http://jounce.net/The latest items at Jounce by M. Jackson Wilkinsonen-usThu, 05 Nov 2009 14:02:38 +0000http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/4FCJvzbnRxo/incompetence.html<p>Dustin&nbsp;Curtis:</p> <blockquote> <p>A <span class="caps">FEW</span> <span class="caps">MONTHS</span> <span class="caps">AGO</span>, I wrote an article expressing my displeasure with American Airlines‘ hideous online presence. I also spent some time mocking up a redesigned version of their website. To my surprise, the head of user experience at <span class="caps">AA</span>.com emailed me an amazing response describing some of the design problems faced in large corporations. You should read my original article here and the response from Mr. X here. An hour after I posted the response, American Airlines fired Mr.&nbsp;X.</p> </blockquote> <p>One one hand, he violated his <span class="caps">NDA</span>, which is generally a bad thing and sometimes worth termination. On the other hand, the fact that what he said was even covered by an <span class="caps">NDA</span> is a bit absurd. The biggest secret he might have revealed was forthcoming transparency into fares and sales policies &#8212; and that&#8217;s only a shocking announcement if you often fly&nbsp;<span class="caps">AA</span>.</p> <p>In any event, the firing of this guy is sure to hurt <span class="caps">AA</span> more than his post could&nbsp;have.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/nov/05/the-incompetence-of-american-airlines-the-fate-of-mr-x/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/4FCJvzbnRxo" height="1" width="1"/>Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:02:38 +0000http://dustincurtis.com/incompetence.htmlhttp://dustincurtis.com/incompetence.htmlhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/-qcFu-xVq6c/<p>A quick post I wrote for the Viget <span class="caps">UX</span> blog on five major identity schemes, how they&#8217;re used effectively, and how to go about working out a scheme for your&nbsp;product:</p> <blockquote> <p>The key to choosing a system is balancing the needs for the contributor&#8217;s privacy against the skepticism of the consumers. In Yelp&#8217;s case, a pseudonymous identity system might lead some to think that many reviews of local restaurants are being posted by the restaurant staff itself. That might still be the case, but at least it&#8217;s discouraged by the emphasis on abstracted real names. In Facebook&#8217;s case, privacy in terms of identity isn&#8217;t really necessary for people who are supposed to know each other anyway. For a forum dealing with sensitive topics like disgruntled workers, relationships, or medical issues, anonymity might be crucial to creating a safe haven for people to share their&nbsp;thoughts.</p> </blockquote> <p>It&#8217;s easy to overlook, and can be tough to change&nbsp;later&#8230;</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/nov/04/five-major-identity-schemes-and-how-to-decide/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/-qcFu-xVq6c" height="1" width="1"/>Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:41:22 +0000http://www.viget.com/advance/five-major-identity-schemes-and-how-to-decide/http://www.viget.com/advance/five-major-identity-schemes-and-how-to-decide/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/Y-2gQ7HJr34/<p>Nick Kallen, one of the Twitter&nbsp;Engineers:</p> <blockquote> <p>Human beings need to understand one another in terms of primordial intimacies because man has no other tools for understanding the solicitations of man. But if the size of the world no is on longer amenable to intimacy technologies, then mankind must invent information technologies that rehumanize the world. Thus the proliferation of social software on the web. The reification of the social graph in Friendster; the Facebook Newsfeed and the Twitter; and the Foursquare all serve this one purpose: to rehumanize an inhumane&nbsp;world.</p> </blockquote> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/nov/04/the-meaning-of-information-technology/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/Y-2gQ7HJr34" height="1" width="1"/>Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:36:10 +0000http://magicscalingsprinkles.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/the-meaning-of-information-technology/http://magicscalingsprinkles.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/the-meaning-of-information-technology/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/JfEkd2X-a6U/why-do-we-have-an-img-element<p>Mark Pilgrim traces the conversations that resulted in the <span class="caps">IMG</span> tag, with lots of interesting conclusions and observations mixed in. I won&#8217;t give away the ending, but here&#8217;s one important&nbsp;takeaway:</p> <blockquote> <p><span class="caps">HTML</span> has always been a conversation between browser makers, authors, standards wonks, and other people who just showed up and liked to talk about angle brackets. Most of the successful versions of <span class="caps">HTML</span> have been “retro-specs,” catching up to the world while simultaneously trying to nudge it in the right direction. Anyone who tells you that <span class="caps">HTML</span> should be kept “pure” (presumably by ignoring browser makers, or ignoring authors, or both) is simply misinformed. <span class="caps">HTML</span> has never been pure, and all attempts to purify it have been spectacular failures, matched only by the attempts to replace&nbsp;it.