will demonstrate a technique that uses part of CSS3 that is also unsupported by Internet Explorer 8. However, it doesn’t matter as one of the most useful places for this module is somewhere that does have a lot of support — small devices such as the iPhone, and Android devices."

Beards in web design: Group interview | Stuff and Nonsense

Hilarious Article (Im bearded by the way)

Beards in web design: Group interview | Stuff and Nonsense: "In the comments of many web design group interviews, many readers ask for more beards on the panels in particular because, There is no way of discerning how the experience of a bearded designer might differ, simply because there is a complete lack of representation. So, we decided to prepare an article featuring specifically professional bearded designers giving their expert advice."

CSS gradients for all web browsers, without using images - Robert's talk

CSS gradients for all web browsers, without using images - Robert's talk:

#gradient {
color: #fff;
height: 100px;
padding: 10px;
/* For WebKit (Safari, Google Chrome etc) */
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#00f), to(#fff));
/* For Mozilla/Gecko (Firefox etc) */
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #00f, #fff);
/* For Internet Explorer 5.5 - 7 */
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#FF0000FF, endColorstr=#FFFFFFFF);
/* For Internet Explorer 8 */
-ms-filter: 'progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr=#FF0000FF, endColorstr=#FFFFFFFF)';
}

Drop shadow with CSS for all web browsers - Robert's talk

Drop shadow with CSS for all web browsers - Robert's talk

.shadow {  -moz-box-shadow: 3px 3px 4px #000;  -webkit-box-shadow: 3px 3px 4px #000;  box-shadow: 3px 3px 4px #000;  /* For IE 8 */  -ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(Strength=4, Direction=135, Color='#000000')";  /* For IE 5.5 - 7 */  filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(Strength=4, Direction=135, Color='#000000'); }

The Most Popular Phone in the World

The Most Popular Phone in the World: "The lesson, basically, is that a company won't do well in the developing world simply by hawking cheap, out-of-date hardware after it's become obsolete in places like America. Companies like Nokia, LG and Samsung spend a lot of time and money developing new phones that you and I might consider old-fashioned or odd, and with good reason: Emerging markets are huge. The 8th, 9th and 10th largest phone seller in the world, by volume, are companies you've never heard of—ZTE, G-Five and Huawei—which have made heaps of money selling millions of customers their first phones. Nokia is actually losing share in India, largely due to a burgeoning domestic phone industry, led by companies whose spectacular sales volumes belie their newness. They'd be stupid to try to sell their cast-off dregs to hyper-competitive exploding markets like this."

handheld style sheets and getting to zen | gotomobile

This is a fantastic idea!

handheld style sheets and getting to zen | gotomobile: "Russell Beattie wants a mobile CSS Zen Garden. Dave Shea has a lot on his plate, but I think we should support the effort and help to make it happen! In his latest posting on handheld stylesheets, Russell points out the latest (and greatest) Opera solutions for flexible CSS solutions to style sheets for various browser types."

iOS Human Interface Guidelines: Introduction

I have been asked to build 'iPhone apps' that are really web apps for mobile phones. Apple has updated their UI Guidelines. Very handy to have. Download them for Apple's site:

iOS Human Interface Guidelines: Introduction

Introduction

iOS Human Interface Guidelines describes the guidelines and principles that help you design a superlative user interface and user experience for your iOS app.

iOS Human Interface Guidelines does not describe how to implement your designs in code. When you’re ready to code, start by reading iOS Application Programming Guide.

Safari on iPhone & iPad 4.2: Accelerometer, WebSockets & better HTML5 support | Mobile Web Programming

Exciting New Features.

Safari on iPhone & iPad 4.2: Accelerometer, WebSockets & better HTML5 support | Mobile Web Programming: "iOS 4.2 is a free update for every iPhone, iPod or iPad device available now. This new release provides some major changes on HTML5 and W3C future standards support, like WebSockets and Accelerometer support, print support, new JavaScript data-types and better SVG support."

Android Top New Smartphone App Platform for ‘11

Think that being open source allows developers to build more apps? Umm Yes!

Android Top New Smartphone App Platform for ‘11: "A leading 29% of smartphone application publishers say they will begin supporting the Android platform next year, according to the Millennial Media November 2010 Mobile Mix report. This outdistances the second-most-popular new smartphone app platform for next year, iPad (20%), by a healthy margin. Twenty percent of smartphone app publishers also plan to begin supporting Windows Phone7 next year. No other platform has anywhere close to this level of planned new support, with RIM coming in a distant fourth (12%)."

Google Explores the Human Body With HTML5

HTML5 offers many possibilities. Leave it to Google to do something extremely cool.

Google Explores the Human Body With HTML5: "Google has just soft-launched its latest browser experiment, the Google Body Browser, which is basically Google Earth for the human body.

Think of it as a three-dimensional, multi-layered browser version of those Visible Man/Woman model kits. Or a virtualized version of Slim Goodbody, if you will."

