Some Random Dude » Opinion

An Open Source Manufacturing Future

P.J. Onori — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 18:32:51 +0000

A few months ago, I listened to a talk by Chad Jennings where he discussed the upcoming shake-up around small scale manufacturing. This is due to the advancements in both 3D scanning and 3D printing. The things that can be accomplished with today’s 3D scanning/printing process is truly amazing and if the technology behind it follows the same trajectory as personal computing, these devices will be within consumers’ reach in the years to come. If that does come to be, what are the possibilities and implications of such a future?

3D manufacturing is at a transitional state. The tools to design 3D objects are plentiful but the hardware to actually create them are too expensive and complicated for the average consumer to own. This has led startups such as Ponoko and Shapeways to provide production services for individuals’ designs. Concurrently, we have seen organizations such as MakerBot pop up, which provides ideas and support for 3D printing of objects. What I consider to be the most intriguing project to spring out of the movement is Thingiverse which provides a community platform to share your 3D plans for making objects.

Many of the objects shared at Thingiverse are silly and mostly novelty. However, it only takes one practical object to see the potential. Take for example, this design for a Canon lens hood.

It does not take much creativity to consider all the other applications something like this could have. We are surrounded by small objects in our daily lives where the cost seems disproportionately higher than their production quality. Never before in modern times has there been a practical alternative to producing physical objects by consumers. If a person can go on the internet, download 3D plans for a doorstop and manufacture it in their apartment, what is the incentive to pay $5 at a store for the same thing? Simple things such as cups could be produced literally in-house to save people money and allow another outlet for personal expression. The cabinet you buy could come with files to reproduce all the parts in case one breaks. The possibilities are boundless.

This will not remove the possibility for profit, but it will force craftsmen and manufacturers to be significantly better than their open source competitors. Be that through service, aesthetics, function or manufacturing quality, something will need to differentiate their product from free options. This tension has been beneficial to all in the world of software, I see no glaring reason why it would not be equally helpful for physical manufacturing. Open source software leveled the playing field for millions of people in this world, imagine what open source manufacturing could do.

If you would have asked someone 30 years ago if there would be a personal computer in everyone’s home, they would have said you were crazy. Today, that is close to fact. Virtually every American household has access to a computational and connected device (whether it is a traditional PC, gaming console or mobile device). It may not be too far off to expect a 3D scanner/printer in most homes or at least in every community. Such a reality could bring a manufacturing revolution that could make the internet’s impact on business look microscopic.

Redesigning the iPhone – is it Necessary?

P.J. Onori — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:48:20 +0000

Three weeks ago, Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S. The phone was a tremendous leap ahead of its predecessors, yet the much of the feedback contained a tint of disappointment. Most of that disappointment stemmed from the news that Apple did not showcase the iPhone 5. Under the hood, the iPhone 4S had been drastically improved, however it did not provide the one thing so many people had been frothing at the mouth for, a new body. This response saddened me because it displayed a general misunderstanding of product design by the media and public at large. Would it be a problem if the iPhone 5, 6 & 7 looked the same? To many, yes. However, I believe the physical design of the iPhone has reached a level of quality that should make us question changing its design to meet the public’s insatiable need for new.

Good Design Removes the Need to Redesign

When you look at some of the best designed products, you will notice that their design evolution is subtle. This is not due to complacency, it is due to success. Real world examples are rare, but they are immediately recognizable. The Porsche 911 has remained remarkably unchanged through the years, yet still is considered one of the most striking cars on the road. Observing the sporadic evolution of other automobiles through the years, such as the Ford Mustang, make the 911 all the more remarkable.

The Leica M rangefinder is the most obvious example of an unchanging design. The camera has continued to be the pinnacle of photographic quality, with the camera’s body design seemingly frozen in time for 50+ years.

52 years of design of the Leica M rangefinder. From top left, Leica M2 (1957) to bottom right, Leica M9 (2009).

To this day, the Leica M is one of the most revered cameras in form and feel. While important changes have been made through the years (the most obvious being the move from film to digital), there simply has been no need to rethink the design of the body. It has continued to function and delight just as well as it did 50 years ago.

An interesting thing happens at some point with products like the 911 and the Leica M. Its form becomes its symbol. This symbol makes the product instantly recognizable and emblematic of the quality behind it. That may seem obvious or simple, but take a quick audit of products you use on a daily basis. How many product lines can be summarized in a singular, unique form? I bet you cannot come up with that many.

From Innovative to Iconic

Back to the iPhone. I consider the iPhone 4 to be in line with the Porsche 911 and Leica M in design. It is not time-tested like the two former examples, but it shares many of the timeless qualities found in them. I would have no problem if the iPhone 5 looked the exact same as the iPhone 4x. Its current design is the result of years of refinement. The first few generations of iPhones were wonderful products, but the iPhone 4 is on another plane of existence. In the all-star lineup of Apple products, I consider it to be their crowning achievement in industrial design. We should all be lucky enough to work on the product that doesn’t need to be rethought every one or two years. Let the iPhone change when it needs to change. I would hate to see Apple make arbitrary decisions to the design of the iPhone’s body just to placate the lesser nature of some consumers and Wall Street.

With all that said, I expect to see a revised design for the upcoming iPhone 5. I have full faith that it will be a beautiful product, just as we have come to expect with Apple. However, I would hate to see such a refined product be left behind without significant reasoning.

The Cloud’s Potentially Huge Liability

P.J. Onori — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 23:08:06 +0000

This post was originally posted on the Adaptive Path blog.

For all intents and purposes, the cloud has been an overwhelming hit. For most people with readily available high speed internet, it has taken a lot of the pain and cost away from the storage and management of digital content. Adoption of cloud services have hit the point where many people now integrate them into their daily habits. Under normal circumstances, I would consider this to be a good thing, but as things stand, I feel as though this trend is going to blow up in our face. The impending problems have nothing to do with cloud services or the cloud in general. The problem is with the policies placed around how we access it, specifically data caps from our broadband and wireless data providers.

Interacting with the cloud makes bandwidth all the more transparent. Simple interactions with computing, most notably mobile devices that in prior years would have had no bandwidth footprint now do. Our data use now resembles a steady stream rather than spurts. This unconscious background stream will make our bandwidth use all the more indiscernible. However, the advantages of the cloud start to break down pretty quickly without the premise of free bandwidth. As the average household's bandwidth use increases and begins to run up against established data caps, the impending sticker shock coming from overage charges will lead to bandwidth anxiety. This bandwidth anxiety will create a general fear of using any service that is a perceived bandwidth consumer and could end up setting back cloud-based products and services for years to come.

AT&T says the caps will only impact 2% of their customers, but that argument is myopic at best. CNet goes into the details of AT&T's data cap policy:

Now AT&T DSL subscribers will be limited to 150 gigabytes of uploads and downloads per month for regular DSL customers and 250GB of broadband usage per month for U-Verse subscribers. AT&T's U-Verse service is its upgraded and enhanced broadband service with fiber deployed closer to individual homes. The U-Verse can handle more data traffic than AT&T's traditional DSL network. … If customers exceed the monthly data caps for either the DSL or U-Verse broadband services three times, they will be charged $10 for every 50GB above the cap.

Comcast has a similar policy with a 250 GB cap. AT&T and. Comcast represent the #1 and #2 US broadband providers. If a 250 Gb cap seems reasonable, consider this:

In 2009, the average American watched more than 151 hours of video from TV, computers and mobile devices. Increasingly, people are turning to cloud-based services such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Instant Video or iTunes for media consumption because it often represents a much better deal for the consumer. Netflix recently shared that their HD video is 4800 Kbps, equaling 600 kilobytes per second or a bit above 2 GB an hour. If an individual wished to forgo a cable subscription and watch their average 151 hours of video online, they will have used over 300 Gb of bandwidth — 50 Gb over current caps. Keep in mind this is just by watching video. This does not take into account any other online usage.

To people's benefit, the cloud has become quite transparent in most popular services. People watch movies, listen to music, or work on documents the same way they always have, with “magic” happening behind the scenes. People have had no need to change their habits or expectations. Those habits could soon be problematic for people where they end up paying both to own the content and then to access it. Many will likely opt out of using the cloud rather than change how they consume content.

These data caps from telecoms risk stifling advancements in cloud adoption and evolution. More importantly, it is putting a huge roadblock in an obvious path society is headed. At this point you may ask, what does this have to do with user experience? From my perspective, a lot. The cloud may have sprung up from technology-minded individuals, but UX designers have been championing the benefits of the cloud and finding new ways to utilize it for the sake of a simpler experience. Under normal circumstances, this would be absolutely fine. However, in this new reality, I wonder how responsible it is for us to continually drive more experiences into the cloud. It would be easy to remain neutral in this situation and argue that these types of issues are not our problem; that our job is simply to design the best possible experience and let the things out of our control fall where they may. A narrow view on the impact of our work would make that argument reasonable. However, an over-reliance on cloud services opens people up to the possibility of ungodly bills or forces them into expensive unlimited bandwidth plans. Neither are good options for the average person this economy. There is a responsibility to design solutions that will ultimately not let people down (in this case, through unforeseen bandwidth overage charges). If our work does not deliver on that tenet, it is not providing a beneficial user experience.

I am not suggesting that the cloud is some pariah that should be avoided at all cost. However, these caps present new experience challenges that need to be proactively addressed. There needs to be greater emphasis on how to make cloud connectivity smarter and, at times, optional. There needs to be clear and detailed information provided as to the amount of bandwidth being used by a service, app or device so people can make better choices as to how to use their bandwidth wisely. People will need to have a much greater idea of how they use data than ever before. It is not only appropriate but ethical to make that a high priority when designing for the cloud in the years to come, otherwise we risk people avoiding it all together.

In Defense of Hard

P.J. Onori — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 04:55:20 +0000

This post was originally posted on the Adaptive Path blog.

The permeation of software in society has given everyone the opportunity to do what only professionals were capable of in years past. The web has only accelerated its progression. There are whole new segments of the population who are now frequently publishing their writing, editing video, and processing photos, among other things. The problem, however, is that to meet the needs of this new untrained audience, the methods of interaction have been over-simplified in the process. Instead of bringing everyone up to a higher proficiency, this is dragging everyone down, including professionals, to a lower state. Superficially designed products create superficial understandings of the subject matter. Expect more of your audience, give them a good reason why it is worth their time, and you will have a better audience as well as a better product.

When easy becomes vapid

The line between simple and simplistic is highly subjective. I think the line has been crossed when an articulation of a concept strips a level of complexity from its subject for the sake of ease that, consequently, creates negative implications for the user. It can happen anywhere; from interfaces, to copywriting, to how concepts are articulated. Cable news is often guilty of this in the presentation and debate of political policy, ultimately driving down the public's understanding of the subject matter. Perhaps a more contentious example of this would be the spell-checking feature in word processors that have made today's writers too dependent on the feature and unable to properly proofread.

Vapidity lets people down

Immeasurable time and resources are put into removing any perceived cognitive overhead in a wide array of our daily interactions. On the surface, there is nothing wrong with this, however, over-emphasis on easy comes at a cost. Often, this effort results in a shallow derivative of the subject's original form which ends up trivializing both subject and user. The premise for removing difficulty is correct, many people do feel intimidated when they are presented with too much complexity. However, the conclusion to remove complexity at any cost misses the mark. While people do feel intimidated when presented with complexity, the issue is often how the subject matter is presented or contextualized. Rather than deal with the real problem of explaining and guiding people through difficult topics and/or processes, it is simply removed or devolved. This results in viewing potentially innovative solutions as dead on arrival if they happen to have the unfortunate side-effect of a learning curve.

