It took us a while to absorb the advancement in interactions that the touch screens has brought us recently (Thank you Apple and even Microsoft) but as it seems, we are already playing with the next big thing in the interaction world, Augmented Reality.

What is Augmented Reality? Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data (virtual reality), where computer graphics objects are blended into real footage in real time. ( Wikipedia )

So far, there are many beautiful experiments done with AR, and as a big fan of it, I just want to present a few videos here (If you don't know them already):

Some "Basic" Augmented Reality:

A ugmented Reality Business Cards – 2 nice videos: (From the " Reaction " Blog)

Augmented Business Card from jonas on Vimeo .

AR Business Card from James Alliban on Vimeo .

Zugara’s Augmented Reality Dressing Room : (From TechCrunch )

Augmented reality – iPhone application that helps you find your Mommy… (From Gizmodo )

iPhone 3GS Augmented Reality from Chris Hughes on Vimeo .

Augmented ID: Augmented Reality Facial Recognition for Mobile : (From ReadWriteWeb )

The future is here?

Layar Mobile Augmented Reality Browser : (From ReadWriteWeb )

Microsoft extreme augmented reality : (From Johnny Holland Magazine )

I am so! looking forward for future developments in this area, it amazing!

Mind360.com Beta was launched yesterday very quietly and I am very proud to present it here as its my brother in law brilliant startup :)

Our brain needs training to be in shape, just like our muscles, and this is why Mind360 was created, they offer a variety of games that allow you to practice and improve different cognitive aspects of your brain, and as a member you have a personal training program to improve your cognitive capabilities and strengthen your weaknesses, and do all this while playing and having fun (well not all fun, some is really hard work, but the challenges keep you going).

As described best in Mind360 home page: Brain training games aren’t just for seniors anymore. Now you can hang on to your wits by simply playing the leading scientifically based brain training games on the net. And what better way to strengthen your cognitive skills than by having a fundamentally good time as well. Today’s advanced brain training games help improve your memory, increase your ability to stay focused, plus make faster and better decisions.

As a Cognitive psychologist I am very familiar with Brain training, it was proven to work amazingly, for example on US Air Force pilots, and on US basketball players .

The best thing as I see it is the ability to get a professional automated analysis of your achievements and to see if your progress is sufficient and where to invest more time. This is truly not trivial, and part of the key to get a real improvement.

Here is an example of one of the games "Celebrity Spot" and what you can gain just by playing it.

• Cognitive exercise: Motoric Precision
• Cognitive skill trained: Eye-Hand Coordination
• Objectives: Synchronize mouse movement with click timing

Although it is just in beta and has a few bugs here and there and some of the advanced function are not up yet, it gives a great user experience. and i cant finish without saying one more thing about the design – it is just amazing, my compliments to the designer, clean, professional and beautiful design.

Keep up the good work.

A coworker in my UI department referred me a few days ago to a blog post (In Hebrew) about a small and helpful UI tool called - UIDT (User Interface designers toolkit...) . This tool was developed by "Morad Stern", a fellow UI enthusiast and a blogger (The blog is in Hebrew).

The purpose of this tool is to supply User Interface designers (Like me, or ones who do not...), with ready made UI elements. In my line of work it is very common to search for such elements in the www (world wide web...), and it can sometimes be very time consuming to find and crop the right element, and when you need to do it many times a day it can be a hassle.

UIDT is offering a simple solution for this problem (Free of charge). Still this tool is in its early stages so it doesn't have a wide variety of elements, but i'm sure that soon enough it will.

Still, I have a few suggestions that will make this tool perfect for me...

• Make this tool a social one, allow UI designers to upload elements for themselves and for others to later use. This will increase the variety and quality of the elements.
• Because I probably won't need to use the tool all day long, but I will still need it to be handy, I would suggest allowing it to work in the background, in the notification area, saving me open-close-open procedures all day long...

• Add a quick search and with auto-complete, to allow easy and quick element search
• Allow color control, especially for the background and the elements. But I don't see it as something too crucial, because most of us design on white background, and adding such control options might kill the possibility of making such a tool social.

Of course some UI design softwares already come with ready made elements, But this tool can make our life easier in so many cases, so keep up the good work "Morad" and thanks.

Few days ago i complained in my last post that Gmail is not giving a full solution to my email management needs. Well today some of these needs are filled, thanks to Gmail's multiple inboxes solution.

