Pain of handling 'Error condition' & designers' dilemma

We have have built a complete web analytics application (internal) for tracking Yahoo! products. Being the only designer for the product I got the chance to work on every BIT of it; from each and every component to every pixel. I can tell you its quite an experience handling such a big product on our own - that too when you are not only the interaction designer but also user researcher, product designer and visual designer. I'm not boosting but 'cribbing' :(

With so many flows and interconnections it become overwhelming. During design we fix these complex flows for most ideal conditions. The design works flawlessly; but then came the surprises - ERROR handling.

The product behavior was built such that the settings can be transferred. To give you an example, you are looking for mail data; then you put up certain segmentation settings like show PVs from India with age group 10-15 with users as male. Now you click on another metric like time spent - the rest of the setting of age, country & gender is transferred. The behavior is to change only the setting which user chooses to change.
This on paper looks flawless work well iin concept but then comes the conditions - in some cases it doesnt work. So this behavior works for most cases (lets say 90%) but in rest cases it throws up error.

Designers’ dilemma
Should I change the behavior to make sure system gives less errors (or conditions of no data found) or to provide a way which give most value?

Well, I choose option 2. Most use cases will work perfectly and give tremendous value, as the user settings are seamlessly transferred. I am providing value for 90% cases (this number is rough assumption) and spoiling the experience for rest 10%. But I guess its worth the risk; as it seems to be working :)

But then I had to figure out ways to make sure those 10% cases are also taken care of. This may not sound to be perfect, but we 'redirect' users to conditions that give data - of course with user consent. We show them the options of redirect.

That’s the best we could do for now.

But one thing I realized. Error conditions can some times spoil the party!
Your perfect design can be derailed with these fringe cases. But that what makes a complete design isn't it?

The design process debate

I must confess that I have strong opinions about “design process” and I'm biased by my understanding of design. Some of you might disagree with me.

Process is so boring!
Process word reminds me of ‘industrial process’ or ‘manufacturing process’. The mental image I get is that of a conveyor belt where a product (which is manufactured) is moving from one person to another. And each one is fixing their own piece without knowing the relevance and the larger picture. Process comes in when to mass-produce items – when the research I being done and all parameters understood.

Also when we know the outcome of the product – manufacturing process where the outcome is predicted. If you use an iron metallurgical process you know that you will get iron of a specific quality out of a process. You can manipulate the process parameters to change the outcome slightly.

Design as research
But what about Design? I don’t see design as an industrial product one where the solution can be predicted or reused (without modification). I don’t see design to be close to industrial/manufacturing process, then where does it lie?
Looking at pattern design process – where specific patterns are to be used. Isn’t this another way of mass production? Yes I know for large enterprise it’s difficult to think out of those due to practical issues. But isn’t this is another conveyer belt? Where a designer is expected to fit in specific “item” (from a selected few) without knowing the complete problem. So the thinking is subject to ‘validation of what fits well’ than what is the solution.

Design as problem solver
I’m a strong believer of design as a problem solver. I see design closer to Research than to manufacturing/production. So how do we think about design then? Does following a process ensure an innovative solution?
I guess not. Innovation is closely tied up with how well the designer understands the ‘problem’. And process doesn’t highlight the problem – it’s just a ‘way’, not a ‘destination’.

Can’t we dump the process?
Is there a better way to look at the process or should we just change our approach to thinking about process? I guess the real value is in knowing the ‘problem’ in its all dimensions. If you have this approach you don’t need a process; all you need an attitude – to solve the design problem to its fullest.

Innovation comes from idea and intellect. Nurture talent not process as your primary objective.

Flow!

It was awesome to see this video on TED. I read Csikszentmihalyi's research papers on Flow when I was working on my research on online shopping. I actually used this in the online shopping model that we built - which helped us in understanding all the aspects of shopping and the experience.

I have found the Flow Theory to be highly relevant in user experience design. It is a good way to measure a "very compelling and engaging experience". If a user gets immersed in your design - that is the highest level of experience. And this can be applied to all levels of design - be it a complete application/site or a small component.

