The VIA Group: Interactive Development

Making sense of interaction

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 02:16:00 +0000

A couple of things caught my eye today, not unrelated.

In "What the Google phone stole from the iPhone", Slate's Farhad Manjoo makes the point that is is not what the iPhone and T-Mobile's new G1, which is based on Google's Android OS, do, it's how they do it:

"This sounds obvious: Doesn't every mobile phone company set out to create a usable interface? Spend a minute trying to navigate deep lists of drop-down menus on a Windows Mobile or BlackBerry device and you'll have your answer. Before the iPhone, phones were pretty to look at but a pain to use; the last blockbuster mobile phone, Motorola's RAZR, induced aneurysms when you tried to do anything but make a phone call. The iPhone changed all that: In the same way that the Mac proved that people want computers that can display calligraphy, the iPhone proved that people want phones that don't require a manual."

Steve Jobs is famous for trusting his own instincts or the instincts of his genius designers:

"Steve Jobs eschews focus groups. He likes to say that he doesn't believe in asking customers what they want; he prefers to build stuff in order to show customers what they want."

Which brings us to the second point. Lest it seem that Jobs's attitude stems only from arrogance, here's what usability expert Jakob Nielsen wrote today:

"In any case, what users want and what users need are two different things, which is why it's long been a primary usability guideline to watch what users do, rather than listen to what they say."

We do a lot of work with large, complex Web sites. We've done enough usability testing (formally and informally) to know that even the most successful designs need adjusting.

Unfortunately, working with large teams often forces us into "waterfall" projects, sequential development in which requirements are gathered, design follows, implementation comes next, and then the product is verified against the design and requirements. But not against whether it actually works for the target audience.

There's a big problem with that. As Nielsen put it, "requirement specifications are always wrong."

Always.

The answer is easy enough: Interface design requires iteration. Somewhere deep in the hideaways at Apple I am sure even Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ives have discarded some pretty good ideas when they turned out not to work at all in practice.

Selling this notion is difficult in a world where CMOs feel they must sign off on every design decision prior to implementation. That is almost certainly a recipe for failure. The real world collides with design theory every time. And it is the customers who pay.

Webidemiology?

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:55:00 +0000

Webidemiology or Epidemiology 2.0? From the New York Times, "Google Uses Web Searches to Track Flu’s Spread":

SAN FRANCISCO — What if Google knew before anyone else that a fast-spreading flu outbreak was putting you at heightened risk of getting sick? And what if it could alert you, your doctor and your local public health officials before the muscle aches and chills kicked in?

That, in essence, is the promise of Google Flu Trends, a new Web tool that Google.org, the company’s philanthropic unit, unveiled on Tuesday, right at the start of flu season in the United States.

Google Flu Trends is based on the simple idea that people who are feeling sick will probably turn to the Web for information, typing things like “flu symptoms” or “muscle aches” into Google. The service tracks such queries and charts their ebb and flow, broken down by regions and states.

Early tests suggest that the service may be able to detect regional outbreaks of the flu a week to 10 days before they are reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some public health experts say that could help accelerate the response of doctors, hospitals and public health officials to a nasty flu season, reducing the spread of the disease and, potentially, saving lives.

The End of Theory

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 19:46:00 +0000

Fascinating article from Bob Garfield in Advertising Age, Your Data With Destiny. Garfield attempts to make sense of where marketing is going (away from mass media) and touches on a topic I have been a bit obsessed with, "The End of Theory" (see Chris Anderson's Wired article with that title for more background).

In short, the collection os massive amounts of data - in our case as marketers, consumer behavior data - makes theory unnecessary. Part of the idea behind Google AdWords and its beta service, Ad Planner, is that we know longer have to use our knowledge and experience to theorize about how to reach consumers; they've told us how to reach them.

Here's an example cited by Garfield (emphasis mine):

"Now we have the ability to automate serendipity," says Dave Morgan, founder of Tacoda, the behavioral-marketing firm sold to AOL in 2007 for a reported $275 million. "Consumers may know things they think they want, but they don't know for sure what they might want. They're not spending all their time hunting for those things."