What is this Multiple Inboxes? Its a cool new tool that allows you to create and define additional content lists on the side, top or bottom of your current list, for example:

• your starred items
• your sent items
• all emails from a certain user

and etc... You define the content of the additional lists according to your needs.

The first thing i'm taking from this new feature is that it finally gives me a good solution for emails I want to follow up on (Until today they were buried in my very lengthy inbox), In addition it gives me the option to better spread my focus when working with my Gmail and to change it when ever my needs are changed, and they change on a weekly basis.

Another good advantage for the Multiple Inboxes is that today many users use a wide screen which support a very wide view, but still most sites are designed for 1024*768 resolution (Because it is still the best resolution for the majority of the surfers). The direct effect of it, is a lot of space not used when we are viewing web sites. Gmail decided to give these wide screen users a better use for this empty space.

And now if you could only help me set my other Gmail account inbox out there and my tasks lists (Another recent Gmail addition) i'll be even happier.

Sorry people, in the last few weeks I didn't have any spare time to dedicate to my blog. Today I found a few seconds for it :) and I wanted to present something that annoys me for a long time... Gmail.

I use Gmail email services most of the time, and I use it plenty. BUT there are a few things that really bother me, annoying as hell...

Navigating or NOvigating between emails

Reading an email in Gmail is always in a news screen and not in the inbox view. In order to view another message in my inbox I need to go back to Inbox and click on another message to view, or go to the next email from within a message,(Next or Previous one).

The problem is that for people who work with their email, they just don't read one email after the other. They scan the inbox and select which messages are relevant now. So Gmail left me with two horrible options:

1. From the inbox to a message and back to the inbox to select another one
2. From the inbox to a message and from the message to another one while marking each message I dont want to handle at the moment again as unread.

This is too much fuss...

Sorting or Searting

Gmail has a lot of shortcuts, much more than you can remember, I even took on myself a few weeks ago to gather most of the, you can read about them here. But these shortcuts the fertilize the user of the search box is time consuming and annoying. Of course Google have a very sofisticated search engine, so why not use it... but we users prefer to do the simple tasks in one click. One click to sort according to sender name, one click to sort according to attachments and etc...

By the way - when I wrote searting on this paragraph title it represents Sorting+Searching in one word.

Filtering?

Beside using all the wonderful search option inside Gmail, you can also select to flag specific messages according to their status All, None, Read, Unread, Starred, and Unstarred messages. This action checks the relevant message checkbox. But... I starred a message for a reason... How do i track all my starred messages? in order to view all my starred messages I need to visually scan all my inbox screens (currently I have more then 1000 pages) and to locate in each on the highlighted one. Sadly I can't use this quick "star" function as my "follow up" tool.

There are a lot of other small things that bother me, and a lot more things that I really enjoy in Gmail (Like the super smart "Undo" function), and I understand that to every problem I presented there are ways to overcome. But in terms of usability it lacks.

What about the competition

Last, I wanted to mention two competitive Email services Microsoft's windows live - Hotmail, and Yahoo mail. To say that both are pretty similar and due to that both offer a smart and simple outlook-like solutions for sorting, filtering, message previews and easy navigation between emails. They have their own usability problems, but as work tools they have the advantage.

So what do you use, and how will you make it better?

Browsing to see what are the new Google search experiments I saw something very disturbing... Looks like that the financial crises hits Google harder than we though, so hard that Sergey Brin himself had to take some more work responsibilities to help out the guys in these hard times :)

What I'm talking about? You can clearly see in the explanation of new Google experiment "SearchWiki with sound":

I love how Google keep a high spirit in every little thing :) Regarding the experiment itself, Sergey's special sound effects are not bad at all...

Read more about Google's Keyboards short cuts experiment and about the Accessible view experiment

I came across a game developed with and for Amnesty International, called " Pictures for truth ".

About the project: "This game was developed to support Amnesty International's campaign on China. The story and characters represented are fictional. The aim of this project is to sensitize the player to human rights violations"

About the game: "You are a journalist and photographer. A few months before the Beijing Olympic Games, your best friend, Jun Shen, a human rights defender and journalist, calls for help. You will do everything you can to help him. This adventure will take you to China where you will be confronted to many human rights violations.  By investigating, taking pictures and publishing your articles, you will work to solve the problems you encounter and eventually save your friend!"