Also it a good way to design - 'think of the experience (design) as a flow'. I recommend Flow Theory to all designers. It is a really useful read.

Anyways, listen to this video. Its an amazing feeling to "see" the person you have read and admired.

Breaking Boundaries

Having moved from so many project I have started realizing the advantages in doing the same. Every domain or say a business vertical works very differently. The design approach and also the mind set is very different.

For example, Online Video site might have very different approach to design; say like engagement or time spent or videos viewed might be important. How much time user spends on your site may well be a parameter of success. While for a portal the success and approach might be to divert the user to a content or application. For Search, more time spent is disastrous. Social Networking might say number of Unique Users they get, or no. of logins per account or virality of their application is what defines the design and success approach.
What I have seen is that these all verticals (if you call them) have their fixed mindsets. There are somewhat clear approaches defined by (whom?) – Competition. What goes on becomes a norm (without analysis) and all of us follow it.


Breaking boundaries

Competitor analysis becomes an important part of our design research and it also sets up the path to design. We mindlessly follow what others are trying to do and what defines its success.

Its useful to break away from this and see the design problem in a new light, what if I apply Online Video design approach in Social Network? The solution might be drastically different. I guess its really important to broaden our boundaries about design concepts and explore unrelated products to see if they could add any value to us. Otherwise we keep our thinking limited to already known parameters and concepts.


Move Horizontal for freshness and Vertical for quality

It’s a different approach to drilling deeper. It’s more of moving horizontally. Look for whats buzzing with user (which is unrelated to your product) and then see if there is any thing that you can borrow or get inspiration – or that allows you to think differently.

This is what I learnt from moving across teams and products.

Micro-Macro detailed design

Working with different products I see some differences in the level of detail each one goes to. Look at two contrasting examples: Search Results page vs. Product Promotional Page. Search Results page is the highest level of detail (Micro Details); all aspects of design are detailed to the core; be it interactions, information – how much; how long; what to show, visual design, design research/usability – usage, eye tracking, semantics, etc. All aspects that are possible generally are thoroughly considered to build a design.

One the other hand we have Product Promotional Pages – high on experience; informative but not so thoroughly evaluated, less interaction, less complexity in Information architecture etc. So generally if you are designing this you don’t get through a thorough screening of the design (Macro details).

I kept thinking why do we have such variation? And I thought may be there are three basic reasons:

Impact on business
Products that are very high on business impact are very ‘cautious’. Any changes or design issues could affect the company drastically. So every company get very careful in designing and every element of design are reviewed to make sure the effect is positive. Thus more details in designing.

Impact to user or habit forming
Traffic on site and usage is another important reason for a detailed design. Products like Search, Calendar or even some online enterprise software need to build a habit in users. They need to be learnt and should be easy. One advantage of habit forming is to build a loyalty around that product – like Google Search. To build a habit you need to have a compelling product; thus need a well thought out design.

Competition Landscape
Fierce competition could also lead to detailed design approach. Competition is fighting for both the above parameters – Business and Traffic/Users. Thus if you have a competition it makes you more cautious in design.

Impact Matrix
Micro Detailed design or more detailed design requires a lot of resources and time. The decision making is slow and thorough; thus it takes more thinking, iterations, approvals and research. It all comes down to the question of how many resources (in terms of time, money, people etc) versus the impact. And I guess we evaluate the the above three parameters we could make a rough guess about this. We could make a matrix to evaluate the impact.

Let make it for search results page.

Impact | Importance
Business | High
User | High
Competition | High

For Product Promotional (micro sites) site
Impact | Importance
Business | Low
User | Low
Competition | Low

For Yahoo! Front Page
Impact | Importance
Business | High
User | High
Competition | Moderate to High (mostly indirect competition)

As a next step we could built out some concrete evaluation parameters to figure out High, Moderate or Low importance.

