I have a about 35-40 feeds that I follow daily. I was impressed with how Feedly stepped-up and made it easy to import all of my feeds from Google reader.

Since Google’s announcement last month about shutting down their Reader service, I had a brief moment of panic, followed by thoughts of what a potential pain in the ass it could be to setup my feeds all over again. As I started looking around for an alternative, I realized that the RSS reader space was alive and well in many other applications, some that I already knew of, some I hadn’t heard of before, I was relieved.

Having been a Google Reader user for almost as long as the service has been around, I had everything set up exactly how I liked it, including a quick way to re-tweet articles by automatically starring them.

Now that I’ve settled into using Feedly everyday, enjoying their ‘better-looking’ personalized magazine-style layout, I am reminded of how digital content has evolved.

Not to overstate the obvious but we seldom think about the daily buffet of content that we consume for free through these kinds of services. Its a fact that I often tried to bring to the surface with publishers when I was working on digital strategies for ten daily newspapers in Canada.

A strategic insight that could have perhaps shaped the way publishers market and distribute their content online but was sadly overlooked and dismissed under the ‘kill what you don’t understand’ category.  With paywalls erected on news and magazine websites these days, the effort has hardly made a a ripple in the digital-reader pool.

I’m not talking about the ‘power-users’, I’m talking about Joe-average user who doesn’t even need to know what an RSS feed is in order to select and add content to applications such as Flipboard and Feedly.

Their behavioral patterns in how they collect content and why – is what I’m interested in. Newspapers don’t want to think about it because the emphasis is no longer on local sources, rather the emphasis is on what the user feels is good content to collect. Content that is personalized with everything the user wants and none of what they don’t want.

Media companies and publishers could save their industry and may even find a way to get users to pay for digital content if they used the RSS reader ‘smorgasbord’ model as a starting point. From there, they could develop the next stage in evolution and find new ways to add value by creating services that are smarter than your average RSS reader.

As I’ve said in previous posts, its the “SERVICE” that is missing from the digital media model. No one will pay for content (save video – maybe). Consumers, however, will pay for services. When  home delivery was a valued service (now almost defunct) consumers had the peace of mind that if they skipped reading the paper for a couple of days – at least they still received a service worth paying for.

Perhaps through the acquisition of hip, new content apps (Yahoo buying Summly) , some media companies may be spared. So far, its too early to tell.

One thing is for certain, it will require a giant leap-frog jump to meet current user-behaviour trends and the ability to trust ‘true’ digital professionals if media companies want to save themselves over the next five years.

Related Links:

New York Times drops paywall on videos thanks to Acura & Microsoft

Thanks to the surge in app development driven by mobile devices and the wide adoption of HTML5, it is easier than ever to architect a solution made up of components that work well together. UX designers, planners and developers have never had it so easy.

So what now? Web UX is at it’s peak. Most web UX folks are specializing more and more in the mobile space (including yours truly) as a natural progression to the next wave of technology and guess what? It’s kind of not mobile…

Mobile will still be at the center of the solutions we build, because we still need to need some manual control over what we do. Websites and – even applications are stupid. They don’t have any sort of real intelligence, they are either meant to display content and data, run a search or perform a defined set of functions. Sometimes you have a few algorithms that feign intelligence but for the most part, we, as users, still need to input data in the right places to make things work.

The next wave of UX will be outside the box (literally). I’ve been saying this for years. back in 2005, everyone sort of just looked at me like I was mad. It won’t be so focused on display technology. Instead the focus will be on artificial intelligence or sophisticated programs that reduce the amount of data we need to input.

A great example of where this is happening can now be seen in iphone apps that interface with your home thermostat, so you can adjust your heating and cooling settings remotely. Smartphones can start cars, act as your PVR remote and there are countless more apps that integrate into your environment. Next up, apps that can predict or respond to changes in situations so all you really need to do is monitor via your mobile device.

This is the era of appliance technology – meets mobile technology – meets data from the web and the user. The beginnings of affordable home automation and control over our environments through a central mobile device.

Are you ready for the next wave of job titles? Environmental Experience! Not UX but EX. Okay, we can still call it UX if you like – because there will always be a user. The focus will shift from your on-screen experience to what’s going on in your environment.

