This is your opportunity to hear all 12 Masters from the Tour give their 75-minute presentations. The OnDemand collection consists of 15 hours of audio recordings, Q&A from the audience, and the Masters presentation decks. It’s a toolkit that you can share with everyone in your office. You can access it any time you want, as often as you want.

Web App Masters OnDemand covers these topics

• Constructing sites for active communities
• Building native device vs. mobile browser-based applications
• Producing beautiful data visualizations
• Using data for design decisions
• Integrating infographics and games to engage your users
• Designing for mobile first
• Handling rich interaction techniques on multiple devices & platforms
• Looking at AARP’s journey into web-based applications
• Conducting successful kickoff meetings
• Finding users’ deepest needs and desires
• Designing Salesforce.com’s Cloud Apps
• Creating great design principles for your team
• Ensuring a positive user experience with mobile

Learn more about Web App Masters OnDemand.

With Web App Masters 2011 OnDemand you’ll get

• Fifteen hours of audio from 12 Masters
• The best of the Q&A from all the tour stops
• Presentation slides from all 12 talks
• Unlimited access to the material any time you want it, as often as you want it

Order Web App Masters 2011 OnDemand now

No pre-ordering and no waiting for a disc. With just a few clicks, you can have Web App Masters OnDemand at your fingertips and start to improve your web apps today.

Purchase Web App Masters OnDemand by August 30, 2011, for $179. After the 30th, the price
increases to $229.

Now go get your bundle of goodness.

Kate Brigham and her group at PatientsLikeMe are doing amazing work when it comes to online communities. They’ve created and nurtured an environment where patients can share information and their stories through data visualization. Below is part of the transcript from my interview with Kate earlier this year. After you read the article, you’ll definitely want to hear the rest of the podcast and encourage anyone you know with a chronic or life changing illness to explore PatientsLikeMe.com.

Read the article, Building a Community through Stories and Data or listen to the podcast.

And you can hear Kate in person at our last stop of the Web App Masters Tour
in Minneapolis on June 27-28. Get all the details of her talk and the 8 other masters at www.UIETour.com.

If you haven’t explored the UIE podcast library (hopefully you knew of its existence), it’s time you did. Many of our upcoming UIE Virtual Seminar presenters, like Dan Brown and Dan Rubin (our June webinars) have podcasts. It’s a good way to hear their expertise and see why we think they’re so great. Explore the podcast library.

At our Seattle stop, Luke Wroblewski captured Bill’s talk in a blog post he originally posted on lukew.com. He’s graciously allowing us to repost his notes.

Bill and Luke will both be at our final tour stop in Minneapolis, June 27-28. Look for the special registration offer at the end of this post.

*  *  *  *  *

At the Web App Masters Tour in Seattle, Bill Scott detailed how Netflix manages the differences and similarities in cross-platform design. Here are my notes from his Designing for Mice and Men presentation.

• Over 400 SKUs have Netflix running on them (TVs and streaming players). You could give every manufacturer an SDK and guidelines and ask them to make things. But most manufacturers don’t want to build experiences themselves and they often have the skills or resources to do so. They prefer a platform.
• Netflix uses HTML5 on Web, Tablet, Mobile, and TV. Have used different WebKit platforms to manage this. On the TV, Netflix ported two instances of WebKit in order to deliver HTML5 solutions (QT and Skia). This allows the same team to build the same way across many devices. WebKit is Netflix’s application platform.
• Why HTML5? Server-driven dynamic UI, Web-style release vs. CE firmware updates, Support A/B Testing, Learn fast/Fail quickly, Chaos otherwise.
• Netflix needs a server-driven UI so they can test lots of different variations. The PS3 interface had 16 variations and four experiences that were tested. Trying to manage this testing through certification processes (like those on TV manufacturers) takes way too long.

Different Platforms, Different Experiences

• Some people at Netflix have been arguing for a single experience across all devices. This has never born out in any kind of testing. Instead, Netflix has a variety of experiences on different devices and even regions. In Canada, Netflix does not have a queue as they only have a streaming service available.
• Netflix chose a portability layer. But varies user experience across platforms (TV, Web, mobile, tablet).
• What determines the right user experience for a platform?
• User posture: Stationary, Lean back, on-the-go, shared.
• Input capabilities: pointer/keyboard, LRUD/OSK, Gesture/OSK
  Navigation style: controls & windows, panes.
• Display capabilities: Hi-Res, near, far away, small, medium, large
• These constraints are really powerful. You need to embrace them to get to appropriate designs.
• Design for mobile first when thinking about multiple platforms as it holds the most constraints. This helps you focus.
• The new Netflix Web experience has learned a lot form the constraints of the TV experience.
• So What’s in Common? Design principles: fundamental, universal ideas that underpin good design stay the same but the application of principles varies across input, posture, navigation, and display.

Get Physical

• Whenever possible add a realistic, physical dimension to your application. The more true to life your application looks and behaves the easier it is for people to understand how it works and the more they enjoy using it.
• Use metaphors to embody physicality. Take a common, understandable metaphor and translate it to the interface. Example: filmstrip metaphor on the Rocku player.
  The user’s mental model is the user experience cushion. Don’t break the metaphor for the underlying implementation model.
• Instead, break the metaphor with magic. Strict physicality is hard work! Use magic to simplify the real world.
• Use directness to simulate physicality. The scrollbar has moved from a controller to an indicator (on touch devices). Content is scrolled instead of the scrollbar. It is not about controls driving the experience; it is about content driving the experience. You are interacting with the content not the controller. This is really powerful.
• It must feel real. Make sure event handling is consistent. Remember fingers are fat. Real estate is limited.
• On touch interfaces, you can use less constructs to create the experience, and instead add more content to create the experience. As people get used to the idioms, we’ll be able to do more with content interactions.
• Drag and drop often creates artificial constructs in an interface that are not necessary. People often start with a technical solution first not a user experience first. This often ends up in artificial visual constructs to support a technology solution.
• How big should touch targets be: 44 pixels on mobile, tablet, TV. 16 pixels on desktop Web (mouse/cursor) but accurate as 1 pixel.

Maintain Flow

• Change blindness: our brain expects continuous change. Single page changes sometimes leave things unnoticed because the change is too drastic. This happens with page refreshes on the Web –people don’t notice what changed. So people can loose their context when moving from page to page.
• Overlays can encapsulate alternate workflows without removing context. Flow keeps people engaged in a task. Manage screen transitions carefully. You can minimize them with page slide transitions and other forms of animation. When using transitions, make flow visible.
• Where possible replace annoying hover details with dedicated detail panes.
  You can help explain interactions through changes in the user interface. Content is the flow. Keep information in context.

Be Responsive

• Use transitions/animations to create responsiveness.
• Animation can: reveal relationships, improve responsiveness, show state change, focus attention, create delight, and simulate physicality.
• Needless fanfare anti-pattern: don’t use animations without purpose.
• Animation is a supporting actor. It should not take center stage. Always question why you are using animations. Occam: what can be done with less is done in vain with more.
• Consider the least effective difference to communicate change.
• Because you can easily add animations in Flash, people often do (many times in bad ways).
• On touch devices animation and input are synchronized. When things are more direct, connections between transitions feel more appropriate.
• Use invitations to create responsiveness: just in time invitations at drag moments & invitations at touch and hold moments.
• Pull to refresh is a great place to show a shortcut. Align it with a natural action like pulling down. Think about ways to align with already existing, natural interactions.
• Tours have their place but features at the point of discovery are much more powerful.
• Netflix Web site had a lot of white space in between box shots. The version that took out names, star ratings, buttons, and more performed much better than the version with text, etc. The idea is that content is front and center in the UI. This was directly influenced by the TV interactions.

Hear Bill’s full talk and 8 other Masters at the Web App Masters Tour in Minneapolis, June 27-28. Other topics at the tour include data visualization, UX in mobile design, and process best practices.

UIE Web App Masters Tour:
Get $100 off the Minneapolis Masters Tour with the promotion code TOURBLOG when you register by June 17.
Last Stop! Minneapolis

The last stop of the UIE Web App Masters Tour is in Minneapolis, June 27-28. Hundreds of web application designers, from all over have found inspiration from our world-class experts. Experience it yourself later this month. And below, you’ll find a special offer to help make attending this Tour stop a little easier.

The UIE Web App Masters Tour is coming to an end. I’m sad because I really wish we could keep going, bringing this merry band of thought leaders to designers all over the world. I’m excited because every tour stop gets better than the last. Minneapolis is sure to be our best.

But don’t just take our word on how awesome this Tour is. Here’s what some past attendees had to say:

I received valuable, instantly applicable action items that will improve my products with regards to design and user search.
– Seattle attendee

I went to #UIEWAMT to find a direction and you guys definitely provided me with one. Many, many thanks.
– @PattiHermoso

We loved our experience at #UIEWAMT and found the content very valuable for our current environment. Thank you to all the presenters!
- @cognitionstudio

Absolutely one of the BEST conferences I’ve been to. Each speaker brought valuable lessons we can take away with us.
- Philadelphia attendee

This Tour Changes the Way You Design

Across two days, nine leading experts in web-based application design share their experience and wisdom, to show you concrete examples on how to take your work to new levels. They tackle the issues of mobile strategy, data visualization, design patterns, engagement, and process best practices. Attendees come away with a full brain and a pile of new ideas, ready to start making improvements right away.

These 9 Masters rock this Tour.

Stephen Anderson shows us how to engage users by presenting information in a clearer and more precise manner.

Josh Clark tackles the question of building a web-based interface or implementing a native app.

Luke Wroblewski dazzles us on how to think about and design for Web organization, actions, inputs, and layout on small screens.

Noah Iliinsky demonstrates how to turn mountains of data into beautiful visualizations.

Bill Scott shares his collection of design patterns and best practices for creating immersing and rich experiences.

Kate Brigham describes how PatientsLikeMe translates data that is mind-boggling in complexity into useful simplicity.

Aviva Rosenstein gives you a peek on how Salesforce.com take advantage of cutting-edge UX techniques.

Mike Lee explains how his team at AARP incorporates a design strategy through major organizational changes.

Jared Spool shares the latest UIE research in two presentations.

Read all about each Master’s session on the web site.

Special Deal for Our Blog Readers

It would be downright awful if you missed this last tour stop. So we’ve put together a special deal. Just use the promotion code TOURBLOG when you register and you’ll get the $895 price – $200 off from the final price. Be sure to register by June 21 to get this discount.

Don’t miss the event of a lifetime. Join us in Minneapolis and inject new energy and inspiration into your designs.

Pam Rodriguez and Luke Wroblewski did a nice job of posting their notes. Thanks guys!

• Steve Portigal on Design Fieldwork: Uncovering Innovation from the Outside In – Pam’s notes, Luke’s notes.
• Kate Brigham on PatientsLikeMe: Adventures with Data Visualizations – Pam’s Notes, Luke’s Notes.
• Luke Wroblewski on Designing Mobile Web Experiences – Pam’s Notes.
• Mike Lee on AARP: Designing a Strategy for Organizational Transformations – Pam’s Notes, Luke’s Notes.
• My presentation on The Essential Principles behind Great Design Principles – Pam’s Notes.

As you can see from the #UIEWAMT Twitter stream, everybody had a great time and we all learned a ton.

There’s one more stop on the 2011 tour – Minneapolis on June 27-28. Use the promo code BLOG and get $100 off the registration price.

See you there!

UIE Web App Masters Tour:
Get $100 off the Minneapolis Masters Tour with the promotion code BLOG.
Minneapolis

Blogger Pam Rodriguez has done a tremendous job summarizing the first day’s sessions. You can read them here:

• My talk: Mobilism & UX: Inside the Eye of the Perfect Storm
• Bill Scott’s talk: Designing for Mice and Men
• Josh Clark’s talk: Mobile Apps: Native or Web-Based?
• Noah Iliinsky’s talk: The Steps to Beautiful Visualizations
• Julie Zhuo’s talk: Facebook: Data-Informed vs. Data-Driven Design Decisions

Our own Web App Master, Luke Wroblewski, also has some great summaries:

• My talk: Mobilism & UX: Inside the Eye of the Perfect Storm
• Bill Scott’s talk: Designing for Mice and Men
• Josh Clark’s talk: Mobile Apps: Native or Web-Based?
• Noah Iliinsky’s talk: The Steps to Beautiful Visualizations
• Julie Zhuo’s talk: Facebook: Data-Informed vs. Data-Driven Design Decisions

Thanks to Pam and Luke for taking such great notes.

You can follow along with the second day by following the #UIEWAMT hashtag or the UIE Web App Tour attendee and speaker Twitter list.

UIE Web App Masters Tour:
Get $100 off the Minneapolis Masters Tour with the promotion code BLOG.
Seattle · Minneapolis

Mobile design is becoming more important everyday. As the technology and capabilities get better so can the users’ experience. Taking advantage of this technology affords you the opportunity to create great experiences for your users.

Luke Wroblewski is at the forefront of mobile design. He champions a mobile first design process to improve user experience on all platforms. In his talk, Designing Mobile Web Experiences, from this year’s Web App Masters Tour, Luke discusses the capabilities of mobile devices, new usage behaviors, and the future possibilities.

With every prediction about mobile device sales or mobile web usage, the reality has come sooner than projected. It’s no surprise that the increase in usage has come along with better technology, faster connection speeds and a design mindset specific to mobile applications.

Mobile inherently allows for different behavior than a desktop would. Luke offers that the “personal computer” is no longer the classic desktop or laptop set up on our desks or in our offices, but our mobile devices that we have with us all the time. Since mobile devices allow this personal nature, apps like Twitter and Yelp! are seeing exponential growth in their mobile usage and changes in their users’ behavior.