Journey to flat-panel purchase
Take, for instance, flat-panel TVs. In 2006 Tacoda did a project for Panasonic in which it scrutinized the online behavior of millions of internet users -- not a sample of 1,200 subjects to project a result against the whole population within a statistical margin of error; this was actual millions. Then it broke down that population's surfing behavior according to 400-some criteria: media choices, last site visited, search terms, etc. It then ranked all of those behaviors according to correlation with flat-screen-TV purchase.

In that list, "shopping online for flat-panel TVs" ranked 22nd -- 18 places below "consumed 'Miami travel' content." Miami travel?

"Not Chicago travel," Morgan says. "Not Europe travel. Not business travel. Don't ask me why. But here's the incredible thing: No. 1 -- and significantly above the others -- was people looking at military content. It made no sense. Then I talked to a friend of mine who had been an officer in the first Iraq war. I said, 'What's going on?' He said, 'That's easy. The kids in the military are huge video-gamers. They get big, fat signing bonuses, and their housing is free. They don't need cars. So they buy big TVs.'"

Morgan followed up because he was curious and felt the need for this counterintuitive association to have an explanation. But he needn't have. Why ask why? The whole point is that data mining takes us to a realm beyond obviousness and common sense. The data speak for themselves.

The Left Side Navigation Bar

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:25:00 +0000

I blogged earlier this morning about WSJ.com abandoning the left-side navigation bar, and opined that online publications will make that a Web standard. It's better for readers online.

I just stumbled upon CNET's new look, and what do you know? No left-side navigation.

Why is this significant? CNET is often "credited" with setting the "inverted L" standard for Web design. CNET explains its design rationale, but I couldn't find anything on the removal of the left-side navigation. CNET still uses the bar on some idex pages, but it appears to be an exception rather than a design rule.

WSJ.com to push community

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:59:00 +0000

The New York Times reports that The Wall Street Journal will unveil a new Web site design tomorrow that pushes community. Subscribers will be able to comment on news stories, email each other, pose their own discussion questions in what The Journal calls a "clean, well-lit place."

One other thing the design will do: eliminate the left-side navigation. We got push back from a client when we recommend that a year and a half ago for their content-heavy site, but I believe online publications are going to push that idea into the mainstream.

I've always liked Business Week's design: no left side navigation, larger type for content with more linespacing (example here).

Staying ahead of the competition

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:02:00 +0000

I was thrilled to be able to buy a 20GB iPod when they were introduced, it seems like, yesterday. Finally an iPod with enough capacity to hold most of my music, and for only $499. (I just Googled it -- that was 2002.)

Steve Jobs announced a new iPod classic today in San Francisco: 120GB for $249. In six years it has six times the capacity at half the price. And the form factor is smaller.

Is this reflected in the CPI?

Information Architecture: What it takes to make stuff easy to find

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 18:56:00 +0000

Building Web sites is new and does not benefit from the centuries of experience we have with other methods of storing and finding large amounts of information, such as libraries or encyclopedia.

When VIA creates an information architecture, we spend a lot of time worrying about the way content links to other content. It is hard to overestimate the value of this work, but it may be harder for clients to perceive the value of this work.

Site maps, which show the high level organization of the site, are somewhat easier to grasp. It shows the "drill down." Vannevar Bush, the influential science advisor to presidents and computing pioneer, pointed it out in 1945:

"When data of any sort are placed in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass. It can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to have rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome. Having found one item, moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter on a new path.

"The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature."

CERN still on the Web's cutting edge

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 11:38:00 +0000

The World Wide Web was invented at CERN, the great particle physics research organization based in Switzerland. It as intended as a medium to share research and collaborate on projects.

The scientists there are still using the Web to spread the word:

Intelligent Design: Facebook and MySpace

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:40:00 +0000

Facebook is soft launching a redesign that aims to bring order to its expanding universe. On first glance, it seems to do a better job of organizing the clutter that has accompanied the burgeoning number of applications available to devotees.

MySpace is trying to catch up, recently launching its own redesign that cleans up its famous trashy look.

I have long been interested in, for lack of a better term, "deliberate downscale," a design ethic that seems to aim lower than the typical aesthetic ideas in an attempt to convey something like "we are approachable" or "we are focused on price, not sizzle." Wal-Mart's marketing has always approached me as the best example of that.