Your canvas: a real-world space – The palette: intelligent personal assistants (SIRI will get smarter – don’t worry), refrigerators that do cool stuff (other cool stuff), washing machines that can get the laundry going when you’re not there, beverage machines that will make anything you want, even ‘Tea, Earl-Grey, Hot’ before you get out of bed.

DONT PANIC! Unless you really can’t let go of your wireframes and figure out how to architect this environment. Oh Yes, as an EX or UX professional, you will need to be more cognizant of technology in order to use this new palette. You’ll need to know what component works with the latest artificial intelligence and which brand appliances will work together, while driving towards the goal of less data input from the user (less work).

If that isn’t mind boggling enough, you will need to factor-in personal robotic assistants – in about ten to fifteen years. They might cost as much as a car but everyone will want one. They will be the new iPhone of 2028.

Architecting this will be fun and super exciting. You will be profiling users and coming up with better ways to create archetypes for these new spaces. Beyond that, it will be pulling the respective pieces together that result in an enjoyable, easy to use environment rather than a more complicated frustrating one.
And of course, there will always be user testing – lots and lots of user testing.

Related Videos:

1. Print will disappear sooner than you think

2012 ended with Newsweek going digital-only and abandoning print after 80 years.

What most publishers don’t want to face, especially those who are close to retirement age, is that they no longer control content distribution. The print model is no longer sustainable with print advertising on a steady decline.

Of course by now most publications have digital content in the form of web, mobile and everything in between. Pay-walls or paid-metering now being used on many news publications in Canada and the US became the trend in 2012 as media companies and publishers desperately try to get readers to pay for digital content. The revenue gained from paid-metering doesn’t offset the decline in print revenue however, given that metering just means that they need to also offset the decline in page views and sales in digital advertising.

So they have two choices; stop the printed edition and drastically reduce the size of their staff and learn to survive in this (not so new) digital jungle OR shut down altogether and go out of business.

Twitter is the new newspaper. Newspapers can’t comprehend the shift from a local distribution model to a model that embraces the new digital news reader. That is, people who consume content on social media as their main source – socially aggregated content. People don’t care as much for local content these days, they really just want good content. You can pretty much aggregate the type of content you like by following select users on Twitter .

Oh – and by the way, reading content aggregated through Twitter makes pay-walls more-or-less irrelevant. Publishers will need to find new ways to make revenue in this digital world.

It will all come down to services, bundling content and a more data-driven data model.

My new content application prototype, Beamwire CL solves a lot of these problems, so I’ll be talking to a few potential media partners in 2013.

Related Link: Newsweek abandons print after 80 years, goes online only

2. The shift from social to private will begin

Okay, the trolls who are out there will sling mud at this one saying that if you want more privacy, stop using social media. Thanks in advance for overstating the obvious.

Now the reality is that most users have their lives so entrenched in social media that shutting off may be tough to do. There are so many services attached to core social applications that it might become a bit overwhelming to manage.

The opportunity in 2013 is to help users get some of their privacy back. Social media is still a popularity contest and your “social equity” is quantified by how many followers you have. This trend can backfire when you mix large lists of “friends”, most of whom you don’t really know with highly personal information and details about your life.

Identity theft has been on the rise as a result and I think now more than ever, users need tools to help them organize and separate the popularity contest from information that they really only want to share with a select few.

Part of this is education but some folks may be too lazy to bother with learning fast enough. Services that help automate privacy will become popular and help users get some control over their private lives again. The opportunities are too numerous to mention here but keep an eye out for emerging startups that address this issue in 2013.

 3. TV will emerge from a new digital cocoon

TV has already changed so much with users moving away from traditional cable companies and adopting alternative means for getting TV shows, movies and video content. Apple TV has been one of the front-runners with users paying à la carte for content rather than paying big fat subscription fees for channels they never watch.

In Canada, this trend may be moving slower than it has in the US thanks to monopolies by companies like Rogers and Bell – Antitrust anyone?

Regardless, users aren’t waiting, they are already going around the problem and taking control of their programming experience through other means. Take into account new display technologies, better entertainment options on gaming consoles (i.e. Xbox 360) and integrated services through the ever expanding Apple TV (they are rumored to have a TV coming out in 2013), you will see a major shift in 2013 in how users consume programming.

Related Link: Apple TV hinted at by CEO Tim Cook

 4. Mobile will be the nucleus of our digital ecosystem

This is already happening but will become more prevalent in 2013.