Suggestions are welcome :)

“Gut Feeling” & design

I was having a conversation with one of my design colleague. He was telling me about a design discussion he had with a Product Manager. The story is very interesting – they had a conflicting views about a UI issues. The discussion later on went to –

Designer: …because I think this is a better way to do it; its my gut feeling.
PM: …but this also my gut feeling; why should I go with your gut feeling and why not mine”.

Well there isn’t much that you can do to help anyone here. But this kept me thinking – the PM is not totally wrong (is he?). If we are fighting for design without any data; what can you do to convince the product teams? Or is there more to a “gut feel”?

Personally, “I feel” the designer was right in suggesting a design; but without any valid proof it’s difficult to make an argument. The best situation is to do some test; get some data and then prove. But data is not always available. We make a lot of decisions on our “feeling”.

So why should people listen to our gut feels and not their own?
I see the difference lies in ‘experience’. We constantly build our mental database about things that worked or not. So rather plain ‘gut feeling’ we try to make “intelligent guesses”.

User research is a great way to build user behavior repository. Not only does it gives you data but also help you build the ‘user’s behavior and understanding’. How much can you push your design, how simple should you be in UIs or in communication etc. You could "benchmark the level of complexity" that a user can easily use/understand through user research (even observing a study can teach you a lot).

So my suggestion would be – next time when you are having an argument rather than saying ‘my gut feeling’ state ‘examples’ or take your team to the user. But never make it a clash of the ‘egos’. Because it’s not only you (or other) who looses, but also the ‘end user’.

Don’t deprive end user of a good product.

Services mindset in product design

IT industry in India is inherently a services industry. The mindset is to provide a service and move out of the project. This approach to ‘projects’ seeps into the product companies as well.

The fundamental difference in services is same as the difference between a concept of a ‘project’ vs ‘product’. Project gets over after a deadline but a product keeps living on.

Product design

One bad thing about a product is that if you don’t address an issue in a release you have to readdress it in the next -‘Its all your responsibility; its all your mess’. So you need to be careful; and need a sense of responsibility in what you make. Secondly, you need to have a clear larger vision of your product (I know you can argue; but there should be some vision). How will this step going to effect the course of the future. If you change your deign approach after a release; then there is a lot of mess that you need to sweep out. It will all go back to the drawing boards from a design point of view.

Most importantly you need to be ‘constantly’ aware of the market; knowledge is supreme. To be ahead you need to innovate. So the more aware you are the more you can innovate.

Product lives on thus it requires more sense of responsibility; more engagement; larger longer vision and a sense of ownership.

Working and talking to industry people I feel this sensitivity to product is missing in India. Everyone focuses on – ‘just release it’ without thinking the mess that we will create with it. I guess our market needs more maturity in terms of dealing with products & not to think of them as ‘projects’.

Product doesn’t end in release; it stays back with you, to give you either sweet dreams or nightmares. The choice is yours.

Is it worth?

I was in Sunnyvale few weeks back and I was having a discussion with Prasad over the lunch. Prasad mentioned something interesting about discussing design.

Most often we land up discussing with PMs or Engineers or other designers and the discussions land up in conflicts say about changing the link color from blue to black. Now it’s difficult to argue especially with PMs who have data to back up their claims most of the time. So as designer you loose the argument unless you have the data or a design research to back your point.

Prasad mentioned something interesting. He said when you discuss these issues also look for a new parameter “If I change this how much impact is this going to create to the users”; “Is it impacting a substantial amount of our user base or just 50 of them?”; “If its just 50 user that this change is going to impact, then is it worth doing it?”

It’s a very crucial point if you look at it deeply. Not only this ‘parameter’ can be used in design discussion but I guess also effectively during ‘designing’. It is worthwhile to look at our design and ask – is this change going to impact a large user base? Should I focus on this problem or shift to other problem which can have a greater impact?

Nice and important point.

Sprinting: the Scrum experience

Scrum is an Agile PD process, which is seemingly becoming very popular in the industry. So I thought of writing about it a bit. I was fortunate to work on two projects – one was using scrum the other was not. So I could see the difference between the two. Let me share some of my experiences with you.