I wondered whether MySpace's "design" was really all about that, but its latest moves suggest that that may have been overthinking it; MySpace just developed the same way as the platypus and other odd products of evolution. Stuff just started appearing and if it worked, it remained glommed on.

Facebook started out ahead of the game, with a clean look that suggested usability, but the addition of so many applications probably made it less usable in a classical sense.

Both social networking sites seem to be onto a phase of intelligent design.

Google now reads Flash

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:25:00 +0000

Google says it is reading and indexing Flash files. Good news for Web sites like VIA's.

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Improved Flash indexing: "We've received numerous requests to improve our indexing of Adobe Flash files. Today, Ron Adler and Janis Stipins—software engineers on our indexing team—will provide us with more in-depth information about our recent announcement that we've greatly improved our ability to index Flash."

Bill Gates on Usability

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:23:00 +0000

The Seattle Times unearthed a five-year-old email from Bill Gates in which Gates goes ballistic about his experience trying to download Microsoft MovieMaker from his company's Web site.

Among the gems:

So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying - where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?
So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.

They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!).

and

"This time I get dialogs saying things like 'Open' or 'Save'. No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do."

Working on large, complex Web sites can be tough, but every once in a while someone powerful sees the light and it gives one hope!

Here's why the iPhone will take over the enterprise

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:16:00 +0000

From the Motley Fool's iPhone Takes the Enterprise? Bet On It.:

My point? Innovation is the only constant in tech. So even though corporate buyers have no urgent reason to switch to the iPhone, it's almost certain that an enterprising developer will create one.

But that will take years. In the meantime, the iPhone will catch on at corporations for the same reason that other popular mobile devices did -- because executives and employees bring them to work.

Click through isn't all for Google any more

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:12:00 +0000

Google doesn't give the top spot in its advertising column to the highest bidder. It also takes into account the quality of the ad. Better ads get better click-through and better click-through means more money for Google.

Now, according to today's New York Times, Google is also taking into account the quality of the landing page:

Over time, the company also looked beyond click-through rates to rank ads. Google now takes into account the “landing page” that the ad links to, and, for example, gives low grades to pages whose sole purpose is to show more ads. Soon, the loading speed of a landing page will also be considered, Mr. Fox said.
These factors contribute to an ad’s “quality score.” The higher that score, the less the advertiser has to bid to secure top billing. For example, an advertiser who offers to pay $1 per click to attract those searching for “vacation rentals in Colorado” may receive more prominent placement than another who bids $1.50 for the same query but has a lower quality score. An advertiser with a very low quality score may have to bid so much for placement as to make it uneconomical.

This qualifies as an epiphany for most, unfortunately

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:01:00 +0000

An article in EETimes describes the way the iPhone is affecting embedded systems design (the design of small gadgets and tools that require a balance of hardware and software to run):

David Carey, who heads the "de-engineering" firm Portelligent, praised the iPhone poetically as a "glass cockpit" whose most significant feature was "almost dispensing fully with the keyboard" and directing the user toward the device's touch-activated screen. The success of iPhone is influencing engineers to reconsider the way consumers use electronic devices, Carey said.

In turn, this reconsideration has shifted design emphasis away from hardware embedded in a device and toward software that enables applications and defines the user interface.

And:

[Tech Online] panelists agreed that simplifying an electronic device, to make it more user-friendly, tends ironically to require a higher level of complexity in software design. "There are layers of functions in devices," said Smart, "and none of it is very coherent." The solution is another layer of software " complicated in itself " that "makes a very complex application seem very simple."

As one who has been trying to sell the benefits of user-centered design for the past eight years, I can tell you that it is frustrating that it requires an epiphany for engineers and product marketers to understand the importance of making products that people can use and enjoy.

But I hope it will bode well for all of us -- the designers trying to sell this largely invisible product (invisible, at least, when it is done right!) and the people forced to rely more and more on gadgets and computers to survive.

Visually Disruptive

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:40:00 +0000

I love the trick of being visually disruptive to draw attention to interaction elements that might otherwise be ignored. Take a look at the New York Sun's left-side navigation, which extends beyond the edge of the page.

If you really want productivity ...

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 14:47:00 +0000

This is a side effect of Moore's Law, the famous idea that processing power doubles every two years. As technology becomes less expensive, more companies can be competitive with their products.

