I asked (on the Twitters, of course) what was the first application to use the pull-to-refresh gesture. My world of followers suggested it was the original Tweetie app, which was then acquired by the Twitter overlords. Since Tweetie, it’s shown up in a bunch of apps on my iPhone. I’m told it’s also on apps all over those Android phones that everyone talks about.

What’s interesting about the pull-to-refresh gesture is how natural it feels. Need more stuff, pull down on the list. Very simple. Very intuitive.

Well, it’s only intuitive if you know about it. You see, the problem is the gesture has no affordance (a hint or clue that the function exists). There’s no way to know where pull-to-refresh is implemented. Anyone who has learned the gesture has probably experienced the pull-to-do-nothing function in all the apps where it’s not implemented. Suddenly, something that’s novel has become a basic expectation, just like Kano taught us it would.

If you didn’t know about pull-to-refresh, how would you learn it’s in your app? For the most point, it requires you learn it from someone else.

Someone who leans over and says, “Hey, did you know you can update your list by just pulling down on your thumb?”

“No Way!” is the usual response, followed by the now-common thumb maneuver. “Cool!” is what comes next.

And it happens. Just like that. We’ve just transmitted the functionality, socially.

Pull-to-refresh isn’t the only socially-transmitted functionality. In years past, it’s how I’ve seen people learn about drag-and-drop in applications. It’s how they learn about special keys, like F5 for refresh or F1 for help. A lot of functionality has been transmitted from one person to the next, socially.

There’s nothing wrong with socially-transmitted functionality, as long as it’s not something the user needs (they can use the design just fine without it) and you have users that talk with each other. The problem comes from when you, as a designer, know about an functionality that only transmits socially, it’s hard to realize that people around you haven’t caught on yet. Just because it’s in your pattern library doesn’t mean your users will know about it.

[A note about accessibility: socially-transmitted functionality is rarely accessible in itself, as it usually has no way for a screen reader to work. For accessibility reasons, you probably want alternative access.]

In a recent site visit, I watched users struggle with navigating around a web app because the return-to-main-menu function was a not-obvious icon that looked like decoration to the untrained eye. All the developers observing the visit knew about it, but this collection of users hadn’t been infected with the knowledge of the functionality, and therefore didn’t use it. Their alternative: sign out of the app and back in again, which returned them to the top-level menu. (Boy, did that ever elicit a sigh of wonderment from the observation party!)

Do you have socially-transmitted functionality in your design? Are they things that users can live without and will be delighted when they hear about it from a friend?

Yes, you read that right. A blind person driving a car. Not an autonomous car that drives a blind person around, but a car where the blind driver is getting feedback and making real driving decisions in real time.

They’ve created an amazing set of devices to make this work. One that impressed me the most was the AirPix, a tablet-like device that uses small holes blowing air to substitute for visual picture. By waiving your hand over the air bursts, the user can get a strong sense of the terrain. It’s Google Maps through air. Brilliant.

Virginia Tech's AirPix Kinestetic Display

Watch the video. You’ll be blown away.

In this week’s UIEtips, I share an excerpt of the interview with you. I think this interview with Derek is still fascinating today and worth the read. This is just a taste of what we talked about.

Read the article Accessibility with Derek Featherstone.

Our next UIE Virtual Seminar just so happens to feature Derek Featherstone on Ajax and Accessibility. Derek will share a bundle of tips and advice on how to use Ajax and keep your web site accessible. Find out more about this must-attend webinar.

The answer to these questions, and many more, are in a series of podcast interviews I did with web app experts. Twitter has been abuzz over these interviews and we want to make sure you get to hear what all the tweets are about.(By the way, if you want be notified about each new podcast, or any UIE news, follow us on Twitter @uie.)

Coincidentally, all these experts presented at UIE’s Web App Summit in late April. We offer a special CD with presentations from these experts. At the end of the post, there are details on this CD offer.

In part 1 of a 2 part series, I focus on the following experts:

• Derek Featherstone on how Ajax techniques can improve accessibility
• Nathan Curtis on using patterns and component libraries and the efficiencies you gain from them
• Luke Wroblewski on frequently asked questions with web form design
• Molly Holzchlag on web standards for web apps, specifically with HTML5 and CSS3
• Richard Rutter and James Box on why they use rough interactive prototyping over traditional deliverables 

Sounds intriquing? Here are this week’s 5 podcasts. 

Ajax Aids Accessibility with Derek Featherstone

Does Ajax aid accessibility? Yes, if you do it right, using Ajax techniques can improve accessibility. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Ajax is like most techniques and technologies on the web — they are what you make of them.

In this podcast, Derek Featherstone, principal of Further Ahead, tells us that we first need to know how to think about Ajax as a design tool. Today’s toolkits (such as jQuery) can really help designers build functional prototypes to demonstrate their interaction concepts to developers, who will then integrate theirideas into the production system. Taking advantage of the many available libraries gives you a sandbox for trying out interactions without having to know the best practices for implementing the code.

More detail on Derek’s interview.