Simplistic products can give the false impression of competence which removes the user's incentive to learn and improve. Instead of encouraging users to grow, it ends up wasting their time by giving them the illusion of aptitude. This can lead a person to remain dependent on the product or experience a sense of let-down when the user discovers their knowledge of the subject matter was inadequate. Placating the desire to remove effort in every facet of our lives creates an expectation that unless a product holds your hand through an entire process, auto-magically takes care of everything for you, and, god forbid, makes you think, it is somehow lacking.

An example of trivializing important, complex experiences is found on legacy.com. The website takes the burden out of sharing your condolences by writing it for you.

Writing the condolences for the loss of a loved one should be complex, time-consuming and, yes, hard. There should be nothing easy about it. This is a prime example of how over-simplifying tasks and ideas robs opportunities for growth. As soon as something this fundamental to who we are is made so soulless and vapid, it strips us of our most essential personal experiences. Making the naturally complex process unnaturally painless for the sake of the user's convenience treats neither they nor the subject with respect and ultimately strips them of any confidence in performing the actual task when it inevitably becomes necessary.

No one advocates for intentionally-designed solutions that are obtrusive or convoluted. We should not need to "walk in the snow uphill both ways" for every single thing we do in our lives. However, we should also not create the false impression that one can walk downhill both ways.

Recommendations

The goal of design should be to turn the most difficult into the most enjoyable. While nothing below is particularly new, they are still worth noting.

Challenge people (in the right ways)

Some of our most rewarding moments are rooted in overcoming challenges. Not muddling through time-wasting, unnecessarily convoluted moments, but genuinely difficult tasks that we worked through. Why then would we shy away from presenting these types of opportunities to our audiences? There needs to be an expectation or even a demand for people to learn and grow in order to "get to the good stuff." Vitamin R is an interesting example of an application that helps people reach goals by splitting them into more smaller, more reachable tasks. The important thing here is that there is no intention to simplify the end goal, making easier to accomplish, but rather to restructure it, making the process more manageable.

Determining the correct level of challenge is obviously a difficult job, but a necessity to deliver a fulfilling experience. Too elementary, and the value to engage may be questioned, too onerous, and frustration kicks in. Difficult job or not, this equilibrium has been considered crucial to maintain a state of flow; a concept proposed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Csikszentmihalyi states three conditions for flow, one of which being, "a good balance between the perceived challenges of the task at hand and his or her own perceived skills. One must have confidence that he or she is capable to do the task at hand."

Honest trumps simple

In dumbing down our language, our concepts and processes, we are often times warping its true form. If the appropriate language to communicate a concept is complicated, use it. There are plenty of well established methods to help people through these types of issues without resorting to editorial or design changes. It is OK not to understand something, it is not OK to think you know something that is not accurate.

Rather than edit content to be easier to read, The New York Times website allows you to select words and look up the meaning in a dictionary.

Simple, with depth

Some of the most successful products don't take much time to learn, but take much time to master. It comes from taking complexity and either rendering it in a simple manner or delaying exposure to it until the user is ready for it, not from removing it altogether. What is elementary should be explicit and obvious, what is difficult can be revealed in more subtle ways where the user can decide to engage when they are ready for it. OS X in general is an example of an informationally-dense interface that is presented elegantly. A great example of this is all its hidden gems that quietly provide a large amount of information. One of those gems is the close button's unsaved state. If a file has unsaved changes, the close button will have a dark dot in the middle.

Explicit? No. However, I doubt that was the intention of this design decision. It was there, adding depth to the experience if/when it was noticed, but not critical if missed.

Do not avoid necessary complexity, articulate why it's important

If a subject is naturally complex, work to make it no more complex than it needs to be, but no less. People are not naturally averse to complexity, however they need to know it is worth their time and energy. Educating them on how to do something is not enough, there should be education on why it's important. People enjoy learning if the subject is interesting and engaging, it is the job of design to not just deliver simplicity, but to also provide delight. A great example of a service fulfilling this aim is On The Run in San Francisco. On The Run sells running shoes in a very unique way. The staff members spend time making sure they give their customers a detailed explanation of how a shoe should fit them, thereby improving their comfort, support, and ultimately, their performance. A session at the store not only gets a customer into a pair of shoes tailored to their needs, but also gives them a strong understanding of the subject and enables them to make better purchases in the future.

Challenging users in the correct manner will ultimately lead to more engaged, informed, and self-sufficient users. Informed users have a better idea of what they want and can better articulate why they want it. Most importantly, a user who is engaged with a subject is more willing and able to grow with it.

Examples of making hard enjoyable

The exciting news is that there are plenty of companies and organizations that are proving to be very successful by not dumbing down their products. Not all of the examples pertain directly to design or UX, but the principles they put into practice are worthy of emulation. Below are a few shining examples.

TED

TED is perhaps the most obvious on this list, but that makes it no less worthwhile to point out. For years now, TED has been sharing inspirational and challenging video presentations by some of the smartest people in the world. The subject matter is not diluted, or abridged and because of that it captures the imagination and interest of countless viewers.

Radiolab

Think astrophysics, ethics in natural selection, or civil engineering is over your head? Radiolab makes learning accessible and engaging. It makes you want to learn without turning it into a For Dummies book.

Marco Lau (via The New York Observer)

Portal/Portal 2

Valve figured out a way to design a game where the player solves extremely complicated puzzles devoid of hand-holding, has little to no violence, and is considered by many to be one of the greatest video games of our era.

Lightroom

Adobe's photo management software is professional grade, but is also quite accessible to the weekend photographer who may not always need fine tuning. The application is well partitioned, nothing is dumbed down. It does not force the novice user to dig into complex developing processes, but makes them available when the user is ready for it.

Wrapping it up

The task to make difficult processes simple, while preserving their true form is significant. Selling it to people can be even more difficult. For myself, the debate is not whether it is necessary, but where the line is drawn between challenging users and creating unnecessary barriers. No matter where that line ends up being for each practitioner, if designers take the easy way out, we can expect no better from users.

Acknowledgements

This post was the second go at opening the writing process to the public. The first post written in this manner turned out well and I really believe this one turned out even better. The first draft, second draft, and final draft are still available for viewing. I want to extend my gratitude to all the contributors: Alex Baldwin, Brock French, Honey Mae, Ix, Pam Daghlian, Peter Boersma, and my wife. The feedback was tremendous and made the post significantly better than anything I could have written on my own. Thank you again.

Twitter of 2006 Should Have a Talk With Twitter of 2011

P.J. Onori — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 22:58:32 +0000

The diversity inherent in public design/development was considered the strength of the Web 2.0 movement. In many ways, Twitter has become the behemoth it now is based on that very notion. In an odd turn, Twitter has decided to ask developers to stop making conventional Twitter apps. To put it lightly, there seems to be a lack of historical perspective in this change in opinion. Perhaps the hardest part for myself to swallow is the fact that Twitter’s official client was not the product of an internal design team, but simply a revised version of an acquired third-party application.

Ryan Sarver from Twitter communicates the reasoning behind this move:

“We need to move to a less fragmented world, where every user can experience Twitter in a consistent way. This is already happening organically–the number and market share of consumer client apps that are not owned or operated by Twitter has been shrinking… Developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no.”

Twitter makes it clear in this decision that they consider themselves more adept at providing the best experience for the public. I find framing this decision as championing user experience both problematic and disingenuous. On the contrary, Twitter has not exactly been the public’s best friend lately when it comes to user experience (see #dickbar). Taking a step back and surveying recent events, this seems to be a grab for eyeballs to monetize their content through apps they own. Twitter is now at the point where it simply no longer needs third-party developers to help drive their product. In fact, it may be proving to be a hinderance financially. To me, this makes far more sense than the notion that these decisions are all under the auspices of a better user experience.

At the very least, Twitter is biting the hand that fed them when they were still scrawny and vulnerable. If my speculations are correct, well, then it is another animal all together. Either way, Twitter would be wise not to wield user experience as the argument for this case. Users are smart. Diversity is far more beneficial than detrimental. The good software products have always had the tendency rise to the top—they do not need Twitter, or anyone for that matter, to hold their hand and tell them what product is best for them.

What Comes After Sharing?

P.J. Onori — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:00:22 +0000

This post was originally posted on the Adaptive Path blog.

Sharing ideas, work and knowledge used to be an extremely novel concept. It is now increasingly accepted as vital for community recognition and distinction for businesses. We publish all types of information online, but the sharing of ideas, thoughts and insights is arguably the most fundamental and imperative form. With the pervasiveness of sharing, its current manifestation is quickly becoming the lowest common denominator. Our standard methods of sharing are quite old (in internet years) and improvements upon them are yielding diminishing returns. The thought leaders and evangelists of ideas who fostered the sharing environment will likely push sharing to its next step. I believe the focus of this next step needs to be on behavioral and technological improvements allowing shared ideas to more easily grow beyond their initial form and also empowers communities to participate in the process.

Problems

Human Problems

With the wide adoption of the blogging platform, information and content soon was distributed at a rate previously unseen — and absolutely free. When content was sparse and costly, the simple act of freely offering rough ideas or stream-of-consciousness thoughts online appeared transformative and altruistic. This new method sure felt like sharing. However, simply distributing free content is not necessarily sharing. For example, a lot of published content is created to fill a perceived demand rather than a need or void. Publishing what we think will be popular rather than what we think will be useful exaggerates the problem of noise suffocating signal.

Many of the ideas we share online do not exist in the rich, collaborative environment experienced through even a simple in-person conversation. We have a lot of people discussing ideas online (through blog comments, Twitter, etc.), but they often seem far too disparate, shallow and individual in nature. If sharing is the equivalent of a dialog, we have all been giving our monologues simultaneously — often times only for the sake of hearing ourselves talk.

Platform Problems

The blogging platform has been one of the main drivers of information distribution. Strangely, in the ever-changing environment of the internet, the blog as stayed surprisingly unchanged through the years. Blogging was, and still is wonderful for its original intention — a tool to record a log of thoughts. However, the blog format has become the de facto standard for a much broader swath of online publishing and sharing. Due to this reality, we share ideas that have fleeting lives. Blogs emphasize the new as opposed to the good or promising and therefore create little incentive to improve, edit and evolve our ideas. Steven Johnson has a great talk on where ideas come from. In that talk, he mentions how history shows that ideas need time to incubate. A system where an idea loses relevancy over time is not going to be a strong platform for growing ideas.

The blog also does not allow a method of collaboration where ideas or hunches are able to change an idea’s form from anyone or anywhere. The importance of ideas shared on a blog are highly skewed towards the original publisher which lowers the possibilities for an idea to grow in an organic fashion, the way it so often does. Currently our main platform for sharing resembles a podium when what we really need is a coffee table.

Solutions

Human Solutions

We all have our interests and we love to talk about them. We should not stop discussing the subjects we are interested in, but we should be cognizant of whether the information/ideas/experiences we distribute are useful (rationally or emotionally) to those consuming them. This is not to suggest limiting what we publish, but greater clarity must be provided for what we feel is worth people’s time and what may ultimately be just noise. If we are interested in truly sharing ideas or work, we need to craft the communication of our ideas in the service of the greater community; allowing them to engage with them and contribute to their improvement. Otherwise, we are simply listening to ourselves talk.

This new model of sharing is as much about community organization as it is education. Truly sharing ideas online needs to involve some transfer of ownership from the original publisher to a community willing to help foster it. There needs to be an effort by the individual sharing the content to foster an environment where co-ownership is not just encouraged, but expected. Improving sharing online has to focus on the magic that happens collectively after an idea is created and distributed out to the many — which means being open to having it take a new structure altogether. To that point, it is vital that what we share is at a fidelity and level of accessibility which enables others to easily take some level of ownership and grow the idea beyond the the initial form.

Platform Solutions

Interestingly, a lot of people are now questioning whether our needs have outgrown our tools. We need tools to allow ideas to exist outside of the ordinary stream of information we consume in order to have the time to grow. We need ways to create richer and more direct collaboration rather than a series of directed monologues acting as a makeshift conversation. We simply do not have those tools.