More choices at lower prices is shifting the balance of power to the end user and away from corporate IT departments. And people have their own preferences for the way they get their work done. The iPhone is having such an effect. From the Wall Street Journal's Why IT Hates the iPhone:

"Whereas software vendors and other tech suppliers traditionally pitched their products to high-ranking executives and IT managers, some are now paying closer attention to the technologies workers actually use. Some vendors say that if employees make clear that they are going to embrace a particular device -- with or without their IT department's approval -- then they will develop compatible products for it. Otherwise, they risk losing business to rivals.

" 'It's clear to us that power is shifting to the users' and away from IT departments, says Mike de la Cruz, a vice president at business-software maker SAP AG. 'So we've changed our strategy to focus on the users.'"

Bingo

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:34:00 +0000

Suddenly (since the release of the iPhone) the folks who brought you all those aggravating cell phones have a new attitude. From Hoping to Make Phone Buyers Flip in the New York Times:

LG Electronics, the maker of the Chocolate and Voyager phones, begins by asking focus groups to keep a journal, jotting down feelings about features they like most. Participants can call a toll-free number to share their emotions about the phone they are testing. And sometimes they are asked to draw pictures that represent their mood when they hold the phone.

“Our job is to be behaviorists and psychologists,” said Ehtisham Rabbani, LG’s vice president for product strategy and marketing. “We constantly have to be reminding ourselves that we tend to be geek types and our customers are not.”

Passive Advanced Search

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:26:00 +0000

Google is experimenting with new ways of displaying search results: a map view, a timeline view and an information view.

Search is difficult from a customer experience perspective. Everyone loves the Google standard: enter in just about anything into a simple text box and get just what you want near the top of the results page.

Advanced search is harder. People, even technically inclined people, don't have much luck with it, and non technically inclined don't like those advanced search interfaces.

I like introducing advanced searches passively: Clicking and sorting to refine queries. That's what eBay does when it shows you categories next to your results. You are able to reduce the results to a more pertinent set by clicking a category. That's a far cry from the ERIC and LexisNexis days of "television AND sony and size=32-39."

It is counterintuitive to think that adding steps is better than providing an advanced user interface that enables you to form the query you want right off the bat. But the passive approach works better (in my opinion) because it enables you to present choices in plain English and the single-step process provides immediate and effective feedback about the results of those choices.

Google will help everyone in two ways -- it has a track record for creating easy to use interfaces, and its popularity means that people will be exposed to the new ways of searching. We will all benefit.

Two heroes together in one rest room

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 12:07:00 +0000

Two of my heroes, John Tierney of the New York Times and Donald Norman of Northwestern University, take on the "automatic" rest room faucet: Scientific Breakthrough: How to Wash Your Hands - TierneyLab New York Times Blog.

Anyone who makes things that people use or interact with should read Norman's Emotional Design. And I have added The Design of Future Things to my Christmas list.

Behavioral targeting, for better, or worse

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 16:26:00 +0000

About 16 or 17 years ago, as a technology writer for the Albany Times-Union, I wrote an article about the concerns for personal privacy around computerized data collection and storage.

At the time -- when the largest hard drives available held 210 megabytes and the personal computer at my office was not on a network and had its floppy disk drives disabled by a wary IT department -- the loss of privacy was more theoretical than actual.

Well, we're getting closer to that time that privacy advocates worried about.

The AP has a story today on behavioral targeting, the idea that Web sites show you advertisements tailored to what your Web browsing patterns say about you (see Ad Targeting Improves on Web Sites - New York Times).

"Based on the weather reports and restaurant listings you check out online, Yahoo Inc. has a good idea where you live. Based on searches you've done, the Web portal might also know where you want to go. Don't be surprised then to suddenly see an advertisement on flight deals between those two places. It's what United Airlines did with an ad on Yahoo earlier this year as people browsed for something completely unrelated to travel."

As a member of the advertising industry, this seems great to me. The Internet (and other media, soon, thanks to the digital revolution in audio and video delivery networks like cable and satellite systems) provide a cost effective way to "track' what people do and serve them ads in context.

As a human being, I find it a bit worrisome. I have come to appreciate seeing an ad for a cheap flight to somewhere I want to go. (That kind of contextuality is at the heart of the information architecture practice here at VIA.) I am sure, though, that I do not want someone selling data about where I surf that is attached to my name.

