Trends
3D on the Web
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Twenty years ago I was playing Rad Racer and watching Captain EO in 3D. I would have predicted that by now, we'd be well into the 3D era of entertainment. However, films like Up and Avatar have only recently brought 3D into the mainstream of Hollywood. Going forward, I can't imagine many major animated or action films NOT being released in 3D. While being the last person on Earth to see Avatar this past weekend, I couldn't help but think how this technology might one day relate to my day job. Will the type of 3D effects we're now seeing on the big screen make it onto the web? I think so, but it will take a while and won't be as impactful as it has been for the movie industry.
3D entertainment content will make its way onto the web first.
It's not a huge leap to expect we'll be seeing movie trailers offered online in a 3D format in the near future. When you go to a movie's trailer page, you're already seeing multiple options for the resolution of the trailer. Tacking on a 3D option seems to be a no-brainer; they're already filming the movie in 3D anyway and the only barrier for the user is obtaining a cheap pair of glasses. After movies, I expect to see video games make the leap. In fact, I'm sure armies of people are working to make this happen as we speak.
"Web" content will follow with shopping sites leading the way.
There are a number of other types of content that would benefit greatly from the 3D treatment. Most notably, I can imagine users wanting to view products like sneakers, bike helmets, furniture, etc. in 3D. Allowing rotating views of certain products was a big leap forward for online shopping experiences. Enhancing that type of online product browsing with 3D would be another step forward. In addition to retail, I envision real estate tours, trail maps, photo sharing sites, and infographics all benefiting from 3D enhancement.
Will we see interfaces designed for 3D?
We'll likely see some attempts to make this happen, but ultimately, it won't catch on. I think the path here is roughly analogous to the one Flash previously went down. It's a great fit for delivering certain types of content (video, audio, games, etc.), but building entire interfaces around the technology typically creates more problems (accessibility being a big one) than it solves. I have a hard time envisioning 3D interfaces providing a real, tangible benefit to users.
Don't start worrying about 3D any time soon.
Ultimately, designing for 3D content is not going to have a major impact on web and user experience designers' jobs in the near future. I'll be on the watch out for the first movie trailer site that offers the 3D option though.
Agile 2009
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First, a sad fact:
- Trips I've made to Chicago: 2
- Trips I've made to Chiacgo where I eat Chicago-style pizza: 0
I’m hoping to make a third trip to rectify this injustice, but in the mean time, I wanted to share my experiences this past week at the Agile 2009 conference in Chicago. I had a good time, learned a lot, met some great people, and joined in with 1300 other geeks in cursing the lack of both cell coverage and wifi.
Designing for Politeness
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“If we want users to like our software we should design it to behave like a likeable person: respectful, generous and helpful.” — Alan Cooper, “The Inmates Are Running the Asylum”
A few years ago a grad school friend asked me to come in and speak to his class about interaction design. The class was 50 minutes long, and I could take as little or as much time as I wanted. I prepared some brief notes, 30-40 minutes worth, and figured the rest would be taken up by discussion. I got up in front of the class, and promptly used up all of my material in under 10 minutes. I was mortified. In desperation I pulled up some wireframes for a project I was working on, and started listing off the changes we’d made and the rationale behind them. The class was bored to tears.
As I talked through the changes something clicked in my head, and told the class that “a UI is a conversation between the system and the user.” I started pointing out how the old UI was cold and aloof, full of empty form fields and imperious demands on the user. The new UI ditched the jargon, embraced a more conversational tone, tried to make the outcome of every action transparent, and gradually engaged the user over time.
Waxing Speculative about Amazon’s Business Model
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From Jeremy Keith's notes on Jared Spool's AEA Boston talk:
You can buy an iPod nano on Apple, Best Buy, etc. for about $149. Amazon sells it for $134. That’s probably cost price. It turns out that Amazon can sell almost everything at cost price and still make a product because of volume. It’s all down to the Negative Operating Cycle. Amazon turns over its inventory every 20 days whereas Best Buy takes 74 days. Standard retail term payments take 45 days. So Best Buy is in debt between day 45 and day 74. Amazon, on the other hand, are sitting on cash between day 20 and day 45. In that time, they can invest that money. That’s where their profit comes from.
Holy smokes. Maybe I'm dense or out of the loop on these things, but while I figured there was a volume advantage to Amazon, I didn't realize that this cycle-based plan was the key to their profits.
Barn and I were talking about this a little over IM today, and this gives a lot of fun fuel with which to speculate about all things Amazon...
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An Open Letter to Third-Party Twitter App Founders
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Dear Aspiring Twitter Speculators,
Congratulations on your new idea. You’ve come up with, and perhaps already built, a product that is genuinely useful to almost every Twitter user, filling one of the many feature canyons left open by the Twitter product team. Perhaps you’ve already gathered a respectable following on the interwebs, with a few thousand people using your service on a regular basis. All that, and it only took you a couple weeks to build on the side.
Now you’re waiting for the big moment to happen: the call from Ev or Biz or whomever. You’re sure they’re going to want to purchase your product for loads more money than it took you to build it. It fills a clear gap, after all, and there are already people using it. They bought Summize, right?
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