.cross.wired.mind.

I had an interesting experience yesterday. I was surfing on my iPhone and I pulled up CNN to check out the news (I normally use the BBC but that’s a long story). I was shocked when I was forced into the mobile version of CNN and could not find a way to get back to the regular page. I do appreciate that CNN is trying to look out for me, but their assumption that I would rather view a “mobile optimized” version of their site is a bit presumptuous.

I prefer to use the full version of nearly every site I visit and many of the sites I have encountered have provided the means to leave the mobile version for the full version, or leave the full version for the mobile version. Facebook did this particularly well. I understand that many mobile web browsers lack the capabilities of their fixed computing cousins but that does not mean that all mobile devices and browsers share in those limitations. I also understand that many mobile devices still sit on very slow networks and bandwidth may be limited, but that is no longer a given.

I hope that product teams begin to realize that the choice to use the mobile or full version of any site is an important factor in the overall user experience. I think the choice to make the mobile version the default option (upon detection of a mobile browser) is prudent but the user should be allowed to make the choice that is best for their needs and for the capabilities of their mobile device of choice.

When the use of a wonderful technology comes back to bite the user - in this case a Chinese restaurant.

Women who knit sweaters for men often find a less than enthusiastic recipient once they complete their work. (note - men knit too but this usually happens when women knit for men) For the knitter the work was a time consuming challenge. It took skill. It took time. It took many hours of hard work. Why is it that the men who get these sweaters simply do not appreciate what was done for them?

Because knitting is so time consuming the creation of the knitted object must hold the knitters interest. The yarn must feel good on the fingers. The stitches cannot be too repetitive or too simple. The color must not be a bland monotone lest the knitter become bored like a long distance driver watching the white lines of the road wiz by in endless procession.

The trouble is that most men want plain sweaters. One need look no farther than a local men’s shop to see the kinds of fashions that men like to wear. When men see sweater that is a many colored, intricately cabled, mash up of styles they see a sweater that they do not want to wear. Yes it was fun for the knitter to make but it is not what the guy want to wear in public.

The knitter is trapped in a cruel paradox - in order to make a sweater that a man will wear, she will need to use monotone yarn that might be thicker than she wants to use. She may have to use a simple pattern with row after row of uniform stitches. Producing it will be dull and will lack real challenge. Her choice is to enjoy knitting or make a sweater that a man will wear.

So what does this have to do with digital design? User experience designers want interesting projects. They get bored building plain old digital information systems. Information architects constantly look for new ways to build intricate structures, complex organizational systems, and sites with perfect browsing systems. Interaction designers want to build sites with sophisticated interfaces that solve challenging problems. Information designers want everything to be visually interesting and designed with a deeply artistic aesthetic.

We do this because the alternative is often dull and it isn’t always challenging. We want the work we do to be personally gratifying. We want to feel as if we have accomplished something great. Above all else we do not want to get bored. Creativity needs to be expressed. We must stay challenged. We must push the edges of the envelope. We strive for exquisite sophistication that takes complexity and makes it useable for the masses. We all want to build a better, cooler mousetrap.

That is not what the user wants. The user wants a tool that makes sense to them. The do not want to think about how it works - they just want it to work.

User centered design is not just about making products that people can use. People can use products that don’t work very well. User centered design is about making products for the people that will use them and not to make products that can be used but were primarily designed so that we could have a fun time designing them.

If you are an IA, UX’er, code monkey, software or web product manager, or an exec that makes big decisions about web base applications or software then you NEED to buy designing the obvious … you just may not realize it yet.

Why should you listen to me? Well first of all I am not earning a dime from this. I am just a oft frustrated IA/UX professional who has spent the last 10 years banging my head against the walls of corporate America to get them to learn exactly what Robert Hoekman Jr. wrote. Like all great books he has taken an obvious truth that has been hidden in plain sight and captured it so we can all see it clearly and learn from it. We now have a common language and framework to bring this subject into the enterprise, into our garage web app projects, into the community of practice, and help folks understand just how critical this is.

By next week I will post my full review. Don’t wait untill then - just go buy it. Now. I mean it. Go to wherever you buy books and order it up. I don’t care if you just bought Gears of War and your a little short on cash. Go sell some blood plasma or something.

If you have ANYTHING to do with the creation, design, or development of web application than go here right now and get the damn book.

Don’t make me get the flying monkeys after you.

I was browsing through the stories over at The Register when this one jumped out at me - Is Google Legal?

What? Huh? WTF?

So I read on and to my horror it would seem people still don’t get the Net.