Where your PC or laptop used to be hub of your digital universe not so long ago, the smartphone has now taken its place putting the PC on the periphery. This makes perfect sense since the smartphone is the one piece of tech that users always have access to 24/7.

Now the smartphone acts as our remote control, home monitoring center, music library, gaming console, they can start our cars and they initiate data synchronization from almost any location.

The eco-system will continue to grow around our smartphones as 2013 unfolds.

5. UX is going to be huge

I think 2012 is the first year I’ve seen a flurry of job postings from companies trying to hire their very own UX person. UX education is becoming more formalized and it seems companies are realizing that they need this service in-house in order to be successful in a digital world.

That is all well and good, however not all UX folks are cut from the same cloth and hiring a dedicated UX person may or may not be the best decision to make in 2013. When many hiring managers are still trying to figure out the difference between UX and UI (they are the same thing no?) – then maybe it’s better to start with outside help first.

To be clear, a UX expert should have UI (user interface design), user interaction design  and information architecture under their belt with a thorough knowledge of how to apply cognitive ergonomics and solve design problems across multiple platforms. In addition, they should have experience in user testing – formal and informal.

It might seem like a lot to ask but then this is no small role in any organization. You can’t become a good UX professional by attending a few 3-day conferences. User experience takes, well…experience. You won’t be good at it really until you’ve been doing it for at least 4-5 years (I’ve been doing it for 14 years).

The option that should not be overlooked in 2013 is hiring these UX folks on contract. Are you sure you really need someone full-time / permanent? Another option is looking for a design company that specializes in UX. That might be the best way for non-UXers in your organization to learn how the process works before you make the decision to invest in more headcount.

If you do decide to go with someone full-time, make sure they can do a few things first:

• Research – they can use metrics and know how to find data on current user trends
• Business Goals – they understand your business goals and know how to cross reference your goals with a successful user experience.
• Prototyping – They need to know how to generate effective prototypes for multiple devices. I can hear the UX trolls coming down the mountain on this one! Many UXers have made their living from producing reams of documentation. This worked well for web pages at one time but it just doesn’t put things into context fast enough when you’re looking at a user experience on multiple devices.
• Less documentation – this goes hand-in-hand with the third point. Strategic documentation is still valid but should be considered in small doses and when it really is needed to clarify certain issues. (i.e. do you really need to produce another eco-system?)

Part of the fun in casting predictions is watching how many of them come true. I will elaborate throughout the year on some of the above as things progress.

Happy New Year everyone and all the best in 2013!

Here we are now in December and Apple finally did the right thing by allowing Google maps back into the app store. It was an obvious solution to a problem they created for themselves, which left users confused and upset after the iOS 6 update.

Last week, Google maps became the most downloaded app in the app store (over 10 million downloads at the time of this post) – not surprising with all the iPhone users out there looking to restore their map experience to its previous capabilities.

Releasing Google maps back into the app store as a downloadable app has created an opportunity for Google to add some new features to further rival Apple’s Maps.

In Map view, the slide-up panel with extra information such as street view, reviews, social media comments and user submitted photos makes for a more robust map experience than the previous Google maps.

Also in map view, you can now access alternate views such as Traffic, public transit, satellite and Google Earth  from a right-side sliding panel.

Google didn’t just stop there. Most of Google’s iOS apps have been updated with new features and enhancements, making the most of the free PR created by the Map-gate scandal.

From Apple’s point of view, lesson learned – I suppose. Even if you’re at war with a competitor, you need to pick your battles carefully. From the users’ point of view, Google maps and iPhone already made a good partnership – why ruin a good thing?

Some Other articles on the topic: 

Proof That Google Is Beating Apple On The iPhone

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/proof-that-google-is-beating-apple-on-the-iphone-2012-12?op=1#ixzz2FKPh1WPt

Apple’s wrong turn leads Google Maps on iPhone to 10M downloads in 2 days

Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/17/google-maps-iphone-10m/#1Y3gX7q7tuFoBZbe.99

There is no way I can cover all the options in this post but I thought I would narrow it down to a top three  list to perhaps make it a bit easier for prospective shoppers. To make it fair, I’m sticking to the 7” variety of tablet because this format appeals to a larger mass market versus their 10” counterparts.

This is not an in-depth review, rather I am reviewing each as a prospective buyer while comparing tablets in-store. The elevator pitch for each tablet will be evaluated based on how easy or fun it is to use in the first 3 minutes of trying it out.

