Immerse yourself in our world. Thats the slogan of the new & flashy (itÅ0Ö7s not evil) website of Barneys. I came to this site because Jim Heid pointed out the following: One thing is certain: Flash makes possible innovative navigation schemes and beautiful presentation experiences that you can’t create with HTML. Thats true, somehow. For the innovative navigation schemes Jim pointed to Barneys. Yes, there is innovation. But I think that real navigation canÅ0Ö7t come up on such a complex site becuase you have to spend 95% of your time handling all the content instead of experimenting 95% of your times with new ways of navigation. Well of course Barneys is a nice example, its cool and somehow useable. there are nice details (eg. very small type beeing enlareged and coloured when you roll over - but you canÅ0Ö7t click). You see the site, but you canÅ0Ö7t act. You are damned to watch the eyecandy. I am very looking forward to the further discussion about flash and the usability and I believe that in this discussion we are going to develop a more and more subtle and useful definition of usability.

The Best UI Is No UI
Challenging words. In fact it shows that there is a tsunami of expressions and meanings. Two nutshells in the ocean are “Interface” and “Interaction” (and both also specified with the appendix _design).
Scott Berkun thinks that the User Interface should be so smart that there is no need of a user Interface. Does this mean that “No user Inteface” is no new buttons or windows in Microsoft applications? Well, step back and take a look at the whole situation: You wanna do sth and you are sitting in front of the computer. Surrounded by a couple of physical (I/O) Interfaces that should be optimized. I like the example of the calculator: even if every PC has a calculator, mosz people take their “real world calcluator if they want to sum up 5 numbers. No complex task, but the UI Situation doesnÅ0Ö7t start in the moment where teh desired application is open.
We have to see User Interface Design user-centered. This is the only way for real improvements, And perhaps we can get rid of the windows interface in 200x?

Here we go - will there be a proof for flash usability? John Rodes, the editor of WebWord set up a Flash Usability Contest. He asks for usable flash sites with a clear concern:
“I do care about developing and providing solutions that augment the customer experience. The key for me is identifying and providing effective, high quality web sites. For me, usability is a huge part of the customer experience. I basically filter every article and email and news posting as either helping or harming the customer experience. In a nutshell, the general usability of web sites is important to me.
That is why I am sick and tired of people telling that Flash is great. People tell me it is cool but I think that it ruins the customer experience. I think that it should be thrown out as an e-commerce tool, except in rare cases of promotion and marketing. Maybe it is useful for entertainment, personal web sites, art and game sites, but it isn’t any good for e-commerce. “
Well, by yesterday they had one attempt to win the $150 contest and it was - the macromedia site;-)). Stay tuned to this contest!

Digital Convergence with the Cue Cat:
The most important invention after the mouse - the cat? This tiny little device supports the convergence between print products and web sites. It is not necessary to type links any longer - if a special barcode is printed in books or magazines. Just wake up your cat, scan it in and - youÅ0Ö7re there. IF you have a computer and an online connection avaiable at that specific moment. I feel that we dont realy need such a device, its a little bit like the ShowView stuff for the Couch Potatos. But it is one possible answer taking the challenge of convergence into account. letÅ0Ö7s dream about the machine allowing links the other way round: reading/viewing/browsing an opener or trailer on the net and then going to the bookshelf. Will it be possible with the digital ink paper?

Jakob Nielsen wrote -two years ago- an interesting piece about Microcontent. That might be of great interest especially in context of the history of weblogs moving towards those microcontent archives (living archives indeed).

Ever thought about handycaped persons while designing your site? ItÅ0Ö7s hard to meet the WAI requirements. As you may guess, this site is not BOBBY APPROVED . Check out your site! But forget about frames, use the simplest and most straightforward language that is possible, avoid ASCII art, provide alternative text for all images etc etc. Interesting report, we come back to this point later;-))

HTMLHELL
Jeffrey ZeldmanÅ0Ö7s Thoughts at AdobeÅ0Ö7s pages about style vs. design. b Style as a fetish, producing a vast similarity of sites and a whole bunch of look-a-likes. Design as a means of communication. That sounds familiar, ok, but seems to be necessary to mention it again from time 2 time. DonÅ0Ö7t miss to check out Jeffreys href=”http://www.zeldman.com/coming.htmll” target = “_blank” >weblog.

Amazon.com New Navigation
Tabs are the holy grail of usability. Making structures understandable, compressing information. It is in fact what Edward Tufte described when he talked about graphical excellence as something “…that gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space”.
And now we have Amazon explaining their tabs? Reduced complexity and graphical excellence is NOT scalable, if the interface works with 12 tabs, it might not be able to work with ONE single tab more. Flexibility is another grail - and it doesnt seem to be a good friend of the grail usability…

Fundacao Laramara
Experience is not only based on visual attraction. See what happens if you canÅ0Ö7t see anything - another interface experience. At the end: surprise!

Oringe Interactive
Another impressive (its why there are just a few out there?) example of a (flash-based) interface that makes you think about the way you use interfaces. It is audio-based, and you canÅ0Ö7t use your mouse. Of course it has its limitations, but its a reminder of the fact that any standard must not be a standard - and can be enhanced. ThatÅ0Ö7s why I like those experiments…