connecting*the*dots

When I heard through the grapevine last year that Adaptive Path’s secret project was an AJAXy blog analytic tool, I was psyched to see what was going to hit the market.

The alpha release didn’t disappoint. It was powerful, yet simple to understand/use and had a few features (most notably, the mapping feature) with a bunch of potential. I ended up writing a glowing review and a follow-up post with a few suggestions for improvements. I’ve been using the service ever since… well, to be completely accurate, I’ve been trying to use the service ever since.

The above is the message that has greeted me every time I’ve attempted to sign on for the past few months. I’d post the problem to the MM message board, but that thing is about as helpful as a Republican in a hurricane. If I were a jaded human being, I’d say that MM was a thesis project for Jeff to become acquired by Google and there were never plans for long-term support or development of Measure Map.

But I’m not jaded…

So, I’m now looking for another analytics tool. I’d like for it to have a sweet interface and a bunch of ways to slice and dice my readership data. Mint has always been an option, but I’d rather not install anything on my server. Does anyone have other suggestions?

UPDATE: I’ve installed Mint (with some tweaking assistance from John, thanks man!) and I’m lovin’ it! The great thing about MM was its clean interface — really simple to understand — but conversely, the experience was akin to using a ladder, as I had to travel up and down the interface categories to get to the details of my data. With Mint, all of my data is presented in one simple to understand interface. No navigation necessary. Great job, Shaun!

Four months ago, in the midst of writing an essay about Web 2.0, I threw out an example of a potential service that reflected the best qualities of the movement. Well, it’s now a reality; Welcome coComment.

Man, I love this industry; a thought one day, a full-fledged service another. Now if I could only score an invite to use my dream service of discourse.

UPDATE: The folks over at coComment just sent me an invite. Thanks, guys!

So it’s Friday night and I find myself cruising around the web after a night out and a tooth brushing away before a night in. In my travels, I landed on JJG’s blog and subsequently stumbled into his Ajax essay on the Adaptive site. I’ve got to admit something; before tonight, I’ve never read one iota about Ajax. The only real conversation I’ve had on the topic was a recent conversation with a client-side developer pal and after reading Jesse’s well defined description of the approach and the benefits. My initial reaction was pretty much, "well, duh!"

I don’t say that to offend Jesse, nor downplay the great client-side work anyone is doing right now, it’s just that I’ve been immersed in online application design for years now and have always tried to communicate these types of solutions to developers. I say "these types of solutions" lightly, as I’m primarily a designer, not a developer, so from my perspective these communication calls have been screaming to be stiched together for a while now. All said, I refuse to rake engineers over the coals. We’re here now.

Jesse spoke to the difficulties of designing online applications due to the technical workarounds which have been historically necessary to successfully support innovative interface behavior. While I agree with the level of difficulty, I disagree with the approach to design, for while practicing interaction design, I don’t model persona scenarios based on technological constraints. As David Fore of Cooper exhorts, the period of scenario modeling should be a period of making magic. That’s how innovation occurs while supporting user needs. I’d much rather engage an engineer in a position to support a brilliant solution than bland, useless features/interface behaviors. So first, come up with the right behaviors, then encourage technology to make it come to life.

Okay, that could come off as a bit pushy, unrealistic and non-tech savvy. One has to understand the constraints of the media when designing for it right? Sure. But not at the cost of potentially handcuffing a more useful experience by limiting possibilities. So how can one design for the user, while considering possibilities of Ajax?

While at Ameritrade, when the opportunity to start the UX Group came my way, I was lucky to be able to convince management to include our relatively small client-side development team in the mix. That brief organizational commitment created a huge opportunity for me to espouse innovation and collaboration across both designers and developers. I didn’t know how long the group structure would last, so I instantly switched up working from the level of context scenarios and began to approach the issue holistically.

We must have used the phrase "push the browser until it pushes back" more times in our weekly staff meetings than "war against terror" has been used in the White House over the past few years. Come hell or highwater, our (paying) client behaviors needed to be supported in our online applications, so in turn, I refused to limit us to any narrow definitions of client-side technology. Thankfully, my CSD guys (and gal) latched onto my mantra with vigor and did the heavy lifting to evolve our conversations into their domain (code), while myself and the IxD’s returned to the iteration of modeling user needs into interface behavior. Did they use the Ajax approach per se? No, but they pretty much pushed the browser until their SOP—which supported the design team’s further pursuit of forward thinking behavioral patterns—is now reflected in some of the latest Ajax app behaviors, such as Gmail. Business as usual of design and development at Ameritrade started to evolve.

Were the solutions as soundly executed across the board as the current Google attempts in leveraging the Ajax approach? I’d have to say no again, as we were performing Ajax-type workarounds on the fly. But the mere fact that the team addressed dynamic interface scenarios on a case-by-case basis, with dynamic executions on the presentation layer, led our marketing group to center their next campaign around the slogan, "Welcome to the 21st Century. Now trade like it." The ripple
effect of the progressive experience design was contained, as it only applied to the authenticated, Apex trading platform, but Barrons seemed to notice it by giving us a 4 star rating (up from 2.5 stars the previous year).

A switch to a complete Ajax approach at Ameritrade today would entail a short period of refactoring, but would make the current authenticated interface move from "singing" to "harmonizing."

As long as the IT politicians and system managers keep their paws out of coding philosophy, Ajax should mark the sweet spot of the golden age of presenting complex scenario relationships as simplified behavioral experience in the browser. Elegance in action. Personally speaking, I just never want to hear "that’s not feasible" again when proposing the design for such a dynamic solution.

Remember Belushi’s reaction to the insipid acuistic guitar love song in Animal House? Exactly.