Anyway... I played with the game for about an hour until I finished the game (Its a short game) with a score of 4000 fame points (Hurray!) and I must say that I liked it, It brought me back to the good old days of playing simple quests. But this is obviously not a game for gamers, its a very creative way to spread the amnesty agenda. And a good work doing so in this way, it really brought it to my attention.

In terms of usability the game is pretty intuitive, and I have just one main remark - It was really hard to learn how to start playing... Why?

This is the first screen you encounter after you load the game

Good idea to show me the game instruction before i play, but i kept looking and looking for the Start playing button, and couldn't find him. I just didn't know how to start the game. After a lot of air-clicking I pressed the instructions button F1 and the instruction disappeared and I could play the game. From my subjective view, this was not so intuitive... so please add a Close/Start/Play button instead of making us try and understand that this is not a pre-game screen, and just a layer of the instructions already opened...

Other than that, and on an ethic level something really bothered me

During the game you need to take pictures of "events" in order to publish articles (each article gives you more fame points). If you manage to get a better picture that shows things in different angels, for examples a bigger focus on the big bad Chinese police and in the background its prisoner, you gain more fame points then just a simple picture of both of them.

What is my problem?

• First, the game objective is to gain "Fame" points by revealing the truth and exposing the real deal. Do Amnesty people do it for the sake of fame?
• Second, the game enforces the art of taking the right picture? Do Amnesty encourage people touch up the pictures so that they will be more effective?

These things make me think a lot about the objectivity in reports, The entire conception looks a bit rotten, But the game is pretty cool, and it does deliver an important message, so go play it .

A a usability professional I'm a bit ashamed that I didn't know anything about it, and more ashamed that it didn't occur to me to do some Guerrilla Usability on my neighborhood myself.

If you don't know what is Guerrilla Usability, I'll explain shortly - It means improving usability level with methods that require a minimal budget.  And what I mean  by "Guerrilla Usability raid in your neighborhood"? Walking around finding things that are so horrible to use in your own neighborhood, and making them a little bit (or sometimes much) better. (see notes on the example below)

I saw some wonderful examples of such guerrilla raids when i viewed the blog post Users fix parking ticket machine interface themselves in etre company blog. There I saw some examples of such raids people did to very un-usable products in their neighborhood, here the best example:

Parking ticket machine:

Oh and one last thing, this reminds me of a really cool project that was done in a small supermarket in Israel - web2.0 supermarket - you must watch it:

I fell in love with the raid idea. If you got any cool examples or raid opportunities, let me know.

There are a lot of people out there that don't know they can use Google to refine their searches and to apply the search box for many many more functions. (In Part 1, I'm going to list here all the functions I found that can be used in Google's search box (Feel free to add more), and in Part 2 I'll present some Gmail shortcuts).

All the functions that I'm going to present below are operated from the search box. But easily they could have been operated not by the search, but (for example) by a tool box, or a select box or in many other ways... Am I suppose to remember only my 5 favorite functions from the massive options? Wouldn't it be easier if I had an option list? I guess the simple answer is that Google expect the pro users to remember what they need to use, and they don't think these options are relevant to all.

So here it is a pretty full guide, you will find a lot of useful options here.

A guide to Google shortcuts (First some links to nice sources I gathered, of unique shortcuts):

• Calculator shortcuts and a nice calculator tool based on Google search - Soople (removed the need to use the Google search to calculate, but I guess using a web calculator instead is easier)
• Travel Planing
• Travel Conditions
• Phone numbers & addresses
• Street maps
• Stock quotes
• Definitions (Google Glossary)
• Search by Number

And some additional functions that do not exists in the above links:(some of them taken from Google web search help )

• Plus (+) Operator

Google ignores common words and characters such as where, the, how, and other digits and letters that slow down your search without improving the results. If a common word is essential to getting the results you want, you can make sure we pay attention to it by putting a "+" sign in front of it.
Example: peanut butter +and jelly

• Related Search  

To search for web pages that have similar content to a given site, type "related:" followed by the website address into the Google search box.
Example: related:www.cnn.com 

• Fill in the Blank  

Sometimes the best way to ask a question is to get Google to ‘fill in the blank’ by adding an asterisk (*) at the part of the sentence or question that you want finished into the Google search box.
Example: Isaac Newton discovered *

