Tyler Tate

Browsing the web. Surfing the net. Navigating a website. Traversing a hierarchy. Going back. Scrolling up and down. Returning home. Our history of using computers to interact with information is littered with such metaphors. Haphazard though they may be, they highlight a universal truth of human psychology: we perceive the world — both physical and digital — in spatial terms. However, despite mankind’s age-old proclivity towards spatial organisation, the majority of today’s web experiences are built to resemble a relatively more recent invention: the book.

It’s time to think differently about how people interact with information. The dominant metaphor of the last five hundred years — the page — is coming to a close, and a new metaphor is in order. Books were the universal repositories of information from the time of Gutenberg until the birth of the world wide web. Since then, web pages have been organized into websites with navigation and keyword search in the same way that printed pages were organized into books with a table of contents and an index. In other words, the page metaphor remains intact. This year I hope to elaborate on why the page metaphor is holding us back, and explore the metaphor that is poised to replace it: namely, information interaction as spatial problem solving, popularly known as wayfinding.

The gestalt principle of consistency has served designers well for generations. But today, the designer’s canvas is expanding to include entire ecosystems where digital channels such as web and mobile must work in harmony with physical channels, from print media to the natural environment. As our remit expands, we must revisit the principles that have made us successful in the past, and reinterpret them for the future.

Read the rest on UX Magazine.

Despite the growing influence of search on our daily lives, relatively few non-academic books have been published on the topic. That’s why Tony Russell-Rose and I set out to write Designing the Search Experience: the Information Architecture of Discovery. For the last year and half we have been researching, drafting and editing; striving to transform our ideas and insights into a coherent narrative. Tony and I are pleased with the results - we hope you will be too.

Web pages are dead. The future of information—and how people interact with it—is undergoing a profound metamorphosis. Our eulogy must begin long before web pages were conceived. Before the Internet, there was the written word; the book was the preeminent artefact for disseminating and assimilating information.

Read the rest on BCS IRSG Informer.

In 2010 there were more computers manufactured than mobile devices—but just barely. Starting in 2011, the number of smartphones and tablets began outpacing the number laptops and desktops being sold. While these devices are being purchased primarily by consumers rather than corporate IT departments, there’s a growing trend to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) to work. Mobile devices are becoming ubiquitous—both at home and at work. Search has long been the de facto method for interacting with information, and mobile devices are no different. Yet the temptation to replicate desktop-oriented user interface conventions on mobile devices is far from ideal. That’s why designing mobile search is an important topic.

Read the rest on The TwigKit Blog.

In Part 1 I identified three levels of consistency: internal, local, and external (analogous to creature, habitat, and ecosystem). In Part 2 I discussed four types of consistency: functional, behavioral, organizational, and aesthetic. In this third and final installment, I’d like to offer some very basic guidelines for appropriately aligning consistency across the multiple channels of an ecosystem.

Last month when I blogged about the cross-channel blueprint as a tool for planning the tasks and channels of an ecosystem, several people commented that it failed to fully account for user. Indeed, those comments helped me realize that the cross-channel blueprint is itself a system-oriented diagram—useful as a planning tool and for the concise overview it provides—but that it must be paired with a user-centered perspective. One such tool is an obvious companion: the experience map.

In the opening pages of The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith demonstrates the power of the division of labor through the example of a pin factory. At that time, the process for manufacturing sewing pins consisted of about 18 operations, such as drawing out the wire, straightening it, cutting it, pointing it, sanding it, and so on. Each tasks was sufficiently involved, Smith maintained, that a single individual could perhaps “make one pin in a day, and certainly could not make twenty.” Yet when each operation was distributed to a tradesmen specialized in that task, the team “could make amongst them upwards of 48,000 pins in a day.”

In part 1 I outlined three common levels of consistency: internal, local, and external (analogous to creature, habitat, ecosystem). Here I’d like to turn our attention to a second dimension: type. While level answers the question, ‘Is object A similar to object B?’, type is concerned with: ’In what way is object A similar with object B?’