The worst problem with scrum is - you land up working hard all through the product lifecycle :(

Implementational approach
My feeling has been that Scrum has a very ‘implementational’ character. Implementational? A very focused approach to ‘implementation’ than design, exploration or research. It’s very effective if you know what you are implementing. Thus this basic implementation approach most of the times conflicts with design. Which by character is more exploratory and research oriented. Design due to its subjective character involves a lot of analysis and discussions (with shareholders, PMs etc).

Design: subjective (& dynamic in internet business)
Another issue with design is that it has dependences on business; any changes in business and strategy could substantially influence the approach to design and design solution. Thus it becomes critical how and when you use Scrum for design. Suddenly a competitor comes in the market and you have to rethink strategies and design; thus in internet business the situation is very dynamic. You should always be ready to change you approach to your environment.

It would be recommended that design comes into scrum with a little ‘home work’. The earlier phases of research and exploration should be kept out of scrum. Build up a little understanding of the project and then start sprinting. Otherwise the problem would be that by end of the sprints you might not have a substantial ‘deliverable’. Though you might have done a lot to understand the project you may not necessarily have some thing concrete to share with you non designer teammates. If you are the only designer then you can understand you might understand your situation would be tough. Some people call this ‘Sprint 0’. I would say this is important.

Involvement and sharing
One of the best part of scrum. It keeps you ‘involved’. You know various components of the system – from data; to backend engineering to front end etc. Also it gives the designer an opportunity to educate and make the engineers aware about design issues. When people know what you do - they tend to respect you. Sometimes you will land up at a situation where you feel a certain engineering weakness/error/problem could be countered through ‘design’. Thus it keeps you involved.

Pressure to be ahead of you engineering and time estimation
Using scrum you’ll be constantly finding a sense of urgency to be ahead of your development teams. You don’t want to be blamed for slowing down the project. Thus you have to be at least a sprint ahead of the developers.

Another common problem is that you will never be very sure of the time for your tasks. Design often is dynamic and keeps changing through the course of the lifecycle no matter how hard you try. Even there is a restriction (by Scrum) on PMs interfering with their basic task; still you will encounter changes or suggestions that may have a significant impact on your work or time.

The best idea would be to keep your task broad and a bit generic with more time allotted. This will also give you some buffer time to explore and to some extent nullify the estimation issues.

What worked for me was for a 3 week sprint was that I used to keep one day off. This used to give me some time to explore or even reflect on my designs (which is very helpful if you are most of the time in the implementation mode.)

If you follow the ‘spirit’ of scrum I’m sure you will like it. Especially if you are the curious kinds who want to know all about the product you are working on.

Transforming Maruti 800s to BMWs

I was making a presentation yesterday for Web Dev conference yesterday when this idea came to my mind – “We designers create BMWs from Maruti 800s”. Now for all those who don’t know what Maruti 800 is – it’s the most basic and the cheapest car available in India.

Let me tell you the whole story. So I was writing about how design helps create Humane Softwares – softwares that are pleasant to use. The argument was that functionality and the experience has to go together to create a WOW software. Now for the functionality driven engineers – who believe functionality is the only aspect of software – I made an argument saying as we all are humans we have ‘feelings’. We always look for feeling in anything we do.

Is Art functional?
What functionality does a painting have? Nothing. It just hangs on the wall without any function. But people still – see it, appreciate it and buy it (by paying millions of dollars). What does it create – it creates some feelings in us and that’s what we all care for in art. The same applies for software – we are humans we look for a pleasant experience in using them.

Maruti 800 to BMW
What’s the function of a car – to take us from point A to B. So why doe we buy or aspire to buy (like me) a BMW (luxury cars)? Just because they are a pleasure to drive. We, designers in the software industry help to transform Maruti 800 (functional car) to a BMW car (sedan). But if BMWs don’t work properly (functionality) I don’t think anyone would buy them. Thus both functionality and experience has to go together. Same arguments can be made with Architecture as metaphor. Why do we go to an architect or interior designer?