Achieving Pattern and Component Reuse with Nathan Curtis

Dealing with real-life web app production isn’t as glamorous as some aspects of design in the digital realm, but it is full of challenges and can honestly make or break a project. There are ways of truly optimizing certain aspects of the production so that you can create a product with consistent quality at a faster pace. To find out how, I turned to Nathan Curtis, principal and co-founder of EightShapes.

Hear how design pattern libraries and component libraries are defined. And how having these libraries can save you tremendous production time.

Using these repositories prevents each team from inventing their own wheels and engineering them from scratch. Nathan than compares pattern and component libraries to style guides, which were the first step toward this idea — one that is too often broken, over restrictive, and simply ignored. 

More detail on Nathan’s interview.

Web Form Design with Luke Wroblewski

How many pages should my complex form be? Are Dynamic Forms a good idea? When I get questions like these and others on web form design,I turn to to Luke Wroblewski, author of Web Form Design: Filling inthe Blanks and Senior Principal of Product Ideation & Design for Yahoo. Luke also has his own shop, LukeW Interface Designs.

In this podcast, you’ll hear the answers to the approve questions. Luke explains why there is no easy answer on the number of pages for complex forms and how the content should shape the form. And he’ll talke about how to use Dynamic Form correctly. In addition to answering some other questions, Luke also points out why he’s particularly interested in the concept of parti.

More detail on Luke’s interview. 

Web Standards for Web Apps with Molly Holzschlag

There are a number of new standards that have come out recently, HTML5 being perhaps the most notable for web applications, because it was brought forth with applications in mind. New features, like canvas, are designed to improve dynamic interactions between the presentation layer and the behavior layer. JavaScript’s usage has really matured and is almost indispensable with developers.

In this podcast, I reach out to my long time friend, Molly Holzschlag to discuss the impact these and other advancements are having on web application design and development, along with the tremendous benefits building with standards (or even a subset of them) brings to the lifecycle of a product.

Molly is the unsinkable author of a metric ton of web development books, is a noted teacher, and an in-demand consultant in the field. There’s likely no one better to ask about web standards than Molly.

More detail on Molly’s interview.

Roughing it with Interactive Prototypes with Richard Rutter and James Box

Without planning, web apps have no where to go. Planning documents for web app projects are often overlooked, despite their importance in the success of the product. As a designer, no matter how great your research is, or how amazing your programmers are, if your planning documents do not develop well, your project will fail.

James Box and Richard Rutter of Clearleft have been working on ways to plan highly interactive web apps that make the process more efficient.

Instead of using traditional deliverables, they show clients what they call ‘design tools.’ The advantage to these is that they stress design as a process, rather than set in stone. This method aids the flow of dialog between the designers and the client.

More details on Richard and James interview.

Information about Part 2

I think you’ll find great nuggets of information from all of these podcasts. Early next week, I’ll finish this series of podcasts with:

• Steve Mulder and Riccardo LaRosa on Web 2.0 Strategy & Design
• Dan Brown on Documenting Design 
• Robert Hoekman on Interaction Design with Frameworks 
• Brian Kalma on Company Culture Meets Customer Experience

CD Offer

If you enjoy listening to these podcasts you’ll want to check out the Web App Summit proceedings CD where you can hear the audio presentations from the Summit. For only $185, your CD will include 14 audio recordings and 22 presentation decks. Get more information on pricing and ordering the CD.  

Enjoy the podcasts.

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Yes, if you do it right, using Ajax techniques can improve accessibility. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Ajax is like most techniques and technologies on the web—they are what you make of them.

I had a chance to talk with Derek Featherstone, a world renown expert on web accessibility and principal of Further Ahead, a consulting firm out of Ottawa, Ontario that helps their clients get the most out of their web site designs.

In the podcast, Derek tells us that we first need to know how to think about Ajax as a design tool. Today’s toolkits (such as jQuery) can really help designers build functional prototypes to demonstrate their interaction concepts to developers, who will then integrate their ideas into the production system. Taking advantage of the many available libraries gives you a sandbox for trying out interactions without having to know the best practices for implementing the code.

Derek also discussed common misconceptions about Ajax. He said that, while implementing Ajax that aids accessibility has its challenges, it’s within the technical reach of most developers.

I was glad when he reminded me that many interactions that improve experiences for people with special needs also improve the experience of average users. Techniques like managing large data sets on one page through Ajax-powered content updates can also help users with special needs by maintaining context which is normally degraded by full-page refreshes.

As always, I found Derek’s insights fascinating and I bet you will too.

[In case you hadn't heard, this year we asked Derek to build a brand-new, full-day seminar just for UIE's Web App Summit. His session, Designing Great Interactive Experiences for Everyone: Implementing Ajax and Accessibility will unleash a torrent of information about integrating Ajax best practices into your design workflow.

For people who are new to Ajax, he'll define the technologies and techniques involved, and describe what they're really good for and what they are not. For those who are using Ajax currently, Derek will delve into where to get your biggest wins with these interactions and what the best practices are for enhancing accessibility with Ajax. It's going to be a great session from one of our best-rated presenters. You won't want to miss it.]

Robert Nyman does just that with the Nokia and SonyEricsson UK sites and finds some surprising results. It’s quite a good write up.

Very much worth a read followed by the obvious next step: checking your own site out the same way.

[Hat tip to NortyPig]