connecting*the*dots

I’m really liking where the Amazon UI is heading.

Not to say that their interface has been devoid of good design decisions over the past 9 years. I mean, they were the first e-commerce company to truly leverage collaborative filtering, essentially taking advantage of The Long Tail of online consumerism, long before the terminology was officially anointed within the context of new media. Just getting those features into the interface — placing more eyes on more products — drove the business model and the promise of the New Economy circa 1998.

But crafting the balance between user search, participatory and discovery scenarios within the interface was definitely an afterthought. As a matter of fact, at one point in time, it seemed that Amazon had little concern for any interaction design considerations within the interface at all, satisfied to add features within a scroll-driven, hierarchical construct to no end.

Well, that has seemingly changed. Check out a new test version of the product page:

Am I the only one standing up and applauding? The interface now completely supports the common needs of all users at a point-of-purchase.

1. Clearly display the product price & savings
2. Show the product itself
3. Provide the ability to purchase it or add it to a Wish List
4. Then provide the ability to move into search, participatory or discovery scenarios

Amazon reduced the cognitive friction of the previous interface
by removing the bookend columns of contextual navigation and by moving only the highest priority scenario features (reading reviews and looking inside/searching the book) under the primary sales window. The affordance for the DHTML window on the product image needs to be increased, as it is currently one of purely learned behavior, but the simplicity of the new interface does wonders in focusing my attention.

Take a look at the old interface in comparrison:

For someone that has reached the conclusion of their search or discovery scenario, the shopping experience is now set up for the user to determine price feasibility, drop the product into their cart and either head for checkout or continue to discover.

For someone who’s in the midst of a discovery process, the interface hasn’t changed for the worse, as an anchor link still drops the user down to user reviews. It’s now just better placed. The interface continues to present other collaborative filtering information below the fold. With these smart design decisions, Amazon now finds itself in a position to add elegant customization, because elegant design parameters have been established.

The Amazon jungle is evolving, and in very smart fashion. In my book, that’s pretty cool.

a longer road to travel to chance the unravel?
more satellites along the way to pass our desires through the fray?

you’ve got a look in your eyes
and with that pull on your cancer stick
it looks to be a struggling compromise
and although my lungs may be tar free
i can imagine your perspective
i can feel your degree
of conviction
of superstition
of contradiction
of mission critical
suspicion…
because on one level or another
it’s in my heart too
my mind goes pragmatic
my heart falls into you…

/and then i sleep/

i roll over to the waves of a deep (dream)
i see your mind begin to creep (away)
i drift past as i make my leap (of faith)
i find the distance is too steep(no more!)
of this bullshit
of this best of all worlds
of this balancing act
my heart needs to be unfurled
you see…
you’re my blistering sun
my full moon from afar
my crisp nights’ air
my shimmering star
i love you more than i can say…
more than i can say…

/sunrise/

6 days away.

A few years ago I ranted about my fear of a society where the media is absolutely controlled by corporate interests.

Now, my head wasn’t in the sand. I obviously realized that we were already living in a particular version of such a world, as money and power drives practically everything in this country. I was just a little concerned with the audacity of the FCC to even consider the type of deregulation it ended up approving. Sure, it happens every day; legislation lobbyed for by people in power turns around to increase the empowerment of those same people. I mean, this is how the free market works. But this legislation goes beyond just making money for the upper class.

If you view media reach as ephemeral noise in the ether, then the concerns of this post won’t bother you. Feel free to hop over to Amazon and consume away.

The fact is that Americans are glued to the tube and this type of conglomerate legislation — spanning all media (television, print, radio and the internet) — has now allowed for a greater possiblity to create a lasting, singular, corporate perspective in the psychology of the moment and beyond. Consume messaging has been given even more proximity to our children’s brains.

They Live shades are looking pretty good right about now.

So without the prospects of landing a pair of magic sunglasses, what exactly can be done to defend ourselves from this destructive approach to creating a consumer culture at all costs? As a contributor to public discourse, I’ve always believed that the ‘net (in 1997), and specifically, blogs (over the last five years) were a key development in the fight to present a perspective to battle corporate or government disinformation. Why?

• With blogging, there’s no managing editor around with advertising pressures to censor (or generate) a particular perspective. (Well, that is until the corporate structure tries to jack the nomenclature of blogging to dilute it’s effectiveness outside the reach of capitalism)
• Blogs are also a time permitting endeavor; you can publish many times a day or once a year. There isn’t a revenue figure to drive towards, which allows for individual perspectives to be expressed at will

This break from the days of publishing via the standard print revenue generation model is something akin to the advent of the printing press, yet with the merchant nation-state taking the place of the previously empowered Church. Okay, maybe that’s a little pre-mature, but the possibilities are there. And what are the possibilities?

