I'm in the NASA generation... meaning I grew up when space exploration was THE most thrilling news covered in our solar system. It also means that I'm probably a bunch older than you... but we'll proceed anyway.

I recall gathering with my family in the living room, watching our single TV set:

10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 0 - BLAST OFF!!!!!
ROAR of unbelievably powerful rocket engines. HUGE Saturn V rocket engulfed in smoke and flames. INCOMPREHENSIBLE forces inching untold tonnage slowly upward, breaking away from gantry tubes, somehow going straight upward, hurtling its miniscule human cargo toward exciting exploration and discovery missions in outer space.



Not coincidentally, we all just got past the most famous recurring example of this type of cultural artifact:

10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 - HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!
Woooo Hooooo! Yelling. Noise-making. Kisses. Champagne. Affection. Reminiscing. Resolutions.

Countdowns are Cool!
Read on and learn how to Rock Your UI! >>

Objectively measuring design is critical to a product's success. Usability testing and tracking are powerful tools to evaluate your design with data from real users, and now AOL Designers have another tool at our disposal. With the help of Forrester Research we have created the AOL User Experience Checklist. Building upon the great work of Forrester's original Web Site Review Scorecard, we've added evaluation criteria specific to AOL and our design standards .

Best practices evaluated in the list include messaging to users, navigation and way-finding, visual and architectural hierarchy, and task efficiency.

I am recommending that every product be evaluated once a year at a minimum for a baseline. Then teams may revisit their report and score as improvements are launched.

Please note that a perfect score is exceedingly rare and the goal should be to always be improving the score. If the score is always moving in the right direction then we know our experiences are always improving as well.

AOL folks can find the checklist on our design guide here:
AOL UX Checklist

Well, it's been a few years since the book "Skip Intro" by Duncan McAlester and Michelangelo Capraro. I'm guessing that its lessons weren't quite absorbed by the web strategists for each of the presidential campaigns.

A thorough analysis of each site would be a worthwhile effort for several articles, but for now let's just take a look at how each site employs the splash screen.

You've worked hard, sacrificed nights and weekends, your site is out there for users to click around in, the beer from the launch party is now flat. And yet, there is an outstanding list of design bugs that goes around the corner. Columns are uneven, colors "off" from spec, fonts the wrong size, links going to the wrong places if working at all. Hmmmm... Obviously, something is wrong. Everyone is saying the site is live and celebrating, but it looks... unprofessional and not representative of the team's best work.

I'll state the obvious that this is not where anyone wants to be in this business. So, how to deliver quality each and every time? This post looks at each major role in the creation process and posits the questions that need to be asked individually to keep professional-level design a strategic priority.

Another company with a name that looks like a typo.

Apture is a killer new publishing application that lets you hook interactive multi-media modules from the Web onto your editorial. It has to be experienced to be really understood, so, for example, if you were writing a blogpost on the Aurora Borealis and wanted to provide definitions, pictures, and video from top sources like Wikipedia and YouTube, you could do so with just a couple of clicks. And then your audience gets to experience multi-media and related content on your website.

It's rare I say "wow" these days since I'm steeped in the Web all the time, but I have to say that this particular capability is stunning in its implications. Now ANYONE can have a site that is supported by some of the Web's top content providers (the Web 2.0 ones, that is).

Here are some examples of media stitched into a sentence (overdone for effect):
"The Summer's reigning blockbuster is still Iron Man, with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull hot on it's heels. Me, I'm now rooting for The Incredible Hulk. And Will Smith's Hancock has yet to take a bow."

OK, the sentence is bad, but the multimedia in-page is really differentiating. Only real flaw is if there is no great content on any of those properties accessible within the application. For this type of interactive plug-and-play experience I can sure live with that.

Well, considering that that experience has little to do with words, I'll just say "check it out"...



But, if you like to read, the site says: "VUVOX is excited about the coming introduction of a new personal expression platform - called COLLAGE. This dynamic media creation suite will enable everyone to easily turn their photos, videos, text and audio clips into interactive story panoramas." At last someone finally built one of those. Been waiting... Thanks to Jonathan Meyers for the tip.

The Webby Awards have been announced! There are some overwhelming overachievers who rightfully deserve many a nod (ahem, TED.com), as well as some interesting discoveries. My favorite findings consisted of:

Moo.com- An ingenious printing press allowing users to create paint-swatch-esque "moo cards". The cards come in a petite box and can be used as a mini collection of images or as satisfying business cards.

Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years- MOMA's illustrious flash experience devoted to the sculptor. Full screen images of work with a nice splitting zygote menu for effect.

Checkland Kindleysides- The most soothing promotional design site EVER. Imagine: a paper tree blows leisurely in the wind while you look at hard-hitting design work for some of the largest corporations in the world. The navigation is as fluid as the calming background music.

PostSecret- A cheap and easy (yet so gratifying) blog. Concepting off of I can Has Cheezburger, this blog takes random doodlings, drawings, photos and offers them vulnerable narratives.

Blurb- Make your own book. Blurb allows users to download software and put together a collection of images/words for a very captivating price. It seems to offer more options than iphoto and has a FANTASTIC URL.

Sitting at a desk near Libe Goad, EIC of Gamedaily, is hell these days. She's not only played GTA4, she's played it several times. I get to hear the boasts, the snideness and, yes, even the cat calls as I wait until 4/29. Like the common man I am.

