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I recently caught a short but sensible post from TechRadar.com that makes the case that Apple is great at interface design because they are one of few technology companies who value “pleasure” as a design principle.

Great concept and very true – when was the last time you used a device or application (from a company other than Apple) and found the experience actually…ummm…enjoyable?

So what is this user experience pleasure principle? Why do Apple products continue to inspire and dazzle users while products from companies like Microsoft and HP just tend to bore us?

UX designers are conditioned to think that user workflow, task completion and logic are the essentials of a quality experience. Elements like design craftsmanship and detail are often considered extraneous and wasteful—or are simply seen as just “adding color”. Many leading design firms and pundits have trumpeted this concept of simplicity over embellishment—function always trumps form.

It’s becoming clear, however, that interfaces don’t need to be stark and bland to be good. Some of the most interesting and powerful digital experiences can be seen in game UI. And companies like Apple continue to show that creating a sense of wonder in your product experience just may please customers as much as simplified design workflows.

I’ve been reading a number of interesting articles about the imminent death of search engine optimization. Frankly, traditional SEO has been languishing on its death bed for the last several years. While this doesn’t bode well for the folks who have built careers out search optimization, we’re going to see a lot of new opportunities for smart marketers able to marry traditional research with search engine savvy.

I’ll explain.

Google has been moving towards more personalized search services for the last couple of years. Much of this is driven by new principles of the semantic web and the advent of web services and media types that compete with traditional web content for relevancy. Who’s to say, for example, that someone searching for Angelina Jolie will be interested in viewing news more so than her videos or photos?

Google’s New Personalization Tools

Google no longer wants to prioritize content for you—they want their users to do it themselves. This approach is now clearly apparent with the promote and remove functionality now showing up on a lot of search results.

Expect to see more of this technology in the coming months. I strongly believe that search personalization will only become more pronounced in future—both user-managed personalization and machine-generated based on your “personalization profile”: personalization based on both your prior activity and the behaviors of users similar to you.

So what does personalized search mean for the traditional SEO? If you deconstruct the process of SEO it breaks down into three parts:

1. The ability to forecast and predict how search engines will assign relevancy
2. The understanding of the terminology used by target users (and their search heuristics)
3. Modification of web pages and content to optimize for the top two parts

The combination of these elements fundamentally drives search optimization. With personalized search, however, #1 and #3 lose their importance, while #2 because vital. The future of SEO hinges on user research.

User research and profiling has gained importance in user experience design, interactive strategy, and digital marketing. SEOs will also need to become user researchers if they hope to excel. Not only will they need to gain insights into how people search, they need to be able to understand who their users are, how they behave, and what their needs are. This goes way beyond traditional keyword and terminology research—SEOs will need to “get inside the heads” of their users—gaining understanding into demographics, psychographics, and technographics.

The future of SEO may hinge on the ability of marketers to truly understand the makeup of their target customers. This may kill off a good number of the traditional number-crunching SEOs, but the savvy and innovative players will find lucrative opportunities to optimize for the next generation of search experiences.

I spent a day with the winemakers at Pax Wines in Sonoma. RDVO is helping them develop a new website and online marketing strategy.

It’s amazing to watch wine being made. The process is fascinating –a combination of chemistry, botany, elbow grease, and classic taste-and-feel. Below are a few shots taken “behind the scenes.”

Pax logo on the grape bins

Many wines were sampled over the course of the day

The first press is done the old-school style

Head winemaker Tyler Thomas

Testing wine right from the press

I’m now somewhat fascinated with winemaking…wondering if I can get a barrel or two in my condo…

Writing is something that can always be improved. While some people have a innate talent for writing, anyone’s writing can be improved by following the basic rules of style, taking time to proofread, and avoiding grammatical errors and pitfalls.

It’s also easy to fall into bad habits with writing and sometimes just recognizing them is enough to break out.

Here are five of my favorites posts on writing and how to improve your prose.

1. How to Write with Style – Kurt Vonnegut
Vonnegut’s essay on writing from 1999 offers eight points on how to write with more style. This is a wonderful piece that gives some great insight into the author’s mine and approach to writing.

Favorite Tip:
The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not.

2. Strunk & White’s The Element of Style
Even though you can get the most widely accepted guide to writing style online, I recommend buying this little book and keeping it on your desk at all times. A number of websites also offer quick summaries of the Strunk’s main rules.

Favorite Tip:
Do not take shortcuts at the cost of clarity.

3. How to Write a Thank You Note
Anyone who performs business of any kind should know how to write a proper thank you note. This post provides a six-point formula for crafting a classy note. When is the last time you sent someone a handwritten thank you note?

Favorite Tip:
I’m not going to go all Miss Manners on your ass and get into the social intricacies and delicate situations that surround thank-you note writing, as I was taught that a solid thank-you note will transcend all complicated situations—and I have seen no evidence to the contrary.