I believe that nuggets of thoughts or ideas need their own platform to truly be shared, discussed, derived and improved in a collaborative, yet consistent location. I immediately think of the various source control solutions as an interesting starting point. In many ways, software products are the collection of ideas from various people. Some ideas are the culmination of a single person, others are ideas which were iterated on by various people at various points in time. All the large and small contributions (through creation, removal or editing) result in a final product. Could an idea be formed in a similar manner? Could thoughts be committed, updated, branched and/or rolled back by a group of people committed towards generating a larger idea? In a sense, we are doing these types of actions at this very moment, but in a very disparate and unorganized method. Would a tool which helps streamline and organize this process help good ideas grow into great ones?

The Chicken and Egg Dilemma

The movement of sharing ideas online has won. Barring some unforeseen and radical shift, information will continue to be easier to access and still very free. Now that we know sharing is not going away, we need to focus on improving how we do it. I think people are hungry to take that next step in how we distribute and collaboratively grow ideas online. Pragmatically, I think the largest impact can be made by improving the tools we use to publish ideas/work online. I would love to attack this from a hearts-and-minds perspective, but without better tools, it feels empty. Once those better tools exist, we can have the philosophical discussion about the best way to use them.

Design and Technology, Sitting in a Tree…

P.J. Onori — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 06:27:50 +0000

This post was originally posted on the Adaptive Path blog.

One constant that has stood the test of time in new media/technology projects has been the tension between designers and developers. There have been very few places I have worked where this tension was not one of the central issues holding back teams from generating successful final products. We, as a community, have tried countless ways to alleviate this issue, but it continues to persist despite our efforts. Sadly, I feel this issue stems less from process (although that can definitely exacerbate the situation) and more from a company’s culture and organizational approach. The seamless integration between design and technology is becoming increasingly vital to a product’s success. Up to this point, a lot of subconscious time and energy is put into the segmentation of designers and developers, but what we should really be doing is working to blur the lines between the skill sets. The companies that will thrive moving forward are the ones that resolve this tension. With that in mind, what can both designers and developers do in their everyday process to create a more mutli-disciplined approach that still works within a company’s structure?

Resist segmentation

From a business perspective, it feels good to be able to create an A,B,C/1,2,3 list as to how a project will be accomplished. Many firms deal with design and technology as if they are self-contained/unrelated entities and resource teams accordingly. Considering how intimately related design and technology are in today’s new media projects, this division can often be detrimental to a project’s success. I have worked on many projects where there was a noticeable gap between design and technology. The normal process would be for the designers or developers to come up with an idea and then float it by their complementary group to get an up-or-down vote. This had the potential to produce results that exhibited “seams” – where one could almost visibly see where the work of one group ended and the next group’s work began. Design decisions need to be collaboratively made along side technology decisions (and vice-versa) to erase those seams. Even if a project is scheduled in a linear/waterfall structure, advocate for short and yet constant round-tables. These sessions will not only give team members of every role an opportunity to provide their specific perspective, but it allows potential red flags to be raised early on.

Kill the camps

I have never worked at a company that would actively discourage team members of different disciplines to work closely together. However, I have worked at plenty of places that didn’t expect it. In discipline-segregated environments, it is common to see the different groups have lunch separately and generally interact separately. This inevitably creates camps, which quite often generates a sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’. The best projects I have worked on fostered environments where everyone sat down together and had their work be dictated by what needed to get done. There was significantly less importance placed on a team member’s official role/job description. A developer would open up Photoshop and help edit some images. A designer would gladly write some HTML or CSS as much as they felt comfortable. Every team member had their role at the end of the day, but the most important role they had was to lend whatever skill they had to help move the project forward.

Frame your work in the larger context

Nearly every team member on a new media project has an impact on user experience. The creation of a website is a perfect example – it is obvious that UX and visual designers impact the user experience of the site, but few people acknowledge that developers have an equal impact. The responsiveness and stability of the website is going to have a tremendous impact on a user’s general reaction. In my experience, when one group made decisions (intentional or unintentional) that has a negative impact on another group’s work, it almost always had a detrimental effect on final product’s overall user experience. Our work, regardless of what we do, does not exist independently. Try not to frame the quality of your work within the confines of your role. It is important to view how your work will integrate with all the other pieces of a project. Ultimately, the user experience of a project is dependent on how all the separate pieces fit together.

Treat everyone as problem solvers

Design problems and technology problems do not always need their respective practitioner exclusively to solve them. It can sometimes be a little off-putting to have team members of different disciplines suggesting solutions in your “field of expertise”. However, we have all experienced how an outsider’s perspective can inject fresh air into a group’s thinking. Many of the problems trying to be solved in the new media sector are not cut-and-dry design or technology problems. Therefore, it doesn’t seem to make much sense to approach these issues in a one-dimensional manner. I have found it very helpful to abstract a problem, whether it originated in the design or development process, and ask as many colleagues from as many disciplines how they would go about solving it. I have almost always been presented with an idea that I had not even considered due to my self-imposed tunnel vision. When you are stuck on a problem, try asking someone for help who your suspect has a significantly different point of view.

Expand your own horizons

In a such a heavily cross-discipline environment like new media design, teams need members who are willing to learn and work outside their traditional job descriptions. It is a given that team members need a strong core skill set to be successful, but that isn’t enough. Team members need to be genuinely interested in all pieces of the product creation process and willing to put thought and effort into those other pieces. This is helpful for three reasons. First, if a person has a strong understanding in what all their fellow team members do and how much thought and effort goes into what they do, a greater level of empathy and respect can begin to form. Second, understanding a team’s full process to get to the final product will begin to implicitly influence their work. Team members will be able to make decisions which will pay dividends five steps down the road. Third, by better understanding the full process, better decisions around trade-offs can be made. A developer will likely know that the path of least resistance technologically in a particular area could hamper the user-experience and conversely, a designer will understand where to pare back areas of a design to account for better performance and function stability. From my experience, the members with the broadest knowledge bring some of the most multi-dimensional ideas to the table. It is good to be an expert in a particular field, but it doesn’t hurt to have a few other tricks in your sleeve.

To conclude, we are all naturally multi-dimensional people. Very few, if any, people will naturally look at problems from a totally one-sided viewpoint. For the sake of efficiency, one-dimensional, super specialist type of thinking has been fostered in the workplace. However, if we want rich, multi-dimensional products where design and technology feel seamless, our internal cultures, roles and processes need to reflect that.

If You Could Subscribe To Only 20 RSS Feeds…

P.J. Onori — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 16:52:32 +0000

A big part of my morning is going through Google Reader. It is perhaps the most intense period of information consumption that I go through. If my trend statistics are accurate, I go through an average of 400 posts a day — at an almost alarming rate. This daily ritual is the center of my process for updating this blog. This all happens within about a 30 minute window. At the moment, I have 298 RSS feeds that I am subscribed to. I wondered what my list would look like if I had to limit it to just twenty. I took about 10-15 minutes to dwell on the subject enough to compile something that looked promising.

But First, the Rules

I do not get my news via RSS nor do I expect to hear about trending topics from it. My RSS reading is to find content that I will not see everywhere else on the internet. So first off, the sites like NPR, Kottke.org, FFFFOUND or Signal vs. Noise are immediately gone because I am all but certain to run across links to their content via Twitter, delicious, Reddit, etc. (yes, I subscribe to those sites, but if I had to choose twenty feeds, I would not). Secondly, this list ties directly to my blog interests — which, broad as they are — have general categories to follow. Therefore, my list would contain sites focused around general design, interaction design and design technology. Third, each feed in the list needs to have a high signal-to-noise ratio.

So, with that out of the way , here is my list of twenty feeds (OMPL). This list may not be the same a month from now, let alone an hour from now, but you are all but guaranteed to find some compelling work, links and ideas in this list.

While I am at it, I might as well break my own rule of not posting a “Top x” list of links by pointing out each feed below:

52 Weeks of UX (RSS)
AisleOne (RSS)
anthony mattox (RSS)
bitique (RSS)
blprnt.blg (RSS)
but does it float (RSS)
Changethethought (RSS)
Chimes The official Utopian Key lifestream (RSS)
CreativeApplications.Net (RSS)
Datavisualization.ch (RSS)
design work like (RSS)
Monday By Noon (RSS)
omarrr (RSS)
Processing.org Pool (RSS)
Reza Ali (RSS)
siteInspire (RSS)
Soulwire (RSS)
Surfstation (RSS)
Thinking for a Living (RSS)
TypoJungle (RSS)

Yes, I have no doubt that your list of twenty is better. Why not show everyone how awesome you are by posting a link to your OPML file in the comments.

Identity On the Web – Are Logos Relevant Online?

P.J. Onori — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:55:09 +0000

Identity systems have become a mainstay for companies that are trying to secure a presence among their target audience. Strong identity systems have worked miracles for brand awareness through the years. With all the potential recognition that can come from a good branding, it seems logical that would translate well into the sphere of dot com organizations. Like many times before however, equating historical norms to loosely-related metaphors on the web can prove problematic. Being that the internet is first and foremost informational, how vital is a strong visual identity system for a dot-com company? If you ask me, not very.

The Traditional Purpose Of Identity

Logos have come to existence for a reason; history has proven that identity systems can distinguish a product/company/service from another. I could put down my attempt at defining what a logo/identity system is supposed to do, but I think Mr Rand did a much better job:

A logo is a flag, a signature, an escutcheon, a street sign.
A logo does not sell (directly), it identifies.
A logo is rarely a description of a business.

Rand articulates that a logo’s job, first and foremost is, is to identify its intended target. Traditionally, this has mostly been done in a visual manner but it has not been limited to that. Auditory identifiers such as jingles (think Intel) have been used very successfully as well. We take in our natural environment almost entirely through a sensory manner so using our primary senses to create mental cues of a product or business makes sense. On shelves of department stores, strong visual branding and package design gives a way to stand out for new customers, familiarity for repeat customers and easier recognition for those who do not remember the brand name but remember the packaging design. When driving down the street, drivers are exposed to towering signs containing logos; allowing quick cognition of products and services. Most companies set in a brick-and-motar model need visual distinction because it is one of the few ways to get attention in a passive manner. The comparison of a logo to that of a street sign or a flag is both powerful and efficient in this environment. From my perspective, Rand’s description of logos as flags is why they have had such an important role in traditional business and such an unimportant role in the online environment.

Identity Becomes Informational On The Information Superhighway

Think about how you look for something online, specifically product-related. For myself, I will usually just search for the product name. If I do not know the exact name, I will go to the company website of the product’s creator by either: a) typing in the domain name into the browser if I know the company’s name or b) search for the company on Google and hope I can find it. If that does not work, I will go to an online store like Amazon and search for the product by category. My guess is that most people online have a similar pattern to this. No where in this process does a logo or identity system ever prove useful or relevant.

In the online world, traditional brand association methods are much less important. When businesses sell material products online, customers rarely see the company’s logo or package design for a product. All of the sudden, brand association is entirely informational; it is all about the name of the company and/or the name of their product(s). A logo for a company is rarely seen outside of the company’s own website. The impact of a logo on customers interacting in a text-based, informational environment is minimal.

The concept of identity is just as important online, just in different ways. Rand’s emphasis on identifying still remains, it just cannot be done as effectively in a visual manner online. Association and brand identity happens everyday online, just in a medium that makes sense to the format – informationally. The text-centric nature online makes name recognition important and domain name recognition even more so. A particular name could be perfect for an organization, but if it is difficult to spell and/or remember as a domain name, that is going to be extremely problematic. We still need to remember a business/organization, which is accomplished through identity – the difference is what we need to remember to get to the next step. Simply put, online brand identification is all about remembering what to type in the address bar.

