By Philip Webb on 2 December 2009
I’ve been intrigued by the user experience challenge that electronic readers make on physical books. Beyond issues like e-ink and screen sizes, it’s the versatility of the physical books that sets them apart. Book lovers are used to riffling pages, recycling books to their friends, or dropping them on the floor!
E-reader design is at a crossroads. I think the aim should be to harness the flexibility and connectivity of technology rather than to mimic paper. Here are some ideas:
- Flexible rights agreements that allow copies of books to be sent peer-to-peer
- Enable the swapping of quotes – make it easy to crop off excerpts and send them as email or text
- Merge audio and text experiences into one ‘copy’ – read Chapter One on the Tube, listen to Chapter Two while driving
- Allow easy annotations and make it easy to share them
- Connect the text seamlessly to other material e.g. the glossary to the language used in Sea of Poppies
- Facilitate interactive book clubs – e.g. allow fans to meta-tag their favourite books
This could be the way to persuade readers to love e-readers as much as they currently love books.
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By Philip Webb on 19 August 2009
Our recent local council website usability report found that many local council websites still have a lot of room for improvement when it comes to usability. However, it seems that Google now wants to help local councils with their online offering with its Local government resource centre.
Offered in partnership with Directgov, LG Communications and the Society of IT Management (Socitm), Google’s resource centre offers a variety of online tools designed to help local government organisations to:
- Make their websites easier to find
- Improve the user journeys on their websites
- Improve efficiency and reduce website costs
- Build revenue through their websites
- Help local business use digital to their advantage
The resources on offer such as Google Analytics, Website Optimiser, AdWords and AdPlanner certainly have the potential to be useful to local councils, but the question is whether the decision makers will see the value in and also get over any fear of using such an abundance of web-based tools.
Time will tell, but one thing’s for sure - the opportunity to save money through the resources on offer, and the strategic partnerships Google has developed for this venture could just swing its widespread adoption in the local government sector.
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By Philip Webb on 13 May 2009
Creating a mood board is a great way to visualise, develop and communicate design concepts. It can be a useful frame of reference for interface/website design, storyboarding, brand design, fashion design - in short any kind of creative endeavour, including those that aren’t explicitly visual. The idea is to collect images and objects that encapsulate a “feeling” or direction that reflects what the designer is trying to achieve.
A great online tool for creating moodboards is provided by Image Spark. A free account gets you 1GB of space to create up to 2 mood boards. Creating a library of images is made easy with the plug-in (Firefox). You can also upload your own images, or browse the libraries of others in the “community” to collect images. Then just arrange your images into a mood board using the simple, intuitive interface. The tagging facility opens up the community content so that you can see interesting collections of similar images uploaded by everyone.
It’s unclear whether future upgrades will involve a cost or not. The site’s success will depend ultimately on whether the community takes off. The simple interface is a step in the right direction, although if I have a gripe, only plug-ins for Firefox are available at the moment. The site can also be pretty slow. Having said that, it’s free, useful and compelling!
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