The mobile web and mobile applications are not going away. Mobile is beginning to dominate the landscape and is becoming the main access point to the web for many people. Understanding the constraints of mobile devices will help you streamline your design. Taking advantage of the capabilities of mobile devices and understanding mobile behaviors will help you enhance your users’ experience.

Want to hear this whole talk? The recordings of this and the talks from all 11 Masters will be available soon. Visit UIEtour.com for more information.

UIE Web App Masters Tour On Demand:
Available in August – 15 hours of fantastic presentations. Sign up to receive more information.

Recorded: March, 2011
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Great design principles guide your team to creating designs that delight your users. They are well thought out and often based on research. Having a set of great principles will allow your team to turn ordinary design into extraordinary design. But not everyone has great design principles. What even constitutes a great design principle?

Jared Spool understands what it takes to create good design. In his talk The Essential Principles Behind Great Design Principles, from this year’s Web App Masters Tour, Jared dives into our latest research on what teams are doing it right and which are missing the mark.

Great design principles are born out of research and observation. If you sit and have a meeting to discuss “what you want to be when you grow up”, you might end up with vague or convoluted principles. You’re not basing your decisions on your actual users’ experiences. Conversely, the Windows 7 desktop team collected a large amount of data on the failings of Windows Vista to develop their principles and by all accounts, turned out a much better experience.

Creating a set of great design principles shouldn’t be about striving for vague goals like being “universal” or “clean”. They should be developed to solve problems and address real issues with your product. Principles are the guide to getting your team to the project’s end goal and fulfilling the vision you had for it. As Jared says, “if you know where you’re going, it doesn’t matter how fast you get there.”

Conducting field research and gathering data can help you determine your top priorities. Once you make that determination, you can then take steps toward developing design principles that will ultimately guide your team in making great design decisions.

Don’t miss Jared in either of his two talks at the Web App Masters tour. The tour is making stops in Seattle in May and Minneapolis in June. For more information on Jared and all 11 Masters, visit UIETour.com.

UIE Web App Masters Tour:
Get $100 off the Seattle Masters Tour with the promotion code BLOG.
Last Stop! Minneapolis

Recorded: March, 2011
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At the Philadelphia Web App Masters Tour stop, Josh Clark enlightened us with the pros and cons on the difficult decision around native apps versus building a web-based interface.

Luke Wroblewski captured Josh’s talk in a blog post he originally posted on lukew.com. He’s graciously allowed us to repost his notes.

• First of all, it’s safe to assume your audience has some kind of phone. 82% of US adults have cell phones. 37% use it for Web. 35% use it for apps. 35% in the US are smartphones. Worldwide market share (according to Gartner) has Symbian at 41%, Blackberry 18%, Android 17%, iPhone 14%.
• But it’s not all about numbers. Android & iPhone have momentum but not overall market share. They may not be the winners of the future and market share can change fast. There’s too much innovation and change right now.
• Just a few yeas ago there was only two games in town: Nokia Symbian & Windows Mobile. Now have 10 mobile operating systems to consider. That’s a lot to maintain and manage. As a result, people are worried about keeping up with mobile.
• And for good reason. Google Maps, for example, has over 100 builds that need to be maintained. Anyone who tries to build a separate app for all mobile platforms is entering pain. Craft a plan to get rid of your fear and manage your pain.
• There are factors beyond market share that can influence where you put development effort.

Platform Cultures

• Not all native platforms are the same. It’s not just a technical question. Each has its own personality that influences people’s expectations.
• Blackberry has 40% of global enterprise market. Far more email & texting but much lower browser (changing as Webkit is rolled out). Very text driven usage.
• Third of worldwide mobile Web traffic comes from iOS despite only having half that in market share. iPhone marketing targets people, family, connection, and software for media usage. Apple’s philosopher king ensures consistency & quality but occasional clashes on what is allowed occur.
• Android is tools & technology. A way to be more awesome. But being on the bleeding edge is going to be a bit rough. So the Android experience is not polished. Android skews younger, because it is cheaper. Google acts as the shepherd of the geek flock. Uses an open source platform that can be adjusted by carriers and hardware vendors. So there’s lots of divergence and competing interests.
• Windows Phone 7 is trying to bring Windows back to mobile. Highly customizable. Personal connection like Apple but personalize-able like Android. Microsoft has infighting, strategy tax, and a new platform.
• Platforms and their personalities set the expectations people bring to the table. These are very personal devices. They feel different. It changes the way people get attached to their devices. Personal nature of devices means more than one culture can thrive.

What about the Web?

• Platforms are risky places to put your business.
• This is exactly the problem the Web is supposed to solve. To overcome platforms.
• But with less than 3 years of app stores –there is already an entrenched app culture. When people want a quick hit/lookup, they go to the Web. When they have a recurring use, they turn to an app.
• Web’s Weak Spots: touch gestures are harder to do on the Web. Swipes are ok. But more complex touch gestures are not evenly supported. The Javascript libraries that try to resolve this are quite heavy. Graphic tools on the Web are not as fast as they could be. And these are less accessible to device hardware.
• If you can do it with the Web –do it with the Web. It’s faster, cheaper, and easier. The user experience gap is going to close but not all the way. Native will always have a user experience edge.
• But the most crucial aspect of user experience –is that anyone can have an experience at all. A mobile Web site is the cost of entry for universal access. We want our content to flow between devices. The Web is the common element across devices.
• There is no struggle between mobile Web and native apps. You ultimately need both.

Doing Both

• Form has to meet function. Design must manage context of device & place. Build once and run everywhere is a bit of a pipe dream. You need context –not just a stylesheet for a mobile device.
• Core functions should be the same but the hierarchy might be different. What makes your app mobile? Three different mindsets: micro-tasking, local, and bored.
• Web and native is not as clean as you might think. Hybrid apps can integrate Web applications with native functionality. Hybrid apps still use slower and less capable Web technologies. They address findability, payment, and common code base issues but not all issues.
• Think Flagship apps: create a mobile Web experience. Then create a flagship app on one or two platforms. Align with the mobile cultures & populations that match your demographics.
• Core content should be consistent across all apps but you don’t need use the same design.
• There’s no real fight between Web and native –you need both. We’re just at the tip of device fragmentation. Step back, and ask –what is tying this service together.
• Start with thinking about your interface as an API: a smart back-end that encompasses what you do. Different front-ends can then be plugged into your core APIs.
• Fear not: this seems scary and chaotic. But don’t be intimated. This is going to continue coming faster and more furious. Be expansive-let your imagination roam. We are inventing the future- go make something awesome.

Hear Josh’s full talk and 8 other Masters at the Web App Masters Tour in Seattle or Minneapolis. Other topics at the tour include data visualization, UX in mobile design, and process best practices.

UIE Web App Masters Tour:
Hear the Masters’ Insights on mobile design, data visualization, and design process. Register with promotion code BLOG for the lowest rate and get Josh Clark’s Mobile Design webinar for free.
Last Stop! Minneapolis

Analyzing data is a great way to make design decisions. But when your analytics log contains billions of clicks, how do you distinguish which ones you should use in forming those decisions? Users’ behavior and activity can provide you with great information and insights. But when do you look to that and when do you trust your own instincts?

Julie Zhuo is the Product Design Manager at Facebook. In her talk at this year’s Web App Masters Tour, Facebook: Data-Informed vs. Data-Driven Design Decisions, Julie discusses Facebook’s design process. The Facebook team uses data to learn about users’ pain points and to support their own intuitions.

Facebook’s deactivation page shows you pictures of your friends to encourage you to reconsider.

Julie and her team know there are downsides to being too data-driven. Numbers and metrics can always look good on paper, but they don’t necessarily speak to your users’ emotions about your brand and image. If you’ve implemented a change that, from an analytics standpoint, works and is successful but leaves a bad taste in the mouths of your users, is it really as successful as initially thought?

Facebook faces some unique design challenges. With 600 million users all over the world, it’s impossible to predict how each individual is going interact with Facebook. Implementing a design or functionality change may thrill many users, but it is equally possible that it will disappoint others. They have to balance user interests against network interests, and certain rules need to be in place to encourage the right types of interactions between people.

Ultimately, data and metrics are great for making design decisions, but they’re only part of the process. Especially for a social network like Facebook, there are many other factors that need strong consideration. How you interpret and use that data is especially important. Having a sense of what your team values from certain endeavors will go a long way to helping inform your decisions.

Come see Julie discuss more of how Facebook confronts these challenges at the Web App Masters Tour. She is one of 11 amazing Masters sharing their insights. The Tour is coming to Seattle in May and Minneapolis in June. For more information visit UIETour.com.

UIE Web App Masters Tour:
Get $100 off the Minneapolis Masters Tour with the promotion code BLOG.
Last Stop! Minneapolis

Recorded: March, 2011
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1. Topics focus on mobile design, data visualization, and process best practices.

2. The Masters are hungry for your questions and conversations. They’re accessible and want to meet you.

3. After the final tour stop, you’ll have access to the best recordings of each talk with their PDFs.

4. You’ll get free access to Noah Iliinsky’s webinar. It’s an appetizer to his information visualization talk.

5. Network with your peers: organized lunch discussions and a networking cocktail reception.

6. A bonus webinar when you register by May 6. Josh Clark’s SOLD OUT seminar on Creating Tapworthy Mobile Design.

If you missed out on the $895 rate for Seattle, you can still get it! Register by May 6 with the promotion code LASTCHANCE and you’ll pay the lowest rate of $895. The Minneapolis rate of $895 is available until May 26.

Tell your boss you’ll increase your web app design skills, build your confidence, and get inspired at the Web App Masters Tour. How can your boss say no?

UIE Web App Masters Tour:
Get $100 off the Minneapolis Masters Tour with the promotion code BLOG.
Last Stop! Minneapolis

At the first stop of the Web App Masters Tour in Philadelphia, Julie Zhuo shared Facebook’s approach to data-informed versus data-driven design decisions. Fortunately for us, Luke Wroblewski took fantastic notes about Julie’s presentation and is allowing us to share them with you. Luke originally posted these notes on his blog in March.

Without further ado, here is Luke’s notes on Julie’s presentation.

Facebook believes in small teams that can act like a start-up. The team on the ground needs be the most knowledgeable about what data to use on their project. Each product usually has a single designer assigned to it. There are only 20 designers and 5 researchers in the company.

Using Quantitative Data

• Facebook uses quantitative data to inform decisions, help understand how people are using the product, and how they can optimize key flows further.
• The company kind of got into the data game late. From 2004 on, the company just kept adding feature after feature. They never took a step back and looked to see what was successful. Some features were doing a lot better than others.
• It wasn’t until 2009 that Facebook went back and updated their Photos service. The last they touched it was in 2006. Photo uploading was hard to do. Facebook used a Java uploader that was built by an outside firm.
• When the team redesigned the photo uploader, they built a solution that required the ability to install a plugin one time and from then on photos could be uploaded. This implementation took about 4 months to build.
• The new photo uploader was rolled out to a small % of users. When they looked at the data, only 34% of users that started were successfully able to upload photos. It was the install plug-in step that was tripping people up. Half of the people dropped off at the install step.
• The team decided they needed to go back to what people were familiar with. They had to throw away months of work and instead stick with what people knew. The second iteration of photo upload made use of native OS controls.
• In the second redesign, of all the people who hit the upload photo button, 87% made it past the create album form, 57% selected photos, 52% make it to upload step, but only 45% of people actually uploaded photos.
• The more standard design increased uploads from 34% to 45% but the team thought they could do better.
• They found 85% of people were only selecting one photo at a time -probably as a result of the native dialog. People needed to know how to use the OS control to select multiple images.
• The Facebook team designed an interstitial to educate users about how to select multiple photos in the OS dialog. Though they usually avoided interstitials, it was important enough to try.
• With the interstitial tip in place, the number of users uploading only 1 photo dropped 40%. Photos uploaded per attempt increased from 3 to 11.
• Another example of using quantitative data to inform design was the “composer” –where people publish status, links, etc. For the composer, the team A/B tested explicit actions for: photos, questions, links and status updates. In this design, Status updates decreased 1%, photo uploading went up 1.5%. But there are way more status updates than photos. So the offset didn’t pay off.
• The second idea they tried was to show a user’s last status update at the top. The idea was if you see an old update you might want to update it. This approach didn’t have any effect on updates.
• Another option included links and an exposed status box. This performed better but only marginally.
• After spending a lot of time tweaking the composer and not getting a lot of results, the team finally stopped working on the problem and moved on to something where more gains could be realized.

Using Qualitative Data

• Quantitative data points to insights. Qualitative data can be used to optimize and sanity check flows.
• Facebook’s first user researcher joined in 2007. In the early days, they tested people going through flow. But because employees at Facebook use the product so much, they spot issues before usability sessions and fix them. As a result this type of qualitative research is not as valuable to them.
• Instead the user research team focused on bigger picture issues.
• Recently, they studied identity and what people feel comfortable sharing through ethnographic studies. Also they studied local businesses to tailor pages product to these smaller businesses.
• The end results of qualitative research are insights on how people feel and what they think. This funnels into higher-level strategy.