• Sports Scores

To see scores and schedules for sports teams type the team name or league name into the search box. This is enabled for the English Premier League, National Football League, National Hockey League, and Major League Baseball.
All sports data provided by STATS, Inc.
Example: san francisco 49ers

• Book Search

If you’re looking for results from Google Book Search, you can enter the name of the author or book title into the search box and we’ll return any book content we have as part of your normal web results. You can click through on the record to view more detailed info about that author or title.
Example: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

• Synonym Search

If you want to search not only for your search term but also for its synonyms, place the tilde sign (~) immediately in front of your search term.
Example: ~fast food

• Spell Checker

Google’s spell checking software automatically checks whether your query uses the most common spelling of a given word. If it thinks you’re likely to generate better results with an alternative spelling, it will ask “Did you mean: (more common spelling)?”. Click the suggested spelling to launch a Google search for that term.
Example: Expolasion

• Movie Showtimes

To find reviews and showtimes for movies playing near you, type "movies" or the name of a current film into the Google search box. If you've already saved your location on a previous search, the top search result will display showtimes for nearby theaters for the movie you've chosen.
Example: movies 94705

• Local Search

If you’re looking for a store, restaurant, or other local business you can search for the category of business and the location and we’ll return results right on the page, along with a map, reviews, and contact information.
Example: Italian food 02138

• Real Estate and Housing

To see home listings in a given area type "housing", "home", or "real estate" and the name of a city or a U.S. zip code into the Google search box and hit the Enter key or click the Google Search button. Clicking the "Go" button on the results page will display details of individual homes that Google has indexed.
Example: homes Los Angeles

• Plus (+) Operator

Google ignores common words and characters such as where, the, how, and other digits and letters that slow down your search without improving the results. If a common word is essential to getting the results you want, you can make sure we pay attention to it by putting a "+" sign in front of it.
Example: peanut butter +and jelly

• "OR" search

To find pages that include either of two search terms, add an uppercase OR between the terms. For example, here's how to search for a vacation in either London or Paris: vacation london OR paris

• Domain search

You can use Google to search only within one specific website by entering the search terms you're looking for, followed by the word "site" and a colon followed by the domain name. For example, here's how you'd find admission information on the Stanford University site: admission site:www.stanford.edu

• Num Range search:

Feel like a number? Numrange searches for results containing numbers in a given range. Just add two numbers, separated by two periods, with no spaces, into the search box along with your search terms. You can use Numrange to set ranges for everything from dates (Willie Mays 1950..1960) to weights (5000..10000 kg truck). But be sure to specify a unit of measurement or some other indicator of what the number range represents. For example, here's how you'd search for a DVD player that costs between $50 and $100: DVD player $50..$100  

• Cache:

If you include other words in the query, Google will highlight those words within the cached document. For instance, [cache:www.google.com web] will show the cached content with the word "web" highlighted.The query [cache:] will show the version of the web page that Google has in its cache. For instance, [cache:www.google.com] will show Google's cache of the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the "cache:" and the web page url.

• Link:

The query [link:] will list webpages that have links to the specified webpage. For instance, [link:www.google.com] will list webpages that have links pointing to the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the "link:" and the web page url.

• Info:

The query [info:] will present some information that Google has about that web page. For instance, [info:www.google.com] will show information about the Google homepage. Note there can be no space between the "info:" and the web page url.

• Stocks:

If you begin a query with the [stocks:] operator, Google will treat the rest of the query terms as stock ticker symbols, and will link to a page showing stock information for those symbols. For instance, [stocks: intc yhoo] will show information about Intel and Yahoo. (Note you must type the ticker symbols, not the company name.)

• Site:

If you include [site:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to those websites in the given domain. For instance, [help site:www.google.com] will find pages about help within www.google.com. [help site:com] will find pages about help within .com urls. Note there can be no space between the "site:" and the domain.

• Filetype:

You can search a specific file type, for example: filetype:doc

• Allinanchor: 

Allows you to search for a link or an anchor text - allinanchor:get more referrals

• Allintitle:

If you start a query with [allintitle:], Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the title. For instance, [allintitle: google search] will return only documents that have both "google" and "search" in the title.

• Intitle:

If you include [intitle:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the title. For instance, [intitle:google search] will return documents that mention the word "google" in their title, and mention the word "search" anywhere in the document (title or no). Note there can be no space between the "intitle:" and the following word.

Putting [intitle:] in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting [allintitle:] at the front of your query: [intitle:google intitle:search] is the same as [allintitle: google search].