Confined By The Existing Vehicle

No matter how media-rich the internet has become in the last 5 years, the web is an text-based information platform. We search for information with text, navigate through text links, provide information through text forms and consume content primarily by reading text. Bookmarking systems for most browsers are mainly text-based as well – favicons are the best most users can hope for. While arguably boring, the text-based model is highly efficient, accessible and has a quick learning curve. With this model, visual identity systems play a much smaller role for brand recognition. Web users rarely ever take in a brand’s visual identity unless they are actually on the company’s own site. This does not diminish the importance of branding once a user comes to a site, but its penetration is much narrower in scope than traditional, tangible brick-and-mortar organizations.

With the web’s lack of tangible space, the name and/or domain name of a site becomes all the more important for recognition. Brick and mortar stores have the advantage of taking up material space – meaning they can put up a big sign so people can see their store literally miles away. On the web, the equivalent just does not exist, so users better be able to remember how to get to a site on their own. Therefore, while a simple visual insignia can be extremely effective in a tangible world, it is going to be much less useful on the web.

An interesting exercise is to compare dot-com leaders to that of the largest global brands:

Identities of the top 9 online properties
Identities of the top 9 global brands (Google omitted)

With the exception of Wikipedia (which, ironically, has the least prominent typography) and MSN to an extent, all the dot-com logos are essentially type treatments of their domain name. The type is legible and to the point. In comparison, the top global brands are significantly more visual in their execution. Additionally, the logos in the top brands are, as a whole, more refined than the dot-coms’ equivalent. This is likely the case for many reasons – most of the top global brands are extremely old and have had the time to spend on their identity. Those older brands also existed long before the internet, meaning all the brick-and-motar rules of the past applied. That said, many of the dot-coms on the list are some of the wealthiest companies in the world – so money is not always an issue. Perhaps, just perhaps, the logos for these dot-coms simply are not that important. Google will be Google, regardless of whether you put some shiny new insignia next to its name. What is important is that people know how get to their site. Hell, Google is a verb now – you cannot get a better identification for “search” than that.

What Does This All Mean?

This article is not intended to diminish the benefits of a good identity system for any organization, be it online or offline. It is not that a strong visual identity system unimportant for dot-com businesses, it is just much less important than things such as user experience, accessibility, content, and yes, the domain name. Online properties are working with a different set of variables and a different type of interaction with its audience. Rather than spend tens of thousands of dollars on an identity system for a dot-com, that money may be better spent elsewhere such as acquiring a the right domain name. To put it simply, if buying the perfect domain name is going to eat up your entire branding budget, buy the domain, set it in a solid typeface and feel confident you made the right decision.

Flash, the iPad, He Said, She Said, the Frying Pan and the Fire

P.J. Onori — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:35:21 +0000

Even if the iPad is not a success, media producers are understanding the implications of using a technology that could be rendered lame almost overnight. It is as if in an instant the world saw what has been taking place for years; HTML/CSS/Javascript has been catching up to Flash – pushing it closer to being inessential. You cannot put the cat back into the bag. However, Apple is not to be applauded. They are upping the ante for how closed an experience can be for next-gen mobile devices. After the unveiling of the iPad we have heard sniping from both Adobe and Apple, however neither have the best interests of the public in mind.

The web up to this point has had a nice balance between accessibility and innovation. Technologies like Flash are important catalysts of a better web. Current trends in standards-driven web design have been highly inspired from the Flash landscape. Flash raised the bar and standards-centric technologies rose to meet it. Flash was a necessary evil to achieve the things we wanted on the web. Now, many would say it simply is not necessary anymore – with myself leaning heavily in that corner. This is something I have been alluding to for years. In the past, Flash offered solutions for needs that HTML could not meet which is why I historically supported Flash. That day is proving to quickly be over.

Flash has always had a contentious place on the web. However, it pushed the internet kicking and screaming into a richer realization. Much of what we see in the HTML5/CSS3 specs look like they were pulled directly from the Flash playbook – and we are all happy for it. However, for one reason or another, Flash has not been able to leap-frog HTML as it had in the past. This could likely be that our needs have now been met. In a more optimistic take on it, Flash has accomplished its mission of “bring[ing] the Internet to life”. Its job is done.

What made Flash the go-to technology in the past is that it accomplished things that HTML just could not do. Flash existed out of needs from designers and wants from (some) users. A few examples include:

Video: HTML5 video is looking very promising, with YouTube and Vimeo already having HTML5 video players.
Vector graphics: Canvas seems to be able to do much of what one can do in Flash with vectors.
Typography: CSS3′s @font-face now allows custom font embedding.
High motion: New Javascript engines are frighteningly fast and can hold their own on the equivalent of typical motion in Flash.
Rich graphics (opacity, gradients, etc.): Support for transparent PNGs and new CSS3 rules have come a long way to narrow the gap.
Asynchronous data transfer: AJAX anyone?

From my view, these were the core distinguishable features that made Flash the hard pill that was necessary to swallow. Many developers embraced Flash despite being closed because it offered unique solutions. Users installed Flash (many against their desires) so that they could consume content that most often could not pragmatically be viewed in any other way. Yes, there will be some growing pains with HTML5, but it can be done and, in theory, with less effort. Any technology that loses the qualities that make it needed is not long for this world.

Now, enter the iPad. It is shiny, affordable and at the very least looks fun to use. Here’s the difference, the iPad already is not a necessary evil. Other devices achieve the same functionality, just in a different, if less polished sort of way. We do not need the iPad, therefore I think it would be unwise to let it determine how we use the web or consume media. With Flash, we had to make the compromise to install a proprietary browser plugin to view rich media on the web in a way that we otherwise could not. With the iPad we will have to make the compromise to buy a device with a closed application platform where Apple chooses what we can install, a closed 3G market with only one carrier, media formats which may or may not be protected with DRM and the ability to browse the internet with only Apple’s browser. All this to do things that we already do, just in a debatably more enjoyable way. Simply put Flash served an inarguably vital service to the progression of the web. The iPad does not.

All that said, I am excited about what the iPad could do for media consumption. What concerns me is the trend that Apple takes more and more control from users with each new device. We need to let users and web publishers decide if Flash is an unnecessary technology. There are still certain areas in the browser where Flash is optimal, such as games and complex data visualizations. Additionally, no one seems to be considering the scenario where Adobe steps up Flash’s game and comes up with the next big idea that we simply cannot live without. Does it still make sense to block Flash entirely? It has long been considered that Apple’s decision to not support Flash lies in part with the fact that Flash offers direct competition to many apps produced for the iPhone/iPod/iPad. If Apple truly is concerned about the web user experience, why are we not talking about an ad blocker? An ad blocker would filter out the vast majority of negative instances of Flash (banner ads) while preserving the (potentially) positive instances. Blocking Flash seems just too close to how they blocked Google Voice.

Barring some mind-blowing innovation by Adobe, Flash is on its way out as a mainstream web technology regardless of the success or failure of the iPad. What irks me is that I don’t want Apple deciding what I can or cannot install on my machine. Standards-supporters are cheering short-term victories for long-term defeats. This new Apple has a history of blocking technologies on their mobile devices once they deem it a competitor or a threat. Who’s to say they will be fine with standards if it ever ends up conflicting with their business interests? I could easily see a scenario where Apple’s mobile Safari only supports the H.264 codec for HTML5 video – putting us essentially in the same place where we are now for video. Yes, we need a standard, non-proprietary platform to start from. However, it is also highly beneficial for outsiders to push new concepts and technologies that do not have to wait for slow moving organizations agreeing upon final specifications. We need both these forces in balance with each other. What we do not need is a company artificially impacting that balance.

Adobe is not the good guy. Ultimately, they are not concerned about an open platform, they are simply irked that Flash was not accepted and are crying for an ‘open’ web to protect their interests. If they were truly concerned about an open web, they would have open sourced Flash Player years ago (yes, I know the SWF file format is open, but that’s far from the same – see the notoriously spotty Linux support) and/or accepted the fact that the web is just moving on. Additionally, Apple is not the good guy either. They are not concerned about an open platform, they are simply blocking out a technology that could potentially chip away at sales from their AppStore. If they were truly concerned about standards, I would like to remind them that standards go hand-in-hand with openness – something Apple has been devoid of with their mobile devices.

Make no mistake, this little spat between Apple and Adobe is a power struggle about how we consume media. Both are fighting tooth and nail to give users the best media consumption experience available, as long as it’s theirs. In conclusion, what is most sad to me is to watch the different development communities duking it out over what is almost certainly two companies vying for a larger stake in how we consume media. It surely doesn’t seem like either community wins in the end. As my colleague Justin Windle mentioned to me lately, we should concentrate on building great work rather than try to intervene on this corporate cat-fight.

Why You Should Give Away (Some) of Your Work

P.J. Onori — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:46:46 +0000

I am an ardent supporter of the open-source philosophy – but who isn’t? It is a safe assumption to make that just about anyone working on the web in some capacity (developer, designer, information architect, marketer, etc.) is taking advantage of free/open-source work in one way or another. The internet would not be the internet that we know without free and open-source projects moving it forward. With that in mind, I consider it the obligation of those who make a living on the internet to carry their share of the weight and offer up something in return.

As web-based bread-winners, we work in one of the few, if only, professions where it is common place for our peers to give away their hard work. Not only do many release their work, but tremendous effort is put forth to make it easy for others to use. When I try to explain this to friends/family who are unfamiliar to this environment, they think we are crazy. Honestly though, could you imagine what it would be without this reality? I think most web developers and designers want to release some of their work, if not for altruistic means then for promotional. The problem is the time and the effort it takes to actually release it can be substantial. I could lie and say that the effort is always immediately worth it and that it will always be appreciated – but we know better. There will be times where no one even seems to notice or care. That said, the web landscape depends on the contribution of publicly released projects to keep innovation chugging.

If you want to accomplish something in the world, idealism is not enough – you need to choose a method that works to achieve the goal.

So here’s the deal. I suggest you take something you have been tinkering with in your spare time and release it. Do you have something you have used or currently use which speeds up your workflow? Release it. However, simply releasing something for free is not good enough – license it under a GNU-related license or under Creative Commons. If you work on the web, you do having something that someone else could use. Whatever that is, release it. We are all beneficiaries of an individual or a group of individuals taking the time to do the same thing – why not do the same in return? There are plenty of obvious reasons to release your work which I do not feel the need to dwell on in this article. Rather, I want to spend some paragraphs discussing other reasons to offer up your work.

Your job exists on the fact that other people gave work away for free

The idea may be somewhat basic, but it is a point many overlook or take for granted. This site, along with many others, runs on WordPress and is being served by a LAMP-stack server. In addition, you are most likely viewing this site with Firefox or a WebKit-based browser. All the Javascript on this site is built on top of jQuery. This specific experience is more common than it is not and is almost entirely based on open source projects. If we did not have projects like Linux, Apache, WordPress, jQuery, Rails, Eclipse, Blueprint, etc., the process of creating quality websites would be more costly, less reliable and take more time. The fact that we rely so heavily on the hard work of others dictates the need to return the favor. Our aggregate effort really does make a difference.

Due to this open source platform, the software overhead of creating many websites is essentially nothing. If ramping up a web project necessitated buying licenses for Windows Server, an Oracle database, and commercial IDEs to develop in, the costs just to get started would prove too high for small businesses, hobbyists, young entrepreneurs or any other entity unable to absorb the initial investment. Just imagine if you had to pay for each instance of Rails or WordPress you ran on your server. The web would be a very different place and we would likely not see things like free email or small bootstrap startups. This low cost environment of building on the web allowed early and rapid adoption by entrepreneurs, developers and creators. Almost all the titans of the internet started as small startups with non-existant budgets but great concepts. Ideas drove innovation, not capital. Without that free and open foundation, this likely would not have happened. We would not have seen the anything close to the volume and diversity of sites. All web entities would have been much more business focused and likely more business-centric. It would have been horrible.