Evaluating Design with Metrics

• Some projects at Facbeook use data to judge their success. Not all projects are judged this way but the growth team is an example of a completely data driven team. The growth team was created in 2007 and was the first example of data driven design at Facebook.
• In 2007, Facebook opened up to the world (beyond colleges). A team was formed to tackle growth. A social network is valuable if people you know are on it. Otherwise, you don’t know what it’s for.
• Growth team looked at registration, metrics associated with people that were coming back, etc.
• A simple visual design change on registration page resulted in 9M more people per year joining. 3% increase. For growth, this is a big deal. Deactivation page. Reduced deactivations by 7% (a million more users a year).
• A few months ago, Facebook created a team called engagement –modeled after the growth team. Thought it would operate the same way. First tried quantifying success by looking at number of read/writes. One of the early ideas was comment liking. Saw an increase of writes in the system 7% up when this feature was rolled out.
• Though writes went up 7% it was the same people creating writes. 85% of reads/writes of Facebooks are generated by 20% of users. Same people were doing the activity. Had to go back and reset metrics for the engagement team.
• Current metric for engagement at Facebook: L6/7 number of users that come back to Facebook 6 out of 7 days a week.

Making Decisions

• Facebook is wary of being too data driven. Data alone might look good but could have a bad impact on brand.
• It’s difficult for metrics alone to represent what you are trying to build with a company. Decisions at Facebook have to balanced between: qualitative data, quantitative data, strategy, user (individual interests), and network interests, competition, regulatory bodes, and business interests.
• You need to think about all these things as you design.
• Quantitative data helps understand how people use products, how to optimize flows, and if products are successful.
• Qualitative data helps understand user intents and feelings in order to focus strategy.
• Data is one small piece of the pie and lots more comes into the decision-making process.
• True innovation does not come from being lead by numbers.
• When launched, the Facebook newsfeed had an overwhelmingly negative response from users. Metrics plummeted the day after the launch as people were not coming to the site. The team made some modifications to give users more control but never got rid of the idea even though metrics took a hit at first. Now the newsfeed is hugely successful.
• Facebook learned how to take risks and not be surprised by reactions to new products: do research & anticipate what people will do.
• When Facebok was a college site, people loved all the features they released. Now the company needs to communicate why a change is good. They give people a choice to opt in now so a new design is not a shock.
• The greatest risk is taking no risk. Small tweaks are safe. Big ideas are what leads to innovation.

Hear how Julie and her team incorporate data analysis into their design decisions, plus 8 other Masters at the Web App Masters Tour in Seattle or Minneapolis. Other topics at the tour include data visualization, mobile design and strategy, and process best practices.

UIE Web App Masters Tour:
Get $100 off the Minneapolis Masters Tour with the promotion code BLOG.
Last Stop! Minneapolis

Luke Wroblewski, the former Chief Design Architect for Yahoo! and founder of Bagcheck, is at the forefront of the “mobile first” approach. Streamlining your design for mobile helps you focus on what is absolutely necessary. In this podcast, Luke joins Jared Spool in a discussion about designing mobile experiences.

Here’s an excerpt from the podcast.

“… I think we’re still really in the beginning stages of this stuff. I personally have this philosophy that what we call the personal computer isn’t really the personal computer, the laptop, desktop that you have attached to your messenger bag or your desk at home.

The real personal computer is the thing that’s with you all the time. That increasingly is our smartphone level mobile phone. And it’s much more personal than your laptop or desktop can ever be, because with a single click you can talk to anybody you know. The address book is sort of embedded in it.

And not only can you talk to them, you can text message them, you get instant messages, and you can now do video calls with them. You can as you said buy anything you want using the services you’re interested in. And you can look up any information you want.

You can play god and say I’m stuck in traffic right now, show me an over head view of the map with real time traffic, and give me a satellite view to see if there’s a short cut I can take half this road somewhere else, right. And all that happens from the palm of your hand literally.

It’s the old William Gibson, “The future is here, is not just evenly distributed yet.” So yeah, I think these devices are much more personal. They can be used anywhere and everywhere because of the high portability factor.

And they’re connected to a network through pretty decent speeds, and increasingly getting better. And now we have all of our assets in the cloud. This is triumvirate that Google CEO, Eric Schmidt talks about.

He says, because these devices have better processors, there are faster networks, and because more and more of our stuff is up in the cloud, then the mobile phone is sort of this high volume end point of what we can do with computers right now…”

Tune in to the podcast to hear Luke cover these additional points:

• How does direct manipulation affect user interaction?
• How difficult is it for an organization to switch to a mobile design mindset?
• What benefit, as far as prototyping goes, is there to creating a browser-based experience?
• How can this thinking be brought back and applied to the desktop?

Luke is also one of the Masters joining us for the 2011 Web App Masters Tour. We’re coming to Seattle in May and Minneapolis in June. For more details such as dates, pricing, and agenda, visit UIEtour.com.

UIE Web App Masters Tour:
Get $100 off the Minneapolis Masters Tour with the promotion code BLOG.
Last Stop! Minneapolis

Recorded: February, 2011
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Mike Lee has to face this challenge. Mike is the Senior Digital Strategy Advisor at AARP. With much of the organization’s 53-year heritage being within “traditional” media realms, shifting its publishing and broadcast businesses into the online world is no small task. In this podcast, Mike joins Jared Spool to discuss some of their design challenges. They also discuss the ways AARP has transitioned to the web, and how they have been exploring and taking advantage of mobile and tablet technologies.

Here’s an excerpt from the podcast.

“…obviously we know and we look very carefully at what the ROI is on the paper side, and I think the inertia that is behind this machine is at least two faceted. One is a good piece, it’s to say, well, it’s working and we’re pretty sure that this mode of doing the paper piece is going to be useful and engaging and accepted for a five to 10 year time frame.

But, for example, our numbers tell us there are about five million members with smart phones. And that number is only going to grow. Our mobile traffic, which is still in the single digit percentages, is showing its 70 percent IOS devices and 20 percent Android devices.

So that number, if it’s five million now out of nearly 40 million members, as it grows, will start to be really interesting and impactful when you start to get into the teens and the 20 percent share. Here’s this group that prefers digital and they want the green, sort of, membership, they want to opt out of paper. We’re not seeing a big rush to that yet, but, I think it’s only inevitable. And we’re seeing that that’s an opportunity.

So, as great as a paper magazine is, and it doesn’t need a battery and it doesn’t crash, and (it’s) ultra high resolution, and you can bookmark it really easily. (It) has page numbers, which the Kindle just only recently added, right?

Digital engagement is extremely compelling, because the person can engage with the organization from wherever they are. And if we do our job correctly, it’s offering the tools that they need, wherever they may be standing…”

Tune into the podcast to hear Mike address theses additional points:

• How do you get an organization as old as AARP to begin to think about new technologies?
• Do you find that you have to argue for good user experience?
• Do you have a dedicated user experience team?
• Are people talking about user experience closer to the beginning of projects now?
• Has there been a change in energy level amongst management teams when it comes to the idea of user experience?

Mike is also one of the Masters joining us for the 2011 Web App Masters Tour. We’re coming to Seattle in May and Minneapolis in June. For more details such as dates, pricing, and agenda, visit UIEtour.com.

UIE Web App Masters Tour:
Get $100 off the Minneapolis Masters Tour with the promotion code BLOG.
Last Stop! Minneapolis

Recorded: February, 2011
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You’re eager to attend the Web App Masters Tour. You know you’ll put into practice the insights that Jared Spool, Luke Wroblewski and Josh Clark share on mobile design. Your brain will be full of ideas from Stephen Anderson and Noah Iliinsky’s take on data visualization. The tips and techniques you take-away from the Masters at Faceboook, PatientsLikeMe, SalesForce.com, AARP, and Netflix will prove extremely useful. You see the value in attending the Web App Masters Tour. But how do you persuade your boss to spend the money on you?

Convincing your boss to send you to a conference is not easy. There are expenses, and the time out of the office. Your manager needs to understand the benefits of investing in you.

We’re going to help you. Use these points to help convince your boss why you need to attend the Web App Masters Tour. But besides highlighting these points to your boss, you need to show you really want to go. You need to ask, “May I register for the Web App Masters Tour?”

Invest in your skills—Spending money now to send you to the conference will save the company money in the near and far future. It’s considerably more expensive to search and recruit new talent with a skill set your team needs. Companies who invest in their employees reap the benefits of your new skills and save money by leveraging your new-found expertise.

Invest in your site’s experience—Attending the Web App Masters Tour advances your skill set, allowing you to bring more functionality to your company’s web site. By improving the user experience, your users are likely to spend more time on your site, which in turn, will bring more revenue.

Invest in a motivated, productive, and happy team member—One of the most frequent comments we hear from past attendees is how inspired and motivated they felt at the end of the conference. You too will be eager to implement the new ideas and skills you gain at the conference.

You’ll learn how to communicate your data and content with visualization techniques. You’ll gain valuable advice on how to better map out the direction your company should take with mobile. And you’ll pick up best practices and tips and techniques for your design process.

Now figure out which Tour you want to attend, Seattle on May 23-24 or Minneapolis on June 27-28. Choose the date, take these points to your boss, and ask the question, “May I go to the Web App Masters Tour?”

UIE Web App Masters Tour:
Get $100 off the Minneapolis Masters Tour with the promotion code BLOG.
Last Stop! Minneapolis

We’ve spent some quality time with Stephen Anderson. Steve makes it his business to explore how serious applications can be fun and engaging. The more we talk to him, the more examples we see of fascinating and novel approaches to entice people to use our designs.

In today’s UIEtips, we revisit an article we wrote a year ago. In the article, we explore some of Stephen’s thinking with a fresh look at how the elements of game play can serve our business requirements. We look at examples from four businesses to see different approaches to integrating the elements of play into great user experiences. I’m sure you’ll find it interesting.

Read the article, Designing with the Elements of Play

At last year’s Web App Masters Tour, Stephen’s talk was a big hit, so much so we’re bringing him back for this year’s tour. Stephen will show how to change people’s behaviors and improve their lives by tapping into their emotions. Don’t miss him (or the other great Web App Masters) at our upcoming stops in Philadelphia,
Seattle or Minneapolis.

Have you experimented with game play in your applications? We’d love to hear your experiences. Share them below.

Register with the promotion code BLOG by March 20, 2011 for any of the Tour cities and get $100 off.

You’ll hear from top web app masters like Luke Wroblewski, Hagan Rivers, Bill Scott, Stephen Anderson, and Jared Spool. And you’ll get the details on Facebook, Twitter, 37signals, and Marriott Corporation’s design process.

How To Get the Free Recordings?

It’s easy. Just submit your email by March 14, 11:59 PM PT and you’ll get last year’s Web App Masters Tour talks and materials for free. No tricks, no quantity limits. We’ll send you an email with details on how to access this bundle of goodness.

Details on This Year’s Web App Masters Tour

After listening to last year’s talks, you’ll be itching join us this year in Philadelphia, Seattle, or Minneapolis.

More than half the conference focuses on mobile design, including Luke Wroblewski discussing mobile strategy, Josh Clark explaining the differences between mobile native apps and browser-based applications, and I’ll be looking at how mobile affects UX. And you’ll discover how emotionally connecting with your users and spending time with them can dramatically change how they use your applications. Plus you’ll hear case studies from Faceboook, PatientsLikeMe, SalesForce.com, AARP, and Netflix.

Get all the details on this year’s tour at UIETour.com. Use the promotion code RECORDINGS and pay just $795 when you register by March 24

Now hurry and get last year’s bundle of goodness before 11:59 pm on March 14.

Translating information and data into a useful visualization is challenging. When creating information visualizations, as with any design process, it’s imperative to keep your audience in mind. With quality visualizations, they can understand and analyze complex information.

Noah Iliinsky is the co-editor of Beautiful Visualizations. He examines complex data and the ways to effectively communicate it visually to audiences. In this podcast, Noah joins Jared Spool for a discussion about how to interpret information visually in a way that is most effective for users to process the information and be successful in their tasks.

Here’s an excerpt from the podcast.

“…As with any other design process, or writing process for that matter, it’s really a matter of understanding what it is that you are trying to communicate and understanding who your audience is, their whole context, and every user centered design sense of that. Their jargon and everything.

And using those to prioritize things like, what do we include in this visualization? How do we choose which data to include and more importantly which data to exclude? Because it’s very easy to get seduced into adding more knowledge simply because it’s available, even though that may not contribute to your final goal or the goals of your audience.

You pick data. You have to decide what it looks like on the page. You have to decide where it goes on the page. These are all topics I am going to talk about in the Masters Tour. It’s a design process, you can parameterize it, and you can actually make it like any number of other design processes where you step through particular phases. The goal at every phase, I think, is to understand that you are making design choices, and the best choices are intentional choices not arbitrary choices.

So the work that I have done has been all about teaching people how to understand that they are making choices. To give them some foundation to make the right choices in each of these design phases in terms of, what data do I include, how do I think about my users, and how do I decide placement on the page. All these sorts of things…”

Tune in to the podcast and hear Noah address these additional points.

• Is seeing if your visualization is accomplishing your goal any different than form design and trying to get someone to sign up for something?
• What are some examples of well-done visualizations?
• What are some of the toolkits available?
• Does the “newness” of some of these techniques make it difficult to know where to look for well-crafted examples?

Noah is also one of the Masters joining us for the 2011 Web App Masters Tour. We’re coming to Philadelphia in March, Seattle in May, and Minneapolis in June. For more details such as dates, pricing, and agenda, visit UIEtour.com.