Right now there is a modicum of privacy built into the cookie model. Web sites can place information on your computer (a cookie -- a small text file that the Web browser manages) and they can read that information. That Web site can't read cookies placed there by other Web sites, so there is a security model that works.

The trouble comes with the cookies accompanying online ads. These come from the Web site that serves the advertisement, most likely not the Web site you are visiting. So if you visit a bunch of different Web sites, and the ads on those sites are served by the same server, that server can put two and two together based on the cookies and start to create a picture of you: My Web history this morning suggests that I like reading about religion and college football(or is that redundant).

This can all be defended, I think, when the picture created of you is anonymous. That is, the behavior can't be tied to me personally. Just a nameless construct of me for the purpose of selling someone like that construct something they would be interested in buying.

Unlike the days of sneaker net, though, tying you to your behavior is not only possible, it's a business model. If you are a registered Yahoo user, Yahoo has the technology to be able to tie your behavior to your specific identity. Yahoo will share information about you with itspartners under confidentiality agreements, according to its privacy policy.

The ability of advertisers to target people who may be especially interested in their products is either better (if you are an advertiser, or you would prefer to be exposed to ads for things you might actually find useful), or worse (if you believe that your behavior may say things to some people -- like insurers or potential employers -- that you believe is private, or misleading).

(As an aside, thinking about 1991, when the coolest thing in mass storage was the Bernoulli Box -- a portable hard/floppy drive hybrid cartridge that held 90 megabytes for $1,100. I bought a loss-leader 2 gigabyte USB drive last Christmas for $20. So in 15 years, the cost of portable data storage went from $12.22 per megabyte to $0.01 per megabyte. That's a 99.92 percent decrease.)

If people who knew about user interface design wrote headlines ...

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:19:00 +0000

As these things go, this headline is not the worst: "Rocket Scientists Stymied by Hearst Elevators."

At least it sets up the notion that the elevators were doing the stymying and doesn't say "Rocket Scientists Are Idiots."

I'd go with something like "Poor Design Mars Innovative Elevator System." (Of course, without the play on the brilliance of rocket scientists, I doubt anyone would read the article.)

If you think about it for a second, elevators shouldn't be trying to stymy anything or anyone. They should be all-but invisible to the conscious mind.

Turns out the interface to these elevators was so poorly designed that even rocket scientists couldn't use it.

IT'S NOT THEIR FAULT.

I had a similar experience at the New York Marriott Marquis earlier this year. The elevators, like Hearst's, are mostly expresses (great!). But they disrupt the usual mental model by requiring you to enter your destination outside the elevator. When your express elevator arrives, it lets you know through a sound and a flashing display panel at the entrance to the hallway that all the elevator doors open into.

I have to admit that I am not sure how I would design this to be less confusing to first-time visitors.

You don't need a weatherman / To know which way the wind blows

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:32:00 +0000

You're not stupid

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 19:39:00 +0000

My ten-year-old daughter got another unwanted user interface lecture yesterday.

They're not always bad. I have waxed poetic about the reasons the ATM machine wants you to take your card back before giving you your money (you will forget the card if it's last; you aren't going to forget the money) and marveled as she worked my iPhone like an expert the first time she laid hands on it.

This one was a bad one though. It was a self-serve checkout at a grocery store in Connecticut. We stopped by to buy one thing - a tween magazine to shelp the kid pass time on a long road trip.

The supermarket had one of those new self checkouts, where you scan your item and enter your card or cash. I've seen the ones at my local Home Depot perform pretty well, but this one, to misquote Randall Jarrell, was designed by a spec sheet for a spec sheet.

There were three key interfaces: The bar code scanner, the credit card swiper and the machine that printed the receipt. Upon entering the aisle, I was first confronted by the credit card swiper, which had a flat panel that said "Swipe your card."

So I did.

I received no feedback from the device. I don't think. I was already flustered, because (as you can see above), my mental model was "1. Scan items. 2. Pay for items with credit card."

Dutifully I went to the scanner, a separate contraption about two feet to the right of the card swiper. I scanned my magazine. It beeped that beep that we all now recognize as "I read the bar code." The scanner asked me if I wanted to pay cash or credit. But I had already entered my credit card?