</p> </blockquote> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/nov/03/why-do-we-have-an-img-element/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/JfEkd2X-a6U" height="1" width="1"/>Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:23:16 +0000http://diveintomark.org/archives/2009/11/02/why-do-we-have-an-img-elementhttp://diveintomark.org/archives/2009/11/02/why-do-we-have-an-img-elementhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/J5bUyNJR2vU/02ratings.html<p>Not only are DVRs not killing <span class="caps">TV</span> advertising, but more folks are watching shows because of them, and many of those people are too lazy to skip&nbsp;commercials:</p> <blockquote> <p>Almost across the board, the gains for playback are growing. The best preseason estimate for the current season, said David F. Poltrack, the chief research officer for <span class="caps">CBS</span>, was about a 1 percent increase from playback over the live program for the networks combined. Instead, many are in the range of 7 to 12 percent, with some shows having increases of more than 20 percent when <span class="caps">DVR</span> ratings are added. The four networks together are averaging a 10 percent&nbsp;increase.</p> </blockquote> <p>Of course, as with almost all such things so far, digital media isn&#8217;t actually killing a business, just threatening one particular model, revealing another more profitable&nbsp;model.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/nov/03/tv-finds-that-a-mortal-foe-the-dvr-is-really-a-best-friend/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/J5bUyNJR2vU" height="1" width="1"/>Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:19:16 +0000http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/business/media/02ratings.html?_r=1http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/business/media/02ratings.html?_r=1http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/qD3W1FXHTmw/<p>While it&#8217;s interesting that Torrent communities are using this to ban users, I think there are potentially a lot of ways to use this kind of hack in positive ways too, to improve the user experience based on the types of sites and interactions you know they&#8217;ve used&nbsp;before.</p> <p>Of course, the privacy concerns don&#8217;t go&nbsp;away.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/oct/21/css-history-hack-used-to-ban-torrent-users/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/qD3W1FXHTmw" height="1" width="1"/>Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:54:41 +0000http://ha.ckers.org/blog/20091008/css-history-hack-used-to-ban-torrent-users/http://ha.ckers.org/blog/20091008/css-history-hack-used-to-ban-torrent-users/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/gRbDG8c0_54/0012-google-wave.html<p>A good look at the problems Google Wave really does solve &#8212; primarily centering around business&nbsp;email:</p> <blockquote> <p>I believe this is partly Google’s fault: they released Wave to geeks and hackers and social media folks first. But Wave is not a geek/hacker tool, or a social media tool, it’s a corporate tool that solves work problems (more on that later). On the other hand, they never claimed it would be a Facebook replacement or a Twitter killer. Google calls wave an “online tool for real-time communication and collaboration”. The way Google should have advertised Wave is: “it solves the problems with&nbsp;email”.</p> </blockquote> <p>The article also discusses a few key shortcomings with conventional email. Would you solve them the same&nbsp;way?</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/oct/21/what-problems-does-google-wave-solve/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/gRbDG8c0_54" height="1" width="1"/>Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:51:38 +0000http://danieltenner.com/posts/0012-google-wave.htmlhttp://danieltenner.com/posts/0012-google-wave.htmlhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/1BvHHGMwHKo/<p>Straight from 1995, the first collection of animated <span class="caps">GIF</span> images, many of them originally made for this site, later becoming standards across the&nbsp;interwebs.</p> <p>We can thank Netscape 2.0 for this glorious&nbsp;innovation.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/oct/21/the-micro-movie-mini-multiplex/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/1BvHHGMwHKo" height="1" width="1"/>Wed, 21 Oct 2009 06:50:18 +0000http://209.197.100.244/mmmm/http://209.197.100.244/mmmm/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/nLMX_o1kGWg/<p>This is pretty hot. Moves from sans to slab-serif seamlessly, among other niceties. If only you could set this up and export to&nbsp;<span class="caps">OTF</span>.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/oct/20/fully-dynamic-font-using-processing/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/nLMX_o1kGWg" height="1" width="1"/>Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:36:45 +0000http://laikafont.ch/http://laikafont.ch/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/Pk4OnZR12Xg/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html<p>The title says it all. Now you have proof for clients. Who really cares about Ask and&nbsp;Yahoo?</p> <p>Another strike against&nbsp;<span class="caps">SEO</span>.