BenZipkin.com

More big sites should do what LinkedIn.com is doing: testing a working design concept in real-time—with actual users. The site is testing a new homepage design (which is very good, BTW). There’s a very clear call to action soliciting input from their user community. Clicking on the ‘send your feedback’ link opens a pop-over window with a text box for comments.

I’m surprised that more websites don’t put feedback loops like this into practice. Granted, the site owners probably receive a ton of junk to sift through, but I’m sure they are lots of great insights and commentary that will go a long way towards informing their design decisions. It’s also think that the simplicity of the text boxes results in more candid feedback and is much more user-friendly than a poll or survey.

It would be interesting to learn how the LinkedIn design team plans to assess and act on the data…

I was recently asked to give a brief presentation on the elements of interaction design and web strategy. Distilling all the aspects into a thirty minute presentation was a daunting task! After some deliberation, I decided that the most sensible way was to break interactive design strategy into three elements:

• Concepts: Basic components of interaction design strategy—key “sound bites” and practices
• Process: The five stages of strategy development with their individual artifacts
• Deliverables: Examples of primary deliverables (wireframes, task flows, prototypes…)

Here’s presentation via Slideshare.net.

Over the weekend RDVO launched the new Gillette Young Guns Website. It’s an update to the original site we launched last year. The site is a Flash-HTML hybrid website that’s updated every week with the latest driver information, race results, and general news. It’s quickly becoming one of the most visited NASCAR fan sites on the web.

It’s a really great site that solidly supports Gillette’s growing NASCAR promotions. The site was a 2007 MITX Award winner for Best Entertainment/Sports Website.

The new website was refitted and updated with a number of new features and functions. Two new drivers—Denny Hamlin and Clint Bowyer—joined the Young Guns and now prominently featured on the site. We also developed driver-specific screensavers that are automatically updated with news, driver updates, and other exclusives. There is a wealth of multimedia, images, and text content tailored for NASCAR fans.

We also extended out existing multimedia features and content, including our Google Maps-driven track locator. Several new community and content features are planned for later this year.

Congrats to the combined Gillette and RDVO team for pulling together a great new site!

A couple of weeks ago I posted about CNN’s use of the Perceptive Pixel’s magic wall. The Wall has created quite a buzz among interaction design geeks and there’s been quite a bit of coverage since.

Tuesday’s edition of the Washington Post has a nice article about the wall, calling it the “gee-whizziest TV-news gizmo since the animated weather map”.

Some more good links:

• All things CNN
• Gawker Readers Don’t Get It
• NY Times Calls Super Tuesday Night of the Touchscreens

There’s been an interesting thread going on at the IxDA discussion boards that gets down to a critical issue in the interaction design field: is investing in design really worth the investment by product manufactures?

The post, entitled “Why Do Crappy Interfaces Sell?“, raises some important issues. Do end users really care about great design? Is amazing user experience really worth the investment required by product developers and manufacturers?

I think the answer is a resounding “no”. Outside of our small community of designers there are very few people who would consider paying a premium for an above-average user interface.

Take for example probably the most purchased consumer product: the mobile phone. The vast majority of phones have hideous UIs—many are close to unusable. Still, the vast majority of users barely take the user interface into consideration when buying a phone. I wonder if the normal buyer would pay a premium for a better UI…

CNN’s election coverage is boasting some cool new technologies—specifically the new “Magic Wall”, an interactive Touch-screen provided on Jeff Han’s Perceptive Pixel multi-touch technology. According to this article from Broadcast Engineering, Perceptive Pixel developers created customized software for use during the election coverage.

CNN reporters have been using the Magic Wall to toggle between screen views and zoom-in on data sets. During the Iowa coverage, they also had a slick “delegate-sorting” interface. Last night, one reporter used the multi-touch resizing to show some campaign picture. Overall…very cool stuff and, like any design geek, I can’t wait to get my hands on one those (although I hear they go for a cool $100,000.00).

As they cool as the screens are, watching a reporter interact with them feels broken – there’s an unevenness watching them work with the device that doesn’t translate well to TV coverage. The screens also create some challenging body positioning issues. Reporters have to face away from the camera to interact with screens, creating some choppy communications. This is similar to some of the problems people have when presenting projected PowerPoint presentations.

All in all, it’s great to see nifty new technologies like multi-touch interfaces being put to practical use, but there are some clear kinks that need to be worked out…

I was experimenting with Mint.com, a web-based money-management application. While I haven’t decided if it’s the type of tool I’d like to use, I was impressed by the clear, organized, and simple UI.

Anyone who uses online banking knows how perplexing web-based financial management can be. It’s also not surprising that some of the most intelligently designed web apps are in the financial sector. E*Trade and TurboTax are both great examples.

The Mint UI is a nice example a of clean Web 2.0-styled UI. Simple and structured, the design is clean and well organized – with great use of space, context and design. I like how the primary navigation options are presented in a logical sequence that clearly maps to the financial management thought process: I wanted to see my transactions > see trends > and then use that date to identify ways to save.

Mint.com also does a nice job with data visualizations. Charts and graphs are used frequently but never seem to overwhelm the page. They are presented in a purposeful manner. The spending trends page is excellent. I also like the date range sliders which are similar to those used on Google Finance.

This is one of the nicer UI I’ve seen recently.