IDEA 2006, at least in theory, may be the most interesting, useful and innovative conference for Interaction Designers to date. Organized by my colleague from years long gone by, Peter Merholz, IDEA promises to be a thought fest stuffed with presenters from a colorful array of backgrounds. Here is how IDEA opens its web site:
IDEA 2006 brings together a diverse set of designers, creators, and researchers addressing a fundamental challenge we’re facing today - how to let everyday people take true advantage of the overwhelming mass of information that floods their lives.
There are currently many different kinds of folks working in this space, but they typically don’t talk with one another. For this event, we’ve made an effort to invite presenters across a stunning array of disciplines - museum design, information visualization, librarians, environmental design, user research, engineering, interaction design, product strategy, and more.
It’s important to recognize that this is not airy-fairy theoretical stuff. These presenters are practitioners, people actually doing this cross-channel, cross-media work with complex information. A primary goal of this conference is to give you the confidence to cross boundaries and engage with a wide range of problems.
Any time a leader from the United States National Park Service Interpretive Design Center is going to share information about why their materials and experiences are so tightly integrated, I’m all ears. There will be speakers from the BBC, the Seattle Library, Maya Design, and more; Linda Stone and Bruce Sterling are presenting.
Oh, and to top it off, the conference is happening at the new Seattle Library; the ultimate in neoarchitecture information space geekery! Will I see you there?
I came across this post on reveries magazine today that made me stop to think a little. Perhaps not a very coherent or thorough thought, but I’m sharing it nonetheless.
Today’s Cool News of the Day post titled: Wow v. Oh, describes how google engineers set about trying to come up with things that are new and different, that makes people say “wow”. This, I have to admit, has happened to me using some of google’s apps. Whereas, Yahoo tries to create new features within the context of its existing offerings, trying not to create ‘orphans’ of new applications.
The post describes how both companies are attempting to become more like each other, one trying to get engineers to develop integrated add-ons, and the other trying to emulate a fast-moving, innovative company.
CCTV Headquarters by OMA, Koolhaas
This made me think of OMA’s new headquarters for Central Chinese Television, which to me looks “wow” from the outside – but concerns me that it might not carry through that throughout the inside of the building. Inside it might be more of an ‘oh, okay’ kind of response. Google’s wow-ness in it’s applications definitely is short lived, when I find that much of the initial experience is about all there is to see. Not to be horrible, but it’s just that there’s not a lot more to the stand-alone app, like Calendar, than meets the eye. For me, Google and all the apps, feels a little like Adobe illustrator and Photoshop before ’93 – they might as well have been completely separate companies.
Whereas Yahoo’s chess game seems to reveal that it has all of it’s pieces moving in sync with each other. Now I don’t work for Yahoo – and this really isn’t a Yahoo-appreciation blog – but the Mail beta app continued to wow me for some time. I constantly discovered features that delighted me and worked the way I expected. Unfortunately the ‘wow this is slow’ took over and I moved on.
Now all this wraps up with a lingering thought that I had while reading this, and which won’t leave me since reading a preview copy of Dan Saffer’s new book: Are engineers designers?
I considered an observed difference between Yahoo + Google, the so-called Pepsi & Coke of our new media space, which is that Google seems to celebrate it’s engineers who invent and develop the new applications, whereas Yahoo celebrates (or buys) it’s designers and teams who invent and build their products.
So I wonder who has the better chance of sustaining a ‘wow’ both on the inside and out, and who has more work to do in becoming that? I know Google has designers, I’ve met a couple, but I know of a lot more designers at Yahoo and wonder how much the DNA of a team at either of the companies has to do with their product innovation and design?
In other news – we’re going to be posting our review of Dan Saffer’s new book: Designing for Interactions: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices, that was recently published by New Riders. Hopefully within the next few days, and I’ll be sure to expand on what it was he said that inspired this post.
It is no secret that Yahoos are involved with regularly occurring Hack Days. When I first started at the company, I participated in a Y! Travel Hack Day - yes, we designers (and all team members) are just as involved in designing the hacks as the engineers that code them. The hack that came from my first Hack Day endeavor was a Yahoo! Widget (a.k.a. Konfabulator widget) for FareChase.
My team of three spent about three hours designing it, four or five hours coding it, and that was that… we thought. Not bad for a day’s work.
The hack was passed around to various people in the company, and it quickly snowballed into a request for a real, living breathing widget. So after six months of politicking, red tape, tweaking, and backend engineering, Yahoo! released the FareChase widget Version 1.0.1a without much fanfare on July 8. We have had a couple thousand downloads at this point, and would love your feedback!
What does it do? The Widget finds the lowest air prices from dozens of travel sites for you and brings them right to your desktop. Hey, we are a lazy bunch, and prefer things to come to us - and now you can benefit from our laziness as well!
Today, Yahoo! Travel brought Trip Planner out of beta. There has been a ton of press coverage today, which is quite exciting. To see folks write about my work in Forbes, and in many national and international newspapers, online news outlets, and in the blogosphere (the most important outlet!) simply stokes my fire.
Some people would say that Y! has bet the farm on social media, and I say that it is an exciting place to be right now. Greg Sterling ponders today, “in many ways it’s the most impressive expression to date of Yahoo!’s social media strategy. Yahoo! Answers has received a great deal of attention recently (there’s an Answers integration with Travel) but the new Trip Planner is more fully realized as a product.” I think Greg hits the nail on the head, and there is only more smart, focused integration of Yahoo properties (in Travel and elsewhere) on the way. If the press and PR folks are missing some points, I would have to say that Trip Planner is focused on SIMPLICITY, and very concise, progressive disclosure of functionality. It doesn’t overwhelm, but hopefully it is helpful in all the right places. We also took great pains toward personalizing the experience based on other actions you have taken within Yahoo Travel and elsewhere - but that’s a hard topic and concept for the PR engine to spin, so you’ll have to read it here. 
While much of the trip creation process of Trip Planner existed when I started at Yahoo back in December, I led the design for many of the new features in Trip Planner, including the ability to explore geo-coded trips across the world. Rather than go into detail describing all of the features and new-skool Yahoo! coolness, I’ll just point you to the Trip Planner home page; go plan a trip!
To the Trip Planner team, I’m proud of the work we’ve done, and can’t wait to get started on Trip Planner 2.0. The Trip Planner engineers are amazing, and thanks to my fellow designers for all of the great feedback, idea generation, and help in bringing focus to the product (and the sweet visual design). There is so much to do still, and I look forward to seeing where we can take it.
Update: Be sure to check out Ivanka Trump’s Trip Plan to Dubai!
We’re sorry for the inconvenience for some of you who are looking for online distractions today, being the last day before a long weekend for many Europeans, and just another day we should have taken off for the rest of us.
I’m working on the site right now, as it may appear, and implementing a newer, fresher easier-on-the-eyes look for Push Button For.
Hopefully this and all kinks will be worked out before the weekend and new content and programming will resume on Monday (Tuesday for you Europeans).
Have a good weekend.
update: Any PC IE/FireFox users? Would you like to take a screengrab of any funkiness you see going on, and send it to us? A screengrab of the home page as experienced within Safari on OS X can be seen here. Thanks in advance for your help.