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/oct/20/official-google-webmaster-central-blog-google-does-not-use-the-keywords-meta-tag-in-web-ranking/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/Pk4OnZR12Xg" height="1" width="1"/>Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:08:41 +0000http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.htmlhttp://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.htmlhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/Bf-sevFvlD8/208454730<p>Marco Arment discusses the two sides of the iPhone app store &#8212; the popular side and the craftsman side &#8212; and how apps targeting the wrong one can find themselves on the wrong side of success. He takes, as an example, the Iconfactory skee-ball game Ramp Champ, which has been <a href="http://gedblog.com/2009/09/28/losing-ireligion/">revealed to be a commercial failure thus far</a>.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/oct/13/the-two-app-stores/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/Bf-sevFvlD8" height="1" width="1"/>Tue, 13 Oct 2009 07:46:51 +0000http://www.marco.org/208454730http://www.marco.org/208454730http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/I_-0QzFDvwE/<p>Alex Russell in response to <a href="http://www.quirksmode.org/webkit.html"><span class="caps">PPK</span>&#8217;s new mobile browser tables</a>, which reveals wide disparities between various versions of mobile&nbsp;WebKit:</p> <blockquote> <p>The important takeaway for web developers in all of this is that WebKit is winning and that that is a good thing. The dynamics of the marketplace have thus far ensured that we don’t get “stuck” the way we did on the desktop. That is real&nbsp;progress.</p> </blockquote> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/oct/13/webkit-mobile-and-progress/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/I_-0QzFDvwE" height="1" width="1"/>Tue, 13 Oct 2009 07:41:23 +0000http://alex.dojotoolkit.org/2009/10/webkit-mobile-and-progress/http://alex.dojotoolkit.org/2009/10/webkit-mobile-and-progress/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/vUK0iIfoUcM/2090<p>Derek&nbsp;Powazek:</p> <blockquote> <p>It’s a game, and every link is a score for the <span class="caps">SEO</span> jerkwads and their disreputable clients. And every time they win, those of us trying to create quality work and good experiences on the web&nbsp;lose.</p> </blockquote> <p>I&#8217;m looking forward to my first opportunity to use the word &#8220;jerkwad&#8221; in semi-formal&nbsp;conversation.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/oct/13/spammers-evildoers-and-opportunists/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/vUK0iIfoUcM" height="1" width="1"/>Tue, 13 Oct 2009 07:37:10 +0000http://powazek.com/posts/2090http://powazek.com/posts/2090http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/CoekQ5NB2Uk/the_myth_of_the_page_fold_evidence_from_user_testing.htm<p>From&nbsp;CXPartners:</p> <blockquote> <p>We can offer three design tips to ensure content below the fold is&nbsp;seen.</p> <p>Less is more – don’t be tempted to cram everything above the fold. Good use of whitespace and imagery encourages&nbsp;exploration.</p> <p>Stark, horizontal lines discourage scrolling - this doesn’t mean stop using horizontal full width elements. Have a small amount of content just visible, poking up above the fold to encourage&nbsp;scrolling.</p> <p>Avoid the use of in-page scroll bars - the browser scrollbar is an indicator of the amount of content on the page. iFrames and other elements with scroll bars in the page can break this convention and may lead to content not being&nbsp;seen.</p> </blockquote> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/oct/08/the-myth-of-the-page-fold-evidence-from-user-testing/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/CoekQ5NB2Uk" height="1" width="1"/>Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:29:42 +0000http://www.cxpartners.co.uk/thoughts/the_myth_of_the_page_fold_evidence_from_user_testing.htmhttp://www.cxpartners.co.uk/thoughts/the_myth_of_the_page_fold_evidence_from_user_testing.htmhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/et9qV52fg-I/dont-make-your-links-open-in-a-new-window-im-serious.html<p>Nate Eagle on the <span class="caps">PBS</span> Design&nbsp;blog:</p> <blockquote> <p>There&#8217;s nothing terribly difficult about hitting cmd+click for me: I&#8217;ve got two able arms with able fingers attached to the hands that join them, but Twitter&#8217;s completely right that I always want its links to open in new windows and that I appreciate not having to think about it. Twitter&#8217;s my base, man: I want to have my place saved while your picture of your adorable bull-dog loads in another&nbsp;window.</p> </blockquote> <p>The answer? Inconclusive, but I can identify with Nate&#8217;s&nbsp;indecision.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/sep/30/are-links-that-open-in-new-windows-the-great-satan/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/et9qV52fg-I" height="1" width="1"/>Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:18:17 +0000http://www.pbs.org/design/2009/09/dont-make-your-links-open-in-a-new-window-im-serious.html#morehttp://www.pbs.org/design/2009/09/dont-make-your-links-open-in-a-new-window-im-serious.html#morehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/zbvkCPxQzhg/<p>They dropped Paul Rand&#8217;s interesting logo, which was designed in 1985, and replaced it with Yale University&#8217;s main logotype, which, while clearly not as inherently interesting, does indeed convey the character of the University and much of its community reasonably&nbsp;well.