 1. The Kindle Fire

• Display: 7-inch multi-touch display with IPS (In-Plane Switching) LCD technology
• Operating System: An Open source (forked) version of Android Gingerbread
• Connectivity: 802.11n WiFi and USB 2.0, and 4G version
• Storage: 8GB
• Processor: Texas Instruments’ dual-core 1.5GHz CPU
• Price: $159 – $199
• Application capabilities: web browsing, email, video streaming, e-books
• My UX Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Test Drive

Amazon, along with most of their major competitors, is morphing their e-readers into tablets and for good reason. Tablets are coming down in price and e-readers will most likely disappear or become endangered species in the next two years.

The Kindle fire is the best selling android tablet in it’s price category. It’s persistent functions and buttons are intuitive and placed where you would expect them to be.

For it’s price, it’s pretty fast and powerful, able to handle web browsing, video streaming and offers a nice display for magazines and books.

If you are shopping for an avid reader who enjoys having the cross-function of web and email, the Kindle Fire is a solid choice.

 2. Samsung Galaxy Tab

• Display: 7.0″ WSVGA
• Operating System: Android 3.2 Honeycomb
• Connectivity: Wi Fi 802.11 b/g/n, USB 2.0 and Bluetooth 3.0
• Storage: 32 GB
• Processor: RAM: 592MB, ROM: 512MB – C110, 1GHz, Cortex A8 Hummingbird Application
• Price: $249 – $288 – depending on the retailer
• Application capabilities: web browsing, email, video streaming, e-books, camera, video recording
• My UX Rating: 4 out of 5

Test Drive

This is probably the best Galaxy tab yet. I have never been a big fan of the galaxy but I think they finally hit a home run with this version. It was pretty easy to get into with the persistent button placement making it intuitive to jump in and out of tasks. I see this as being the best choice for business travelers this year with its solid email capabilities and powerful hardware features. I know users who have stopped lugging their laptops to the airport in favor of doing everything right on this device.

It does a lot more than you would expect a tablet to do – maybe more than the average user needs. The price on the Galaxy Tab varies and to be honest, I’m still trying to figure out why. Overall, it gives you probably the most muscle for your dollar, even at the higher price point.

 3. iPad Mini

• Display: 7.9‑inch (diagonal) LED-backlit Multi‑Touch display with IPS technology
• Operating System: IOS 6
• Connectivity: Wi Fi 802.11n 2.4 GHZ, lightening to USB, Bluetooth 4.0 (3g/4g lte cellular available)
• Storage: 16, 32 and 64 GB models
• Processor: Dual-core A5
• Price: $329 (16GB), $429 (32GB), $529 (64GB) – WiFi
• Application capabilities: web browsing, email, video streaming, e-books, camera, video recording, IOS Apps
• My UX Rating: 5 out of 5

Test Drive

“You already know how to use it”, Steve Jobs once said when unveiling the first iPad. I would say in the realm of marketing statements, this one is true. Apple’s IOS is one of the most user-friendly GUI ever designed. All the features you need, none of the ones you don’t.

Power-users who love spending hours customizing their experience may not agree but if we’re talking about a mass market and mass-adoption, the iPad is still pretty hard to beat. Within 30 seconds, you’re discovering everything that matters to you. When you have more time on your hands, you have the app store with the world’s most popular apps available.

Simplicity is the key: Keeping user options to a minimum has always been the hallmark of Apple’s hardware and IOS symbiosis. Something Android needs to learn how to do as an option.

Machine learning on IOS isn’t quite there yet but Siri has a large role to play in moving in that direction. Even on WiFi, Siri is finding restaurants checking weather and running searches – just as she would on my iPhone.

For most users, its about the apps. People choose iPads because they can have the best selection of apps. The mini is $129 more than both the Kindle Fire and the Kobo Arc (16GB models) but when you test drive it, you will know where those extra dollars went – better usablity.

If you love someone….

The winner in this review is of course, the iPad mini. If you love the person you’re buying a tablet for, this is the one to invest in. As I said, its a little higher in price than you might be willing to spend on a 7- inch tablet but it packs a lot of value into a small package.

I think back to when I bought my first iPad, which I paid over $600 for – and it didn’t have half the power and capabilities the mini has. I recently bought the mini and spent an evening watching a movie on it (Master and Commander: The far side of the World). After about 15 minutes, I completely forgot about the size of the device and was enjoying the movie as much if not more than I did on my 10-inch iPad.