• Allinurl:

If you start a query with [allinurl:], Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the url. For instance, [allinurl: google search] will return only documents that have both "google" and "search" in the url.

Note that [allinurl:] works on words, not url components. In particular, it ignores punctuation. Thus, [allinurl: foo/bar] will restrict the results to page with the words "foo" and "bar" in the url, but won't require that they be separated by a slash within that url, that they be adjacent, or that they be in that particular word order. There is currently no way to enforce these constraints.

• Inurl:

If you include [inurl:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the url. For instance, [inurl:google search] will return documents that mention the word "google" in their url, and mention the word "search" anywhere in the document (url or no). Note there can be no space between the "inurl:" and the following word.

Putting "inurl:" in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting "allinurl:" at the front of your query: [inurl:google inurl:search] is the same as [allinurl: google search].

• Acronym:

Putting "Acronym:" in front of an acronym, you will receive results with the acronym explanation. for example: Acronum:P.S

• Safesearch:

If you start a query with SafeSearch: you will exclude adult oriented search results. for example: Safesearch:breast

I hope I gathered most of the possibilities out there of the giant Google search engine.

Few posts ago I wrote on another Google experiment - Keyboard Shortcuts. This new experiment is a bit different.

Google accessible view, I presume, was created for disabled people who can't see well (This is why its called accessible view...). I am very glad to see that "Accessibility" is embraced for Google .

What the Accessible View gives the user, is a very simple and intuitive navigation alternative, that allows him to browse the search results. You can navigate between results by using the keywords "J", "K" (very similar to the keyboard shortcuts experiment)In addition "N", "P", & the up/down arrows (Very good improvement for the keyboard short cut experiment) allow you to do almost the same.

The added value here is that the results are highlighted. But it is not just a highlight of the results, but a sort of  magnifying-glass view of the result. The magnified area floats in different layer above the actual results page. This solution is great for people who have difficulties seeing, as they can magnify the text even further by using the "=" key or the "-" key, and in addition if the user has a screen reader (commonly used by blind people) - the result that is currently highlighted, will be read to him, and only that (nothing else in the screen will be read to him, as this might distract them).

Few insights:

• I will not recommend using it for people who have no difficulty in reading, as the floating layer of the highlighted result, is floating above other results as well, and because you can't see the next results or the previous one, it is very hard to have good orientation when navigating between the results.
• J,K,Up and Down keys have the same functionality, they allow you to navigate between the results (but not to jump to the next index page). Using "N" & "P" do the same, but also when you are standing on the last result of the page, pressing the key "N" will send you to the next index results page (and the other way around with "P"). what I find confusing is why do we need different functionality for these buttons. Either create buttons that will allow you to jump between index pages, or just use the same functionality as the "N"&"P" keys, for all buttons. This way it will have a better logic to me in terms of user experience.
• Too many buttons that act the same, well I realize its an experiment, but why can't you decide?

Keep them coming Google, you're doing good to the user experience and accessibility.

In the last few months I witness an impressive advancement in the auto-complete function of browsers, web sites and application. So I decided to summarize the evolution of it, in terms of User Experience.

          
            In the beginning there was (and still) 
          
          
            
              Internet
explorer
            
          
        

In Internet explorer 7 , the auto-complete only complete if the browsing history string starts with the exact string the user wrote. for example, if you write the string "A", only web sites that start with "A" will appear.

And Google said, let there be Google Suggest

Google suggest, is literally suggesting the users search terms according to the the strings the users entered into the search box. and in the same principal of the Internet explorer, it mostly suggest the matches from the beginning of the search terms.

There is only one small user experience problem as I see it, sometimes the string I enter will be more relevant in the middle of the sentence, but due to the fact that Google has so many suggestion to give that match the beginning of the phrase, you almost never see suggestion that include your string in the middle of the suggested search term. (I had to write "hesaurus" to receive the suggestion that doesn't start with "H" and got "Thesaurus"...). I wonder if the Google algorithm take it into consideration.

And Mozilla saw the light, and created FireFox 3

The big improvement in FF, is that the auto complete searches the string you enter in the address box, not just in the beginning of the phrase but in the middle of it and/or in the site description, all according to how relevant it is according to the user browsing history.