Although no one was behind me, I felt that moment of panic that accompanies the feeling that you are the stupidest person on the planet.

This is generated by the amygdala with no interference from the rational part of the brain that reminds me I am a user interface designer, that I have been a computer hacker and sometime programmer since I first laid hands on the terminal my dad brought home from work 35 years ago, and that I am a gadget freak.

I canceled the transaction.

There was a store clerk being paid to hover around this set of contraptions to help people escape. She gave me the help I needed (and admittedly would have figured out). Step 1, the card swipe, is actually Step 2. You proceed past the card swipe to the scanner, then go back to the swiper.

My mental model conformed to the functional model. It just didn't conform to the user interface!

The receipt was spit out three feet away from the scanner (about five feet from where you just swiped your card and completed the transaction), and she helpfully pointed it out for me.

I wish I had a picture.

I explained to my daughter that stores are putting these self checkouts in to save the cost of checkout clerks.

She explained to me that that did not do much good if they had to have a clerk there to help you figure it out.

The Web Designer's Dilemma: Design for visual impact or for easy maintenance?

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 19:06:00 +0000

Analog Devices launched a new page featuring its products for the automotive industry, which we were privileged to help them with.

The goal was to create something that conveyed to the big players in the automotive world that Analog Devices is serious about their industry and has invested a lot in it. ADI has a ton of content (because they have been serious about automotive and they do have a ton of experience with it) and a vision for how they wanted it presented.

Web designers can do wonderful things, particularly with Flash, but the Web team had some practical considerations: The site had to fit into the current directory structure, and the team wanted to be able to change, add or delete content as needed.

Content Management Systems loom large is all these kinds of discussions. They are getting better, but it is still fairly easy to recognize Web sites that use content management systems. They are characterized by stacked rectangles, a design that more easily adapts to the ever-changing volume of content that is "poured" into design templates used for multiple pages. We knew we wanted to use Adobe's Flash to add some sizzle to this page, and that is even tougher for Content Management Systems to handle.

With the large amount of content that we had but the inability to insert another level of index pages -- that's where the technical requirement about the current directory structure came into play -- we found ourselves in a bind.

Our solution: Build a Web page that included both Flash and HTML, or, more specifically, DHTML. Doing so enabled us to provide different levels or layers of content on a single page in ways that we believe are easy for visitors to comprehend.

The Flash section at the top of the page enables you to look at an exterior and interior view of the automobile in order to find the application you are interested in.

The DHTML in each of the columns below expands to reveal more choices than could be comfortably displayed on a single page.

The fact that the lower half of the page uses HTML and DHTML means that it is relatively easy for ADI's staff HTML experts to add or change content.

The result is a meticulously-designed Web page that isn't frozen in time.

A sum of destructions

noreply@blogger.com (Tim Beidel) — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 22:42:00 +0000

"A picture used to be a sum of additions. In my case a picture is a sum of destructions."
-- Pablo Picasso

I took the plunge and bought an iPhone last week on opening day. When I woke up Friday morning I knew I would not be able to fight it.

I've been entranced since Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone earlier this year. Actually, before that. I've been looking for something like this since rumors began to swirl a a couple of years ago that Jobs was on a phone project.

Some people thought the Motorola Rokr that included iTunes signaled that Jobs had thrown in the towel, but that looks more like a shot across the bow, or something to buy time.

I even had something of an actual need for this device, since I was regularly slogging three devices around: a Treo 650 for Internet access and email, a Razr as a cell phone (a client complained about the voice quality on the Treo and disinvited me to a conference call once because of it), and an iPod to get me through a session at the gym (while texting on the Razr and browsing and checking email on the Treo).

So off I trudged to my local AT&T store Friday, to get to about 35th in line. (Behind a friend, an otherwise solid and stable heart surgeon my age who I also once bumped into in the Apple store in New Hampshire, 90 miles away, one weeknight a few years ago when both of us were simultaneously coveting the first generation iPods). I was clumped with a group of middle-aged folks who laughed nervously at our reflection in the first folks exiting the store with iPhones in hand, who were more geeks than hipsters.