The touch points for social media obviously go far beyond a share button these days and it is impossible to separate social from the overall strategic design.  I guess many UXers might avoid recommending APIs or might be shy about it since they fall into tech territory.

I might be one of the few UX designers out there who include not just the “what” but the “how” in coming up with a user flow and strategy. In other words, the “how” will involve the tech components that propel the user’s journey.  This is not to limit the choices when formulating a UX strategy, rather, it is a method of adding credibility to the design.

Get familiar with social APIs

Research, research, research. Yes, I know, most of the documentation around APIs is written for a developer audience but that’s okay. As long as you understand the intended functionality and how it might be integrated into your UX strategy, you can make a recommendation.

Choosing the right social API for the job

You’ll need to research which APIs do what and how you might get APIs to creatively work together within your overall UX design. Think of it like a subway line. Your design must indicate where the passenger needs to change trains and get to where they need to go with an easy way to make a return trip. There is a lot of opportunity in getting APIs to to work together in ways that may not be intended by the respective developers who made them.

Future Proof 

This is a pretty broad and sometimes daunting term – “future proof”. More accurately, make sure that whatever API you recommend can be replaced by something else or closed off without creating a dead-end. Your overall design should not solely depend on a social component to be a success.

As we know from the past five years, APIs get discontinued, disallowed or disappear altogether in the nebulous, fast changing social media world. So it’s important to keep your design modular enough so that it doesn’t fall apart if the API suddenly becomes unavailable.

It was highly anticipated, highly speculated and would have been the flagship product to usher-in the era of Tim Cook taking over as CEO.

I didn’t get one. I still have my iPhone 4s, which is only a year old and to me it seems the improvements on the iPhone 5 are really only marginal – not enough to do an early upgrade right now.

The hardware product, however, is only part of the story. On a day-to-day basis, hardware doesn’t make much of an impact on how you use your smartphone. The thing noticed most by users was the iOS6 software upgrade. I downloaded and installed the software upgrade on my 4s – reluctantly, I might add.

All the reviews that raged over the Maps app had me a bit worried. You see, I am a heavy Google maps user. My iPhone is my GPS device and Google Maps is what helps me get to client meetings on time. I thought I would take the reviews with a grain of salt and go ahead and install the new software upgrade anyway. Much to my dismay, the new Apple Maps app was even more disappointing than I expected.

I tested the maps application with a few addresses around Toronto and it seemed to be fairly accurate. I haven’t tried it outside of the city yet so I can’t say for sure if any accuracy bugs are there that effect me personally. What’s glaringly obvious though is the absence of street-view as found in Google maps.

I clicked on the little blue arrow expecting street view and got a sort of lame info screen with a photo montage-screen saver viewer, which was no help at all. I miss street view.

I used it religiously when I was looking for buildings and landmarks near destinations and it was always a life saver.

As a user I feel like Apple has cast my mobile life back into the dark ages and all because Apple refuses to share the sandbox with Google. As a consumer, I would say my loyalty to Apple and Google products is about on par. I don’t care who produces the tools I need, I just want to know that I’m getting the best tool for the job. For geography, Google Maps has been a staple app and in my opinion it is the best tool for the job.

I can’t help but think back to a time when Apple was sans-Steve in the early to mid 1990s and how products were being released – well, kind of in the same fashion – half baked. I know Steve Jobs as well as anyone who read his biography and I’d like to think that if he were here today, the Maps app would never have gone to market in this state. It is a critical, highly used app and should have been at least as good as Google maps to make the iPhone 5 launch a success. This was not a place where Apple should have compromised.

Sure, there were bugs and issues with previous iphone launches (antennae issues and such) but I think this one is going to leave a mark for a while. If nothing else, it is definitely testing the loyalty of Apple fans who are now the have-nots compared to Android users who are still enjoying the Street-View feature on Google Maps.

I know Apple is working on the bugs in Maps but that just doesn’t cut it. If they really cared, they would allow Google Maps into the app store and let the users decide which one they want to use. As an Epic PR move and to show that Apple is the bigger man – Tim Cook would do well make that wish a reality.

The sum of these objects make up your experience. Some of these objects create an experience and some of them are part of a larger experience. Some parts are designed to be ignored most of the time and some are designed to get your attention for specific tasks.