Commercial products fit an important purpose, make no mistake. However, I have observed that my suite of tools is moving more and more towards open-source projects. Not because of any idealistic preferences, but because they are simply better. Support is community driven and (for large products) both voluminous and granular. My experience is that finding specific solutions, work-arounds, tutorials and other informational documentation is generally easier for a strong open-source product than its commercial counterpart. Additionally, third-party development in the form of add-ons, plugins, etc. can easily dwarf that of closed-source/commercial competitors. The community-driven development of a product allows for individuals to build solutions for their niche needs that would otherwise may be passed up in the traditional commercial model. In the end, I find strong public projects to offer more features and have a better support platform due to the product’s community. I rely so heavily on public products nowadays that my workflow would essentially have to start from scratch if I could no longer use them.

Open source helps close the digital divide

As hardware costs decline, commercial software costs are becoming the major impediment for lower-income households. Access to technology is not enough – the technology needs to be fit in their budget. Free and open software helps ensure that individuals across all income levels, ages and geographical regions have the same access as those more privileged. This has left an indelible mark on the internet since there is little to no monetary overhead for developing web applications, publishing information or creating media. The rich ecosystem of the internet would otherwise be stagnant if we strictly relied on commercial solutions. Yes, free software which is not open source achieves the same goals in the short term. However, free but closed-source projects can many times die on the vine if the creator(s) stop working on it or stop supporting it. Open source ensures that products continue to live as long as the public feels it serves a need.

Closing the digital divide is not just some charity-case; it is beneficial for everyone. By giving a larger swath of the population access to open and accessible technology/content, we are all able to reap the rewards of millions more potential developers, publishers and content-creators. You may end up using something that one of those people helped release to the public. We all benefit by a more open and inclusive environment.

The effort it takes to get your work ready for public consumption will make it a better product

Make no mistake whatsoever, the creation a good product can be significantly easier than the process of publishing it. For instance, by the time I released coordy, I ended up spending more time getting it ready for public use than I did actually coding it. For code-based projects, you need to spend time commenting your code, writing documentation, cleaning up poorly-written or unused code, creating examples, unit-testing (if you are hardcore), installation notes, I could go on… These are all crucial to a public release, but they are rarely done for oneself. Additionally, when you need to take other people’s use-cases into consideration, it forces you to think about new features, functionality and overall improvements that may currently be unimportant to yourself, but immediately vital to others. By taking the time to make a project usable for the public, you are inherently making the project better for yourself.

The very process of publishing your work is a learning process

Prior to coordy, there was no need for me to write documentation as the code I wrote was primarily for myself. Like many other people, I tend to learn things on a need-to-know basis, therefore documentation was not something I had any experience with. While I cannot attest to being someone who writes exceptional documentation, it is something I am working on and hope to improve at. Besides the obvious tasks for publishing work, even things such as clearly describing what your project is and how it works can be something that we do not necessarily have experience in. How about creating workflows and tools to make the process of packaging up the final product more efficient? These are all invaluable skills that we otherwise may pass on if our project never sees the light of day.

There’s a good chance it is not worth selling

Despite what music companies would like to you believe, just because someone is interested in your work, it does not necessarily mean they are willing to buy it. This does not mean that it is worthless but rather due to the fact that many products are valuable due entirely to the fact that they are free. Open source projects succeed when a large developer community exists around it to provide support, improvements and add-ons to the codebase. I am a firm believer that most web-based products are not worth the time, effort and support it would take to properly sell it. Can you imagine anyone paying for a PHP framework, an Actionscript library or a pixel icon set? Outliers do exist, yes, but they seem to be few and far between. For many, there is far more karma to be gained by offering up work for free than dollars to be gained by selling it.

Open source is not just about code

I firmly believe the notion of open source needs to move beyond source and into other sectors. It is happening, but very slowly. Designers on the web medium will soon not have the luxury of ignorance when it comes to development. As this happens and our future designers have a more intimate relationship with code, development and all that comes with it. I predict that due to this progression, we will see a stronger embrace of the idea of open source among the design community, culminating with a growth in open source fonts, design templates, assets, etc. Open source, when boiled down, has never been about code – it has simply been about sharing ones work to make the larger community a little richer. It sure, seems like something worthwhile, wouldn’t you think?

A Call For Open Sourcing Our Fonts

P.J. Onori — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 10:09:15 +0000

With embedded fonts being supported by all modern browsers in one form or another (be it EOT or @font-face), it is only a matter of time until font embedding becomes commonplace on sites catering to current generation browsers. There is a large collection of blog articles discussing the obvious ramifications of embedding commercially-licensed fonts, the inevitable rise in piracy and the equally inevitable decrease in type foundry profits. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this subject and how it relates to recent copyright ~~debacles~~ conflicts. I would like to be optimistic that a proactive approach towards embedding licensed fonts is attainable and will be accepted by many of the major foundries. However, I do not think it will be happening anytime soon. Therefore, I think the more plausible solution for the immediate future, is to push for an embeddable, open source font collection.

The Easier of Two Daunting Tasks

To be clear, I do not think it will be even remotely simple to create a core open source font library that would be seen as a viable alternative to the market’s best commercial fonts. I am not under the impression that some random people on the internet with high aspirations can just usurp Max Miedinger and Paul Renner in their spare time. What I am aware of though is the 10 year stalemate we have had with copyright protection and media/information distribution on the internet. I am also aware that, like most other issues, the W3C and Microsoft will most likely go their separate ways in how to handle this situation. This leaves the rest of the folks sitting around, waiting for someone to solve the problem. That is how little faith I have in this being settled without an open source intervention. Do not get me wrong, I understand the dilemma of type foundries. I would not be privy to having commercially-licensed fonts to be freely downloaded by anyone willing to look through the source code of a CSS file. That is an easy way to not be in business anymore. On the flip side however, that is no reason for the public to wait for hell to freeze over.

To a degree, this idea has already started to take form. There are some small repositories of open source fonts getting started. Additionally, there are some great collections of free fonts already available. The problem from my perspective is that most of the free fonts currently available just are not comprehensive or flexible enough to meet the basic needs for everyday widespread use.

Five Families, That’s All I Propose

If the web community had five strong, reliable and flexible typefaces to choose from, the general web experience would increase dramatically. In my opinion, these five type familes consist of a headline san-serif (ala Futura), a general use san-serif (ala Helvetica), a classical/transitional serif (ala Garamond), a modern serif (ala Bodoni) and a slab serif (ala Clarendon). Instead of spending time making more than these five fonts, my desire would be to see a diverse selection of weights for each family. Instead of the grossly undernourished choices of regular, italic, bold and bold italic, it would be welcoming to have the choice of light, book, heavy, condensed and other weights that just have not been in our lexicon up to this point. While five families may seem slim, these families should take care of the majority of use cases online and could potentially improve both the aesthetics, legibility and readability of online copy. Creating replacements of typefaces such as Helvetica and Futura is not something that I think is attainable. However, using these fonts as a benchmark in terms of quality and weight diversity is. Even coming remotely close to their quality would be a step up from where we currently sit. This solution would obviously pose no threat to type foundries — there will still be plenty of demand for their fonts. If such an open source collection existed, I could also see less desire by many to embed commercially-licensed fonts without permission.

Headlines Be Damned, This Is About Copy

It may not always be pretty, but web developers and designers have come up with many ways to set small portions of text in non-system fonts. While the solutions are not perfect, it at least exists. The major reason embeddable fonts are so important is to allow online copy to be set in non-system fonts. The frustration amongst anyone designing on the web is that basically all web-safe system fonts are just frankly sub-par. Honestly, if we could rely on Helvetica Neue, Sabon and possibly even Clarendon as web-safe fonts, I think I would be far less concerned about this issue. Yes, we all want to use particular fonts for particular projects, but at least we could find comfort that the type set on a website was set in a legible, solid and beautiful typeface with enough weights to ensure proper use. At this moment in time we just do not have any system font that meets those needs. To me, that is the real promise of embeddable fonts — to bring type setting on the web to the level print designers have been on for decades.

Do Not Underestimate What An Open Source Project Can Achieve

We are all aware at this point that just because something is free does not mean it is devoid of value. The open source movement is responsible for giving birth to some of the most important and influential software in the world. Additionally, the concept of “open source” is moving beyond its initial definition and encompassing any project, regardless of medium, where the intellectual materials used in constructing it are made available for reuse and modification. There are an increasing number of web studios that take an internal codebase and offer it up as open source. I do not see why it is too far off on the horizon for forward-thinking design studios to get in the spirit. Ultimately, the same rules apply — they are just executed in slightly different manners.

Much of the internet is based on open source technology. It seems fitting that the letters of the words read on it are open source as well. So until the time where all major browsers come up with a solution to safely allow embedding of commercial fonts without the possibility of piracy (i.e. a very long time from now), I think we should get busy and start making fonts of our own. For everyone that has been forced to read in Arial, it will be a welcome change.

Why I Block IE6 and Why You Should Consider Doing the Same

P.J. Onori — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:09:55 +0000

When Internet Explorer 6 came out in 2001, it was a huge step forward for the browsing world. Sadly, while the long-living browser still commands a strong contingent of users, it has outlived its welcome for at least 5 years. Nowadays, the nearly 8 year old browser still continues to be a thorn in side of web developers. When I redesigned my site this past January, I was unwilling to commit to the time it would take to make IE6 fully compatible with the design and unorthodox elements on the site. I had a choice of allowing visitors using IE6 to have a downgraded version of the site (which would take time in and of itself to implement) or to block them altogether. I chose the latter and I am writing why I think it is a reasonable decision.

Objects At Rest…

Many users on the internet have no problem browsing on IE6. Most sites work just the same on their outdated browsers as they do on its modern counterparts. This gives the general public no reason to move on. However, there is a reason why most sites still work on that browser — it is because web developers spend an extraordinarily unproportionate amount of their time making sure it does. As long as people’s favorite sites continue to work for them with their browser of choice, there is no reason for them to move on. This may be a foreign concept to many of us, but there are plenty of people that operate this way — explaining the 10%-20% of users (depending on the statistics you believe) that still use it. In a way, this noble pursuit from the standards movement to push for backwards compatibility has caused this this nasty side-effect.

Web developers feel like they must support IE6 because it still constitutes a large segment of the user population. IE6 still constitutes a large segment of the population because web developers still support IE6. It is a vicious cycle that really is not doing anyone in the equation any good. In my opinion, by not blocking IE6 or at least making it very clear that it is unsupported, it is essentially continuing the notion that IE6 is a relevant browser. A bit of education and an adequate nudge in the right direction would do both parties a lot of good. Instead of trying to make IE6 users have the least sub-par experience possible, why not help them actually have a good experience?

Time Well Spent?

The more complex sites become, the more code they need to contain in order to support legacy browsers. My question is if that is worthy of our attention. For some sites, it most certainly is. However, for others, it is taking valuable hours away from improving the experience of the site for the majority of users on modern browsers. Even the process of creating and testing downgraded versions of the site for older browsers takes significant time. It’s just another task to juggle and manage when adding new pages/features. Ultimately, it just does not seem to pan out to spend 30% of one’s time trying to put a square peg in a round hole for 10% of your audience. There are an increasing number of sites that have decided not to fully support IE6, but do not actively block it either. That is a reasonable decision, however I find some fault in it. No matter how good the messaging is, if users come to your site and it looks broken, it will reflect poorly on your site. Better to block it altogether and ensure all users that can view the site see it perfectly.

This is what you'll get on this site with IE6.