Consistency is lauded as a staple ingredient of every good user experience; a fundamental principle of interaction design; a golden rule of the user interface. Yet it’s a heuristic that’s sometimes misunderstood and often oversimplified. Consistency is more complex than intuition would lead us to believe, rife with tension and competing forces, and often seemingly contradictory.

User experience design is growing up. We’ve finally realized that UX is less about creating end-all-be-all websites, and more about designing cross-channel ecosystems that encompass both the digital and physical.

The practice of information architecture is undergoing a tectonic shift away from creating individual websites and towards designing cross-channel experiences that span both the digital—from desktop to mobile—and the physical—from print to storefront. While the information architect’s skillset is well-suited for this new challenge, our existing tools are not.

Search often appears personal, introspective, and private; an activity of the individual in isolation. In fact, most researchers depict search as a single-user activity. Yet a 2008 survey found that over half of respondents self-reported having co-operated with other people to search the web, while an impressive 97.1% went on to indicate at least one form of collaborative search activity in which they had engaged (Morris, 2008). It’s safe to say that collaboration is pervasive.

Read the rest on BCS IRSG Informer.

Apple’s iOS Human Interface Guidelines, Google’s Android Design Guidlines, and others such as Luke Wroblewski’s Mobile First book provide valuable guidance for designing general mobile applications. Yet there are a number of design principles unique to crafting mobile search experiences in particular. Namely: prioritizing content over controls, providing answers over results, being sensitive to context, and ensuring cross-channel continuity.

Read the rest on The TwigKit Blog.

An old, ugly problem still plagues fluid layouts: sub-pixel rounding. You’ve experienced this nasty issue when elements within your percentage-based layout unexpectedly wrap to the next line in Internet Explorer, or aren’t flush with the right-hand edge in Safari and Chrome.

Mobile information needs can be assed by two criteria: scope and type. Scope describes the sophistication of the information need, the degree of higher-level thinking it involves, and the time commitment required to satisfy it. The lookup, learn, and investigate elements of scope are derived from Gary Marchionini’s work on exploratory search, while the casual component has been more recently advocated by Max Wilson and others.

Read the rest on The TwigKit Blog.

Read the rest on UX Matters.

The book is a very practical guide on how to exploit query logs to improve your company’s search experience. Lou outlines a collection of simple but potent techniques for analyzing search logs, spotting insightful patterns, and putting those insights to use.

Read the rest on The TwigKit Blog.

The invention of the printing press transformed the physical object that is the book from an artefact of human transcription to that of mass production. By 1500, just 40 years after Gutenberg’s invention, an estimated 150 to 200 million copies had rolled off the press; a century later, the by then pervasive technology led to the rise of a new medium: the newspaper. This was the era of information as physical object.

CSS grid frameworks can make your life easier, but they’re not without their faults. Fortunately for us, modern techniques offer a new approach to constructing page layouts. But before getting to the solution, we must first understand the three seemingly insurmountable flaws currently affecting CSS grids.

Read the rest on Smashing Magazine.

Yesterday was the deadline to submit a redesign of Wikipedia’s search page to the search design contest organized by Greplin. While the contest isn’t officially endorsed by Wikipedia, we found the challenge too much fun to turn down.

Read the rest on The TwigKit Blog.

Think of the last time you ordered a book, booked a flight, or bought a car. How did you choose which book to read, where to go for vacation, or which car was best for you? You may have searched online, read reviews, or asked others for advice to help you make an informed decision. In a word, you learned. Learning is a complex process with distinct stages, each with corresponding tasks and emotions. Understanding how users learn can help us design experiences that support the user throughout the entire process. To design better learning experiences online, start by learning a thing or two about learning itself.

Read the rest on A List Apart.

You and I are different. It’s obvious, but has a profound impact on fulfilling the needs of disparate users. Not only do you and I have different accents, hairstyles, and musical tastes, but even our cognitive processes — the very building blocks of being human — are substantially different. I recently wrote about individual differences in expertise and cognitive style, but there is a third dimension: learning style. Understanding how people learn is fundamental to delivering desirable content, a prerequisite of any good user experience.

Read the rest on Johnny Holland.