Your alarm clock and the alarm tone or ‘tune’ you choose to wake up to everyday defines the experience of waking up. The alarm clock was designed to provide multiple experiences, taking into account that there are heavy, medium and light sleepers. The user chooses the sound they want to wake up to thus personalizing the experience. This can be considered a micro-experience in the overall macro-experience that make up a succession of tasks that is getting up in the morning.

So far, I’m talking about the factors that are predictable, there are also factors that are unpredictable. The weather outside will determine how much natural light will get inside the room. Maybe the user has decided to install heavy blinds or curtains that will make this irrelevant. Maybe they went with medium-opacity curtains to allow some natural light to come into the room when they wake up. If it’s winter, this may also be irrelevant.

Our world is made up of a series of micro and macro experiences and even with the experience of getting up in the morning, there are multiple layers of complexity and multiple factors influencing the experience from day to day.

The one thousand designers I’m referring to – all designed within factors that will effect the experience of their respective product. Some products are designed to work within stringent parameters and much of the time, the designer has defined for users – ‘how their product should be used’ – usually in an owners manual or installation guide. This is designing with an ideal in mind and communicating the ideal thus mitigating the risks and leaving it up to the user to use the product as intended.

This is the key differentiator when comparing user experience design to other design disciplines (i.e. industrial design, interior design etc). As UX designers, we must design for how users will use, misuse and abuse a product. We don’t have the luxury of defining the ideal use case and holding users to it. Our design must be adaptive.  It’s why we get hired.

We also must be cognizant that a product can be an experience or that a number of products combined can make up an experience. That last point is probably what UXers struggle with the most. The current trend is that UX designers don’t design products, they design the overall experience. This is only partially true.

We should be looking at UX design as a field that is performed in an arena.

That arena will sometimes be a product and other times it will be an environment made up of many products. The touch-points would be the user interface (UI) and the goals or success measurements should be clearly defined. In other words, it doesn’t matter whether we’re designing a product or guiding a user through many products to reach a goal.

Where UX design adds value and works in conjunction with other design disciplines is:

1. Our design must strive to be self evident. If we have done this, the intended use should be clear.
2. We will also design for known cases of improper use, meaning that we build-in touch-points and opportunities for getting users back on course when they do not use something as intended.
3. Finally, we cannot really design the user’s experience 100% – there are so many factors that cannot be predicted and therefore, we provide help when something goes wrong. This is where a user’s manual, help guide or service call is built into the experience.

In all cases, the design is intended to get the user to the goal. We will have more control over the experience when the arena is an end-to-end product versus when we are creating an experience made up of many products that may or may not work well together.

So where should UX designed be used? On any product that needs to be self-evident. Most often and not by accident, we end up designing for software or web applications because of the need for those experiences to be self-evident but UX design can be injected into almost anything virtual or real. Our job is to work with a thousand designers from multiple disciplines and do the thinking for the user so they don’t have to.

I’ll admit the pricing wasn’t always competitive, however, we eased the transition for the consumer by offering a bricks to clicks strategy. This strategy involved incentives for consumers to buy more online and bundling products to make the value-add proposition stronger.

At the time, Amazon was leading the charge. They were spending an exorbitant amount of money on marketing and planting the idea of shopping from the comfort of your own home.

When we look back from where we are today, Amazon is still leading the charge and is stronger than ever. Yesterday, they posted that their earnings exceeded their projections by 10% and their net sales increased 34% this year. They have become the largest online department store with the built-in e-commerce intelligence to understand what the consumer might want next.

Today, we have much more to consider in our online shopping strategies. If you’re building online shopping around a specific brand, you need to make it social and it needs to be targeted on the consumers’ lifestyle.

It’s not just social for the sake of social, rather it’s social in a way that allows the consumer to find the items that suit their lifestyle and share them with their circle of friends. Fab.com does a great job of building communities around things people like. It’s mostly geared towards Urban hipsters, nevertheless, the idea of making the products seems like treasure – treasure you can’t find anywhere else, is what makes the experience appealing to consumers.

Pricing isn’t so much a problem anymore as most retailers have architected their product fulfillment to factor-in the cost of delivery and the absorption of that cost in order to make buying online much more enticing (free shipping for X-number of dollars).

Consumers are more confident now. Even with clothing, which used to be risky to buy online, it seems we’ve almost cleared that hurdle as consumers settle into the brands that they know in terms of sizing and style.