</p> <p>While this may have been one of Rand&#8217;s most interesting logos, it wasn&#8217;t one of his best, and certainly wasn&#8217;t as timeless as many of his others. Instead, it created the perception that the University and the Press were very different entities, moving in different directions, and this is apparently something they wanted to&nbsp;rectify.</p> <p>Based on the comments on Twitter, I&#8217;m apparently one of the few who thinks this was a good decision. As a graphic design artifact, and as an important element of the history of logo design, it will surely live on. As a logo, its time had&nbsp;come.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/sep/30/yale-press-drops-distinctive-logo/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/zbvkCPxQzhg" height="1" width="1"/>Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:46:26 +0000http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/art-news/2009/09/30/yale-press-drops-distinctive-logo/http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/art-news/2009/09/30/yale-press-drops-distinctive-logo/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/Nywzby00gtA/001196.html<p>Caterina&nbsp;Fake:</p> <blockquote> <p>Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on. Paying attention to what is going on in the world. Seeing patterns. Seeing things as they are rather than how you want them to be. Being able to read what people want. Putting yourself in the right place where information is flowing freely and interesting new juxtapositions can be seen. But you can save yourself a lot of time by working on the right thing. Working hard, even, if that&#8217;s what you like to&nbsp;do.</p> </blockquote> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/sep/30/working-hard-is-overrated/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/Nywzby00gtA" height="1" width="1"/>Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:10:39 +0000http://caterina.net/archive/001196.htmlhttp://caterina.net/archive/001196.htmlhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/u1WjpeRB8g4/intelligent_home_screen.html<p>Interesting concept screen from Larva&nbsp;Labs:</p> <blockquote> <p>Larva Labs proposes an intelligent home screen that creates a meaningful hierarchy out of a user’s information. Designed for an Android-based handset, our home screen is intended to appeal to Blackberry owners and people struggling with information&nbsp;overload</p> </blockquote> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/sep/21/intelligent-home-screen-for-android/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/u1WjpeRB8g4" height="1" width="1"/>Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:35:55 +0000http://www.larvalabs.com/product_pages/intelligent_home_screen.htmlhttp://www.larvalabs.com/product_pages/intelligent_home_screen.htmlhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/BJQi0IEJSq0/<p>Tom Watson on the value of taking outlier cases into&nbsp;account:</p> <blockquote> <p>Now these things on their own are valuable, but the collateral benefits are why you should do them. If you were designing a car, worrying about extra leg room might make you rethink the entire console. Making a design polished isn’t achieved by making it work for your mom or the average user. You end up with something&nbsp;average.</p> </blockquote> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/sep/21/outliers/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/BJQi0IEJSq0" height="1" width="1"/>Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:32:50 +0000http://tincorporated.com/writing/2009/sep/20/outliers/http://tincorporated.com/writing/2009/sep/20/outliers/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/dsomvdoO600/<p>Some solid tips on presenting from Jason Santa Maria. Including this&nbsp;nugget:</p> <blockquote> <p>Your slides are not your talk. Even though slides are what most people equate with “the talk,” depending on your presentation style, they are actually one of the least important&nbsp;aspects.</p> </blockquote> <p>Can&#8217;t tell you how much I steam when someone asks me to &#8220;send my presentation.&#8221; Like, do they have a time&nbsp;machine?</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/sep/17/make-yourself-presentable/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/dsomvdoO600" height="1" width="1"/>Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:53:59 +0000http://jasonsantamaria.com/articles/make-yourself-presentable/http://jasonsantamaria.com/articles/make-yourself-presentable/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/LvHsMcqVIo4/<p>Most content creation tools (think WordPress, <span class="caps">MT</span>, Blogger) relegate content creation to a secondary page. Adam Mathes argues that this is bass-ackwards, complete with&nbsp;examples:</p> <blockquote> <p>Twitter gets it right. This is why anyone - even confused celebrities who barely comprehend technology - can actually use this product. You show up, there’s a box at the top, you type in it, and it shows up below with other people’s stuff you can&nbsp;read.