UIE Web App Masters Tour:
Hear the Masters’ Insights on mobile design, data visualization, and design process.
Seattle · Minneapolis

Noah mentions the following books as great resources in the podcast:

Graph Design for the Eye in Mind by Stephen M. Kosslyn
Information Visualizations: Perception for Design by Colin Ware
Visual Thinking for Design by Colin Ware

Recorded: February, 2011
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[ Transcript Available ] ]]> http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/03/09/noah-iliinsky-the-steps-to-beautiful-visualizations/feed/ 0 Translating information and data into a useful visualization is challenging. When creating information visualizations, as with any design process, it’s imperative to keep your audience in mind. With quality visualizations, Translating information and data into a useful visualization is challenging. When creating information visualizations, as with any design process, it’s imperative to keep your audience in mind. With quality visualizations, they can understand and analyze complex information. In this podcast, Noah joins Jared Spool for a discussion about how to interpret information visually in a way that is most effective for users to process the information and be successful in their tasks. Jared M. Spool and User Interface Engineering (UIE) no 30:19 http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/03/08/uietips-iphone-app-design/ http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/03/08/uietips-iphone-app-design/#comments Tue, 08 Mar 2011 16:59:03 +0000 Jared Spool http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/?p=3608 We’ve all been there. Your mobile phone, tucked away in your back pocket, accidentally dials someone you have no intent on speak with. Or perhaps you deleted an important message to quickly.

Mishaps do happen with mobile devices, but there are ways that design can protect against those accidental occurrences or even undue the mistakes. The Apple iPhone is a great example of incorporating design that prevents these unwanted mistakes.

In this week’s UIETips article, we’re reprinting an article that Josh Clark, author of Tapworthy, wrote back in October. Josh does a great job explaining different design interfaces that Apple used in their iPhone to prevent you from deleting important items or doing unwanted actions with your phone.

Read Josh’s article, iPhone App Design – When an Awkward Interface Makes Sense.

If you’re looking for more on mobile design techniques, we have 2 opportunities for you. First is Josh Clark’s upcoming UIE Virtual Seminar on March 17—Designing Tapworthy Mobile Apps.

Your second opportunity is the Web App Masters Tour in Philadelphia, Seattle, or Minneapolis. At the tour, Josh will guide us through the decision making process of whether to build native mobile apps or web-based interfaces. Learn more about Josh’s session. If you’re planning on registering for the tour in Philadelphia, use the promotion code WAMT300 and get a $200 discount.

Here he tells the story of his brother and how it inspired him to look into the data of 45,000 people who are reporting their daily status with the diseases, drugs, and treatments in their lives. The end result is a “time machine”-like report that helps understand what can really improve the quality of people’s lives. I loved the 1-page summary of their health that patients can take to their doctors, to show exactly what they’ve been doing and how it’s been working.

This video encapsulates exactly what Stephen Anderson talked about in his podcast, The Quest for Emotional Engagement. If we can find a connection between the data we have and what’s meaningful in people’s lives, we can really make a difference to them.

It’s no accident that we’re talking about this at this year’s Web App Masters Tour. I think this is a critical conversation we need to have about how we bring the most out of our designs. On this topic alone, I’m pleased that Stephen Anderson will explore this idea of emotional engagement, Noah Iliinsky will how us how to create great visualizations like the ones Jamie demonstrates, and Kate Brigham will share what it’s like leading PatientsLikeMe’s UX team — making all this a reality for their 45,000+ users.

Register with the promotion code WAMT by March 11, 2011 for any of the Tour cities and pay just $795.

What makes the Digital Age great is ready access to information. But many times there is too much information, too much data, or too many options to make sense of. Users can easily become frustrated or disengage if they can’t find a connection with what is presented to them.

Stephen Anderson, designer and creator of the Mental Notes card deck, believes your users must be emotionally engaged if you want them to exhibit a certain behavior. Stephen uses simple visual representations to help people make choices and understand complex information. In this podcast, Stephen and Jared Spool discuss creating designs that engage your users’ emotions.

Here’s an excerpt from the podcast.

“…I use an example with providing a personal feedback loop on your performance. This is in the meeting tool that I’m working with a start-up on. We had talked about things like providing a score or coming back with a grade, A, B, C, or D, but we felt like there was no emotional connection there.

So instead what we came up with was this idea of a hot air balloon. And when you get back this report, you see a hot air balloon. If it’s fully inflated, you’re doing great. You’re staying in the sky. Everything is fantastic. But if you see that balloon is sort of deflated or losing air, there’s an emotional connection with that. That’s not good, right? The hot air balloon’s going to sink and crash.

So we’ve turned that score, that metric, into something that people can connect with in an emotional way. It’s something that people will look at and they don’t have to say, “Well, is this good or bad?” They know right away this is probably not good. I need to work on this. I need to get my hot air balloon full again, to use that metaphor…”

Listen to the podcast to hear Stephen address these additional points:

• How do you construct designs to elicit the desired behavior?
• Do we run the risk of “dumbing things down” by simplifying information?
• What types of representations work best for different types of data?
• When designing a visual representation, how do you connect the message so it’s not just “dressed up data”?

Recorded: February, 2011
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[ Transcript Available ] ]]> http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/03/04/stephen-anderson-the-quest-for-emotional-engagement/feed/ 0 Stephen Anderson, designer and creator of the Mental Notes card deck, believes your users must be emotionally engaged if you want them to exhibit a certain behavior. Stephen uses simple visual representations to help people make choices and understand ... Stephen Anderson, designer and creator of the Mental Notes card deck, believes your users must be emotionally engaged if you want them to exhibit a certain behavior. Stephen uses simple visual representations to help people make choices and understand complex information. In this podcast, Stephen and Jared Spool discuss creating designs that engage your users’ emotions. Jared M. Spool and User Interface Engineering (UIE) no 33:16 http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/03/03/how-a-theme-emerges-mobile-design-at-the-web-app-masters-tour/ http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/03/03/how-a-theme-emerges-mobile-design-at-the-web-app-masters-tour/#comments Thu, 03 Mar 2011 16:29:42 +0000 Jared Spool http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/?p=3557 As we were finalizing the program for this year’s UIE Web App Masters Tour, a theme quickly emerged that we hadn’t originally planned on: designing mobile applications.

Up until now, mobile has been elusive for us. You see, we don’t talk about a subject just because it’s the latest fad. There are plenty of sources for hype-ridden design topics.

Instead, we wait until real expertise starts to take form. We keep looking for people who have a broad range of experience — the kind of folks who can answer all the difficult questions our audiences will throw at them.

When a topic is in its infancy, at best, the most advanced folks have experience doing one, maybe two designs. They don’t have the breadth of experience to deal with all sorts of difficult situations, only those situations they happened to encounter in their short-lived experience.

Our approach is to wait, to see what comes from it. If it’s just hype, then it goes away quickly, to be replaced by something new. But if it’s real, well, we can identify some experienced talent.

Mobile Emerging

Last year, a new book was all the rage: Josh Clark’s Tapworthy. We loved the book. At last fall’s IDEA conference, I was excited to share the stage with Josh. Turns out, Josh blew the audience away with a presentation on putting together a mobile design strategy. It was clever and information rich — which is perfect for a UIE program. I knew we had to have Josh on our program.

Luke Wroblewski was a top speaker from last year’s inaugural Web App Masters Tour. We had to have him back. Because of his shift from being Yahoo!’s Chief Design Architect to founding his own startup, he’s been thinking a lot about designing for mobile. He’s putting together a great presentation on what’s he’s learning about designing for a mobile experience first. We’ve been working through his outline, and the presentation is quite exciting.

I also reached out directly to Bill Scott, another of last year’s tour top speakers. He’s back at Netflix, now working on their sign-up experience. As we started discussing ideas for his topics, he shared what he’s been working on: making Netflix easy to sign up and manage on a multitude of devices — everything from iPads to Playstations. He’s been deep in making the subtle interactions work, like how you deal with hover and scrolling, with a range of input devices. (Does your app work with an internet-enabled TV remote control?) Turns out there are many general principles that every designer needs to know.

Our tour always includes people in the thick of designing their web-based applications, so we can hear their experiences. AARP has done an amazing job of keeping a 50-year-old organization completely state of the art. Mike Lee and I started hashing out what he could share, and guess what? AARP’s new efforts of shifting their publications and services to a mobile platform was the big story. He’ll share the trials and tribulations of turning the cruise ship to meet the new challenges of the mobile world.

While all of this was going on, I was thinking about what’s happening with experience design overall. It’s clear that there’s an energy around UX design that is far more vibrant than ever before. I wanted to know where that was coming from. As I dug into our research, I realized there are multiple forces making all this happen. And right in the middle of these forces is the world of designing for mobile. These forces are really strong, which means they’ll affect all of us. Want to know what they are? I’ll tell you at the tour.

When I set out for this year’s program, I didn’t expect half of the sessions to have mobile at their core. But here we are and I’m really excited about it. It’ll be a much deeper treatment than any we’ve seen before, which is perfect for the mission of the Web App Masters Tour — to prepare every web-based application designer for the intense challenges ahead.

[By the way, we're just a few weeks away from our Philadelphia stop on the tour. We're also stopping in Seattle and Minneapolis later this spring. Register for any stop by March 11 with the promotion code WAMT and you'll get $300 off the final registration price.]

Register with the promotion code WAMT by March 11, 2011 for any of the Tour cities and pay just $795.

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With mobile quickly emerging as a viable and practical source of web based content, designers need to know how to adapt and keep up. With the sheer number of different devices out there it can be a daunting prospect. When do you need a mobile website? When should you have an app? What tools and techniques should you employ to address the needs of your users?

Josh Clark is a designer, developer and author of the book Tapworthy. He will also be joining us as one of the masters on our 2011 Web App Masters Tour this spring. And not only that, he will be presenting a Virtual Seminar with us in March. Josh joins Jared Spool in this podcast for a discussion about making the decision between mobile web and native apps.

Here’s an excerpt from the podcast.

“…in the same way that the phone demands a very different interface than the desktop, this middle ground area of tablet really does as well.

So one way that I think about it is that you have your mobile phone when you’re on the way to the coffee shop, but it’s your iPad that you use at the coffee shop.

The iPad is a device of calm and contemplation. It’s something that I’ve observed. A lot of people, if they’ve got an iPad on their desk, they’ll literally pick it up and go and sit in a more comfortable chair.

It’s something for a calmer state of mind for longer sessions than the iPhone.

And of course with the form factor too, it means that your hands and fingers rest in different areas. You have to use more of your arm than just a flick of the finger as you would with the phone.

So in fact when you’re designing for touch, this is one of the biggest things that I think is new for designers when they approach a touch screen platform, is that you really have to think about the physicality of the device.

To press a button on the iPad isn’t just a flick of the wrist like it would be to move the mouse on a desktop. You have to haul your arm over.

So there are honest to God issues of ergonomics to consider when you’re designing for touch devices. It’s entirely new to designers who are accustomed to the desktop.

So what you find a lot, I think, is that it’s not just a challenge of graphic design, which we as software designers on the desktop are often largely accustomed to. It’s really a challenge of industrial design because these devices are just blank slates with no interface to speak of until you impose one on it.

And because your interface defines the physicality of this device because it’s going to be worked by hands and fingers, then it means that you have to have all these ergonomic considerations of button placement. Where’s it going to be easiest for your hands to get at quickly?

Is it large enough? Are the things spaced out enough for fingers? It’s really like designing a physical handheld device in a lot of ways…”

Tune in to the podcast as Josh also covers these points:

• Are the basic principles of mobile design going to stay the same for a while or are they changing?
• How does a designer keep up with all of the different sizes and form factors of mobile devices?
• Is it good practice to make a browser version to test limitations and get a better idea of what the native app needs to be?
• What are the benefits of creating native apps for all the different platforms?

We’re really excited about the 2011 Web App Masters Tour. We’ll be coming to Philadelphia, Seattle, and Minnesota. Josh and 8 other Masters will share their insights and knowledge when it comes to designing web applications. We hope you’ll join us too.

Register with the promotion code WAMT by March 4, 2011 for any of the Tour cities and get $100 off.

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The number of places that you can access the web grows every day. People can see your content on TVs, tablets and mobile phones as well as the more traditional desktop and laptop. But are you designing for it? How do your users see it? And more importantly, how are they interacting with it?

Bill Scott is the Director of UI Engineering at Netflix. He is responsible for making sure that the Netflix service looks as it should and works properly no matter how you access it. In this podcast, Bill joins Jared Spool and discusses the challenges and a few of the surprises that come with designing for multiple platforms.

Here’s an excerpt from the podcast.

“…Luke Wroblewski, as you know, and others have started the “design for mobile first” which is really “design for constraints first”. You take a more-constrained view of what you can do in the application, either through input or screen size, maybe you’re on the go, and it forces you to think of the main things first. What are the most important items, tasks or goals that the user has, and design for those.

With the living room, with the left-right-up-down [of a remote control], something’s always focused. And you’re always moving from one item to the other. But then, when you move to a pointer-based [system], nothing necessarily has focus. You have random access to things on the screen; you can get to something quicker. With left-right-up-down, your keyboard is usually virtual, on the screen, and those still need a lot of work. We’re doing some A/B testing in April on some different on-screen keyboards to see what’s the right layout.

And then when you move to mobile and tablet, your input becomes more of the finger, thumbs and, swiping gestures. And then when you get back to the laptop, of course, you have the mouse and the keyboard. Mouse really is both a blessing and a curse, because it’s an indirect method. You can move it around just on either the trackpad or on your mouse pad. But you’ve got scrollbars, and scrollbars are really an indirect way to scroll. They’re not as direct, as physical as flicking your finger.

All this leads to that end of the screen. If I’m sitting across the living room, say 10-15 feet away from a television, what kind of text can I read on it? You have to think about how you design the text. Then the mobile, the screen’s small but it’s right there in front of you. And then the laptop, which you’ve got real high resolution. So you’ve got this output, the screen changes a lot.

And even the navigation. When I’m sitting in a living room, and I’m especially browsing for media content, I tend to be in a little bit lazier mode. I want things to kind of show up for me. I don’t want to have to work real hard to find something. If I’m on a desktop and I’m doing some research or something, I’m may be willing to click a lot, maybe type a lot. So, then your whole posture changes.