Today a short and easy domain name is not something so common, and many domains today are created from half words or a couple of words, and this is not so easy remember. The FF auto complete was a huge improvement in terms of user experience, as users no longer need to be so accurate, and remember exactly the domain name, they only needed to remember part of it or how it is described.

And Google said, let there be Google Chrome

In Google Chrome the address box and the search box are combined to one. If the phrase you enter exists in your browsing history it will suggest a web site, if it doesn't it will suggest that you will search for this phrase.

So simple and so smart, why hassle the user to click between two boxes that are so relevant to each other, when he can do it in one.

And when something makes your life so much easier, people find out many ways use it.

Good friends of mine, created the startup Predictad , They give advertisers a new place to advertise in - in the suggest box. The ads that appear. are relevant to the user search phrase. This gives the publishers and the advertisers a new way to earn money or exposure.

I wrote this post because I saw today a nice post in the weblog of 37signals - Signal vs. Noise , a nice enhancement Highrise made to their auto complete tool.

Something in particular caught my eye, Their auto complete tool, also know how to complete strings that not exactly match (For example if the user wrote "danrimon" (my name), the auto complete will also know to search for "dan rimon"). This is pretty cool, although exists in other places, including Google Chrome , but for some reason I only noticed it when i saw Highrise video.

This made me think, What's next?

The purpose of the auto complete is to help users, then why not take it to the next level:

• One obvious improvement - correct spelling mistakes.
• The other thing is more interesting in user experience terms, and this is Auto-Complete with filtering. what do I mean? If I want to search the word "Water" for example, I can write instead "trewa" (Why is that?), because this string includes all the letters of the word "water", but mixed. What the auto complete algorithm should do in my mind is suggest all the strings that include these latter in the relevant possible combination (and filter the words that do not include these letters or part of them). This simple change will solve a lot of most common mistakes we do when we write in the Internet. mix the letters because we write to fast and do not pay attention very closely.

If you have any more interesting auto complete tools or just more insights - feel free to share.

Saw today the Amazon Window Shop , looks cool, and more importantly simple to use.

The browsing can be done in 2 modes:

Zoom-in view (at the moment the default mode):

 

Regular view:

You can navigate by using the arrows - and zoom in and out by using the "spacebar" and the "enter" (they don't mention it for some reason). you can also navigate by using the mouse, using a dragging method (They also don't mention it, is it too obvious?).

Some anecdotes:

• The top navigation bar that allows you to navigation left to right between different content and dates is yet to be perfect
• Different content is presented in a different color - this is a good cognitive indication, my only concern is that there just too many colors to grasp the difference or even notice it (for example between movies and TV shows).
• There is lack of consistency - some categories are monthly and some weekly. This situation create a bit of confusing, as the order of categories is not consistent, and a bit confusing.
• I would add some sort of borders between update dates, for example an intuitive way to understand that now i switched between October updates to August updates and so on... this will ad another level of structure.
• This experience of easy browsing without using the mouse is good, but there is one little annoying bug here... if you give me the chance not to use the mouse why do you make me press on the "I" (help) icon to read the help? pressing the letter "I" should do the trick.
• The default way of navigation (zoomed in) in my mind is not the right way, because for someone who didn't see the feature before, found it difficult to get a good orientation, and it might create a negative first impression for the users.
• I think another level of information is missing - short reviews, rating or a reference to information on the site. In my mind i see an option to flip the item picture to see its back side, and in it will appear some additional information on the item.

I find the window shop pretty good compared to many semi-virtual environments I saw in the past. But keep in mind, this can not replace the rest of the shop/site (in this case amazon shop). It is not for no reason that the feature name is "Window shop", as this can be used effectively almost only to present new items in a sort of a "show case".

Most of the day I sketch and design the future web sites of my company and sketch the improvements of the current ones. An important aspect of my work is to plan the correct flow of things. This is why Product Planner caught my eye.

The company describe this product - "Product Planner was born out of the need to help people understand and create user flows for their web products. The idea is that by looking at examples of other successful web products, you can get a better idea of how to create your own".

The site is in its early stage and doesn't really have yet enough examples, but I really love their vision, and I can see how much it can do to the User Experience of web sites who will follow it.

In general Product Planner is a simple tool to create and share flows, but the great thing about it is that the flows are not created just from headlines but they are created from functional designs screens or from the actual site screen shots.  The full detailed design in the flow makes all the difference in understanding and building good user experience.