</p> </blockquote> <p>If content creation is the primary action, it should be presented that&nbsp;way.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/sep/09/your-post-box-is-too-small/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/LvHsMcqVIo4" height="1" width="1"/>Wed, 09 Sep 2009 09:36:34 +0000http://trenchant.org/daily/2009/9/8/http://trenchant.org/daily/2009/9/8/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/yJTnDpoeZGs/How-to-Build-a-Popularity-Algorithm-You-can-be-Proud-of.aspx<p>Popularity based on votes seems like a super-simple algorithm at first, but it can get pretty hairy once you get into the details. This post dives into some of those details and discusses how to make an algorithm that is complete and&nbsp;effective.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/sep/09/how-to-build-a-popularity-algorithm-you-can-be-proud-of/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/yJTnDpoeZGs" height="1" width="1"/>Wed, 09 Sep 2009 08:17:17 +0000http://blog.linkibol.com/post/How-to-Build-a-Popularity-Algorithm-You-can-be-Proud-of.aspxhttp://blog.linkibol.com/post/How-to-Build-a-Popularity-Algorithm-You-can-be-Proud-of.aspxhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/zb6SRxvF-OA/why_your_web_content_will_look_darker.html<p>I was just explaining the whole Snow Leopard gamma shift this morning to Ali when she asked why some of her recent work was looking so dark. Conveniently, Adobe&#8217;s John Nack published an article that includes an interesting history of the&nbsp;issue:</p> <blockquote> <p>Macintosh, in 1984, introduced us to desktop publishing and to displays with shades of grays. Publishing at that time meant printing presses, and the dot gain of a typical press (then and now) corresponds to a gamma of 1.8. As color management was non-existent at the time (the first color management solutions did not appear until early 1990s, when color displays became more available), Apple&#8217;s pick of a 1.8 display gamma enabled the Macintosh displays to match the&nbsp;press.</p> </blockquote> <p>But now both Macs and Windows are at 2.2, while the HDTVs are all moving to 2.6. Something tells me we&#8217;ll have to deal with this again in a couple&nbsp;years.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/sep/07/why-your-web-content-will-look-darker-on-snow-leopard/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/zb6SRxvF-OA" height="1" width="1"/>Mon, 07 Sep 2009 17:01:44 +0000http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2009/09/why_your_web_content_will_look_darker.htmlhttp://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2009/09/why_your_web_content_will_look_darker.htmlhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/o0odNILEqdY/000455.php<p>Written in&nbsp;2002:</p> <blockquote> <p>Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48&nbsp;hours.</p> </blockquote> <p>Funny read. I think a lot of this will even out as the industry becomes more mature, sheds some of its silly social media expert influences, and begins to have some recognition of authority. That day can&#8217;t come soon&nbsp;enough.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/sep/07/if-architects-had-to-work-like-web-designers/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/o0odNILEqdY" height="1" width="1"/>Mon, 07 Sep 2009 08:38:55 +0000http://www.digitalsurvivors.com/archives/000455.phphttp://www.digitalsurvivors.com/archives/000455.phphttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/rNjSHB78wtw/<p>The Most Excellent and Right Honourable Doug Avery tries to clear up the mysterious Save for Web color&nbsp;shift:</p> <blockquote> <p>This comes down to a matter of taste. As you can see, Row 4 [sRGB, no embedded profile] produced great, predictable results as long as you remember to turn on Color Proofing while you&#8217;re viewing things (and in <span class="caps">CS3</span>, it&#8217;s off by default every time you start Photoshop). This indicates that sRGB is workable, you just need to be careful that you understand what you&#8217;re&nbsp;seeing.</p> <p>I still prefer the monitor profile [no embedded <span class="caps">ICC</span> profile] (Row 8), it simplifies the entire process and makes my results even more predictable. It also might makes things easier if you&#8217;re in a hurry and need to mix screenshots into a comp without the colors&nbsp;mis-matching.</p> </blockquote> <p>Click the link, view the poster, pick your poison, and never have an issue&nbsp;again.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/sep/04/save-for-web-simply/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/rNjSHB78wtw" height="1" width="1"/>Fri, 04 Sep 2009 07:46:54 +0000http://www.viget.com/inspire/save-for-web-simply/http://www.viget.com/inspire/save-for-web-simply/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/i1Vvx6wZKFA/the-other-side-of-crowdsourcing.html<p>A good article arguing against crowdsourcing design. The key&nbsp;takeaway:</p> <blockquote> <p>While design sites tout the &#8220;community&#8221; aspects of their sites, the truth is that they play a winner-take-all game where work is purposefully not collaborative. The power of crowdsourcing comes from when many people working together can achieve something big, like when hundreds of people spend a few minutes each tagging museum photos through the Extraordinaries or when 50 people each contributing $50 can collectively fund an artist&#8217;s dream project through&nbsp;Kickstarter.