I think of input, screen navigation, and the posture of the person, not just the physical posture but their mental posture, as they start to use the application in those different scenarios…”

Tune in to the podcast as Bill addresses these additional points:

• How has the changing landscape affected the way you think about design?
• What are the things that you immediately have to take into account when going from a desktop experience to a mobile experience?
• Is there a way to know what types of content need to be on which devices?
• How have you been using Hack Days and how successful have they been?
• What are the advantages of allowing users to do things like, sign up, directly from their devices?

Bill is also one of the Masters that will be joining us for the 2011 Web App Masters Tour. We’re coming to Philadelphia in March, Seattle in May, and Minneapolis in June. For more details such as dates, pricing, and agenda, visit UIEtour.com.

Register with the promotion code WAMT by February 23, 2011 for any of the Tour cities and get $100 off.

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Communities thrive when there is a common ground and a shared understanding. Connecting and feeling like you belong are essential parts of a community. PatientsLikeMe has created an online community for people struggling with life changing medical conditions. Here they can find support and share their experiences.

Kate Brigham is the Patient Experience Manager at PatientsLikeMe. Rather than focusing solely on forums and discussion, she has helped create an environment that encourages sharing amongst the patients. Through their similar experiences and shared vocabulary, patients create a support structure. In this podcast, Kate talks to Jared Spool about how PatientsLikeMe uses data visualizations to enhance the level of understanding within the community.

Here’s an excerpt from the podcast.

“…People don’t use their real name when they join the site. They have a user name. We allow people to post photographs on their profile, much like on Facebook or Twitter and some people choose to use photographs of themselves. Others choose animals or flowers or other things.

We try to get demographic information about people: are they male or female, how old are they, sort of where are they geographically but without having to identify themselves by name. Through the interface and kind of questions we ask, and through our messaging, you share as much as you are comfortable sharing.

People can also select different levels of privacy. One is where they basically only have their profile visible to people within the community. So there is a sense of a walled garden, and I think that is actually very important too. Many people feel more comfortable talking about this kind of information when they realize they are surrounded by others who are in the same situation.

They are talking to a room full of people who relate, who understand. Even the way that we identify people on their profiles, we very clearly show if someone’s a patient versus a caregiver versus a guest. If somebody is a guest, they are in fact actually required to share their real name.

[The different levels of identification] are ways that we can signal that you can come and share without fear of being publicly outed…”

Tune into the podcast to hear Kate address these additional points:

• How do you approach this very personal information without turning off your user base?
• How do you handle designing an interface that is not only usable but also emotionally supportive?
• How are you using both structured data from surveys and unstructured data from forum discussions to create visualizations?
• How have you converted people’s individual stories into data?

What I love about these pictures is how he’s slowed down time. Once it’s slower, we can see details we couldn’t see before.

Turns out we need to slow down time when we’re designing sophisticated interactions. There’s a ton of things happening when we drag an object on the screen or scroll through text. If we want to ensure these interactions feel natural, we have to first slow down time so we can talk about what’s happening.

In today’s UIEtips, we look back at an article we originally published in July 2010. In the article, I talk about a technique that Bill Scott showed me for slowing down time. It’s called the Interesting Moments Grid and it’s a living deliverable that teams can use to describe what happens in the microseconds of an interaction’s lifetime. If you design interactions, I know you’ll find this fascinating.

Read the article, Capturing the Interesting Moments.

Last year, Bill Scott shared his Interesting Moments Grid at the Web App Masters Tour. His talk received rave reviews, so we asked him back for this year’s Tour. In his new talk, Bill explores how web applications handle rich interaction techniques on multiple devices and platforms. Learn about Bill’s talk and the other masters’ talks at UIETour.com.

How do you slow down time when designing your interactions? We’d love to hear your experiences. Share your ideas with us below.

Register with the promotion code WAMT by February 23, 2011 for any of the Tour cities and get $100 off.

We had to provide more than just inspiration. We needed to make sure attendees left with new tools, ideas and processes they could immediately implement. We needed to make sure that the conference was going to impact their day to day work. Improve it, refine it, energize it.

As we put together the Masters, we realized we had something really special. A group of people you’re unlikely to see present ever again at one single event.

We knew we hit the mark when we received comments like this.

“Absolutely one of the BEST conferences I’ve been to. Each speaker brought valuable lessons we can take away with us.” Philadelphia attendee

“First conference I’ve been to in a while where I was very glad I attended every presentation. Content quality was excellent.” Philadelphia attendee

“A great 2 days. I could build the rest of my career on what I learned at this conference.” Stan C

Even though we broke up the band, you can still experience the Tour

With the Tour Proceedings, you can listen to over 13 hours of audio from 12 sessions, view all the PDFs of the presentations, hear interviews with many of the speakers, and get discounts to their books.

Order your proceedings by August 31, and you’ll pay just $249 – $50 off the regular price. You’ll immediately get access to the proceedings and make an impact on your web applications.

You’ll hear from these Masters

Luke Wroblewski, author of Web Form Designs. Luke masterfully blended entertainment and information in his presentation. He focused on ways to improve web forms, where they need to grow and change, and what to consider when designing for mobile applications.

Bill Scott, co-author of Designing Web Interfaces. Bill showed us rich interaction design principles in action on several web applications. He explained his concept of interesting moments — opportunities to engage with the user, and that these moments can actually be mapped out in a grid.

Doug Bowman, creative director, Twitter. Doug gave us a fascinating look at how Twitter helps new and one-time users become loyal repeaters. He discussed how users fall into 3 main groups – curious, casual, committed/core and how they track the users in these groups.

Ken Kellogg, director of user research, Marriott. Ken told us what it takes to redesign a web site with dozens of internal stakeholders involved. He discussed how negotiation was an important tactic during the redesign and the importance of never harming the corporate cash cow.

Jason Fried, co-founder, and Ryan Singer, lead designer, 37signals. Both Jason and Ryan talked about solving design problems. Ryan takes a more hands-on approach and shows you the methods 37signals uses for designing—from low fidelity sketches to using Photoshop. He emphasizes the lack of wireframes and detailed designs. Jason’s approach is more around the dynamics of the team—their communication around a design and how ownership of a design evolves.

Hagan Rivers, co-founder, Two Rivers Consulting. Hagan’s session covered several ways of tackling navigation in web applications. She carefully details the four types of navigation to consider: local navigation, global navigation, cross navigation, and dashboard navigation. Hagan’s session was very in-depth and detailed.

Christian Crumlish, co-author of Designing Social Interfaces. Christian lead us on a journey around social design principles and patterns. His talk covered five social principles: pave the cowpaths, talk like a person, embrace openness, learn from games, and respect the ethical dimension. He then continued on with five social pattern groups and five social anti-patterns.

Stephen Anderson, creator of the Mental Notes cards. Stephen explained how to use psychological concepts to motivate users. He engaged the audience with exercises on how to make mundane tasks fun and engaging.

Jared Spool, founder, User Interface Engineering. Jared delighted attendees with two presentations on current findings from UIE research. In his first presentation, Jared discussed the importance of vision, feedback, and culture. His second presentation looked at the importance of creating an experience vision.

Julie Zhuo, designer, Facebook. Julie gave us an inside look at how designers at Facebook work. She covered Facebook’s design strategy of designing for the system, not the individual, and how design decisions are data focused. It was fascinating to hear how a team of 35 design for over 400 million users.

Get all the details on each presentation.

So What Are You Waiting For?

You’ll want to order before August 31 to save $50 and pay just $249. Ready to order? You won’t regret it. As soon as we receive your order, you’ll get the information to immediately access this bundle of goodness.

Get $50 off the Tour Proceedings when you order by 8/31/10. Learn more about the proceedings

Once again, Luke Wroblewski captures the essence of Mark’s presentation. In addition to Mark’s session, he also blogged many of the other Masters’ presentations from San Diego and Minneapolis. You can read these posts on his site, LukeW.com.

Now, on to Luke’s post.

At the Web App Masters Tour in Philadelphia, Mark Trammell outlined Twitter’s approach to helping new and one-time users become loyal repeaters by discussing the company’s focus on A Simple Ladder of Engagement.

• To measure success, Twitter doesn’t look at page views. They look at registered (125M) and unique users (190M).
• Twitter processes 700M searches per day. 65M tweets a day. That’s 10 to 1 searches per day vs. tweets.

Sign Up

• Twitter gets about 330 thousand sign-ups per day. So sign-up is a great opportunity to shape behavior as it is people’s first time experience.
• Usually when people come to Twitter they see a big cliff. They don’t know what it is or how to use it. The people that have been using it for years know what is going on, new users don’t.
• In trying to understand how people “get” Twitter –the research team looked at a specific group of users: people that signed up, left, and then came back.
• The people that got the most out of Twitter were consumers first and then became producers later. They found things they were passionate about, listened, and then found their voice.
• Twitter wants people to use it as a consumption tool. They see consumption as a way to allow people to settle in and start enjoying Twitter.
• You shouldn’t have to have an account to get use out of Twitter. They want to provide utility for people without them having to do anything.
• The key to getting people engaged on what they are passionate about is asking them. The new Twitter sign up process supports this when it surfaces a set of topics people may be interested in.
• Twitter made the first thing people see after creating an account a list of things they might care about. Before people were seeing things that were random (most popular), now the first thing they do is curate what they care about.
• The new process is now three steps and more time consuming. But it has a 29% increase in completions and the people who complete the flow are much more engaged because they were exposed to use of the product through the flow.

Magnets, Hooks, & Glue

• Magnets: things that pull people to a service but may not keep them there. Celebrities are strong magnets for Twitter but do not keep people there.
• Hook: get people to return to a service. Connections with family members and subject matter experts get people hooked on Twitter.
• Glue: a mix of news & information sources, celebrities, friends/family, and local businesses. When people get a good mix of these items on Twitter –that binds them to the service.
• Embrace lingo. People have been on Twitter for four years know it but others are confused by it. To embrace lingo, you need to explain the lingo and how to use it.
• 75% of traffic comes from outside Twitter.com. The Web client is only part of the experience. Twitter’s fastest growth is coming from areas where mobile is growing fastest.
• Users are 3x more likely to add a friend if they are suggested by another person. Dormant users are 4x more likely to re-engage given social motivation.
• Nothing on Twitter is there that wasn’t first done by users.
• Lists: saw people creating multiple accounts to track different topics of interest. People had to log in/out. Lists help with that issue – easier to switch back and forth.
• Hashtags: started with people tweeting gas prices using “#atlgas” –just made these links to search.
• Build value: add features and remove features as well. It’s often really hard to remove features but if you want to create a great experience, you have to do it.
• Twitter’s number one operating principle: be a force for good.

Doug Bowman of Twitter will join our merry band of Masters in Seattle. Learn more about our last tour date at www.UIETour.com.

Until July 2, register for Seattle and get $200 off when you use the promotion code TOURBLOG. Learn more about the tour at www.UIETour.com

With one stop to go, we’re already considering the UIE Web App Masters Tour a huge success. Hundreds of web application designers, from all across the US and Europe, and as far away as Japan, Egypt, and South Africa, have found inspiration from our world-class experts. Fortunately, there’s one more stop on the tour and you can be there too.

I’m both excited and sad that our UIE Web App Masters Tour is coming to an end. I’m sad because I really wish we could keep going, bringing this merry band of thought leaders to designers all over the world. I’m excited because every tour stop gets better than the last. Seattle is sure to be our best.

But don’t just take our word on how awesome this Tour is. Here’s what some past attendees had to say:

“Absolutely one of the BEST conferences I’ve been to. Each speaker brought valuable lessons we can take away with us.” Philadelphia attendee

“Thank you everyone for an absolutely outstanding event. Loved it, loved it, loved it.” @brightmatrix

“Luke’s presentation on Forms is amazing. The mobile portion is mind blowing.” @webdesignmyths

“2nd day of Web App Masters Tour. Great stuff. @billwscott = excellent #uiewamt” @let5ch

“Wish I had a little #wamt remote so that I could rewind @haganriverstalk! Invaluable information on navigation!!!”@noniekiimp

“Going on record to let UIE know #uiewamt so far is brilliant, great value and I’ll be recommending it. And that’s after day 1.” @rahul

“Still digesting material from Web App Masters Tour! Amazing event! Lots of smart people attending. Loved single track & tons of valuable info! BRAVO UIE!” @Ilonaposner

“A great 2 days. I could build the rest of my career on what I learned at this conference.” Stan C

It’s Not too Late to be Part of the 2010 Tour

The last stop is in Seattle on July 12 & 13. It’s our last time we’re bringing these Masters together, ever! There’s about a one in a billion chance that all these Masters share the stage together again. Seattle will deliver a program we guarantee will change the way you design applications forever.

This Tour Changes the Way You Design

Across two days, nine leading experts in web-based application design share their experience and wisdom, to show you concrete examples on how to take your work to new levels. They tackle the issues of complexity, communicating with the developers, integrating new features, and engaging the users. Attendees come away with a full brain and a pile of new ideas, ready to start making improvements right away.

These 9 Masters rock this Tour.

Stephen Anderson shows us how, using the techniques of seduction, we can entice our users to enjoy exploring our applications to their full advantage.

Hagan Rivers has an amazing way of eliminating the inherent complexity of rich functionality, using a simple diagramming technique.

Ken Kellogg shares publicly, for the first time ever, how they guaranteed the success of Marriott.com’s major redesign of the company’s cash cow: the $6.5b reservation system.

Bill Scott takes us deep into the design of sophisticated interaction techniques that enhance the users’ experience while simplifying the application.

Luke Wroblewski explores several novel ways web applications can collect user input, through both mobile devices and desktop software.

Ryan Singer explains how 37signals integrates the code layers, templates, screen designs, flows between screens, and copywriting.