Leaked Slide Shows Yahoo Is Killing Delicious & Other Web Apps

Whats the future if Yahoo! ??

Leaked Slide Shows Yahoo Is Killing Delicious & Other Web Apps: "The decision to streamline and focus on trendier features makes sense in light of recent rumors surrounding Yahoo. We’ve heard that the company may cut 5% of its staff, and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz hinted at Web 2.0 Summit last month that some product changes were ahead, stating that Yahoo had been a “static entity” for far too long already."

XUI | javascript micro-framework

Like jQuery? Develop Web Apps for smartphones? Meet: XUI | javascript micro-framework

XUI strives to be a framework for first class mobile device browsers such as WebKit, Fennec and Opera with future support under consideration for IE Mobile and BlackBerry.

I haven't tested it myself but it appears to allow you the same easy way to select many DOM elements, set styles, add or remove HTML elements and remoting methods such as XHR.

I am currently building a web app to allow patients to request refills on their prescriptions. I do believe I will give this library a chance.

If anyone else out there has experience with xuijs please weigh in. I would love to hear your experiences.

The Coming Zombie Apocalypse: Small, cheap devices will disrupt our old-school UX assumptions | UX Magazine

The Coming Zombie Apocalypse: Small, cheap devices will disrupt our old-school UX assumptions | UX Magazine: "The UX community needs to embrace this coming zombie apocalypse"

"These new smart devices are turning our original desktop-PC-as-hub model on its head. People used to choose between a Mac and a PC and then buy hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars of software, becoming locked into a single platform on a single device. But now there’s a different model forming in which people work with multiple devices on the same data, usually through the cloud."

Again, the shift from massive software packages (one-size fits none) to smaller focused web apps. As UX professionals use cases might just become our life blood.

Chromium User Experience.

Excited about the Chrome browser and their forthcoming operating system? Check out their user experience section of the Chromium site:

http://www.chromium.org/user-experience

"This section describes the motivations, assumptions, and directions behind Chromium and Chromium OS's user interface design. Its goal is to explain the current design in a way that further work can be developed in-style, or so that our assumptions can be challenged, changed, and improved."

All Webkits are not the same.

There are a few major rendering engines that browser manufacturers use. Webkit is used by Safari, Chrome and Andriod. So if I build my site to look great in Safari it will be fine in Andriod, right? Hmm...

Think again. PPK put together a very useful comparison table. PPK compares 22 WebKits in order to prove that there is no “WebKit on Mobile” and to figure out which one is the best. My hope is that eventually I’m going to gain some insight in the “family tree” of all WebKits.

Check it out

Excellent gist of Ux

When people ask me about what I do, I tell them that I am a User Experience Architect. "Huh?" I typically start in with my daily functions. But is this entirely true? I made me realize (again) that ux is extremely multifaceted. Some projects I am on are more technically intense; writing jQuery plugins or developing a CSS architecture and other projects I never even touch code - I might create diagrams and flows. But I find that I am constantly balancing being buried in the technical nuances of development with a global view of purpose.

I came across this UX Magazine article and wish I could tattoo it to the inside of my forehead so I never forget it:

http://www.uxmag.com/design/the-psychologists-view-of-ux-design

1. People do not want to work or think more than they have to.

2. People have limitations.

3. People make mistakes.

4. Human memory is complicated.

5. People are social.

6. Attention wanes.

7. People crave information.

8. Mental processing occurs unconsciously.

9. People create mental models.

10. Clean logical visual system.

Paper is error prone but software gives me a migraine.

A recent UX Magazine article sums up one of the biggest hurdles for medical IT adoption:

Adoption and utilization can also be issues if the technology does the opposite of what it was intended to do. For example, physicians often lament that writing prescriptions used to be as easy as scrawling some text on a piece of paper. The task now frequently requires prescribing physicians to navigate through many complex software screens to accomplish the same task. http://www.uxmag.com/technology/portable-and-powerful

Adoption happens when people love the products they use. I truly believe that if you build it (well) they will come. The issue then appears that the medical field has not come around like the public has. But maybe they have. Aren't medical professionals also buying smart phones?

The medical profession would greatly benefit from lowering the barrier to entry for smaller more innovative companies that can build solid, safe applications that support or integrate with EMRs. Currently there are certifications that raise the bar so high that for the most part, only large software companies can afford the certification. Don't get me wrong, I am a proponent of standards but not if they only support the companies that take a one-size fits none approach. We have seen innovative companies such as 37 Signals build highly successful, small focused applications. The smaller applications focus on a subset of needs that a user has. They are truly useful and not featureful.

Even with my professional experience, the smaller tightly focused projects are the ones with the better performance (metrics and user studies support this) and often are released on time.

Granted, this article is of my biased opinion but I believe that a shift in approach is needed for adoption of systems that are not seen as migraine inducing and are adopted readily. The software moves from desktop applications needing lots of configuration to tightly focused web-based apps that are simple to use and support users needs.

Importance of HTML Headings for Accessibility