Macromedia’s server-side products have never quite enjoyed the same kind of success that it’s desktop applications have (the exception being Cold Fusion, but then it was already quite successful before it became a part of the Macromedia stable.)
So with the release of Macromedia Flex, is this equation going to change?
Not sure.
Firstly, there is a very similar product in Laszlo Presentation Server that has been around for a while. But despite its potential, I’m not sure if Laszlo has made quite the impact it was hoping to. Flex is definitely has a advantage in Brady (the MXML editor) but the real challenge for application developers would be to justify the cost of an additional application server just to render the UI which in turn requires a plugin on the client.
Somehow, I’m finding this a little difficult to justify. Had the same problem justifying Generator development about four years ago. But then that was the dot.com boom time, and funding an ambitious online application was slightly easier than it is now. So the question is, will Flex go the Generator way?
Sometime back I'd blogged about the design rational behind the 'well designed' urinals at the Amsterdam airport, today, I received an email with an example of a horrendously designed airport urinal...
Come to think of it, the design is so typically Branson...
I'm personally not too sure if there is an answer really. Karel Thönissen tried to answer it in this article but unfortunately the article has a stereotypical view of the various professionals/skill sets. Taking this topic to the other extreme is a discussion on Joel’s Discussion Board. But while all these points of view are quite interesting, im my opinion, to be an interaction designer you need a few important soft skills.
For example, it's imperative that and Ix Designer is able to understand the user goals in order to design according to their needs. But at the same the Ix Designer should have their feet grounded in reality by understanding the constraints of Marketing and Engineering.
It's a thin line to walk on, and in my opinion, one needs a balanced approach to work as an interaction designer. And while soft skills are great, they are of no use if they are not complimented by design skills. After all, that is what you will be paid for at the end of it...
I've got MT-Blacklist, but it still is not the answer to eliminating blog spam, and just today, I was hit with another burst. Of course with the Blacklist de-spam feature I was able to get them removed instantly and the keyword and ip address added to my blacklist within hours (today being a Sunday ;)) But I'm sure the spammers will still keep coming back...
So will Six Apart's Typekey be the answer? Let's hope so...
“ Physical products, from consumer electronics to cars, are needlessly complex because they're developed by insular companies that continue to ignore the growing usability trend.”
I agree with most of what the article has to say, except that with most consumer products, if it is essential to the user, they develop a degree of familiarity with it. I’m not denying a case for usability, but it’s not as Black and White as Mr. Nielsen would have us believe…
PS: Another interesting read on the same topic is Andrei Herasimchuk's Open Letter to Nielsen
Yesterday I attended a workshop by Rashmi Sinha and Jon Boutelle of Uzanto.
It was an interesting workshop with the first half dealing with Remote User Research techniqes. Uzanto advocates a quantitative methodology to develop Personas and gather user information. Often relying on web based surveys and phone calls, these techniques work quite well in salutations where one does not have the liberty to interact with users on a one-on-one basis for qualitative research. (Of course, these quantitative results need to be validated later qualitatively, but that is step two.)
The second part of the workshop dealt a lot with the business aspects of promoting usability. This was a really interesting session, and one final open question was 'What next?' as far as a career in usability is concerned. Rashmi was of the opinion that Usability/UE people will make good project managers. True, but really is that kinda it? How popular do you think the Chief eXperience Officer (CXO) position is? Any thoughts?
At Digité, we have an opening in the User Experience group. The following is the job posting, if you're interested, get in touch with me (leave a message/visit our careers page/or use my presonal site)
The Job Posting is part of the extended entry:
About Digité
Digité, Inc. is a rapidly growing organization that offers global careers in
developing leading edge Information Technology solutions and platforms.
Digité provides its employees with an environment that is conducive to growth
and where they can prove themselves by working on some of the best technology
platforms available today and by providing solutions that facilitate the
operation of some of the top businesses in the world.
About the position
We are currently looking for User Interface/User Experience professionals to
contribute to an exciting new business concept and growth by strengthening our
Product Development team. Apart from an unique opportunity to build a
world-class software product, we also offer an attractive package that matches
leading software companies. In store for you are challenging opportunities,
competitive pay, Pre-IPO stock options, and most-of-all, a fun-filled work
environment.