Now, it’s for the engineers to decide whether they want to work in a Maruti factory and keep creating Maruti 800s or do they want to work in a BMW factory and work on BMW Luxury Sedans?

Design Evolves

Evolution is important; humans evolved to become better ‘designed’ beings (better? umm…do u agree). But we definitely evolved. During the course of your evolution we phased different challenges; which kept changing with time and the environment. This shaped us and made better to face these challenges – read Better Design.

Thus design evolves – to be better. It all starts from the very beginning – when you think about a product you start with an idea. Then we start to add up parameters of environment (competitors; users; their needs, technology etc.), this slowly shapes up the product. It may start by random thoughts/sketches (unicellular bacteria) to a working prototype (complex multi-system organism). The design evolves (constantly improving) from an idea to a prototype and then finally into a full product. The parameters keep adding up, changing the design. Its survival depends of its evolution; shaped up by the design decisions. Bad Decisions?? You are extinct.

Does the story end here? No. Even after the launch it has to keep evolving to be in the race. The ‘survival of the fittest’ remember? To be the best you have to compete with the changing environment (competitors, users, technology, business etc.).

Thus the changing environment - keeps changing the designs. It’s a constant race. And evolution is a reality.

This applies to all the fields I guess. So it’s better to be prepared and conscious of it rather than being surprised by it. Thus keep looking for the changes happening around you. You never know when an ape transform into a human and then takes you to a point of extinction. Be informed, be adaptive and keep evolving.

India Maps: Tiles from Google and Yahoo

Left Map tile is from Google India Maps and right one is from Yahoo! India Maps

Click on images to enlarge

Dealing with GIS

GIS is the next generation technology; one that deals with geographical data. GIS makes a basic layer which can be used as a base to build multiple utility products from - building a local business product; to urban planning; to architecture layouts to Town planning;to topography sheets in geology - everything that has anything to do with Geographical data.

The first thing that you would like to ask is - What data do you want to show at what zoom level (‘if’ you are dealing with zoom)? This totally depends on the intent of the design – what is to be achieved is what will define what data is important and how is it interconnected. Thus the full information set needed - with priority of each.

One data set (for one zoom) could involve multiple data – roads (with numerous categories); water bodies (with numerous categories); land use (with numerous categories); Electric lines; topography; soil type; vegetation etc. The list can be enormous.

After you choose the data type you have to visually represent it. Now it’s easier said than done…look at the options you have to control to make your designs -

• For - Vector Line
• Line width (in px) + color/pattern of line + Transparency (alpha channel) + Line type + (maybe) elevation – z axis data as well;
• Border (in px) + color of border + Transparency of border + Line type (dotted, dashed, complete etc.) + Anti aliasing;
• Text (Name of the line) + Font for Text + Color of the text + Border to Text + Color of border to the text + Transparency of the text + Name to be rendered – full, part, abbreviate.
  

• For - Polygons (regions)
• Color/pattern of region + Transparency + (maybe) elevation – z axis data as well;
• Text (Name of the region) + Font for Text + Color of the text + Border to Text + Color of border to the text + Transparency of the text + Name to be rendered – full, part, abbreviate.
  

• For - Points
• Marker/Icons;
• Text (Name of the region) + Font for Text + Color of the text + Border to Text + Color of border to the text + Transparency of the text + Name to be rendered – full, part, abbreviate.
  

Every data has a lat-long info attached to it. Thus all the points correspond to a point on earth. But there is another issue for you to solve – the correction in making a map by taking into account the circular aspects of the earth. Though thats a mathematical problem; but as designers there are a lot of scenarios where it makes a difference (like if the map is to be imposed on any background like satellite images; aerial images etc. or if it has to corresponds exactly on a point in earth - say for planning.).