4. Ten Overused Words in Writing
Simplifying and cutting wasteful prose is a tip seen in almost every writing guide. This post helps by pointing out ten words commonly overused or misused by writers. You’ll be surprised at how many of these you use.

Favorite Tip:
Mark Twain made this comment about using “very”: “Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” “Very” is a crutch for finding the right word to describe what you mean to say.

5. The Most Embarrassing Grammatical Mistakes
Grammatical mistakes are always glaring and ugly–no matter how good the writer’s prose. There are a number of common mistakes made by amateur writers. This post calls them out.

Favorite Tip:
If you keep your sentence structure simple, you are less likely to misplace a modifier. When in doubt, start with the subject, then move right away to your verb. This can lead to dry writing, but that’s better than inadvertently hilarious writing, like this: Having finished homework, the TV was turned on.

It’s surprising that the iPhone doesn’t have a native solution for MS Outlook task synchronization. Task management has become a core element of my work style and not having my task list (or the ability to create tasks) on the iPhone is an annoyance. Not even MobileMe has a task management feature.

I was able to find a nice workaround after some investigation. This approach is free and seems to work just fine.

You can create a free account at Toodledo.com and then use the free Toodledo synchronization tool to sync your data between Outlook and the Toodledo.com cloud. Once synchronized, Toodledo has a iPhone-optimized page for viewing, managing, and creating tasks.

Your task data is stored in the Cloud, and you can set the synchronization tool to auto-sync at a set time interval or you can sync manually. Total set up time was less than ten minutes.

Get a step-by-step set-up and install guide.

Chapura, the company that developed a number of Palm OS and Outlook sync tools, recently release KeyTasks. KeyTasks costs $9.99 at the app store doesn’t support categorization. KeyTasks also requires a yearly fee.

Every once in awhile you see a presentation that just makes you say “wow”.

Alan Cooper’s keynote address at the Agile2008 Conference, titled The Wisdom of Experience presents a deeply insightful perspective the software development process.

The presentation starts by painting a clear, broad picture of the software development landscape and then dives deeper into the development process. His main premise is that the Agile Methodology is the best (and only) way to effectively implement modern software projects because it facilitates true collaboration between engineers and interaction designers.

We try to use the Agile Methodology on all of our development projects at RDVO. I think we’re one of the few agencies that have embraced this approach–the majority of interactive design firms still use the broken Waterfall Model as their core implementation process. We’ve found that Waterfall essentially sets you up to fail. A reason most agencies embrace it is because it’s much easier to “sell” to clients. Go figure.

So back to Cooper…not only is the subject matter of the presentation important, he is a master of medium. The presentation is perfectly organized and executed. While it would have been interesting to watch the presentation, the main points are clearly organized in the speaker notes.

There has been a lot of talk about the Steve Jobs presentation style, and how all business presentations should follow his model. As great as “Jobsian” presentations are, they also have a lot to do with his subject matter. While this may sound nice, the vast majority of business presentations simply need more “meat” to be relevant. I think that Cooper’s presentation provides a perfect happy medium.

The recent launch of Cuil.com and Microsoft’s acquisition of Powerset.com has piqued some new interest semantic search engines. To deliver on their promise, these new search tools must provide a new experience for search, integrating a number of new paradigms and experiences.

In preparation for a new project, I put together a quick presentation that compares design approaches for a number of prominent semantic search engines, including Powerset.com, Sindice.com, Cuil.com, Twine.com, and hakia.com. Specific attention was paid to general presentation, input methods, display or results, and categorical results approach.

Worth a look if you’re interested in semantic search.

With all that’s going on in the world and with everything seemingly spinning out of control it’s becoming increasingly hard to filter out all the bad news and focus on the good.

One incredible event that seems to have been relegated to the back pages is actually occurring on different planet. Not only has the Mars Phoenix Lander discovered evidence of ice on Mars, it is sending back incredible photos. Seeing these photos is absolutely amazing and makes me wonder if humans will someday be on Mars…perhaps in my lifetime?

Mars photos from Boston.com.

Not a lot of posts this month. I’ve been swamped with work, life, and travel. Lots of great stuff going on!

In the meantime, RDVO is still hiring like mad! We have immediate openings for seasoned .Net developers looking to get involved in some great new projects.

Here’s the job listing if you’re interested.

Email me directly if you’d like to know more.

Bill Gates just unveiled some of the few features of Windows 7, due out sometime in 2009-2010. One of more intriguing features is new “multi-touch” functionality that allows users to interact with the screen similar to the CNN Magic Screen or iPhone interface. The video below shows a demo of the Windows 7 functionality.

Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7

Multi-touch certainly has a lot of promise and a clear “cool factor”, although it’s difficult to imagine how this technology will actually be useful to the majority of users. I mean, how many times can you resize a photo?