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!
It’s no secret: I am a bicycling nut. And of late, my tastes have turned very much toward the classic, bird-like lugged steel frames of a time gone by. I guess my techno-centric work life pushes me toward a personal life of dirt, twine, shellac, and other things that can not be had from the confines of a digital device.
There is a fellow named Chris Kulczycki, who via his Velo Orange blog, has begun to build a classic cyclo-touring business by interacting directly with his customers, and potential customers. The recent post that really struck me as interesting - and ballsy - was this one. Chris asks an open-ended question which has sparked a fervent rash of comments, requests, and of course, doubt. He asks with confidence, “Now don’t get excited, but what if Velo Orange had frames made?” He then lists a few core piece of his frame idea, and finishes his post with, “What else would you want to see on this imaginary frame?”
This is the most concrete example I’ve seen of watching a person build a business, and more importantly, getting explicit and public feedback from his *potential* customers to influence his product design decisions - all via his blog (and probably email).
Are there other interesting examples of this type of thing out there?
Oh, and I have to point you to the Velo Orange store to see the beautiful collection of hand-made bicycling goods that Chris is designing.
In my continuing search for ways in which people have implemented the One Button Interface, I ask that you post photos of your crosswalk buttons, or send them to us (see Masthead for how to get in touch), and we will!
Two weekends ago I was on my Saturday morning ride of about 45 measly miles. About ten miles into the ride I noticed the LCD display beginning to fade. By mile 30 the display had faded into memory, and I pedaled harder, wondering if I could get home before the battery lost the last bit of juice.
I feared that the records of all my pain, sweat, scabs, and fun would be lost into the digital space vacuum.
I pedaled harder, frantically even. When I got home, I went directly to the local battery depot (KMart), purchased a battery, and immediately installed it when I got home. Surprise! All data gone, including my calibration settings for my wheel size, auto-startup/stop settings, and all of my statistical data. My highly personalized cyclometer was acting like it didn’t know me. Like I hadn’t spent hundreds of hours with it over the past two years. Like a total stranger.
Needless to say, but I’ll say it anyway: this was quite the frustrating experience. Why could Cat Eye designers/enginners not give me a warning that, “Hey dude, your battery is getting low. Time to replace it.” Or better yet, why not stick a backup battery, or solid-state storage in that honking piece of plastic to record that miniscule amount of information? I can’t wait until we’re finished with Distance Logger.
There is a better way, but Cat Eye isn’t paying attention. And here is the offender:
It was only a matter of time before designers would start misusing the tag cloud form factor to represent an information architecture. Two that come to mind as I write this are CollectiveX and Yahoo Tech.
There is an inherent problem in using tags (or tag clouds) to make up for your IA laziness. Tags were born from a need to add findability value, insight, and delight to the giant mountains of information that pile up in online communities - they are the Library Science antithesis of a Taxonomy. They are sloppy. They aren’t controlled. They aren’t top-down. They are generated by the people for other people to discover - or not. I hate to say the words, but they go hand in hand with User-Generated Content. They are the DNA of folksonomies.
When designers or companies come along, and take something that, for the past few years has been The User-Generated Lighthouse at the Point of Information Overload, and turn it into a cheap way to navigate a controlled corporate vocabulary, we have to question their intent, or perhaps their lack of intent.
I especially wonder about the decision to place a tag cloud form factor in web sites/apps where there is a huge amount of comingled editorial and user-generated content - for the purpose of navigation of the designer’s Information Architecture. Was it done for the sake of being Web2.0? Was it done because structured navigation has become passé? Was it simply done without an argument for why it should be there? In the case of Yahoo! Tech the purpose of the tag cloud changes depending on your context. On the home page it is top level categories. Inside a category it represents popular searches withtin that category. Eh?
I certainly believe that editorial content and authentic media can coexist in the same information space. In fact I would say that they are symbiotic in many ways - a system of checks and balances. But designers need to question harder their motives to use certain form factors in user interfaces. And in the case of tags, tag clouds, and tagging, keep your Information Architecture out of my tags.