Notes: Please add your name, if you contribute, to the 'Authors' section at the bottom of this file.

DO NOT COPY AND PASTE THIS FILE WHOLESALE. IT MAKES IT SLOW. Export it or save it as text.

15/06/2006
15:30 - 16:30
Designing the Next Generation of Web Apps
by
Jeffrey Veen

Web 2.0
In San Francisco, using 'Web 2.0' as a phrase is as bad as Bush's foreign policy. People are worried we'll see lots of the same trends: lots of money towards products because they're adopting that term.

If you were to believe the press, you need to be on top of Web 2.0 or you're in the shitter. Apparently, Web 2.0 is the ability to scale to many users, good use of bandwidth, ease of use, and RSS feed and stuff like that.

I don't believe that stuff. This is nothing new to our industry. Tulip-mania took hold of the Netherlands in the 1700s. Turkish trade routes opened, NL got tulips for the first time, the economy ballooned to crazy proportions

Cycle is repeated again with steam engine, cars, É Lots of people got really rich, then lots of people got caught out and went bust. Life as we know it changed because of this. Money became information, which could be traded more fluidly.

At one time, Emperor palace in Tokyo was worth more than all the real estate in North America.

Then our industry: 1999 had 5 pet stores going public. None are around today.

The elements
	"Surface - Skeleton - Structure - Scope - Strategy"

Surface
	* Typography
	* Layout
	* Colour
	* Grid
	* Stuff that makes a website appear immediately attractive

Skeleton
	* Interaction
	* As opposed to big scale architectures, this is at page level
	* What can I poke at and what is that experience like?

Structure
	* How is all the stuff in the site organised?
	
Scope
	* What, of all the things we can do, can we do now?

Strategy
	* What is our reason for being, our mission statement, and how does that apply to the web?

Jesse James Garret - "elements of user experience"

Surface
	* Add context to content, de-em context, but have it there.
	* Use colour to show meaning (e.g., darker blue = more rain)
	* More usable depends on audience
All these themes around Web2.0 are about putting the user into control. Could take me, as the designer out of the picture to let the user decide what's important whenÉ

Trust your users with their experience, and have them trust you. Think of it as a peer relationship.

Trust on the surface
	* Visual appeal
	* Cognition & emotion
	* The halo effect

Don Norman's emotional design
BJ Fogg's Persuasive Technology

Users control their data

Skeleton
	"Roller skates for the web!" - Bruce Sterling
	Discoverability - Make finding stuff easy
		Suggest features tthat will enhance user experience, not overwhelm them
		Google maps made it much less like a search engine and more like a real map
		Remember that very discoverable features may still be too innovative
	Recoverability - actions should be without cost
		Catch errors before they happenÉ
	Context - A sense of time, place, and meaning
		Real-time feedback helps compensate for poor browser interface
	Feedback - How the system responds
		YFT, etc.

Structure
	Navigation, taxonomy, vocabulary has been changed by level of participation on the web
	Used to do structureÉ now moving to keywords/tags, and can pivot on metadata
	Experience is becoming architecture, so tags become navigation.
	Breaks large heirarchical structure down. 

Scope
	Seems to be more focused
	Tremendous amounts of experimentation 'cos everything is cheap now
	Old problem, new platform, participation
		 * CMS
		 	- Vignette is huuge, CMS costs lots and tried to give too much power to software
		 	- New platform - blog can supplant over-engineered software platform
		* Maps
			- Add open APIs for mashups (ChicagoCrime.org)
		* Analytics on the web
			- Products all made for e-com types, involved in segments of users et al.
			- Measuremap allowed us to say important thing is ego, not commerce. Is anyone listening/linking?
	** Solve very simple problems, very very well

Strategy
	How are audiences changing, and what does that affect what they're doing online?
	Amateurisation - "An architecture of participation"
	Powerful tools in the hands of people with passion is very powerful
	How do we deal with community? This makes a big difference to how people deal with their content.




--------------------------------
Authors:
Steve Marshall: http://nascentguruism.com/