Job description
Professionals with 3-6 yrs experience in reputed organizations with
qualifications in the following areas:
1. Visual Communication/ Graphic Design
2. Product Design
3. New Media/ Interaction Design/ UI Design
Graduates/Post Graduates from NID, IDC or equivalent with excellent academic
records would be preferred. Experience working on Enterprise level web
applications/RIAs would be an added advantage.
Areas of work
Application UI (Web and Client Server)/User Experience Design/Information
Design/Instructional Design/MarCom
Key result Areas
Ability to define product requirements
User study
Usability testing
Heuristic Evaluation
Information Architecture
Graphic Design, Information Design
Coordinating implementation of interface design
Software skills
Should be conversant with Graphic Design/Web Design tools like Adobe Photoshop,
Corel Draw, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Fireworks, etc.
Knowledge of DHTML/XHTML, JavaScript, XML & XUL would be advantageous
Experience with the print media will be looked upon as an plus point.
Soft skills
1. Passion to excel (absolutely must)
2. Curiosity.
3. Team player with excellent oral and written communication skills in English
language
InfoWorld: Columnists: A look at the leaked Longhorn
Generally I’m not a proponent of deep analysis when it comes to alpha-level software. But so much furor has erupted about the recent alpha release of Longhorn, I figure it’s worth some type time. For those who missed it, Microsoft leaked Longhorn’s Build 4053 and half the world is excited about its feature set whereas the other half is throwing tantrums over its resource requirements.
Read Complete Article
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/03/12/11enterwin_1.html
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CNN reports that as U.S. jobs move abroad, more Americans are willing to work overseas:
“Robert Dunn first spotted the warning signals three years ago, after the dot-com bust.
That's when his Las Vegas-based company, Creative Healthcare Solutions, which provides Internet technology services to healthcare clients, started seeing jobs being awarded to companies in India and China.
Instead of protesting against the offshoring of work that might have gone to U.S. firms like his, Dunn, 55, has decided to get in on the game.”
Two years ago, I decided to come back to India after having worked in the Silicon Valley. I was one of the few back then, but these days I'm seeing a lot more people coming back to India. And now this. Maybe soon people in India will soon start complaining about this phenomenon of 'reverse brain drain' ;)
VentureBlog: Brand Follows User Experience
What year is this again?
We've stayed away (well, mostly) from rants on VentureBlog. But after having a very similar (bad) experience with two web services, I just can't help myself.
I've been looking to sync Outlook with public services of various types... we live in a time of web services, right? It felt like time to have my address book sync with my cell phone. I wanted to be able to look at my Microsoft Exchange calendar via a public web calendar service, similar to how most webmail services these days allow me to log into my private POP/IMAP mailbox. I want to be as effective outside the office and protected LAN as I am in.
But after installing various bits of software, creating user accounts, setting and unsetting numerous options and syncing for hours, all I've managed to do is erase important parts of my address book and calendar. And while I wasn't a CS major, I'm probably what you would consider a sophisticated user (and yes, I did have backups).
It's 2004 and time for the lessons of the last 10 years to be part of a required licensing exam for website producers: it's all about the user experience. And a negative user experience can often be much worse than no user experience at all. Much like voice recognition software, which is useless until it's practically perfect, there are some technologies that just need to stay in the labs until they're bulletproof. And I'd like to nominate technologies that have the potential to erase large parts of my most important data for that category.
The first wave of the web -- starting with sites like my own HotWired, O'Reilly's GNN and Infoseek -- was a short period of exploring the new medium of web publishing and giving the tool builders like
Netscape something to point at. The second wave was the Cambrian explosion with everything from Amazon to Yahoo springing to life. And of course, also everything from Boo.com to Webvan. No market was too small for someone to try to bring online.
The third wave was (is) about the heartiest companies which survived and built scalable businesses out of the wreckage of the bubble. And if there is one unique theme about almost every one of them, it's that they figured out the user experience thing. I'm talking about Yahoo, which first defined page serving time as an important metric; Amazon, which relentlessly sought out the mass market and brought trust and reliability to e-commerce; and of course, Google which refined search to its purest form at a time when website design had become a game of squeeze the most ads on the page as possible.