There is a huge need for a standard corpus of high-quality, free-to-use demo data. When building search applications, for instance, getting your hands on actual data can be near impossible, forcing you to design for unrealistic situations and compromising the end result. Well-rounded demo data would help ensure you’re working towards the right target.

Read the rest on The TwigKit Blog.

We pour over analytics, conduct ethnographic studies, and interview users in order to understand the demographics, goals, and tasks of the people using our product. We create personas, write scenarios, and list use cases. And so we should; understanding who our users are and what they want to achieve is foundational to our job as designers.

Read the rest on UX Magazine.

Would you rather take a photo using your phone, a point-and-shoot camera, or a digital SLR? How you answer this question is probably a good indicator of your photographic expertise. If you snap casual shots, your phone or a point-and-shoot camera will probably suffice. If you’re a professional photographer, on the other hand, you probably prefer using an SLR that gives you control over the focus, aperture, and exposure. Expertise significantly impacts how we seek information online. Just as novice and expert photographers prefer different tools, so novices and experts behave differently when searching for information. Understanding these differences will help us design better search interfaces for both groups of users.

Read the rest on Boxes & Arrows.

Why do you code? It’s probably not just for a pay check (lets face it, there are plenty of boring jobs out there that pay the bills). Maybe you code because you like working with the latest technology, or perhaps you take pleasure in crafting concise, elegant solutions to tough problems. Did I hear you say, “I code to deliver value to users”? Hmm, didn’t think so. But you’re not alone: designers have their own set of motivations devoid of the user, from seeking the praise of others to creating a work of art. It’s imperative that both designers and developers fight against our natural inclinations and treat the user as king. Whatever you’re working on, whether it’s an API for a payment gateway or a new request handler for Solr, you’re building it for the people who will use it. Want to become a better developer? Then start designing the user experience.

Read the rest on The TwigKit Blog.

The designer triumvirate of information architects, user experience professionals, and interaction designers have a potent skill set for creating smooth, delightful experiences for users. While those skills are masterfully applied to browse-based navigation, search is far too often an afterthought.

Read the rest on The TwigKit Blog.

When was the last time that you were “in the zone”? Do you remember being so absorbed in an activity that you forgot about the outside world, time seemed to fade away, and you felt invigorated? Maybe you’re an avid tennis player and remember a rigorous game when you seemed on fire. Or perhaps you’re a musician and recall feeling as if the notes were flowing through your fingertips. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls this state of optimal experience flow. In his research, he found that musicians, composers, athletes, and even chess players all used the same words to explain their enjoyment. Csikszentmihalyi identified 8 elements that contribute to a flow experience.

Read the rest on The TwigKit Blog.

This past week I discovered a new recipe search engine called Foodily. Both the interaction and the visual design are superb, and Foodily makes use of several novel patterns that I thought would be worth pointing out.

Read the rest on The TwigKit Blog.

In 1899 the largest automobile producer in world, Benz & Cie, made a grand total of 572 cars. Few could afford such hand-built luxuries. But in 1908 Henry Ford began to mass-produce the Model T using an assembly line. By distilling the complex process of constructing an automobile into a distinct set of repeatable tasks, Ford reduced the time required to assemble a car down to just 93 minutes. By the 1920s, 10,000 cars were being produced every day, each with a price tag of just $290. Software, too, thrives on the transformation of abstract ideas into concrete, reusable components.

Read the rest on UX Magazine.

It’s been an exciting week for the Nutshell team. We’ve been in New York City officially launching the company in front of about 500 of our peers at the Future of Web Design conference. On Monday, Andy Fowler (our lead developer) and I went on stage at the end of the conference to make the big announcement. We shared some of the key tenets of our development strategy including cross-platform design, building the API first, and prototyping on paper.

Read the rest on The Nutshell Blog.

We’ve all been frustrated by a gadget, from trying to install a printer to spending hours setting up a new mobile phone. Page one of Simple and Usable points out that: “The Technology that is supposed to make our lives easier often feels like it’s on the march against us.” What then is the antidote to confusing products, software, and web sites? The answer is — as one might guess from the title of the book — simplicity. Simple and Usable is both an extremely approachable and an incredibly practical guide to simplicity. Author Giles Colborne compelling shares four fundamental strategies for accomplishing simplicity: remove, organize, hide, and displace.