</p> </blockquote> <p>The debate goes&nbsp;on&#8230;</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/sep/03/the-other-side-of-crowdsourcing/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/i1Vvx6wZKFA" height="1" width="1"/>Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:03:13 +0000http://www.transcapitalist.com/transcapitalist/2009/9/1/the-other-side-of-crowdsourcing.html?lastPage=true#comment5315111http://www.transcapitalist.com/transcapitalist/2009/9/1/the-other-side-of-crowdsourcing.html?lastPage=true#comment5315111http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/pWcTEMz7j2w/1890-the-bar-for-success-in-our-industry-is-too-low<p>This actually raises one of the issues I brought up in my post yesterday. Jason&nbsp;Fried:</p> <blockquote> <p>So I guess what ultimately bothers me most about this New York Times piece, and many other pieces just like it (see TechCrunch daily), is the example that’s being set for the next generation of entrepreneurs. They’re seeing business success defined as “the projections say we’ll profitable later”. They’re constantly being exposed to excuses. They’re being taught that profits are these things that only happen one day far away. That’s just&nbsp;wrong.</p> </blockquote> <p>Word. There are a few ideas that make sense to plan for profitability down the road a ways, but those are really few and far&nbsp;between.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/sep/03/the-bar-for-success-in-our-industry-is-too-low/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/pWcTEMz7j2w" height="1" width="1"/>Thu, 03 Sep 2009 07:17:34 +0000http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1890-the-bar-for-success-in-our-industry-is-too-lowhttp://37signals.com/svn/posts/1890-the-bar-for-success-in-our-industry-is-too-lowhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/b2EZaryOOVA/<p>Interesting&nbsp;concept:</p> <blockquote> <p>Text from questionable sources starts out with a bright orange background, while text from trusted authors gets a lighter shade. As more people view and edit the new text, it gradually gains more “trust” and turns from orange to&nbsp;white.</p> </blockquote> <p>Due out this fall. I wonder how much push-back there will be about who gets the label of &#8220;trusted&nbsp;authors.&#8221;</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/sep/02/wikipedia-to-color-code-untrustworthy-text/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/b2EZaryOOVA" height="1" width="1"/>Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:18:39 +0000http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/wikitrust/http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/wikitrust/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/ZkmT8-PcUOo/<p>You&#8217;ve spent a lot on the new product you released a couple months&nbsp;ago. </p> <p>You tried to do everything right: lots of user input and feedback, really solid interaction design, a strong <span class="caps">IA</span>, appealing visual design perfectly suited to the task at hand, and great developers managed to construct a fast and reliable platform for it all. Even the things you have less control over have been going well: all the pundits have been blogging about your launch as the next site &#8220;to watch,&#8221; and for the first time in your life, you don&#8217;t feel like they deserve a&nbsp;facepunch.</p> <p>But still, there&#8217;s something&nbsp;missing. </p> <p>Interest is plateauing, users aren&#8217;t using it like you&#8217;d hoped, and the potential investors and suitors are noticing. Some base hasn&#8217;t been covered, even as you tried to cover all the&nbsp;bases.</p> <p>See, the problem is the product itself. Whether it&#8217;s about features, expectations, business models, or something else entirely, your best-laid plan managed to hit the wrong&nbsp;mark.</p> <h3>The Wisdom of the&nbsp;Crowd</h3> <p>Sure, you&#8217;d talked to over a dozen smart and real potential users. They&#8217;d given you some good insights into what they need, too. A bunch of their words found their way into use cases, user stories, or whatever you were using, and then a bunch of those made it into the&nbsp;product.</p> <p>But here&#8217;s the rub: they weren&#8217;t telling you about the things they need, they were telling you about the things they <em>think</em> they need. They were wrong, and you overvalued their input. Remember how Henry Ford said, &#8220;If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.&#8221; You made the faster horse, or the razor cartridge with <em>six</em> blades, or the Twitter clone with&nbsp;groups.</p> <p>Most users just aren&#8217;t any good at product design. They&#8217;re good at banking, or biking, or blogging, or whatever they do all the time. They might even be good at giving feedback to the product once it&#8217;s out. They aren&#8217;t, however, just going to hand you a cohesive product that will solve the interesting and unsolved problems that are the focus of great&nbsp;products.</p> <p>In the end, even though the focus of the product is indeed the user, user input is only one small piece of the necessary inputs to a great product design. To win, you need to pay attention to some&nbsp;others:</p> <h3>The&nbsp;Business</h3> <p>You probably paid some attention to this. You probably made sure that there are at least a few potential business models hovering around your idea, whether it includes advertising, partnerships, affiliate revenue, a freemium model, something else, or a combination. You&#8217;ve probably looked to some of the behemoths on the interwebs for guidance, and taken a lesson or two from what&#8217;s worked for&nbsp;them.