I've been a big fan of the GTA series ever since I got to demo #3 in front of a couple dozen IBM executives. They wanted to know what kids were playing these days. Let's just say they weren't pleased. But I left the meeting convinced that GTA3 was not only a game, but a statement. The repulsive violence turned off a lot of people in the room (I think I might have gone a little too far with the baseball bat). But Taxi Driver disgusted a generation, and it's now considered one of the most influential films ever made.

Just like Taxi Driver, the GTA series is not all about the excessive gore, or the sex. That's a component of the game (the one they use to sell copies). The series also allows you to make decisions in a wide open world, with an engaging story all around you. You can do good things if you want to, and they have benefits. You can do bad things if you want to, and they have benefits. While you're limited by the story's linearity you still have an illusion of anything-goes. That's one of the toughest tasks for game developers to pull off.

Love it or hate it, in the final analysis GTA will be seen as a cornerstone of modern gaming, and (with boffo sales) a window into who we are.

Click "read more" to see all the new features...

If you have an iTouch or an iphone you're now able to browse one of the leading movie sites on the web in style. Check us out at iphone.aol.movies.com. (If you are not on one of those devices that URL is gonna look funny btw). The effort was completed in exactly one month to the day by the design and dev teams. The app also made "staff Pick" status.

On one hand, I'm a strong proponent of taking a refreshing nap during the work day. On the other hand, I'm not nuts about waking up to the sight of my boss standing over me. So what's a fried brain to do at 2pm? Sure, the seventh cup of coffee is an option, but not a good one.

I'm the product lead on casual games for AOL. That's a good clue where I'm going with this. Five minutes with a fun game can give you just the spark you need to make it to 5pm (usually 7pm in these parts). For this reason alone, I love being in games. We take the business of distracting you from stress very seriously! Nothing makes me swoon faster than seeing our audience congratulate someone for a new high score in community chat.

In the interest of keeping you awake this Tuesday here are two thrilling, uh, "long-term productivity-enhancers". Check them out during your next lull between meetings, and blame me if you get caught...

AOL News recently launched a new printing experience that comes through a partnership with HP.

As you can see from the screen shot the user has the ability to choose special formats (called "recipes") for printing. A PDF file is then generated for the actual printing. Bill Knight, our Creative Director for Information websites, and his team are now solving a more prominent design integration of print within our article templates now that the experience is world-class. We'll post about that when it is ready.

From a technical perspective the Tabblo-powered technology was very easy to integrate (you can check out their website to see more about this technology).

Why is HP giving this tech away? Their branding goals are to attain mind-share relative to "ownership" of smooth printing experiences on the Web. "HP's goal is to make printing content from the web the easiest and best experience possible for people – whether they are printing a simple map or a book of their favorite blogs," said Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president, Imaging and Printing Group, HP. Of course, we're now working on further integrations into the Weblogs properties.

You can also find an HP print integration within our AOL Food website on the recipe pages.

Our new AOL Body symptom checker experience has a major design factor going for it: simplicity.

Click "read more"

Rewind to the preholidays... I'm looking for a new set of pillows for the bed... the sit-up-in-bed kind... you know what I mean. I go to Google and type in "bed pillows" only to get the first 10 page matches for regular old fluffy down or Tempur-Pedic® pillows. At a glance I can tell that they're not what I'm looking for. So, what's my next step? How do I get past this impressive wall of commerce sites that are all pushing regular old bed pillows (aside from paging through tens of thousands of quickly retrieved results)?

Like a novice forensics specialist I examine the scenario. What actually happened here? What did the user enter in the field? What did the user mean by "bed pillows?" What was the user trying to achieve? What tools (features & datum) were available to help the user accomplish the task?

===== begin scene =====

I guess I should just ask myself (aka the user):
"What did you mean?"

He answers:
"What I meant was that I was looking for new bed pillows to sit up in bed with when we watch TV or read a book... maybe they're called reading pillows... I dunno. I'm just trying to find some stoopid pillows for God's sake."

The user sounds a little frustrated, so I ask another question:
"Why did you type in 'bed pillows'?"

He blurts out:
"Because that's what you're SUPPOSED to do, right?! Enter 'key words'."

please read more...
N.B. This is a half-comic research and analysis narrative, and the longest blog you've read in a while. Get your glasses, a cup of coffee, and about 10 minutes of free time.

Often I am in discussions on staffing to cover the myriad of scalable content projects that need to get done. Yet the answer can be as simple as asking your audience to do the work with you and for you. Many Web 2.0 companies understand and embrace this basic principle. An example I would like to highlight today is from Google and is called Image Labeler.

The problem: How do you classify and accurately tag millions of assets strewn about the Web so that search results can be more accurate? Google came up with a great answer: make it fun for the public to do it all for them. Each matched word between two users playing "together" in the game will help Google to build an accurate database for their Google Image Search. It ain't pretty, but it is effective.

What other ways can an audience generate the actual value proposition FOR you? Best restaurants near a theater? Blogging on concerts? Covering local news? Policing content? If your experiences are not leveraging the energy contained within your audience then you are wasting quite a bit of potential. This goes far beyond comments on a blog, of course. As implied by the game above, the potential is near limitless as long as there is an appropriate value exchange.

A major implication? Some publishing tools need to be created with the external CONSUMER in mind, not just the internal teams. In other words, make it simple and make it fast to collaborate with your audience. I promise my next post will have something prettier to look at. Really.