This is definitely huge list – how many permutations and combinations? This is the kind of information overload you are dealing with. The only way to design – simple – if you are focused, you know what you are doing…this is a piece of cake. If not…you’ll be lost. It’s just a pure ‘age old’ information design problem…just digitally enhanced in terms of degree of freedom (more parameters are to be controlled now).

So it all depends on "design" how much users might want to control in GIS; how much parameters (degree of freedom) can be controlled. There are interrelationships and dependencies which are to be accounted while designing for a specialized use.

The more you are aware of what data you are dealing with and what is the importance of it...the better you can design - both the GIS or its usage.

First Step is hardest and the most critical

Some days back I was thinking about design when this thought passed by. I have always believed that the first step in design in hardest. Building something from scratch and making the first draft is so tough. The reason that I though its tough is because of this is the step when we deal with “ABSOLUTE” values. To tell you an example – for the first time when we built the spec for cartography, we had to do some much analysis – what to show; how to show; will it look good? So many questions came to the table. But once we built and render the first set, things became easy – now it all became “RELATIVE”. This doesn’t look good so remove it, or add some thing, push this down to a lower zoom etc. Suddenly you will realize it’s now much simpler to edit/manipulate/modify things; now that there is some reference to look forward to.

But there is another important reason why the first step is so critical. It ‘defines’ the number of iterations the design would need. The closer the first step is to final (finished) design the lesser the iterations. Also it give that much more time to iterate and finish you design to the best (or even allow you to extent you limit of ‘finish’). The final step/finish thus depends on the first.

But also if the first step is a failure; either the iteration cycles become enormous (some times unmanageable) or one has to go back again to the drawing table. Thus this step is very important and critical. A good designer should keep this in mind – the more effort you put in the beginning – more the chances of finishing the designing properly (and to your satisfaction).

Product: Competing in established market

We were having a casual discussion over the lunch when a nice thought came in. It is practically impossible or extremely difficult to build a new product to compete with competitor products which have been there in the market for some time. What’s difficult is to bridge the “time” difference between the products. Take an example of Maps; Map products have been around for more than 2 years (I guess) in US. So if some company now wants to come up with a new map product it has to bridge that gap of 2 years. In two year the competitors would have built so many features and enhancements that it is practically not possible to bridge that “time” gap instantly.

The best way could be to not make an exactly similar product but a different/unique product to compete. Some one mentioned Gmail; mail was around but Gmail stole the show because it was different. If it would have been similar to other mails, it wouldn't have created any impact. Its a really nice thought...

This is to some extent the state of whole Web Industry in India. Because it started late; there is hardly any innovativeness or uniqueness. Its lags in time from US; thus innovation is hard to come by. If we move 2 steps closer to them; they again more 3 step further from us. Because now things are well established they can make huge jumps forward; while most of our energy goes in just building the basic stuff.

So if you want to be a part of innovation; want to work with products that are ahead of their time…you have to be in US. Or so I think.

Visual Design as an Information Design tool

Visual Design or Graphic Design as people might call it; has been mostly associated with the Experience and Look n Feel part of design. But Visual design is tremendously powerful tool when it comes to information design / information architecture. I personally feel the real power of this has not been truly utilized on the web. With usage of the age old “Gestalts Law” information can be presented in a very interesting manner. The kind of tools that Visual design uses are – Typography, Color, Placement, Layout, Texture/patterns, etc.

Starting from the Layout – the page itself can be designed to allow users to focus on certain aspects of information / section.

Typography, placement and color could be used to effectively create chunks of information which can be effectively used in segregating information. Also this could effectively create the hierarchy in information. Important information / section can be ‘subtly’ highlighted very effectively. Even simple things like 'bullet points' can be used as visual cues to point to an information.

One aspect that all application should account for is ‘Glazing/Glancing’ and design for it. What I mean by that it; user by just glancing on the page should get as much information as possible. This will substantially increase the readability and understandability of the information presented to the users.

To even use this there is lot of thinking that need to go into design. One has to really understand: what is the - information hierarchy, information chunks and more importantly the “objective” of the page/screen. Objective – Why do we need this page/screen; what the user has to understand in the screen/page; what user has to do in this screen.