Over the past few years, the blogging revolution has become more and more accessible and mainstream with the advent of RSS and aggregate readers. With Yahoo! adding access to RSS feeds to their My Yahoo! content modules, blogs are one step closer to being mainstream. But this last step is a big one, steeped in moral conviction… a belief in the common man. Why?

Until blogs are automatically indexed as viable, alternative feeds when running, say, a news query at Google or Yahoo!, they are going to, at best, sit on the periphery of the conscious of the world’s inhabitants. The average person does not have the time, nor the patience, to sift through the pedagogy of managing RSS. Bookmarks are about as much as they can handle. Blogs do return in general search queries, but this “general return only” pre-supposes a value level to the quality of the information being retrieved. You know, a perspective or opinion or even investigative research presented by a blogger has less value than a feed from the New York Times, The Washington Post, etc.

That’s why this information retrieval concept would have to be one generated out of moral conviction. By keeping news sources limited strictly to incorporated, staffed and vested (in the economic structure of society) newspapers, a Google (or any other news search engine) is basically saying that only these sources can report and editorialize news. Even though Google has gone a long way in presenting perspectives from small and foreign sources, providing the chance opportunity for conflicting perspective, it’s still not enough.

It seems to me that with a search capability, news aggregator and a blogging tool, Google and Yahoo! are best poised to create convergence between the “professional” news organizations and blogging communities, within the boundaries of their individual interfaces. How accessible blogs become in the presentation, will be a litmus test of their commitment to providing contextual channels within the information age, while creating usable interfaces for digesting a world of information overload and disinformation.

It’s completely doable and their historical commitment to data mining and information presentation doesn’t seem to indicate that they’ll shy away from heading in this direction. Well, as long as blogs don’t impact their institutional investors or advertisers in a negative light, that is.

What do you instantly think of when you read the word "fence?"

Unless you’re my friend Fleur (she’s a fan of the romantic sports), you probably lean towards the world of "things that stick in the ground and enclose other things" and you would be correct in thinking such, as fences do just that; they enclose, divide and protect areas and organisms for various purposes. Now, if we can agree to such a broad (yet particular) definition, we should be able to agree that fences define parameters of use, for if one can’t get past the fence, one can’t engage with anything outside (or inside) of its parameters.

So why am I fixated on the definition of a fence? Well, a good deal of tactical user experience design within authenticated environments is centered around the concept of defining parameters; as experiences that support specific goals rely on the thoughtful crafting of usage parameters. If that’s a vague concept, think about it in terms of designing site navigation behavior:

• Does the top/down navigation live in a consistent pane in the interface?
• If it’s located at the top of the screen, how does it behave?
• Does it expand onRollover or onClick?
• Does it display horizontally or vertically?
• Does it use rollovers for greater affordance?
• How does color and behavior reinforce the brand?
• Where is bottom/up exploration located?

Before we get too granular, let’s step back outside for a moment and think about how we might design the use of a fence in the real.

The placement of a fence’s corner posts could be determined based purely on property lines, or relative requirements based on the needs of the owner. The height of the fence, and its types of rails or wires, could be designed based on security requirements, or based purely on style. One thing is for sure; when these attributes are specified, usage parameters are in place and an experience is established. These specific choices define our cognitive perception of a fence that keeps sheep grazing within a field; a fence that protects property in the midst of urban renewal; a fence that surrounds a house at the end of a cul-de-sac.

Design is an iterative process, a constant remodeling based upon the objectives and desires of a business and user, and the perspective, and ultimately, the epiphany of the designer. But moving from good design to great design requires an effort of reduction to reach an elegant solution, where less is more and the complex takes form in simplistic presentation.

So the sheep are now grazing behind an elegant, rustic, utilitarian, wood fence. You’ve designed the perfect experience to meet the usage parameters of your client. Congratulations. But don’t pat yourself on the back for long. Your farmer client is now telling you that his sheep are going to be racing for cash on the property and that 25 other farmers are going to be using the property for similar, yet different purposes… and each are going to be equal owners, with equal say in decisions.

You now have 25 clients to please.

Parameters now seem passe, as each owner has slightly different needs and they’re starting to bicker. Your approach to good design (reduction and elegance), as applied to the original usage parameters, must now be redefined as well. So can you satisfy each of you client’s requirements with one static, structured, definition of a fence? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean design parameters go out the window.

An even more difficult challenge now lies on the horizon: How do you broker the creation of apropos usage parameters moving forward, through the creation of both useful and usable customization options? You need to meet their needs, but not by making "fences" too complicated or by coming in too close to their limited operating budget. How does one iterate the elegant reduction of the addition of customization?

Hmm… how indeed.