Christian Crumlish shows you how to build a solid social platform using a core set of social design principles with your application.

Doug Bowman discusses the research they used at Twitter to help the one-time users become loyal repeaters.

And I share our newest research into the secrets behind the best design teams.

Read all about each Master’s session on the web site.

Special Deal for Our Blog Readers

It would be downright awful if you missed this last tour stop. So we’ve put together a special deal. Just use the promotion code TOURBLOG when you register and we’ll give you $200 off the registration price. We have a limited number of seats left and you have to register by June 28.

Don’t miss the event of a lifetime. Join us in Seattle and inject new energy and inspiration into your designs.

Until June 28, register for Seattle and get $200 off when you use the promotion code TOURBLOG. Learn more about the tour at www.UIETour.com

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Web applications can get wild. You know the kind; something that’s on your corporate intranet with an obscure purpose, hundreds of screens and some kind of navigation kudzu growing in every direction. Hagan Rivers is one of our favorite wranglers of such apps. When these types of applications have reached the critical point, companies turn to her to help regain the upper hand.

So what do you do with navigation that is out of control? Hagan brings her pruning shears. That’s one of her three crazy ideas about conquering out-of-control navigation: design without navigation!

Hagan is always a crowd favorite at our conferences, and we wanted to share with you a sample of her presentation, Escaping Navigation Hell, from the 2010 UIE Web App Masters Tour. Listen in and follow along with the downloadable slide deck, or check out some highlights below.

[ Download the complete set of this section's slides and follow along. (2.4 MB PDF) ]

Crazy Idea #1: Design Without Navigation

• Design screens in the application without the navigation system.
• Hagan builds and tests the screens without the navigation.
• She concentrates her energy on the tasks that are performed within that function of the application.

Crazy Idea #2: Navigation in an Application

• Treat navigation as its own application, with its own requirements and goals.
• If your application is going to be complex, so likely too will your navigation.
• Design it as a functioning whole and test it that way.

Crazy Idea #3: Design Navigation Last

• Design navigation systems last, separating them from the rest of the application design.
• It’s easier to design the nav last because you’ll have a better picture of what your users will need to navigate.

30k view

• When starting redesign projects, Hagan maps out the existing site she’ll be overhauling.
• Get a “big picture” of all that the application does.

Screen Tagging

• To identify components of the application, she has a fixed set of descriptive tags she uses to label each node on the map.

Example of tags for a page in the WordPress admin area.

Mapping video

• Here’s a video of Hagan building an Application Map

See all the slides for this section in the downloadable PDF.

In the talk, Hagan references this excellent UIE Virtual Seminar she did for us on web application navigation, which you can still access.

If you enjoyed this taste of Hagan’s talk, why not join us in Seattle for the final stop on the UIE Web App Masters Tour? See Escaping Navigation Hell, and all the other fantastic talks for yourself!

Want to learn more from Hagan? See her entire session at the Web App Masters Tour and get $100 off your registration with promo code TOURBLOG.

Today, UIEtips features two amazing speakers, Bill Scott and Stephen Anderson. Both speakers strongly fit what we think is an ideal presenter. We extracted excerpts from their Web App Masters Tour talks and created podcasts. These talks are loaded with useful information to implement when designing web applications.

Bill Scott’s podcast, Designing Interesting Moments: Live!, delves into one of the principles he covers in his talk: input where there’s output. He gives us great examples of patterns and anti-patterns and how it effects the user’s interaction with the application.

Listen and learn more about Bill’s podcast, Designing for Interesting Moments: Live!

Stephen Anderson’s podcast, Designing Seductive Business Apps: Live!, looks at incorporating behavioral psychology into your design. He discusses three concepts: scarcity, set completion and the feedback loop and how it all plays into a user’s psyche and actions.

Listen and learn more about Stephen’s podcast, Designing for Seductive Business Apps: Live!.

Bill and Stephen cover a lot more material in their talks on the Tour. You still can hear them, plus 7 other Masters, at one of the two remaining Tour stops taking place on both sides of the US, Philadelphia or Seattle. Explore the whole program at www.UIETour.com.

Until May 31, register for Philadelphia or Seattle and get $100 off when you use the promotion code TOURBLOG. Learn more about the tour at www.UIETour.com

Subscribe to our podcast via

It’s becoming common to see behavioral cues in everyday web applications. Designers are looking to encourage certain actions, and are turning to the principles of behavioral psychology to achieve their goals. No longer solely the domain of social and gaming apps, you can leverage many of these in your daily work.

Stephen Anderson is the first person we think of when it comes to these kinds of interactions. Stephen is an independent consultant and creator of the Mental Notes, a set of reference cards with design insights from the world of psychology.

Stephen is one of the most popular speakers at the Web App Masters Tour and we want to share a sample of his talk, Designing Seductive Business Apps. In this portion of his talk, he presents three concepts: Scarcity, Set Completion and the Feedback Loop.

[ Download the complete set of this section's slides and follow along. (6MB PDF) ]

Scarcity

Scarcity is a concept we’re all familiar with. When something desirable is rare—like gold—the more valuable it is. When someone is considering the purchase of something, its availability is an important factor in the decision.

Set Completion

Set Completion is something we see all around us. When was the last time you saw a fast food ad where the restaurant was offering a give away? Collectible glasses and kids meal toys are two common ones. Usually there are several different version of the giveaway, and you’re encouraged to “Collect all five!” The closer we are to having a full set, the stronger the urge to complete the set.

The Feedback Loop

The Feedback Loop is essentially “cause and effect.” When we see our actions have an immediate effect on a situation, we are likely to become engaged. Have you ever walked in front of a TV display at a retail store and noticed you were on the TV? It probably stopped you in your tracks. In web apps, the more immediate the effects of our actions are seen, the more engaging the interaction can be.

Luke Wroblewski did a great job capturing the essence of Jason’s presentation, Backstage at 37signals. In addition to Jason’s session, he also blogged many of the other Masters’ presentations in Minneapolis. You can read these posts on his site, LukeW.com.

Now, on to Luke’s post.

At the UIE Web App Masters Tour in Minneapolis MN, 37signals founder, Jason Fried described how 37signals solves design problems and collaborates by showing four days worth of chat transcripts about an ongoing redesign project at the company.

• The overview screen in the 37signals application Basecamp has been around for four years. 37signals tried to redesign it once and got a lot of pushback from their users, so they pulled back. That was quite uncharacteristic for them, so Jason hopes they never need to do that again.
• Before deciding to redesign the Basecamp overview screen, 37signals gathered feedback from a survey over a couple months. In the survey, people said they do not have a good feel for what is going on in their projects. When looking at customer surveys, 37signals does not implement product ideas from users but instead tries to get an understanding of the problems people are having.
• The current Basecamp overview page is a listing of what happened on a project per day. Everything is organized by day: to-dos, comments, files upload, etc. It’s all useful data but it is hard to get a sense of what happened in a summary view. Things are grouped by time and not type. This was the impetus for the redesign and all the direction the team was given to get started.

Insights from the 37signals Process

• 37signals does not use documentation, schematics, or traditional user testing. They try to design the real thing right away and iterate until they get what they want.
• It’s important for a manager or creative director to know what is important at any given time. Up front, you need to provide feedback on the big picture not on the details. Once you are going in the right direction, then it is time to focus on the details.
• It’s very easy to get stuck on things that don’t matter. Don’t do it. Try to get the big picture ideas in place first then work through the rest.
• Instead of talking too much about feedback, one of the best ways to respond to a design is with another design. This response could just be a simple sketch. Working back and forth with pictures helps to remove misinterpretation. If you spend too much time talking about something, you need an image to ground the conversation.
• When you redesign something, you don’t have to change everything. What is the least amount you can change in a design to have the biggest effective difference? Look for small but impactful changes.
• Typically, 37signals does not try to change 15-20 things at once. They make one change and upload a new screen shot to discuss. This allows them to control everything but the one thing they are changing. When you make multiple changes at a time, it is hard to see what worked and what didn’t. Better to go one thing at a time. When people go away for a week and work on stuff that does not matter, that’s time lost.
• Don’t base the design on something you can’t do. If you can’t build something now –remove it from the design.
• Always try to use real information in your designs. Use real numbers, data, and names so you can think through the way a design will support actual content. A variety of data can help work through potential issues.
• At first you are in the excited phase with a new design. But then you get used to it and start to look at it critically again. This is ok –it helps bring up additional issues.
  If you build things for other people, you are judging everything by proxy. “will other people like this?”. Solving your own problems allows you to effectively judge them. Design for yourself if you can.
• 37signals prefers to kick off projects with loose requirements because they are not smart enough to know exactly how things will go. Allowing the project to evolve yields more insights as things progress.
• 37signals currently has 3 teams: 2 programmers, 1 designer. Each team breaks up and reforms every two months. They always divide work into two week increments. Even big initiatives can be broken down into smaller tasks.

Jason Fried is just one of the Masters at the upcoming Web App Masters Tour in Philadelphia and Seattle. Learn more about the Tour program and dates at www.UIETour.com.

Until May 11, register for Philadelphia or Seattle and get $100 off when you use the promotion code TOURBLOG. Learn more about the tour at www.UIETour.com

Subscribe to our podcast via

There are more than 16 different events and 96 interesting moments in a common drag and drop interaction. Your designs must leverage these moments to enhance the user interaction to deliver the right feedback and avoid distraction and confusion.

Bill Scott’s Designing for Interesting Moments was one of the highlights of the first stop on UIE’s Web App Masters tour, in San Diego. We wanted everyone to benefit from his research into web interactions, so we’re bringing you this audio and visual sample.

View Bill Scott’s Designing for Interesting Moments Sample

Since we couldn’t embed all the visuals here, we’ve built a special showcase. You can listen to Bill describe the components of his first principle of Designing for Interesting Moments, “Input where there’s output”, and view his example videos and screen shots. Bill’s presentation is visually rich. You can listen to the audio alone, but we recommend you view the visuals with the audio.

In this excerpt from the talk, Bill touches on patterns that work and anti-patterns to avoid.

Patterns

• In-line editing
• Multi-in-line editing
• Symmetry

Anti-patterns

• Non-symmetry
• Tiny-targets
• Artificial Visual Constructs

Until May 7th, you can register for any of the Tour cities for $795 when you use the promotion code TOURBLOG. Learn more about the tour at www.UIETour.com

This is just one principle from Bill Scott’s Designing for Interesting Moments You should join us to see all six principles at the UIE Web App Masters Tour. You won’t regret it.

For the past 10 years, Jared Spool and our research team at User Interface Engineering studied the secrets behind successful teams and the factors driving their results. In late March, Jared kicked off the Web App Masters Tour in San Diego sharing this research with attendees.

Once again, Luke Wroblewski did a great job capturing Jared’s presentation. We’re reprinting Luke’s blog post from LukeW Ideation and Design.

Here is Luke’s take on Jared’s presentation.

In his opening presentation at the Web App Masters Tour in San Diego, CA, Jared Spool outlined how design organizations can deliver the holistic experiences Web applications users increasingly expect.

• It’s no longer about the application—its about the experience. When done well, good design is invisible. To illustrate, you only think about the air conditioning when it is not working.
• Web applications are at the intersection of user needs, business goals, and what the technology allows us to do. The design process is about compromise. We need to constantly make decisions that balance these objectives.
• Jared’s team researched 60 different organizations that created good user experiences. They found that size, organizational structure, process, management, etc. did not determine what drove great product design.
• Vision, Feedback, and Culture were the three elements that were consistently present in teams that delivered good experiences.
• Vision: can everyone on the team describe the experience of using your product five years from now? What is the design you are working towards?
• Feedback: in the last six weeks, have you spent at least two hours watching someone use your design or a competitor’s design? You need team members to have first-hand exposure to people using your product. Many teams don’t use the products they design.
• Two hours gives you enough time to see the subtleties and nuances of how people use products. It has to be recent (last six weeks) or else it is forgotten. Once you start to see the same problems over and over again, you focus and fix them. The best organizations do this weekly.
• You can gather feedback with usability testing, field studies, and first-hand persona development. But the key part is exposure. Try to increase hours and frequency. Don’t think in terms of number of participants—think in terms of exposure (hours and frequency).
• Design agents to impact experience: core team (makes the bulk of the decisions) and secondary agents (impact the total experience customers have).
• Culture: in the last six weeks, have you rewarded someone for a major design failure? Every failure is an opportunity to learn. When you celebrate failure, you get to ask some questions—what did we learn about our users, ourselves, our product?
• As the number of things people need to consider for Web applications has increased, the size of the teams has actually decreased.
• The best organizations thought in terms of people’s skills not roles. They worked on building everyone’s skills by giving people opportunities to learn.
• Curation and editing are key skills for Web application design. Need to be vigilant about removing what is not necessary. Curation is as much about what isn’t included as what is.
• Designing for embraceable change: when people learn to use something, it’s hard to change existing behaviors.
• The kitchen cabinet problem: people know what is in their kitchen cabinets. If we change where things are—people’s existing routines are disrupted.
• User assistance can help people through change.

You can hear more about the research Jared and the UIE team did, along with another presentation from Jared, Turning Back to the Future, at the Web App Masters Tour. The Tour continues in Minneapolis, April 27-28, Philadelphia, June 7-8, and Seattle on July 12-13. Learn more about the program at www.UIETour.com

Until April 29, register for any of the Tour cities for $795 when you use the promotion code TOURBLOG. Learn more about the tour at www.UIETour.com

Ken Kellogg’s podcast talks about navigating the design process within a large corporate world, and how customer research plays an integral part of new designs. Listen to Ken’s podcast.

In Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone’s podcast, they talk about the huge collection of social design elements in their book. Christian and Erin also cover social communities and where the growth of “social in” is occurring. Listen to Christian and Erin’s podcast.

Did you miss parts 1-3 of the interview series? We showcased these Masters:

• Part 1 – Julie Zhuo on how Facebook handles design changes. And Bill Scott taking a look at design patterns and rich interactions. Here’s the post to part 1.
• Part 2 – Hagan Rivers’ new approach to designing web app navigation. And Stephen Anderson on how to encourage user behavior with the design of your web app. Read the post to part 2.
• Part 3 – Jason Fried discusses 37signals’ design and development process. And Luke Wroblewski on how to make web forms less intimidating. Here’s the post to part 3.

If you enjoyed the Web App Masters interview series, then you’ll want to explore the Web App Masters Tour. It’s two days of inspiring presentations with a perfect blend of theory and practice. The Tour stops in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and Seattle. Learn more about the dates and program at www.UIETour.com.

Until April 23, you can register for any of the Tour cities for $795 when you use the promotion code TOURBLOG. Learn more about the tour at www.UIETour.com

Bill Scott’s podcast looked at design patterns and rich interactions. Solid and insightful information that is definitely worth a listen.

In part 2, two more Masters from the Web App Masters Tour, Stephen Anderson and Hagan Rivers, share their wealth of information with us.

Stephen Anderson’s podcast on Seductive Interactions looks at how to encourage user behavior through the design of your web app. Stephen’s cutting edge thinking brings new and exciting ideas to try for your designs. Listen to Stephen’s podcast.

When it comes to web app navigation, Hagan Rivers is the grand master of them all. Her podcast, Escaping Navigation Hell, presents a new approach to designing web app navigation—design it as a separate application. Listen to Hagan’s podcast.

Stephen and Hagan join Julie and Scott along with 9 other Masters for the 4 city Web App Masters Tour. Two days full of inspiration, aimed directly at the designers of today’s web-based applications. Come listen to these Web App Masters share their wisdom and deliver powerful insights you can act on immediately. Learn more about the Tour at www.UIETour.com.

Until April 19, you can register for any of the Tour cities for $795 when you use the promotion code TOURBLOG. Learn more about the tour at www.UIETour.com

In a 4-part series, we’ll feature audio interviews with these Masters. Today’s tips feature Julie Zhuo of Facebook and Bill Scott of Netflix.

Julie Zhuo’s podcast, Design Lessons from Facebook’s 350 Million, shares how Facebook handles design changes and public reaction to these changes. You may be surprised by what she has to say. Listen to Julie’s podcast.

Bill Scott’s podcast looks at design patterns and rich interactions. He talks about exploring each micro-stage of an interaction and designing for the nuances of interesting moments. Listen to Bill’s podcast.

Julie and Scott are two of the 13 Masters involved with the Web App Masters Tour. If you’re involved with web app design, then you’ll want to explore the rest of the Masters and their sessions in the 4 city tour. It’s two days of inspiring presentations with a perfect blend of theory and practice. Learn more about the Tour at www.UIETour.com.

Until April 19, you can register for any of the Tour cities for $795 when you use the promotion code TOURBLOG. Learn more about the tour at www.UIETour.com

As we planned the topics for the Web App Masters Tour, social design principles and patterns was a must have topic. After reading Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone’s book, Designing Social Interfaces, it was a logical pick for these two Masters to present on social design.

At the Tour in San Diego, Luke Wroblewski did an awesome job capturing the essences of Christian’s session. Below are his notes from a blog post on Lukew.com. By the way, Luke also did write-ups on presentations from Hagan Rivers, Stephen Anderson, and Bill Scott

Here is Luke’s reprint.

At the Web App Masters Tour in San Diego, CA, Christian Crumlish provided an overview of social design principles and patterns in his talk Designing The Social In.

• When telephones were new, people didn’t really understand why they needed one. Phones also didn’t make sense until everybody had one. It’s often the same way with new technologies –including social networking.
• Social design is more like architecting a house than designing a billboard. You set the rooms and spaces –but people will decorate and use them how they want.
  People will create the experiences they desire and in social design, people are a big part of what the experience will be.
• User is singular, social interfaces are plural. Solitary activities like reading headlines are relatively easy to measure. Social activities require engagement with others that are most easily measured through social objects.
• Pave the cowpaths: support people’s existing behaviors with the way you design software. Example: dogster started as a photo-sharing service, but moved to a social network for pets when they saw people were uploading many images of their dogs and cats.
• Talk like a person: use conversational voice to let others know there are actual people on the other side. Self-deprecating error messages can make things more acceptable. Posing questions prompts responses, which results in a dialog.
• Your vs. My: use “you” and “yours” to indicate other people are around. This sets the right expectations.
• No joking around: some people will take jokes the wrong way or get confused. No joke will be 100% understood.
• Play well with others: be open to participation. Build on open standards, share data outside your application, accept external data within your application, and support two-way interoperability.
• Learn from games: engagement that comes form how games work helps drive business needs. Games, like social networks, are only designed to a point. They have rules, boundaries, and structures but do not dictate a singular experience.
• Respect the ethical dimension: there is an ethical element when people are involved –private data, who they know, etc. In any ethical decision, the business, the individual, and the collective/community have a stake.
• Social design patterns can be grouped by patterns related to the self, activities, community, and social spaces.
• Give people a way to be identified: let people take ownership and customize their identity. Identity doesn’t always have to manifest itself in a complicated profile.
• Indicate presence so people are aware of who else is within a system. Reputation systems help people learn how to interact with people.
• Attribution and avatars –place people’s identity in context to what they’ve done.
  What is the social object in the site you are building? The social object is the reason two people are talking to each other as opposed to talking to someone else. Social networks form around social objects, not the other way around. In Facebook there are many social objects: videos, gifts, groups, etc.
• Social activities give people things to do. Some people will engage in a few small things, and others may engage in many or larger scale things. Social activities include: collecting, broadcasting/publishing, sharing, giving feedback, communicating, and collaborating.
• Feedback allows people to have conversations about objects
• Collaboration is when you are actually making objects together. Goes beyond conversation. Social media –when you have the whole ecosystem of sharing, creating, and collaborating. Social media needs context and filtering tools when it takes off, but this is a rich man’s problems.
• Bridging the gap to the real world includes location, calendaring, etc.
• Let the community elevate people and the content they value.
• Enable people to make connections.

Learn More from Christian Crumlish

Recently, Jared Spool interviewed Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone on the realm of social interfaces. They discussed the huge collection of social design elements their book Designing Social Interfaces, contains, whether you should build a community on your site or leverage an existing community, and how the growth in social media affects new mediums like mobile. Hear their podcast, Crumlish and Malone Design the Social In.

Also, Christian will be in Minneapolis and Seattle, and Erin will be in Philadelphia, for the Web App Masters Tour presenting Designing the Social In. He’s just one of the thirteen Masters. Read all about the Tour at www.UIETour.com.

Until April 19, you can register for any of the Tour cities for $795 when you use the promotion code TOURBLOG. Learn more about the tour at www.UIETour.com

In last week’s UIEtips, we re-published the first part of an excellent article written by Luke Wroblewski, author of Web Form Design. Luke discusses tips for improving web forms and impacting user success. (Read last week’s article.)

This week, we look at the second part of the article where Luke shares additional design tips by taking a closer look at the Boingo and British Airways Web sites.

Read the article, Web From Design in the Wild—Part 2.

If you struggle with the design of your web forms, you’ll want take part in our next UIE Virtual Seminar. Luke shares his thoughts and solutions on 6 important aspects of web form design gleaned from hundreds of questions and issues designers presented him. Learn more about Luke’s virtual seminar.

And you can also see Luke in-person at the Web App Masters Tour. We lined up 13 Masters to share their insights and help you dial up your web app design skills. The Tour visits Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and Seattle from late April – July. Get more information about the Tour program and dates at www.UIETour.com. Also, if you register by April 19, and use the promotion code TIPS, you’ll pay $795/person.

Do you have any best practices for designing forms? What usability problems have you encountered with your web forms? I’d love to hear about your experiences. Share your thoughts with us and join the conversation below.

Once again, Luke Wroblewski (a master in his own right and also part of the Web App Masters Tour) did an excellent job capturing Bill’s presentation at the first stop of the Web App Masters Tour in San Diego. In previous posts, Luke highlighted Stephen Anderson’s talk on Designing Seductive Business Apps and Hagan Rivers’ talk on Escaping Navigation Hell. You can read other posts from Luke at Lukew.com.

Here are Luke’s notes.

In his Designing for Interesting Moments presentation at the Web App Masters Tour in San Diego, CA, Bill Scott outlined several rich interaction design principles and showed them in action within several Web applications.

Learn More from Bill Scott

Jared Spool got together with Bill back in February to discuss his ideas about the nuances of Interesting Moments. The result was a jam-packed podcast interview called Interesting Moments with Bill Scott. You’ll want to give it a listen.

Bill will also be in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and Seattle for the Web App Masters Tour presenting on Designing for Interesting Moments. He’s just one of the thirteen Masters. Read all about the Tour at www.UIETour.com.

Until April 19, you can register for any of the Tour cities for $795 when you use the promotion code TOURBLOG. Learn more about the tour at www.UIETour.com

When you hear Hagan present, you hang on her every word. On the first day of the Web App Masters Tour in San Diego, Hagan gave a compelling presentation on why you should tackle navigation as its own application. Lucky for us, Luke Wroblewski (another Master from the Tour) captured the highlights in a blog post that he originally published at Lukew.com. He graciously allowed us to reprint it on Brainsparks.

If you missed Hagan in San Diego, you can still catch her at the Web App Masters Tour in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and Seattle. Read the details on Hagan’s talk, Escaping Navigation Hell.

This post is the second of a series from Luke. The first one was on Designing Seductive Business Apps with Stephen Anderson. You can read more of Luke’s posts at Lukew.com.

Here are Luke’s highlights.

In her Escaping Navigation Hell presentation at the Web App Masters Tour in San Diego, CA, Hagan Rivers walked through several strategies for getting people around Web applications with lots of screens including application maps and four distinct kinds of navigation.

• How can we help people move around large applications with lot of screens? In most cases, the answer is navigation systems but they can quickly take over applications. How do you get out of this navigation hell?
• Option 1: Design without navigation. Create all the screens based on what they need to do. Assume the way people got to each screen was perfect –don’t need to think about navigation.
• Option 2: Navigation is an application. Its entire purpose is helping people find their way to the things they want. Navigation is a mini-application that lives alongside the main application. This is like the menu bar in a desktop application.
• Option 3: Design navigation last. If you design it first, you don’t know what screens are needed, which ones will be used most, etc.
• Navigation is a combination of logic and widgets. Logic is the information architecture: what’s on each screen, mental models, organization, and flow. Widgets are the UI components used to present the navigation.
• To see the relationships between screens, create a 30,000 ft. view.
  Start by tagging screens as hubs, spokes, modal screens, lists, single item pages, applications, groups, selection screens, wizard, new content creation screens, option screens, etc.
• New content creation screens are important for applications because they are where people go to make stuff (need navigation).
• Modal screens do not need navigation other than “save” and “cancel” buttons. Important to flag screens as modal since they need no other navigation.
• From this overview, create an application map (a diagram that calls out the types of screens and how they are related).
• What’s the difference between an application map and a site map? They are different in the same way a site and an application is different.
• Site map shows hierarchy. Application map shows area of focus. Hierarchical navigation needs to get people to the content they want with as few clicks as possible. Pogo-sticking is more appropriate in applications.
• If parts of an application maps include hierarchical information –use a site map.
  There are four different kinds of navigation: 1.) Local Navigation 2.) Global Navigation 3.) Cross Navigation 4.) Dashboard Navigation
• Local navigation –if you designed your screens first, you have already designed the local navigation. Local navigation is what you need to get specific tasks done. Its like kindergarten tables with all of the crayons, papers & scissors you need.
• Local navigation in hubs keeps all the tools you need where you need them. It should be consistently placed across hubs.
• Local navigation on spokes needs to provide direct links back to hubs. If modal, just need ok/cancel navigation.
• All spoke screens that are not modal should have a link back to the hub they came from.
  Both modal and non-modal spoke pages need the tools you need to work on them on the screen.
• Global navigation: navigation present and the same on every screen (except modal screens). Main job of global navigation to get people to hubs. All the hubs in the global navigation do not need to look the same.
• Frequently visited screens and important screens can be in the global navigation, even if they are not hubs. Selection screens: “New” lists (that create content) are also good candidates for global navigation. Recently changed items can be global navigation –selection spoke screens can be surfaced up front. Unfinished work screens can also be included. These items can be repeated in local navigation and global navigation.
• You need the right hubs in order for global navigation to work.
  Are these things the user things or the database’s things? –If the later, this leads to “navigation” problems.
• Cross navigation is the concierge of navigation –the guy who knows what you need. Goes to related screens (not part of current hub or spoke area). You can include cross-links as elements in an application map.
• Dashboard navigation is a set of links that provides an overview of an application. They link to really important screens. Dashboards can support different use cases and different types of users.
• Dashboard navigation supports global navigation, provides training and an overview of workflow through access to key links and data.

Learn more from Hagan

If you followed any of the #WAMT tweets, Hagan proposed 3 “crazy ideas”. One, design without navigation. Two, navigation is an application. And three, design navigation last. Get the full rationale behind her “crazy ideas” at the Web App Masters Tour. The Tour visits Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and Seattle from the end of April thru July. You’ll find all the details at www.UIETour.com.

You can also hear more of her ideas on her podcast interview with Jared Spool, Escaping Navigation Hell.