Read the rest on Amazon.com.

Lucid Imagination recently invited me to present a webinar on designing user interfaces for search. At the end of the webinar, a number of participants sent in several really good questions. Here are 10 of them, accompanied by my answers.

Read the rest on Lucid Imagination.

What does building a brand new CRM for medium-sized businesses look like? Way before pushing our first pixel, we listened to people recount their frustrations with CRMs on the market today. We had long discussions about how we wanted to both empower sales people to do their job more efficiently, and enable the business to control and codify the sales process. We spent long sessions in front of the whiteboard, and days sketching out and talking through these ideas. Now in the final stages of development (eying a launch later this year), we thought it as good a time as any to show you a few of those early sketches.

Read the rest on The Nutshell Blog.

The implications of Information Foraging Theory on designing user-centred websites have not gone unnoticed. Jakob Nielsen and Jared Spool, among others, have put forth considered recommendations on how to enhance information scent on the web. Most of their guidelines, however, tend to assume that the designer has direct control over the explicit words used in the interface. While this is certainly the case for browse-based websites dependent on site-wide navigation and hyperlinks, it breaks down for search interfaces where both content and navigation are completely dynamic.

Read the rest on Johnny Holland.

People swear by their design process. Rachel Glaves insists on sketching by hand, Dan Brown urges extensive wireframing, and Ryan Singer goes straight to HTML. Conferences are filled with heated debates as advocates of each staunchly defend their favoured technique. With all of these different methods to choose from, should you be sketching, wireframing, mocking-up, or prototyping? The answer is simply: Yes, you should.

Read the rest on UX Booth.

This morning I got out of bed, ate my cereal, took my shower. Everything was proceeding pretty predictably. But then I did a Google search — usually a pretty mundane task — but this morning, Google looked very different than it did yesterday.

Read the rest on The TwigKit Blog.

We’ve been putting together a small slide deck explaining what’s wrong with customer relationship management (CRM) as we know it, and how Nutshell is getting it right. Fortunately for us, there’s a whole lot of room for improvement.

Read the rest on The Nutshell Blog.

We’ve been putting together a small slide deck explaining what’s wrong with customer relationship management (CRM) as we know it, and how Nutshell is getting it right. Fortunately for us, there’s a whole lot of room for improvement.

Read the rest on The TwigKit Blog.

You used to be expected to type for yourself. But today people have come to expect a reasonable amount of help at even this task. Our phones now help us form correctly-spelled words, our browsers fill in long addresses after we’ve typed only a few characters, and search engines recommend searching for “Humphrey Bogart” after we’ve typed just “boga.” But not all as-you-type search suggests are created equal. Careful observation seems to reveal three different approaches: completion, suggestion, and instant results. These approaches range in cognitive burden on the one hand, and utility on the other. We’ll look at several examples of each and consider when they should be used.

Read the rest on The TwigKit Blog.

Clean. Easy to use. User-friendly. Intuitive. This mantra is proclaimed by many but often gets lost in translation. The culprit: complexity. How one deals with complexity can make or break an application. A complex interface can disorient the user in a mild case and completely alienate them in an extreme case. But if you take measures first to reduce actual complexity and then to minimise perceived complexity, the user will be rewarded with a gratifying experience.

Read the rest on Smashing Magazine.

Other CSS frameworks try to do everything—grid system, style reset, basic typography, form styles. But complex systems are, well, complex. Looking for a simple, lightweight approach that doesn’t require a PhD? Meet The 1KB CSS Grid.

Read the rest on Usability Post.

Image grids that smoothly scale at the simple drag of a slider are no longer confined to desktop apps like iPhoto or Picasa. Thanks to some clever CSS and the jQuery UI, fluid image grids are now surprisingly simple to implement on the web. (Take a peek at the final product.)

Read the rest on Web Design Ledger.