Hardware and software have become commodities, thanks to Moore's law and the prevalence of programmers around the world. A positive user experience is the only method of differentiation these days. In the early days of the web, I mistakenly believed that brand drove user experience which, in hindsight, was an old media way of thinking. These days, brand (and everything else) follows user experience.
O'Reilly Network ONJava.com: Graphical Composition in Avalon
Longhorn introduces significant new graphics technology, codenamed "Avalon." Avalon renders an application's visual elements onto the screen using a much more sophisticated approach than Windows has previously used. In this article, Ian Griffiths show how this new graphical composition model solves various limitations of Win32, what new user interface design techniques this enables, and what it means to developers.
Read Complete Article
http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2004/03/08/winfs_detail_3.html
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Tomalak's Realm
NY Times: A Software Program Aimed at Taming File-Sharing. The record industry is hoping that a little magic will solve its problems with online piracy by file sharers. The Recording Industry Association of America has been talking up a company named Audible Magic to lawmakers and regulators in Washington in recent weeks...
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Absolutely, positively, awesome...
Found this via moik78 and I really had a nice laugh. Can;t stop even now... :D
InfoWorld: Columnists: Offshoring and American competitiveness
When I was in kindergarten, my family lived in New Delhi. It was a magical year in which I made permanent memories of the sights, sounds, and smells of India. A decade ago I returned to India for a tour of its software industrial parks. That visit changed me in another way. I met programmers and tech journalists who were my equal or better in every way, but whom you’ll likely never hear of unless they’re profiled in an article such as this week’s cover story. Their faces and their voices became permanent memories, too. For me, the offshoring debate isn’t abstract. I know that it turns on a mere accident of geography.
Read Complete Article
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/03/05/10OPstrategic_1.html
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Dan Gillmor's eJournal: Web Patent Invalidated
Reuters reports that the infamous Eolas patent has been invalidated by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It's a preliminary...
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http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/010070.shtml
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Tomalak's Realm
WIRED: Some Like It Hot. Lawrence Lessig.This doesn't mean that there are no questions raised by the latest piracy concern - peer-to-peer file-sharing. But it does mean that we need to understand the harm in P2P sharing a bit more before we condemn it to the gallows.
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FlashClash is India's biggest-ever Macromedia Flash contest for designers and developers. Here's your chance to show off your creativity in Flash and take away cash and other hot prizes worth more than Rs.340,000. For more details check out the FlashClash site.
Last week I conducted a small workshop on Interaction Design for a few Technical Writers. The workshop was called 'Interaction Design: A Primer' and this is the material used for the presentation. If you attended the workshop, or are generally interested in knowing more about Interaction Design, you can download the ppt (zipped @ 3 MB) from here.
“Yahoo said yesterday that it would start charging companies that want to ensure that their Web sites are included in its Web index from which research results are selected.
The practice, called "paid inclusion," has long been a part of many search engines including Microsoft's MSN search function and Ask Jeeves. But Google, which last year surged ahead of Yahoo to become the No. 1 site for searching on the Internet, disdains the practice as misleading.”
Hmnn, not sure if paid inclusion really makes a lot of sense to people. Sponsored links are much better in my opinion...
Right when Macromedia announced a month of free access to Breeze I received an invitation to try out WebEX for two week. Absolutely free. Looks like there a small bit of competition bashing going on here...
We use WebEX at work (and it has worked well so far) so there was no point in going for the free trial, but I have asked the sales team to try out Breeze, lets see what their verdict is...
Mezzoblue has a posting that lists his favorite standards-compliant CSS based website designs. All excellent stuff, but what stands out amongst them is the new standards-compliant WDDG site. Ok did I mention 'standards-compliant' and WDDG in the same sentence? Well, they still use some Flash, but it is interesting to see what they have achieved with CSS. It's impressive, but for some reason, it does not come out as slick as their earlier Flash-only sites or even as good as some of the other CSS only designs... or may be it is just me...
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