For my site in particular, I wanted to try out some new Flash/HTML interactions in addition to some relatively unique Javascript UI experiments. Whether it could run in IE6 seemed unimportant. Frankly, a large portion of the site is about those types of things — it’s my business. This site is not some strange exception of the rule, there are plenty of sites out there that are interested in offering unique experiences while still desiring to semantically correct and standards-friendly. Those sites should rather work on refining the experience on modern browsers while aiding in the migration to compatible browsers than keeping back the majority’s experience for legacy browsers. Sites that the public depends on for information, such as government sites, should by no means block anyone. However, sites that are attempting to push new UI paradigms and experiences should at least consider the idea. If a site is in the business of a next-gen experience, not only does browsers like IE6 not fit in the picture, viewing a such a site in such a browser could lessen the image/brand of the site.

A One-Time-Only Rule

There are some inherent problems with my train of thought. For one, this route makes information inaccessible to a segment of the population — which flies right in the face of what the internet should be all about. Secondly, not all people have control over their browsing experience. Lastly, this type of thinking can easily spin out of control by simply not supporting any browser that proves to pose compatibility issues. However, let me try to explain why I think IE6 is a unique case.

I would argue, however, that IE6 is different than other legacy browsers because it is lingering. It just refuses to go away unlike almost all of its predecessors. Secondly IE6 was basically the last major pre-standards browser and it had no significant updates that improved its standards support. Sure, IE7 has its issues, but it is nothing like its older brother. Basically, all browsers coming out at least have decent support for standards, with most doing a very good job of it. IE6 is the last browser still standing that falls outside of these parameters. The faster we can push it out the door and forget it ever happened, the better off we will all be. That being said, with the way browsers are designed, I do not foresee any reasonable justification to pull this trick back out once IE6 bites the dust.

Alternative Methods

Even though I see it as the most effective method, blocking IE6 is not the only way to go about solving this issue. Ultimately, I am aware that blocking any traffic to one’s site can be seen as wasteful. There are other ways to get the idea across while being less drastic. One way would be to block IE6 users once a week on a consistent day with a clear explanation of when and why. Another option is to simply disable as much CSS and Javascript as is possible without hampering core functionality. Such a move would most definitely get the attention of users while not keeping them from your content.

Ultimately, this idea is obviously not for everyone. However, it was a huge relief for me to know that I had the freedom to try some new ideas on this site without having to figure out a way to make it work in legacy browsers. At this point in time, the majority of users are using browsers that more or less get it right. I think it is about time to cater directly to that majority.

The Golden Rules of Site Redesign

P.J. Onori — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:06:24 +0000

As many of you know, Some Random Dude was redesigned earlier this month. The redesign of this blog was a tremendous effort that took months of part-time work to get from inception to launch. The process was overly-arduous for a plethora of reasons — I was determined to design and plan in a way that would prolong the longevity of the current site and push off next redesign of this site as long as possible. In doing so, it strengthened my belief of four basic tenets when going through the redesign of a blog or any other content-driven site. I have tried to apply each four of these rules to the new redesign which have already made the site much more manageable and enjoyable and worthwhile. I thought it would be worthwhile to share my experiences.

If You Are Going to Redesign, Then Redesign.

When most people think of redesigns, they think of the visual aspect. For many sites nowadays, the visual piece is just one of many layers comprising the whole. A redesign needs to far exceed merely refreshing the interface. There are no doubt times where that direction is appropriate. However, under normal circumstances, if one is to devote the serious commitment it takes to redesign a site with even a decent amount of content, it should be for something worthwhile. Redesigns should be about big ideas, not just improvements but overhauls, upheaval of weak elements. Not to bang on the Apple drum, but when they redesign a product, they redesign the hell out of it. Visually refreshing a site is fun, but like Cameron Moll’s Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign article suggests, it just is not worth the time. Rather, spend the time to come out with the strong ideas that will make a refresh unnecessary.

With this site, I took a long look at the content I had been producing, spent around a month thinking about what was important and then attempted to reshape this site based on ideas that I had been toying around with but never had the time to implement. The ideas would have never fit into the the rusty, bandaged-up site that was my old blog. If I was going to do it, it would take a rethinking from the ground up. For myself personally, anything less would not have been worth the sacrifice in time and effort.

Making Your Life Easier Will Make Your Audience Happier

That statement when flipped, however, is not always true.

As a general rule, I think most content-centric sites (such as blogs) should put the publisher on equal importance to the audience. As a content publisher, there are two established and proven goals almost everyone tries to attain — quality and quantity. The more content you publish at a higher quantity, the more successful your site will be under normal circumstances. The ease and flexibility in publishing content is directly related to the success of a site. Most people write content in their spare time as a hobby or side-project. The harder a publisher makes it on one’s self to publish content, the less likely quality content will be published on a constant basis. Inevitably, without quality content, the value of a site is highly questionable, no matter how good the architecture, structure and visual design. I cannot stress how important it is to take your habits and daily rituals into account when going through a redesign. Think about ways you can streamline the publishing process or create tools that automate the simple, yet annoying processes. The more you can standardize, automate and delegate, the more you can concentrate on actually creating content.

As I mentioned when introducing the site, this blog is as much an aggregator as it is a personal blog. Other services such as Tumblr, Delicious and Twitter make it excruciatingly easier to publish specific types of content than any “out-of-the-box” blog software around. I already spend a good hour or two everyday surfing through design blogs/sites — it just made sense to publish the things I like and want to share.

Do Not Create Rules You Will Not Be Willing To Follow

It is very easy to make a site look good in Photoshop with perfectly formatted copy and cropped images. The problem is, things change when you get the design out of a perfectly controlled environment and into a world of browser incompatibilities, time constraints and typographic widows. All of the sudden, keeping your design in line with your vision will be much more work than previously thought. The trick is to have an idea where those breakdowns could occur and ask yourself if you are really willing to take the time to make it look as you should. If the answer is even a doubtful ‘yes’, scrap it. There is a good chance it will come back to haunt you otherwise. Some of these rules are things you will have to commit to for years, just remember that.

With the new site, I spent a lot of time finding or making tools that would either automate elements to a degree of quality I was happy with or I removed the idea altogether. In the long run, it made much more sense to me to spend an extra month finding a way around having custom elements than it did to take the time out to do them on a regular basis.

Redesign To Remove the Need To Redesign

This goes hand-in-hand with the first rule. Redesigns are inevitable, but they do not need to be habitual. If you see yourself using the site in the long term, then you should plan for the long term. A redesign should think 10 steps ahead of the initial goal in order to avoid the next redesign as long as possible. Any redesign should have a significant emphasis on improving the overall organization of information, a serious plan for data migration and thoughts on forward compatibility. In a sense, a redesign should be already planning for the next redesign. The more you take into account now, the less problems you will have on the next go-around. If you do not take on those issues, you are essentially moving backwards.

One of the reasons why this past launch took so long was my absolute lack of planning when first creating the site and a continual neglect for any global structure or organization. It was, by far, the biggest mistake I made in the last realization of the site. Due to all those years of short sided thinking, I am still working through compatibility issues with the new site and will most likely continue to do so in the weeks and months ahead. The plan, however, is to work through them this time so I do not ever have to work through them again. But isn’t that what a redesign is for?

To Advocate For or Abandon the 10%

P.J. Onori — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:57:51 +0000

Back in 2002 or 2003, when Internet Explorer reigned at the undisputed leader in browser market share, I was very outspoken over the need to support all browsers – even those with only 5% share or less. I argued about the need to provide a consistent experience for all users, regardless of what browser or version they decide (or as forced) to use. This ideology was all the easier to adopt considering how had market share at the time – I feel as though my strong feelings were just as much about not idly allowing the “evil” corporate browser to swallow even more share by helping make it the de-facto browser on the internet. Fast forward 5+ years and oh, how the tables are turning. A new generation is jumping online and they’re not just blindly clicking the blue ‘e’ on their desktop. Firefox 3 shattered the record for most downloads and, according to some metrics, is passing up 20% global market share and well above 40% in some European countries. The underdog is now the up-and-comer.

Which brings me to why I am writing this article. I am in the process of putting ideas and concepts together for the redesign of somerandomdude.net which has taken me down some very interesting paths. The problem is, many of these ideas are simply not going to work on older browsers – most notably, Internet Explorer 6. IE6 still comprises roughly 10% of the traffic on this site, which should be far too significant to ignore. Here is the conundrum – I just do not seem to care. IE6 is, by current standards, a train wreck of a browser. I have seen more web projects than I would like to remember use the majority of their production time just to resolve IE6 issues. Still, I fail to see the philosophical difference between supporting the Netscape 7′s in 2002 and the Internet Explorer 6′s in 2008. In fact, IE6 gets more share now than any of the browsers I fought to support did. All that said, I still am leaning towards not supporting it.

My argument towards not supporting IE6 for the new redesign would mean faster production time, and allow me to use publishing methods which would help me post much more frequently. So here’s the question – do ends justify the means or is this just an example of hypocrisy at its finest? My justification is continuing to support IE6 will limit what I can do to the blog (in the time I have to build it) in order to make posting easier – which should allow more content to be published. So, do I continue to give an equal experience to the 10% or give an improved experience to the 90%? This question is not new by any means, but I find myself on the other side of the argument this time.

What are your thoughts on this? Does creating a consistent experience trump a better site for the majority? Do the ends justify the means? Should a compromise be found?

Write Articles, Not Blog Postings (Sometimes)

P.J. Onori — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 21:34:58 +0000

I just read a very good article by Jakob Nielsen on proper writing for weblogs. His opinion is that blogs (most notably, business blogs) should focus more on in-depth articles rather than short, post-lets. I think Mr. Nielsen’s advice is absolutely correct for a large number of business bloggers out there – but I hesitate to agree it is the best format for all business blogs. I genuinely respect Nielsen’s research on the subject, but a few thoughts from my experience have led me to the opinions mentioned below.

It Depends on the Goal of the Blog

If the goal of your blog is to market your expertise on a particular subject matter, then, by all means, listen to Mr. Nielsen. However, if your goal is to engage an audience around a particular topic (in order to increase sales), long-winded articles may not be the best format. Creating an audience/community around a business can be a very successful method for driving sale and keeping a close watch on a segment of your consumers. Consistent, and frequent updates are one way to ensure that people will continue to read your content – giving your business and product(s) more exposure.

It Depends on the Audience

Certain types of business lend itself to longer, more articulate articles – others do not. For instance, if I have a skateboarding business and decide to start a blog, the last thing I am going to do is write in-depth writeups on certain subjects. For style-based businesses (music, clothing, etc.) much of the success is based on its cool factor, which should not necessarily be communicated through a 5000 word article. Also, is your audience even interested in reading a boat-load of content or would they rather see the product?

Listening to Gurus Can Be Ridiculously Boring

If part of your business is about exuding a personality, not just know-how, it would be wise to use the format that best exemplifies that personality. Many of my favorite writers use a short format very successfully. Short does not always mean shallow, it can just as easily mean efficient. Readers definitely want to consume content, but they do not want to be bogged-down in articles that are heavy for no reason. Many of the web guru articles that I read are merely skimming material as I am hesitant to commit 15 to 20 minutes to read a post – even if it interests me.

Less (Good) Writing Is Better Than More (Bad) Writing

As someone who is just beginning his first steps in the business world, I know it takes a lot of time. Writing in a blog can be a nice-to-have luxury for many small business owners. Nonetheless, publishing content in a blog can be absolutely invaluable for many business owners. Writing long articles is not an easy thing to do – the larger the article gets, the more that can go wrong. Nielsen states that “In-depth content provides more value in less time than numerous superficial postings”, but I have not had the same experience from my blogging. For myself, the publish time increases exponentially the longer the article gets – and I find myself having less and less time for devoted writing. If time is an issue, I would advise writing smaller, sharper articles rather than sloppy longer articles due to time constraints. Additionally, I much rather see people move towards shorter format posts than just quit altogether.