For example - an "Invitation to Twitter " flow:

Each box in the flow represent and actual page as a part of the flow, and by pressing on a box you can see it magnified:

Few pointers:

• Not enough flexibility in flow types - It decreases the chance that experts will use this tool BUT this limitation can also do good, by keeping the small and generic flows, the site becomes more useful, and it is better than having very long unique flows that won't serve many.
• As a site builder how will I know which flow to use, which is the better? I can see which ones are the favorite ones, but which ones are truly good for my goals? As a User Experience expert, when I plan a flow I have in my mind the objective of the flow. For example if I want to create a signup flow - the objective of it can be:
  • Joining as fast as possible (Low barrier of registration)
  • Gaining as much information as possible (When I want to profile my users before they get access)
  • Complex registration (High barrier registration - when I don't want each users to become a member of my site without some sort of a commitment by him
  • Users can add comments to a flow, but it won't do the trick, maybe add the option to tag a flow by a set of characteristics: "for professional users", "for novice users", and etc...
• What I miss the most if to be able to explain the interaction between each segments of the flow, and to be able to add to the flow exceptional cases - for example error message in case the user does something wrong in the flow (Enter the wrong password, Email already exists).

To conclude:

I hope this site will fulfill its vision and be a tool for product managers, usability experts, developers and etc... and make our web a friendlier place. I'm sure I'll be happy if people will share with me interesting flows from the site.

Occasionally I'm practicing being my very own StumbleUpon engine, when i start typing weird site names and hope for smooth landing.

Today i did just that thing and i was redirected to Johnny Walker site. Personally I'm a White Russian fan (and thanks to The  Dude and the Cohen  Brothers for making me a little more cooler, at least in my mind), but I can handle a few drops of good whisky.

Landing on that site triggered this blog post, as I once again wondered if covering our ass is better than doing the right thing, in terms of marketing of course.

When I landed on the home page of the site, I got a "Warning page" asking me two questions "where do you live" and "when were you born", the purpose of these questions are to verify that I'm in legal age to drink, according to my country minimum drinking age law. and yes it actually works, for "Israel" i said i was 19 and it was ok, and for the US the same age did not let me go through to the main site.

Anyway...

This "Warning page" exists also in other similar companies, such as Absolut Vodka . Yes the regulations require you the warn your visitors before you let them enter a site that will encourage them to drink alcohol, but is the super smart mechanism of age verification will actually stop a minor from entering the site? and what is the purpose of the law?

I understood the purpose of the law when I took my magnifying glass and   examined the "warning page" more closely... to give the "Drinkers" important information before to consume alcohol and to prevent minors from doing so.

The Absolut Vodka version (left) and the Johnny Walker version (right):

In a very small font size...:

• Here is what Absolut say: " ABSOLUT endorses responsible and moderate drinking. For this reason, we would like to recommend the following reading: Century Council , Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS) , and The European Forum for Responsible Drinking (EFRD) "
• Here is what Johnny Walker say (you need to click on the link to see the explanation page): " As we support responsible drinking, we need to ask you these questions to ensure that you're over the legal purchase age and that you're legally allowed to view this site in your country of access. We also need to be aware if anyone else using this computer could be under the legal purchase age. Rest assured that none of the information you provide here will be used to contact you in any way."

Both examples show us that these regulations gave the users the "opportunity" to gain information about alcohol consumption...

Once you finish getting educated by the companies and crack the age verification mechanism, you get to enter the site, But unfortunately you see no mention what so ever on the important alcohol education...

Johnny Walker HP:

Absolut HP:

Nice design, but where did company responsibility toward alcohol drinking went?

What is my point?

• Do you really think that by using such a warning page you prevent minors from entering the site? No!
• Do you really think you got to the attention of anyone, some knowledge about alcohol hazards? No!
• Minors can still access the site, and they nobody will ever see (except me) the alcohol public information.

So what good is this regulation for?

Well i have a suggestion, change the current regulation - Instead of that stupid age verification that also contains important information in a font size of 8 (or lower)... Request the companies to dedicate a part of the home page for alcohol education, and loose that "warning page".

By doing so you will improve the user MX (Marketing Experience(c)) of the actual customers (users who are of legal age), and you will also gain the attention of users to information regarding alcohol drinking - information that is important at all ages.

A win win situation.

On a personal note -

a marketing experience expert - a user experience expertise in marketing

why didn't i think about it before, Its a cool title to use.