To people who create web sites the indexing done by Google is vital to drive traffic their way. In an article in the New York Times one ecommerce site owner said:

Ms. Le Tendre says she assumes that there are many thousands of proprietors like herself who are dependent on Google traffic for their incomes. “I couldn’t even guess at the amount of sales generated by Google,” she said, “but I would imagine it would be sufficient to run a good-sized country.”

But in Belgium a newspaper publishing group is trying to get Google to pay for the right to index their sites. They filed a law suit claiming copyright infringement by Google’s news aggregator. The article is very detailed and I will not attempt to summarize it here so I encourage you to read it for yourself.

The real kickers in the article are this …

Copiepresse told the court that Google damages the publishers’ ad revenue by bypassing their homepages. “We want search engines to send people to our homepage,” she said, explaining that only the homepage always carries ads.

… and this …

“Yes, we have a problem with Google, but we don’t want to be out of Google,” Boribon said. “We want Google to respect the rules. If Google wanted to index us, they need to ask.”

Copiepresse also wants Google to pay for indexing sites. Boribon declined to discuss how or how much. “That has to be negotiated,” she said.

This shows that greed leads to stupidity. Google drives the traffic of the World Wide Web. They do this by accessing the public sites that publishers place on the Web. Publishers can easily prevent Google from indexing their sites but why would they want to?

If you are trying to get people to come to your site why would you block the single largest source of traffic? Why would you ask them to pay? If that model were put in place Google would fold as site owners large and small demanded payement.

So of course Google has removed the Belgian sites from its index, and what was the response?

“They have done it to punish us,” said Boribon, who didn’t want Google to go that far. “They have a bad attitude.”

Hmmmmm. You file a lawsuit demanding payment for the right to index your pages and when Google says no, and drops you from their service you cry foul. To me it looks like you tried extortion to tap into Google’s revenue stream and when they switched you off and your site traffic dropped (and thus your own ad revenue) you realized just how much you need Google’s service.

Oh, and if you want to generate ad revenue - don’t put all of your eggs in the “home page” basket. Search engines drop people on the page they want, not the page you want. My suggestion is to rethink your entire web strategy and get with the times.

Let Google index your site. Place your own ads on story pages as well as the home page. Encourage people to link to your content and even use (in a fair way) the content on your site in their blogs. Open up, don’t close yourself in hoping that it will increase your revenue. The more proprietary your system the more people will turn elsewhere for content.

The Web should be open, free, and completely cross connected. That is the power of the Internet. That is what makes the Net a powerful communication tool that will help us all to realize our collective potential.

As a part of a design exercise today I had a real AHA! moment.

Web 2.0 has given us great content aggregators for different kinds of media. Flickr gathers images. YouTube gathers videos. Blogs gather ideas. There are search engines and all kinds of online communities but why hasn’t someone created a Web 2.0 hub that, based on communities of interest, gathered the photos from flickr, entries from Wikipedia, videos from YouTube, maps from Google earth, blog entries, etc., etc., in one place. Then allowed the people gathering all of that content (or links to that content) to connect in meaningful ways. I know that sites like MySpace kind of do this but not to the same level as a real content aggregator.

Think about it. If I love Battlestar Galactica (which I do) why can’t I go to a site that gives me access to blogs, flickr photo sets, YouTube vids, heck … any kind of content … then allow me to connect with others based on shared interests.

I hate advertising. I hate it, hate it, hate it … unless its about something in which I am actually interested in seeing, buying, reading, wearing, etc. Then the opposition fades and I dig it. With a place that aggregates content based on interests and communities of interest then advertisers can specifically target ads to people who actually want to see them. Got an add for a cool Halo toy? Let me see it. Want to pitch the new cartoon on Adult Swim? I want to hear about it. Get it? Communities of interest that gather together and want to hear what you have to say about what you sell.

Please steal this idea - you listening Google? Yahoo? Give me credit and deliver this killer site and I will sign up and spend money on the products that truly interest me.

bacon on a cat

I have located a site that MUST be the source of information on the Internet used by Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).  I could be wrong (of course I am this is a joke after all) but the similarity is pretty creepy.

Sensationalist headline?  Nope.  From the body that brought you “sending internets through a series of tubes” brings you this little gem of a bill.  Yes.  They want to block any site that has you create a user profile and to which you can contribute content.  The group that still does not understand the fundamentals of the Net is seeking to ban all forms of Web 2.0 from schools and libraries.  A move to Canada is looking better and better all the time.  Speaking of which, the high today in Vancouver is 63 compared to our 100+. Hmmmmm.