Social News an Upgrade From an Old-News-Only World

P.J. Onori — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 22:17:14 +0000

A while back, I read a very interesting article debating the validity of social news sites. There is no denying that the old media machine is beginning to sputter – most notably newspapers. New media has begun to pull visitors away from traditional news outlets with free access to news, less advertising (sometimes) and features unique to the internet such as voting, discussing and recommending. Getting news on the internet is not, well, news at all, however social news is starting to catch on. By catching on, I do not mean our generation, we have been well aware of it for some time – I mean that the larger mainstream is slowly starting to hear whispers of such an idea. The interesting thing is that many people are trying to pit traditional news against social news – as if “there can be only one”. Rather, social news is a great addition to the genre of news which will only improve the public’s access to information.

Like I have brought up many times (perhaps too many) before, I do not own a TV, so the snippets of news from TV I take in are few and far between. Every now and then, I will get the chance to catch a short glimpse of cable news – it does not take long for me to tell I am not missing much. Nowadays, I get my news from NPR and a myriad of social news sites – I use the social news sites for breadth and NPR for depth. I personally feel more informed than I ever have. Many people feel that social news is just too amateur and lacks the true journalistic integrity of traditional media. I would like to think established news provides more professional, smarter content, but I just cannot get myself to believe it.

As many of us know, social news depends on traditional news for a large amount of their content. Because of that, one can argue that social news really is not in the business of news, but rather the delivering of news. Meanwhile, traditional news has become increasingly outdated in its delivery methods, but are still much more adept in the acquisition and recordation of actual news events. We all know what traditional news’ journalistic model has brought to the public, but here are a few things I believe social news is bringing to the table:

News Has Become More Democratic

Things we now take for granted on the internet (such as voting, commenting, linking, etc.) are an integral part of basically all social news sites. The model of traditional news flies right in the face of a democratic process. News in papers, TV and radio are highly curated on subjects that the media outlet thinks we want to know about. This model of picking and choosing information can lead to many potential problems and conflicts of interest. A fully democratic process of delivering news obviously depends on the community voting, however I have found the quality of the news chosen to be hot/popular/front-paged to be on par with mainstream news. Perhaps a little more techy, with more references to the Wii, but still very comparable.

The Source(s) of News Is Now Much More Diverse

As mentioned earlier, much of the content on social news is from actual traditional news sources – the only difference is, social news is not limited to them. The playing field has now been dramatically evened. Blogs and other alternative news sites make up a large part of the content on social news sites which allows a wider breadth of information. Many of the stories that are not covered by traditional news sources for various reasons are often picked up by these niche blogs/sites that could only survive on the internet.

I am not the only person concerned with all the buyouts happening in news media in recent years. The consolidation of information sources puts tremendous responsibility and power in very few hands. With social news, the exact opposite trend is occurring. Social news sites are popping up like weeds – many of which are adding something unique and helpful to the collection. This is just another point that differentiates social news from traditional news’ ever-consolidating/shrinking world. If the more popular social news sites run into problems or start failing the community, there will be a plethora of new options for people to choose from. This competition is healthy in basically every way and greatly benefits the individual’s ability to access information from independent sources.

Immediate, Direct and Uncensored Discussion Is Now Possible

I keep telling myself this is a good thing, although spending a few minutes on Digg will make even the most die-hard social news fan doubt it. Sure, the internet tends to bring out the most belligerent in 99% of us. Sure, intelligent discussion and discourse is a highly endangered species on many social news sites. However, the ability to have open conversations about important subjects is absolutely vital. Traditional media is basically nothing more than one large monologue, social news finally allows for a form of news that allows a conversation to go along with it.

Money and Ratings Much Less the Driving Force

Many people are under the opinion (including myself) that cable news greatly sacrifices their journalistic quality in exchange for ratings. News media outlets are, at the end of the day, businesses – so money is going to be an extremely important factor, if not the highest factor. Cable news, talk radio and other forms of traditional media many times does what it thinks will pull in the highest ratings – leading towards more of an entertainment model and less of a news model. Since social news essentially acts as a service to point people towards news, there is no interest in pushing particular subjects for ratings. The quality of the service and the community running it is what drives traffic and popularity. The recent events over at Digg just drive that home.

Philosophical Differences Greater Than Technical Differences

Social news vs. Traditional news less of a technological difference and more of a philosophical difference. There’s nothing stopping websites from closing down news submissions, voting, commenting, etc. In addition, there is nothing stopping CNN/FOX/MSNBC to make online voting impact news topics. The difference is almost completely on the side of philosophy, technology is just a means towards it.

Social News is Great, But Far From Perfect

Just like any other form of media, there are inherent problems that come along with them. Due to the democratic nature of social news, the model is vulnerable to mob rule as well as gaming (what I would define as an online equivalent to gerrymandering). Up to this point, these problems have tended to be the exception rather than the rule, but these sorts of issues put into question the validity of social news. One could argue that the Anna Nicole Smith media debacle on cable networks had all the same symptoms of a story with a life of its own. The only difference is, there is less recourse for the frustrated audience.

From my perspective, social news’s pros far outweigh its cons. While many people see social news and traditional news as rivals, each battling the other for survival; I see the two pushing each other’s limits and ultimately having the two become better from it. Traditional news is not going away, but neither is social news. The two are both here to stay, although their current manifestation may not. Either way, social news has put the power squarely back into the hands of the public and I cannot see anything but good coming from that.

A Better Web is Coming – Big Business Or Not

P.J. Onori — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 00:55:11 +0000

I read a very interesting article, Why the Semantic Web Will Fail, about one person’s thoughts on why the web will never reach its full potential due to the greed and short-sidedness of big business. The author makes some very good points in the article and it is quite compelling to read.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Semantic Web will never work because it depends on businesses working together, on them cooperating.

We are talking about the most conservative bunch of people in the world, people who believe in greed and cut-throat business ethics. People who would steal one another’s property if it weren’t nailed down. People like, well, Conrad Black and Rupert Murdoch.

And they’re all going to play nice and create one seamless Semantic Web that will work between companies – competing entities choreographing their responses so they can work together to grant you a seamless experience?

I think the author is right about one thing – big business is not a big fan of an open, sharing web and will fight it tooth and nail in the name of profit. My feeling however is that business really does not have a choice in the matter. The web is built on a very open, uncontrollable model – opening up infinite possibilities for individuals, competitors and or startups to ruin them in a heartbeat. The web is moving towards a more open model, like it or not. We do not rely on big business, big business relies on us. If corporations do not want to work in that model, all it takes is $15 for a domain name, $100 a month for hosting and word of mouth for some David to take down Goliath.

The web, since its inception, has been moving towards more a open and communal sense of data. Information and content is shared more than ever on the web. The author is correct in his statement about business – big business has fought it tooth and nail. Nevertheless, the trend towards a more open internet has continued, and if anything, has grown. Not all business is against this movement however – many successful startups have become what they are due to their willingness to share data. The list is too large to fully divulge, but Flickr, YouTube and Digg are three of the most obvious. These companies became what they are today because they shared their content freely and took the user’s experience seriously. Of course, Flickr and YouTube have been purchased by “big business”, but the corporate big-wigs are not dumb – they know that the very success of these sites depends on their open attitude towards information and content. To break those models would surely stifle the success of their newly acquired site and, in turn, stifle their own business. If, for whatever reason, the corporation still decided to do it, there would be numerous sites popping up overnight to try to fill the void.

Most of the true innovation on the internet is not done by big business. Because of the relatively low overhead to start a medium-sized website, very little gets in the way of smart people with smart ideas creating smart web sites. While big business is trying to figure out how they can monetize their web properties, small businesses, startups and individuals are innovating. Of course, many of these innovators will get snatched up by “larger fish” which can lead towards two different directions. The first is that the new owner tries to modify it to their financial agenda. This method has caused many good sites to (very) bad (very) quickly and many times the community does not even stay there long even to witness it. The second direction is that the site gets purchased and is relatively left alone to continue doing what it was doing. YouTube, del.icio.us and Flickr (to a certain extent) seem to fall under that umbrella up to this point. The model opens up the opportunity to slowly move big business towards a more open philosophy. They may not want it, but if the want to compete, they are going to have to eventually.

If the internet was like cable, I would completely agree with the author – however, that is far from the case. Big business accounts for a mere fraction of the content on the internet. With the takeoff of blogging, that fraction is only going to continue to go down. The only advantage business has on the web is money – something that may not be as potent as we think. The majority of successes on the internet have been due to a revolutionary concept, the fostering of a strong community or the publishing of highly desired content. None of these three qualities can come from money alone. Money always helps, but it is not the end-all-be-all. There are even times where I think money could be a hindrance…

I do agree with the author that big business will never volunteer to play nice. The problem is, if they continue to decide to play the way they are playing, the rest of the internet will leave and start their own game.

Improving Online Advertising (For Everyone)

P.J. Onori — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 08:12:49 +0000

In my first of three articles discussing online advertising, I wrote about what I consider is wrong with advertising. In this article, I will attempt to lay out my thoughts on how advertising online could be improved. One of the issues that I see as a problem of the current online advertising model is the emphasis on money and/or click-throughs. This current article talks about how the almighty click-through reigns supreme, no matter how much it damages the reputation of the site or the product that is being advertised. In addition, site creators seem to just fall in line and accept the one-sided relationship advertisers have laid out for them. Advertisers and site creators need to think smarter by thinking smaller. My thought is to put less money on the table and create more effective advertising partnerships with a smaller group of sites. In addition, the banner needs to finally be put to rest. A site’s real-estate is no match for its author’s thoughts, content and the trust it has garnered with its audience. Lastly, the site creator’s content, in conjunction with the trust from the audience, are not resources to exploit, but are potential partners in a sustainable revenue model.

A Broken Model

For the vast majority of sites that advertise, there is little to no communication between site and advertiser. The relationship (or lack thereof) is entirely money-driven – the site gets money for clicks and the product/service being advertised gets traffic (and hopefully) revenue. In many cases, advertising works through third parties such as Google Adsense. The site creator and the advertiser do not know (or care) one bit about the other. In this model, advertisers think that the real estate and traffic of a site are its most valuable resources. Advertisers are only going to be willing to pay for what they consider valuable. Due to this perception, many advertisers expect that they receive prime real estate for their banners, links, etc. Advertisers rarely consider how this may impact user experience or the loyalty of a site’s audience. What should the advertiser care, they know nothing about the site to begin with. This revenue-centered model reminds me of the old method of clear-cutting forests. The lumber companies would come in, take all that is valuable, and leave once the land had nothing else to give.

Honestly, how does an ad like this help anyone?.

What is deemed a success in advertising needs a major overhaul. Currently, most advertisers are only willing to pay for a click-through – some are only willing to pay if a specific ad click generates a sale. Ironically, this model only exists on the internet due to its unique ability to track various forms of data. If a company purchases ad space in a newspaper, that company has little to no way of tracking revenue generated directly through that ad. Comparisons can be made from sales before and after an ad campaign, however that still can not directly track one ad’s success. Advertisers are willing to pay through the nose for TV ads, with no concrete guarantee of financial gain. In addition, there is no statistical data to track the percentage of users turned off from both the advertiser’s product and the site which the ad sat on due to its invasive nature. There also are no numbers to determine the negative impact invasive ads are making on a brand. Why is there such a discrepancy between online and offline advertisements?