The challenge is that if you want to use this you need a pixel perfect both in design and HTML. This is where a single pixel or slight change in color can create a huge difference in design. Just one pixel the information chunks comes close and suddenly you will find that they don’t appear to be two different chunks but one. Here you need a good eye for design.

These are aspect which if present will not be so much noticed by the user; but if absent would make it difficult for users to understand the UI.

We used these techniques in the Map cartography and even the UI.

Designing for the New Age Web

I recently spoke in “National Conference on Web 2.0” held in Bangalore. The topic that I touched was about the challenges for designing for Web 2.0 products. Web 2.0 has essentially changed the way we now have to think about UI design. It has added a lot more to think about now in terms of designing. I’ll touch upon some of them in this article.

Web is changing

Web is changing; and why should we be surprised by the change? Even the environment of the users is changing. Their economic, social and cultural environment has changed; and we web has been one of the instruments of this change. Even the other technologies have brought in new needs for web products. The famous examples are – Flickr and You Tube; if there hadn’t been digital cameras = digital photography/video these won’t have been existed.

These new found needs are pushing the way we have to think about the next generation of products. What’s important to know for designers is to be able to see these upcoming ‘needs’ and track these changing environment of users.

Designing for Web 2.0

Looking at the changing trends and evolution of web technologies are pushing the limits to how we design on the web. The two important aspects that AJAX have changed are the –

• interaction design
• information design
• One critical aspect that has been added to the arsenal of the design is TIME.
  

A better control on time has brought in a whole new change in the way we have to think about Design. Now with power to control elements in time a whole new concept of animation comes to picture. And with animation comes Story. Story that can be used to effectively inform the user about the change in the state of the system.

Let’s look at this new design paradigm change:

• In-context Operations
• Animation / Story
• Continuity
• Multilayer of information
• Multitasking
  

In-Context Operations

Operations that needed another screen now can be done “in context”; user can be present in the state where s/he wants the operation is done.

Animation / Story

A good example of animation is from My Yahoo! When the user click on the ‘Close’ button the section blurs out and is removed. The lower block moves up.

These 2 set of animations – blurring + movement is what builds the story. The story saying “I have closed and now the place emptied by me is taken by another section”. In this case the user doesn’t actively participate but witnesses the change of state of the system. Now when you are implementing this the developer will ask how much time we should give for this to blur and the lower block to move. Then suddenly you realize that you are now dealing with “time”. This brings in a whole lot of thinking.

Continuity

What In Context features have brought are a lot of controls on the screen for a user. User can do multiple operations on the same screen. What it means is there are now multiple “trigger points”. Trigger points are objects/behaviors on screens that trigger operations like buttons, hover actions, roll over actions etc. Not the designs have to thoroughly understand the various states of the UI.

• What if the user starts an operation and clicks on some other trigger point mid way through the first operation?
• What are the dependencies of one operation to another?
• Will or how will the other trigger points change if one operation is done?
• How will they conflict with one and other? How to solve it?
• How will the one operation conclude and how the next one will appear? What should be the feedback?
  

Multilayer of information

Now with AJAX the same component/place holder/ information holder can be used to convey more information. The two basic ways of deign are –

• Either the additional information came in a different layer
• It can be animated - removing one and showing another after an interval of time.
  

Multitasking

New web technologies are allowing the designers to think about allowing user to do multiple tasks at the same time. The one famous example is the new Yahoo! Mail which allows the user to do multiple tasks at the same time through its Tab design.

What does it mean for designers/product managers?

This means that the “Degree of Freedom” to think about design has drastically increased. The new aspects have added a lot for designer to think before they find a solution. Also it means that now there is more probability to go wrong in design.

• So as the degree of freedom has increased there is more need to think about design in product development cycle.
• More is the need to conduct User Testing to make sure you are on the right track.
• Create new set of Web 2.0 patterns for designers.