People are often surprised at all the different things we research here at UIE. While you’re probably aware that we spend a lot of time studying how people use web sites, you may not realize that we also have been researching how new technologies are affecting how users interact with the Web.

Joshua Porter, UIE’s Director of Web Development, has been investigating how sites such as Google, Flickr, and Del.icio.us are using new interaction models to create more powerful user experiences.

In this week’s article, Josh has collaborated with Richard MacManus, a full-time freelancer and author of the blog ReadWriteWeb to write an article describing trends in what people are calling “Web 2.0″.

Web 1.0 was about creating a web site with designer-supplied content, navigation, and HTML functionality. Web 2.0 is a new way to think about the web, where content moves beyond sites, interaction is no longer limited to HTML, and users start to control how data is categorized and manipulated.

While some aspects of the new Web are still in the realm of science fiction, many pieces are quickly becoming a reality. New approaches and technologies, such as Ajax, Folksonomies, and RSS, are becoming commonplace tools. In this week’s UIEtips article, Richard and Josh discuss how these techniques are starting to change the way designers think about their sites.

Have you thought about how these new trends such as Ajax, Folksonomies, and RSS will affect your work? Leave a comment. I’d love to know what you think on this topic.

Enjoy this week’s article and, as always, thanks for encouraging our behavior.

Read: Web 2.0 for Designers

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 25th, 2005 at 5:29 pm and is filed under Letters . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.