Put Less Money in the Equation

Money is the root of all evil, even on the web. An advertising model that is solely monetary can bring out the worst in both sides. If advertising is strictly a means to generating short-term revenue, the advertiser could care less about the impact an ad is making on their brand or the brand of the site advertising for them and the site creator could care less about its audience. Advertising is more than just click-throughs and cost-per-clicks. Are a few thousand clicks worth the possible negative impact an invasive ad leaves on both parties? This pressure for return lies directly in the investment made. If less money changes hands (on both sides) this desire for return by any means necessary could potentially be blunted. With asking for less money, site creators could demand more user-friendly ads in both content and appearance. For advertisers, if less money is asked for ad space, they should be much more welcome to less invasive tactics to promote their company/product. With money being less of an issue, community reputation and a genuine desire to work together are a much higher priority for both sides. Both advertisers and site creators should be just as interested in the ad’s impact on their reputation as they are in their bottom line. Just because someone clicked on an ad does not mean it was successful. The motive of clicking should be a much higher priority.

Many advertisers consider a site’s real-estate its most valuable resource – this is becoming less and less true with the evolution of the web. Today, a site’s content and the trust of its audience are the most important resource. Traditional online advertising strip-mines the trust of the audience where greater short-term gains are made at the expense of long-term longevity. With no mutual interest, this type of model seems completely acceptable – that is exactly why it cannot work. As brought up in the previous article, this type of advertising is may have a lot to do with drops in traffic.

No one knows a site’s community like the site’s creator and the actual community itself. Using that model, it seems somewhat ridiculous that advertisers expect good results with putting their generic ads into a site and then expecting the ads to just work. Every web community has its own nuances and personality – ads that work great for site X, could very well fail horribly on site Y. It makes more sense to, at the very least, get know the community before beginning to advertise for them. Much better, advertisers work with the site creator to interact directly with the community – not a company/consumer interaction, but as two communities with similar interests. In addition, instead of insisting on a traditional advertising relationship, a more tailor-made sponsorship could be created to allow site-creators to advertise a product through the lens of the community. Of course, this depends on the site-creators’ willingness to work with advertisers and vice-versa, but there is a very good chance that the product will be much more well-received if the site-creator is endorsing it rather than XYZ Corp shoving it down the audience’s throat.

I definitely understand the concept of advertising across the broadest segment of the population. There definitely are valid reasons for casting a wide net – the only problem is that many times those advertisements are being served to large segments of people who are not the target audience. This wide net can be quite wasteful both in time and money. For many companies/organizations with small to medium ad budgets, that time and money would be spent more wisely with focused ads to a few quality sites than a more vague ad campaign created to work across many more sites. This strategy fits in with creating personal relationships with site creators. If companies are more interested in advertising across only a handful of sites, the incentive to work very closely with those sites increases. The potential collaboration between advertiser and site creator is where special thing can begin to happen.

‘Ads’ as Worthwhile Content

In my opinion, banner ads are becoming less useful by the minute. Granted, I currently have something similar to a banner on this site, but its future is in great peril. Its lack of usefulness will be its demise as it does absolutely nothing for returning users. I would like to think that I would continue to support TerraPass, but it would take the form of something more useful for the audience. Ads do not need to be “sacrificed space”, they can be substantiative writing, content and media or co-sponsored projects undertaken with support of the advertiser. Just for this site, I can think of many companies/organizations where some sustainable ad model would not just compliment the site’s content, but add to it. People make the idea of throwing ads on your site that are relevant to its content seem revolutionary when in reality it is nothing more than common sense. Revolutionary begins when ads/sponsorships begin to improve a site’s experience. As much as it may seem, this is not a pie-in-the-sky idea. Bloggers could work with a sponsor to have co-created content that neither could produce alone. Companies/organizations could have invaluable expertise on a certain subject that could be published through a site creator’s site/blog. Honestly, there are infinite possibilities and services that could develop in the future. For example, ReviewMe is proof that this kind of relationship between the advertiser and site creator is starting to be occur. My hope is that this model will go one step further – with less dependence on a third party to facilitate very temporary ad partnerships. Just like a site’s content, sponsorships should be relatively consistent.

Content created by advertisers has the potential to be taken much more seriously than just your average banner ad. This method could very easily be considered deceptive at best if done the wrong way. However, if the site creator and advertiser are candid about the relationship and the content is genuine, this model can be used to provide valuable and unique content for the audience. Methods such as this rely on a advertiser/content-creator relationship built on something more than just financial transactions. I would love to have design firms write about sustainable design or a hosting company post an article on this site about how they are working to run on clean energy. My expertise in these areas is slim to none, but a common interest in such topics can open up the door for an interesting symbiosis.

A Sustainable Approach

This advertising approach relies on both advertisers and site creators to think about advertising and revenue in a more sustainable manner. Advertising needs to be seen as a partnership where both parties will reap less benefits unless both are equally committed to make it work for each other. In addition, both parties need to come up with a more creative method of compensation. Money alone will not only create the potential for conflict, but ultimately it is just one piece of what is desired. The long-term results of reputation-building and user-first advertising will pay dividends to everyone – it just may not show up instantly. In the end, site creators and advertisers have a common goal – to engage and communicate with the user. That desire for mutually beneficial engagement and communication needs to take a higher priority than sales via ads or ad revenue.

Come back in the next few weeks for the last article in this series on online advertising.

The Sorry State of Online Advertising

P.J. Onori — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 08:09:08 +0000

For many, the internet symbolizes innovation, creativity and unique expression. Why then is internet advertising so unoriginal, uninspired and uninterested in the people it is targeting? Online advertising symbolizes all that is wrong with the current state of the web. The basic model of advertising bombardment and sensory overload can ruin a site’s reputation while rarely giving the financial return expected. Why have site creators and online advertisers settled for such an unbecoming system? For many site creators, the allure of making income from their site outweighs the needs of their audience. This approach can ultimately cause much more bad than good.

Over the next few weeks, I will be writing about online advertising. This article will focus on what is currently wrong with the most common advertising model used online, the second will discuss my opinions on a better alternative and the third will flush out those ideas into pragmatic examples.

Where Internet Advertising Currently Is

Advertising online is at an all-time low. Users are constantly bombarded by advertisements that seem to be getting larger and more visually obtrusive by the minute. Online advertisements seem to have little or nothing to do with the site’s content and lack any sense of respect for the user. Even though it is a well-known fact that internet users detest ads, the same horrendous model is shoved down their throats. It is as if site creators have just accepted that the advertising status quo is the only way to generate ad revenue and they expect that the users will have to “deal with it”. ESPN.com is a perfect example of such a site where advertising has gone wrong. There are literally ads everywhere, the video player automatically starts playing ads with the audio on, there are annoying Flash ads everywhere and, every once in a while, I would have the pleasure of being re-directed to full-page ads instead of the home page. I do not go to ESPN.com anymore.

Contemporary advertising online many times results with a site looking like a content/advertisement checkerboard. Some sites try not to cluster too many ads together so as to give the impression that they are not bombarding the user with ads. Savvy users realize what is happening nonetheless. I would argue that the sheer number of advertisements some of these sites have on their site is evidence that the current ad model is not working. Instead of thinking of more original, symbiotic and user-friendly forms of advertising, most site creators have subscribed to the “more ads means more revenue” philosophy. This current relationship between the site creator and advertisers is much like a building landlord and a renter. Space is offered to the advertiser and other than the exchange of money, there is little to no relationship between the two. Under this model, the landlord attempts to rent out all the space to whoever offers money. The problem with this model is that if the landlord just rents out rooms to anyone without any discernment, the landlord’s property could be quickly destroyed by the renters. Meanwhile, the apartment building is in shambles and no one is interested to look at the space, much less rent it. Similarly, if a website does not carefully choose its advertisers, the web site could shortly be a ghost town. An interest in short-term gains can ultimately disenfranchise a site’s users to the point that they do not come back. Guess what, advertisers are going to drop you like a bad habit once you are not giving them what they want – click-throughs and revenue.

It Is Not All About the Benjamins

The root of all these problems obviously is money. Most of the businesses that advertise on the internet approach it strictly from a business angle. From my position, this is mistake number one. For many site creators, money is not the bottom line for their site and see advertising as the very essence of what they do not want. Advertisers for years have done an amazing job of cultivating distaste and distrust in the way they peddle their product. Some of the most popular sites have become popular by keeping advertisements to a minimum. In short, advertisers have become radioactive – green in appearance, but deadly to anyone that gets too close. Mistake number two is that many site creators accept this model, willingly or with hesitation, knowing how this will affect the users of the site. Obviously, one needs money to keep the lights on and the servers running, but how long will those servers be needed if no one is showing up anymore? The third mistake is that the lack of dialogue between site creator and advertiser usually ends up with both parties trying to maximize their own best interest. Cheating or gaming click-through ad models is quite a common tactic for certain unscrupulous site creators. Meanwhile, advertisers create obtrusive and abrasive ads that intentionally pry the attention of the user from the site’s content to their ad. Most advertising is not through the culmination of a relationship between two groups but rather a advertising agency “renting” space on some site. Without a direct, working relationship that goes beyond just the exchange of money, there really is no interest in the a mutual, symbiotic partnership. No one really wins in the model – especially the most important group, the user. Eventually, this can end up with site loyalty diminishing. Meaning, as long as a site has something that cannot be found anywhere else, users will continue to visit, but as soon as another site offers the same content with less obtrusive ads, users will begin to migrate.

If money was a smaller part of the advertising equation, site creators would most likely make the advertiser’s business model, the advertiser’s willingness to collaborate and the potential benefit to the audience a higher priority when choosing ad partners. In addition, by paying less for ad space, advertisers would (or at least should) be more willing to work with the site creator to institute an ad strategy that does not clash or interfere with the site’s design/experience while still delivering the message the advertiser desires. Sure, less money swaps hands but better and more cohesive relationships could potentially be formed. Not to mention the audience almost surely would be grateful for the lack of popups, and blinking Flash banners. Some things are just worth the money (or lack thereof).

With the current money-driven model, some of the most worthy organizations and businesses for advertising are left out as they either cannot afford the cost of advertising online or they are unwilling to mar their reputation on a fairly tainted system. From my perspective, there are many small businesses, non-profits and other progressive/forward-thinking organizations that I would be wiling to support or partner up with for little to no money at all just due to my belief in their goals. As you can see, I already do such a thing for Terrapass and I make very little money from it. By ‘very little money’ I mean nothing – personally I could care less because it helps out what I feel is a good organization and I feel my audience benefits from it. I would much rather get very little money and form an advertising partnership with an organization that I believe in and is willing to work with me than a big advertiser that is willing to pay me 20 times as much for ‘space’ on my site. It is like dealing with the devil.

It is safe to say that many internet users have built up an immunity to most internet ads. These people basically can block out such content like it did not even exist on the site. If you take that to be the case, then there is a fairly large percentage of your audience where a certain portion of your site has just lost its revenue generating purpose. With some sites, this can be up to 30% or so of the home page. How is that acceptable? On top of that, many times those very ads have very little to do with the content of the site and basically never follow the visual style of the site. Traditional online advertisements are, in form and substance, nothing but appendages that are inefficient revenue generators for either party and are even more likely to frustrate a user’s experience with the site. However, users are taking matters into their own hands and it was bound to happen. Communities have taken action to find their own solution to advertising. There are now loads of plugins and extensions which will aid in the removal of ads from a site. My personal favorite is the Firefox extension Adblock Plus which has become one of the first add-ons I put into a new Firefox install. Users are sick of waiting for site creators and advertisers to figure out that what they are doing is neither working nor acceptable. Ultimately, it is the user that determines the success or failure of a site. It is not common for the community to be given the level of credit they deserve for this success, if any at all.

Final Thoughts

This article is not intended to make advertising a dirty word. However, poorly planned or only-for-the-money advertising is not beneficial for the advertiser, the site creator or the user. A more sustainable model with less money on the table will still bring in revenue for the site creator while not alienating the audience and allow advertisers to market their product without disenfranchising users. It is about time that advertising catch up with the rest of the internet by using a little ingenuity, sustainable thinking and common sense to bring online ads into the 21st century.