</p> <p>But there&#8217;s a problem with this, too: most of the &#8220;successful&#8221; sites we look to online for business inspiration aren&#8217;t profitable. They aren&#8217;t actually successful businesses, but still funded ventures looking for success. Twitter and Facebook aren&#8217;t remotely in the black, though they may one day get there, so why are you trying to emulate their&nbsp;moves?</p> <p>The successful businesses don&#8217;t strap a business model onto the product. Instead, the model and the product are inseparably blended &#8212; a Kindle and buying books, the Flickr pro account, Amazon Prime, the iPhone app store, Basecamp, Netflix, and even Hulu. Having a blended product and business model greatly decreases your chances for catastrophic failure compared to the &#8220;well, we&#8217;ll probably throw ads on it&#8221; approach. That&#8217;s not to mention other issues like the cold start&nbsp;problem.</p> <h3>The&nbsp;Technology</h3> <p>Of course you paid attention to this, hiring some great developers to build a platform that works great now, and won&#8217;t be hell to change and extend as you learn new things post-launch. But it&#8217;s important to consider the technology requirements in concert with the business&nbsp;model. </p> <p>If you&#8217;re making a photo sharing service, are you going to be able to provide enough storage per user cheaply enough? Is there data available for your product-rating service, and can you get it easily enough or crowdsource it&nbsp;effectively? </p> <p>Thinking about the technology from a product perspective isn&#8217;t always about the code, but about making sure the code takes into account the needs of users and of your business model for at least the next few months. If you&#8217;re successful after a few months, you can make the changes you need and start really thinking&nbsp;long-term.</p> <h3>The&nbsp;Features</h3> <p>Is it okay that you don&#8217;t allow for photo grouping on that photo sharing site you made? Probably not. That&#8217;s something that people have come to expect on any photo site, even if they <em>never mention it when&nbsp;asked.</em> </p> <p>Planning and prioritizing features can be realllly tricky, especially at the beginning of a product&#8217;s lifetime. You want to make sure you have all the features new users would expect, based on how they perceive the product. You also need those things that make the product exciting and unique. You also need the business model taken into account. But you don&#8217;t want to build anything that isn&#8217;t a prerequisite for a successful&nbsp;product.</p> <p>Back to your photo sharing site. You probably need things like reasonable batch uploads, and maybe the premium account that provides extra storage. You also need your secret sauce &#8212; great facial recognition in photos that maps to your social network. But you don&#8217;t necessarily need support for uploading video. At least not&nbsp;yet.</p> <h3>A Cohesive&nbsp;Concept</h3> <p>The thing is, this whole &#8220;launching a web product thing&#8221; is risky business. Without the right balance of all of the above, some good design, solid development, great intuition, and a healthy dose of luck, it&#8217;s probably not going to work out as well as you&#8217;d hoped in the end. That&#8217;s just part of the game, and that&#8217;s also what makes it&nbsp;fun.</p> <p>In the end, your product needs to solve a real problem encountered on a regular basis by a healthy number of real people. They don&#8217;t even have to know that they have a problem, but if your product solves it, you&#8217;re well on your&nbsp;way. </p> <p>So say it right now, like a mad lib: &#8220;This project helps [adjective] people [verb] [adverb] better than anything else out&nbsp;there.&#8221; </p> <p>That&#8217;s your product. It&#8217;s a single cohesive idea, and anything &#8212; use cases, features, a business model &#8212; that don&#8217;t further that is usually just a waste of time and money. Your cohesive product concept is your single most valuable asset when you&#8217;re trying to find the light at the end of the&nbsp;tunnel. </p> <p>The best thing about product design is its inherent contradiction. Teams behind the best products think of everything, but at the same time, they&#8217;re focused on exactly one thing. If you can wrangle that, you&#8217;re almost&nbsp;there.</p> <p></p> <a href="/blog/2009/sep/02/consider-product/">Comment on This Post</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/ZkmT8-PcUOo" height="1" width="1"/>Wed, 02 Sep 2009 11:44:17 +0000http://jounce.net/blog/2009/sep/02/consider-product/http://jounce.net/blog/2009/sep/02/consider-product/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/pVOaAXi8jWI/15318<p>Leander Kahney finds a redesign of an on-screen keyboard in Snow Leopard, and helps put two and two&nbsp;together.</p> <p>As you use Snow Leopard, you find even more examples where the mouse is acting more and more like a finger could act on, say, a tablet running <span class="caps">OS</span>&nbsp;X.