Until April 19, you can register for any of the Tour cities for $795 when you use the promotion code TOURBLOG. Learn more about the tour at www.UIETour.com

Thanks to Luke (by the way he’s also one of the Masters) we’re republishing his blog posts on the Web App Masters Tour. Besides providing excellent summaries of our Tour, his blog has some great posts that are worth exploring. Be sure to check out his writing.

This first summary is on Stephen Anderson’s talk; Designing Seductive Business Apps. His talk was interactive, fun, engaging, and educational. You can still catch Stephen’s talk at the Web App Masters Tour in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and Seattle. Look for a special promotion code at the end of this post for a discount. Learn more about the Tour at www.UIETour.com.

And now, here’s Luke’s summary.

Stephen Anderson’s Serious Play: Designing Seductive Business Apps talk at the Web App Masters Tour in San Diego, CA outlined how principles from psychology could be used to motivate Web application users.

• Seduction: the process of deliberately enticing a person to engage in some sort of behavior
• What motivates people to change their behaviors? Increasing motivation = psychology. Removing friction = usability
• People react to game mechanics within Web apps (badges, points, etc.) as skeptics, cynics, or enthusiasts. But why do they work?
• Motivating human behaviors through psychology is timeless. When the points system may become old and tired but core psychological motivators will still matter.
• Putting psychology principles into action… First, Second, translate problems into behaviors to change. Third, decide what things might encourage that behavior

Examples of Psychological Motivators

• Fun: can change behavior for the better (examples at thefuntheory.com)
• Scarcity: we infer value in something that has limited availability or is promoted as being scarce. When you see supplies are low, you are encouraged to take action. Examples: limited tickets left, limited amount of points to allocate, limit amount of characters, etc. The more of an incomplete picture you see, the more you want to see the rest of the image.
• Set completion: desire to compile a complete set of items.
  Ownership bias: want to ensure representations of you are accurate.
  Social proof: people tend to follow the lead of others when they don’t know what they should do.
• Recognition over recall: do not ask to recall things, let people recognize through visual presentations.
• These principles are going to be available as a card set of 50 insights that can be used as an easy reference and brainstorming tool. Each card describes one insight into human behavior and suggests ways to apply this to the design of Web sites, Web apps, and software applications. Learn more at Get Mental Notes

Examples on Web Apps

• LinkedIn profile completeness meter: gives you indicator of what you can do to get complete. Works because of levels, challenges, and our innate need for completeness –psychology drives the interaction.
• Foursquare is a location check-in service. You earn points, mayorships, and badges on Foursquare for getting out and discovering places. These game mechanics are in place on many sites like Stackflow, Foodspotting, and the 160 (for music).
• Collecting (badges), ownership bias & lose aversion (mayorships), feedback loops (immediate response for doing things –points), curiosity (when do you get badges & why), status (leaderboards are a sign of status), variable rewards (unsure when things will be given to you), and limited duration.
• In Cubeless you need to gather points to unlock ability to add photos, etc. 60-70% of Sabre employees use Social Q&A system. 60% of questions are answered within one hour, each question receives an average of 9 answers. Status, feedback loops, privileges, limited duration, and reciprocity are all in use on Cubeless.
• Game mechanics can help train people on software. Palm Pilot had a game called Giraffe –which worked like Space Invaders but with graffiti characters. Had to write correct characters as they fell. Microsoft released an app called Ribbon hero. You score points for using Word and play challenges that help you learn new skills. The system has hints to help you get points.

More on Seductive Interactions

Want to learn more on seductive interactions? Listen to an interview with Stephen that Jared Spool did back in January. You can also hear him in-person at the Web App Masters Tour in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, or Seattle. Until April 19, you can register for any of the Tour cities for $795 when you use the promotion code TOURBLOG. Learn more about the tour at www.UIETour.com

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Ken Kellogg

There’s plenty of pressure on web designers to groom the corporate website. You have the politics of keeping stakeholders happy and the responsibility of rolling out improvements that don’t decrease revenues. But what if your website was responsible for $6.5 Billion of revenue last year?

Such is the life of Ken Kellogg, the Director of User Research at Marriott International. Ken leads the user research team that is responsible for the experience 12 million people a month have at Marriott.com. The first day on the job, Ken received the first directive: Do No Harm.

In this podcast, Ken discusses with Jared Spool how he:

• Navigates the design process from within a large corporate world
• Partners with his executives to gain access to the most useful tools
• Keeps the site moving forward with a lot of customer research.

Ken starts by telling us the genesis of the current redesign project at Marriott:

Our research kept telling us that we might be missing out on a key segment—and those are folks that are a personal traveler, a leisure traveler. Of course, a business traveler can be a leisure traveler anytime. But, we’re really thinking about folks that don’t normally travel for business, or a spouse of a frequent business traveler who wants to plan a vacation.

What we were seeing over and over was these folks would come to Marriott.com and they’d get lost. One of the old rules about usability is you never get two chances to make the first impression. If someone gets lost, they will go some place else, that is still the truth. Everything kind of started from those two facts.

The needs of their main customer, the business traveler, are somewhat different from the leisure traveler. They had to find a way to cater to this group without alienating their bread-and-butter demographic.

…one of the first things that you’re indoctrinated with when you start working in e-commerce at Marriott is that you do no harm. It’s the Hippocratic Oath. You do not hurt the frequent business traveler. So, we have painstakingly done our best to make sure that we don’t put any stumbling blocks or any delays in the paths of our frequent business traveler.

Ken has a lot more to share in this podcast on the research and decision process that went into the redesign. And Ken’s presentation at the Web App Masters Tour in San Diego, Care and Feeding of a Corporate Cash Cow, received rave reviews. You can still catch him at our Minneapolis, Philadelphia or Seattle tour stops.

Want to learn more from Ken? See his session – Care and Feeding of the Corporate Cash Cow at the Web App Masters Tour

Are you designing within constraints of a large corporate environments? How are you bringing innovation to your site, while coloring within the lines? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

If you missed part 1 and 2, here’s a recap. 

Part 1 featured Julie Zhuo of Facebook. She shared how Facebook handles design changes and public reaction to these changes. It’s a great listen.

Also featured in part 1 was Bill Scott’s podcast looking at design patterns and rich interactions. You’ll find some interesting moments in this podcast.

Part 2 featured Stephen Anderson on Seductive Interactions. He discussed how to encourage user behavior through the design of your web app.

Hagan Rivers also shared the spotlight on a new approach to designing web app navigation. You’ll want to hear her podcast Escaping Navigation Hell if you haven’t yet.

In today’s UIETips, Jason Fried talks about the design and development process behind their single sign on feature for their  web applications. And Luke Wroblewski discusses ways to make web forms less intimidating.

All the podcasts with our Web App Masters are a small sample of what they’ll say on the UIE Web App Masters Tour. We’re finishing up the San Diego Tour now, and the speakers were outstanding. You can review what they covered with a Twitter search #WAMT. You can still catch the Tour in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and Seattle. Read all about the Tour at www.UIETour.com.

Our good friend, Hagan Rivers, explores that question in this issue of UIEtips. Inspired by our recent UIE Virtual Seminar on Search & Discovery Patterns with Peter Morville and Mark Burrell, Hagan started thinking about her own area of expertise: making complex navigation simple. That’s when her article, Browse vs. Search in Application Navigation, was born. We know you’ll enjoy it.

Read today’s UIEtips article.

At our upcoming UIE Web App Masters Tour, Hagan will be sharing with us her secrets for dealing with gnarly, complex web app navigation issues. She’s just one of the great designers we’re featuring in this four city tour, which starts in San Diego next month. Details for the tour are at www.UIEtour.com.

Are you building large applications where users need help finding commands? What techniques have you tried? We’d love to hear your experiences below.

Joining the other seven presenters for our two-day deep dive into all things wonderful about Web Apps will be:

Hagan Rivers

I’ll say it: I love Hagan. She’s an amazing designer who knows her stuff. And, unlike many designers, she’s really great at explaining the why behind her design. She’s presented at our previous Web App Summit and User Interface Conference events, always delighting the crowd.

Hagan was involved in the first web-based applications, back when she worked for Netscape in ye olde early days, where she was the lead designer on versions 1.0 through 4.0. You don’t get much more in-the-trenches experience than that. Now, she’s at Two Rivers Consulting, where she’s still pushing the envelope in web app design.

Luke Wroblewski

I think of Luke as a wunderkind. Like Hagan, he started in the early days of the web, working at NCSA where the original Mosaic browser was born. He then moved on to eBay and is now Chief Design Architect for Yahoo!, where he works on designs used every day by Yahoo!’s 700 million users.

Luke’s first book, Site Seeing: A Visual Approach to Web Usability, was what brought my attention to him. But it’s his most recent book, Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks, that I think really shows his talents. You’d think a book about Web Forms would be boring, but from the first words (“Forms suck.”), he had me. (In fact, I just noticed my copy of his book has gone missing—again! This will be the third time I’ve replaced it. Keep good track of yours as they like to walk away.)

Luke’s been speaking at our events for years and is also one of our top-rated speakers. So we’re thrilled he’ll be joining us on the tour.

Both Luke & Hagan will be at all four stops on the tour, starting in San Diego.

Get Notified As More Details Come Along

What’s that? You want to be notified on additional details and registration? No problem, just leave us your email address and we’ll send you a quick note when we have more information.

Stay tuned as the next thing is to announce the San Diego schedule and what each of our masters will be speaking on. I can’t wait to hear them!

We’ve lined up two more Masters for our UIE Web App Masters Tour. We’re thrilled to announce Bill Scott and Ken Kellogg will be joining us.

Bill Scott

First, let me say this: Bill is the nicest person on the entire planet. You’ll notice this the moment you talk to him. But that’s not why we invited him.

I wanted him on the Masters Tour because he’s brilliant, particularly when it comes to design patterns for web-based applications. Bill spoke at our Web App Summit a few years back and dazzled the audience with his presentation on Anti Patterns—things you shouldn’t do when designing.

In addition to co-authoring the book, Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions, Bill is also the Director of UI Engineering at Netflix. All of these things add up to one thing: you’re going to love his insights. Bill will be with us in all four cities.

Ken Kellogg

Managing the design of a $6.5 billion a year website is no easy challenge. Especially when that website is owned by one of the oldest, most respected brands in the world. While many of us deal with the battle of old ways against modern thinking, this is on an epic scale.

That’s why I wanted you to hear from Ken Kellogg, who sits directly in the middle of that battle, as the Director of User Research for Marriott International. Ken is currently guiding major design changes through Marriott.com and will report, first hand, what that has been like. His stories will inspire you. You can hear Ken talk about his experiences at every stop on our tour.

It’s coming together.

Bill and Ken join a great slate, including Doug Bowman, Stephen Anderson, Julie Zhuo, and Christian Crumlish. Oh, I’ll be there too (but you probably knew that).

Just a few more presenters to go and we’ll have a full program. This is getting exciting now.

Get Notified As More Details Come Along

What’s that? You want to be notified on additional details and registration? No problem, just leave us your email address and we’ll send you a quick note when we have more information.

Julie Zhuo

The designers at Facebook try hard to make Facebook users happy. It’s a hard-to-please audience, and there’s 350 million of them. As Facebook’s Product Design Manager, Julie is at the front of the storm, designing for the site that’s grown from 8 million college students to its current worldwide audience.

She’ll be sharing some of her team’s successful and not-so-successful design experiences, so we can all learn from their experience. The interesting part is that many of the problems they face are just like the ones we face, and their solutions are quite creative. You’ll hear Julie’s experiences at our San Diego stop on the tour.

Christian Crumlish

Many web applications, whether on intranets or public facing, involve making connections with other people. From the address book and contact list, to messaging and content sharing, we see more web apps helping people communicate and collaborate.

We can’t think of a better person, to introduce social features into your web-based applications, than Christian. Working with his co-author, Erin Malone, they have compiled an amazing library of patterns in their new book, Designing Social Interfaces. We’re excited to have him as one of our masters on this tour and can’t wait to hear what wisdom he’ll be sharing with us. We’re fortunate that Christian will be at each stop of the tour.

Stay tuned. We should have more additions to the program tomorrow. And we’re adding more to the site every day, as we get ready for the launch in a few days! Watch along at uietour.com.

Here’s the facts:

We’re going to 4 cities between March and July, 2010: San Diego, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and Seattle. We love these cities for the vibrant tech communities.

We’ve put together a team of leading designers of today’s top web-based applications. We call them the Masters. In each city, we’ll have them unleash two days of inspiring presentations. These folks are the best in the business and we’re thrilled you’ll get the chance to learn first-hand from their experience.

Who are the Masters?

I can tell you about two of them today:

Doug Bowman

What do Google, Wired, Blogger, Capgemini, Mighty Goods, and Adaptive Path all have in common? They’ve all seen the fine work of Doug Bowman, one of the most influential designers on the web. Now, Doug is the Creative Director of Twitter, where he’s helping change the world, one hundred and forty characters at a time. Doug will be sharing his design experiences at the San Diego and Seattle tour locations.

Stephen Anderson

Stephen gave a mind-blowing presentation at the 2009 IA Summit. He discussed how the basics behind game mechanics can help users become more engaged in other types of applications. The minute I walked out of his talk, I knew we had to have him at one of our events. His writing at PoetPainter.com, his presentations, and his work for clients, such as Nokia, Frito-Lay, Sabre Travel Network, and Chesapeake Energy all demonstrate the new insights he brings to application design. We’re thrilled that he’ll be presenting his thoughts in all four cities.

By the way, I’ll be opening and closing each of the events, so you’ll have a chance to hear from me, in addition to Doug, Stephen, and the other presenters we’re lining up.

We’re putting everything about the event at www.uietour.com. Stay tuned for more news…