I showed an unusual amount of discipline when the person right in front of me snapped up the last 8GB model. I walked away. On my way home, I dialed the AT&T store at the mall and was surprised to find that they had plenty of 8GB models left, and no line. Apparently everyone feared the mall would be mobbed, and mobbed the two other AT&T stores in the area instead.

My experience at the mall was more Used Car Lot than Apple Genius Bar. The clerk directed me to a stand full of protective covers and told me to "Go pick out a case" as if they came with the iPhone. Since I had read everything there was to read about the phone and had not heard about an AT&T promotion, I looked at the clerk quizzically.

He answered my unasked question. "You have to pay for it," he said. "But I don't know anyone who would drop $600 on a phone and not get a case for it." Well buddy, meet your first. And that was before I saw what PC World had done to try to deface an iPhone.

In the week since, the iPhone has surpassed my high expectations. And it's not just that the glass hasn't scratched.

What Steve Jobs has figured out with the iPod, the iPhone and, to a great degree, OS X is to know what to leave out. While the geeks who make up a significant portion of the early adopters bemoan their inability to load goofy applications onto the iPhone or otherwise trick up the device, the rest of the world would like to make a call, check their email and maybe even browse the Web with a portable device that can make it worthwhile. Everything else gets in the way.

Most device manufacturers and software makers are obsessed with features. Whether that is due to marketing pressure or the fact that the people who design both are largely geeks themselves, I am not sure.

What matters is that companies are learning from Jobs' incredible success. I bet the AT&T Store would have made more margin on that protective case they did not sell me than they made on my iPhone. Everyone knows that Jobs is charging a rather large premium for three products that are all-but commodities. I can buy a cellphone and an MP3 player for less than $40 each on a rack at my local pharmacy. I have an email offer in my inbox today for a $239 computer that can run Vista from a legitimate mail order company.

Yet I am typing this on a $2,300 iMac, with a $600 phone/iPod sitting next to it.

The geeks may say that I am a sucker. While I did like flaunting the iPhone when I showed up with it Monday morning, what I am really paying a premium for is the experience of enjoying something that I have to live with (in the case of the computer and phone) and something that I can now not imagine living without -- access to almost my entire music collection (at least on my 60GB iPod).

I have had a few bones to pick with the iPhone. When it transferred my settings from my iMac, it made my wireless router its primary DNS server. My wireless router is not a DNS server, and I had to delete it from the list in the iPhone's settings before I could access anything on the Internet using Wifi. I challenge any tech support person to diagnose that problem and talk someone like my mother through the fix (even as easy as it was for someone who knows what a DNS server is, and why you need one).

I have also seen an error message or two that looked like something that could have been crafted in Redmond or Bangalore. Even some error messages that were close to plain English could be quibbled with. I am not sure that explaining that I could not connect to the EDGE network would be meaningful to me without all the hoopla about EDGE's inferiority in the days leading up to release (and I work closely with Analog Devices, which manufacturers processors and other parts for cellphones, and owned a Treo that used the same EDGE network for Internet access). How about "Could not connect to the Internet" instead of "Could not connect to EDGE"?

I have also missed a call that was forwarded from my Razr because the iPhone felt the need to tell me that the call was a forwarded call, in a pop-up message box that included a great big "Dismiss" button. Well, "dismissing" means closing a message or dialog box, but only to user interface designers and amateur translators of a typical user manual, but "Dismiss" meant "dismiss the call" to me, not dismiss the message. (There may be some financial reason to not accept a forwarded call, and therefore some good reason to alert me to the fact that the call was a forwarded call, but if I could not be bothered to learn how to voice dial, I can assure you that the intricacies of my AT&T contract are way low on my priorities list.)

Apple will fix these things. If the iPod is any lesson, our first-generation iPhones will get some great fixes in software updates. And then some great new addition will come to the phone that will not be available to us, because Apple will have completely re-engineered the innards of its next-gen device.

And I will buy it, just like 40GB iPod that replaced my 2oGB, and the 60GB that replaced the 40. Because Jobs' greatest success has not been in transforming the computer, the way we listen to music, or the cellphone. He has done all that, for sure, but what he has also done is the entrepreneur's dream mashup: He has merged the guaranteed obsolescence of the fashion industry with the whiz-bang of the technology industry. And I don't begrudge him his fortune for having done so.