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/sep/02/more-evidence-that-snow-leopard-is-a-touchscreen-operating-system/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/pVOaAXi8jWI" height="1" width="1"/>Wed, 02 Sep 2009 10:07:30 +0000http://www.cultofmac.com/more-evidence-that-snow-leopard-is-a-touchscreen-operating-system/15318http://www.cultofmac.com/more-evidence-that-snow-leopard-is-a-touchscreen-operating-system/15318http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/OwwCxh-9BTw/mac-os-x-10-6.ars<p>As always, John Siracusa&#8217;s is as authoritative as they get. At twenty-three pages, the pagination almost needs its own pagination. I just finished reading, and it&#8217;s&nbsp;fantastic.</p> <p>Even if you&#8217;re not an Apple user, you should read this review. It has boatloads of interesting information about how to think about operating systems, and you&#8217;re almost guaranteed to learn more than just a few useful&nbsp;nuggets.</p> <p>It&#8217;s probably the most interesting tech article I&#8217;ve read in&nbsp;months.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/sep/02/mac-os-x-106-snow-leopard-the-ars-technica-review/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/OwwCxh-9BTw" height="1" width="1"/>Wed, 02 Sep 2009 10:05:32 +0000http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6.arshttp://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6.arshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/2Y0EP4tjER0/why-google-wont-create-the-next-twitter-or-fa<p>I&#8217;m always reluctant to link to anything Scoble writes, but I almost completely agree with what he&#8217;s written in this case, and have been thinking the same thing&nbsp;lately.</p> <p>In response to a quote from Google saying, &#8220;We don&#8217;t want to work on problems that only affect a small number of&nbsp;people:&#8221;</p> <blockquote> <p>The thing is, innovations usually come about when it doesn&#8217;t seem like anyone is interested. Let&#8217;s go back to 2006 when Twitter was first released. I remember showing it to other people. They thought it was the lamest thing they&#8217;d ever seen. See, no one was sitting around and saying &#8220;I have a problem, I need a way to blog but I want to be limited to only 140&nbsp;characters.&#8221;</p> </blockquote> <p>For <span class="caps">UX</span> folk, it&#8217;s one of the big disconnects between user research and the product design process. If everyone could name exactly what they needed, someone would already have gone and made it. Great products solve problems that people never knew they&nbsp;had.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/sep/01/why-google-wont-create-the-next-twitter-or-facebook-or-posterous/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/2Y0EP4tjER0" height="1" width="1"/>Tue, 01 Sep 2009 06:44:33 +0000http://scobleizer.posterous.com/why-google-wont-create-the-next-twitter-or-fahttp://scobleizer.posterous.com/why-google-wont-create-the-next-twitter-or-fahttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/XQrTp3ei8Sg/<p>Jeremy has a great essay about the issues he has with the markup and semantics side of the <span class="caps">HTML5</span> spec, just weeks away from a major milestone draft. Among other issues, Jeremy identifies one of my key disagreements: a lack of acknowledgment of colloquial semantics in the spec. For instance, footer doesn&#8217;t mean a&nbsp;footer:</p> <blockquote> <p>I don’t want to spend the next decade telling authors not to mark up their footers as footers. It was bad enough telling people not to mark up addresses as addresses. In any case, authors aren’t going to listen. If they see there’s an element called footer, they will assume it refers to the device known as a footer, and mark up their content accordingly. At that point, the <span class="caps">HTML5</span> spec will have become a work of fiction instead of documenting what’s actually on the&nbsp;web.</p> </blockquote> <p>There&#8217;s a lot of stuff in the spec that the average web developer couldn&#8217;t easily grasp, but for the rest, it&#8217;s worth a read and a comment or&nbsp;two.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/aug/31/html5-and-jeremy-keith/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/XQrTp3ei8Sg" height="1" width="1"/>Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:04:41 +0000http://adactio.com/journal/1604/http://adactio.com/journal/1604/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/gONXuViqotI/<p>Launched today. For amateur typophiles like myself, this will be an addicting&nbsp;site.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/aug/24/typedia-a-shared-encyclopedia-of-typefaces/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/gONXuViqotI" height="1" width="1"/>Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:00:10 +0000http://typedia.com/http://typedia.com/http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jounce/~3/oOK4f24d7cY/<p>Now it looks like BlackBerry devices will be using WebKit too. It&#8217;s quickly becoming the default platform for smartphones, and a behemoth among all mobile&nbsp;platforms.</p> <a href="/bookmarks/2009/aug/24/torch-mobile-acquired-by-rim/">Comment on This Entry</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jounce/~4/oOK4f24d7cY" height="1" width="1"/>Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:21:59 +0000http://www.torchmobile.com/http://www.torchmobile.com/