I think we’re now ready to go a step further with mobile devices. Stores don’t really need to keep as much inventory as they used to. They only need to offer enough sizes and styles for a consumer to try it on.

If it’s not the right color, no problem. They can use a branded mobile app to make their purchase from the store and have the right color delivered to their home for the same price. This tactic in combination with mobile payment through smartphones, makes it easier for the customer to get what they want and builds a great deal of confidence in the brand.

There a number of ways to leverage mobile and we’re just now scratching the surface. Starbucks’ mobile app has seen huge growth. Over 45 million transactions have been made over the last 14 months with their app.

While the idea of the mobile wallet is still in it’s infancy, I think consumers will be much more amenable to swapping their store credit cards for an easy app to make in-store purchases, using the same account to also shop online. Oh, and no more lining up at the till!

This system, coupled with a stronger lifestyle brand can make for a powerful combination when it comes to today’s consumers.

Links of Interest:

Starbucks’ CEO Discusses Q2 2012 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

AMAZON.COM ANNOUNCES FIRST QUARTER SALES UP 34% TO $13.18 BILLION

The world we live in has rapidly changed over the last three years to a point where we are expected to get an application running on several different devices.

In previous posts, I’ve extolled the virtues of HTML5, CSS3 and the new Javascript libraries and APIs for rapid application development. HTML and CSS have come a long way and they’re all grown up now. Not only do they make rapid development more feasible, the same tools can be used to create rapid, interactive wireframes or prototypes.

One thing that has always been true about wireframes, clients really don’t understand them. I have always endeavored to wireframe in a way that is client-friendly, however capturing all the interactions in a static document can still make it difficult to put wireframes into context. You get very good at walking clients through the interactions (because chances are, they aren’t reading the functional notations) and you can capture  a lot of what needs to be communicated if you’ve carefully set-up the flow of your wireframe deck.

In this age of more start-up, less agency, the workflow is very much about the path of least resistance. In the past, I have done both static wireframing and interactive wireframing (or prototyping). I can tell you that it all comes down to time. There are many factors to consider. The scope and scale of the app will determine your approach. The number of core interactions and the fine-line between almost building the app and actually prototyping.

I would say that if it takes longer to place a static element on the screen and annotate it’s interaction, then prototyping is the best way to go. I’ve done my fair share of interactive wireframes in HTML, mostly using tools like Dreamweaver. There are newer tools, specifically designed for non-coders with a WYSIWYG interface that can be useful, such as Balsamiq.

Overall, I find WYSIWYG editors to be more frustrating and time-consuming. There is always something missing and you don’t have the degree of control that you would have when working directly with style sheets.

I’ve always known how to write code and have updated my skills in HTML5 and CSS3, so my preference is to prototype using some of the new frameworks available such as Foundation, which comes with a fairly extensive set of styles to work with. This, in combination with other tools like Placeholdit and Orbit, make rapid prototyping much easier and well, faster. Again, it comes down to time and choosing the right tool for the job. You really need to know whether it’s going to take you longer to create interactive wireframes vs. static wireframes. If your client is paying you by the hour, you need to make a responsible choice.

As I eluded earlier, the modern mindset is to think more like a startup and less like an agency. Today it’s all about product design and not so much about designing for a specific project. Keeping this in mind, it behooves all UX designers and Information Architects to have solid prototyping processes in their toolbox. It’s part of the job, more now than ever.

Here’s my recommendation: If you don’t know how to code using HTML5, CSS3 and some basic Javascript – that’s the first place you need to start. Really, it’s not rocket science and with the new code standards, it’s never been easier.

My toolkit includes:

Omnigraffle for wireframing (lots of great templates and libraries on Graffletopia and you’re probably already using many of them)

Foundation – for rapid prototyping. It’s up to you how you fine-tune the fidelity in your prototype. If you are pitching an idea to a group of investors, you should work with a designer to get a higher-fidelity prototype. Sorry IA community, I know I’m bending the rules on this one but it’s a fact. Investors aren’t doling out seed funding based on wireframes alone.

Orbit: Quick jQuery image slider plugin – this one is slick and dead easy to use.

Placehold it - An easy placeholder generator that really works well.

Did I mention CSS3? Learn to manipulate CSS3 and prototyping becomes a breeze.

Adobe CS5 Photoshop and Illustrator: Everyone in digital should at least know the basics of Photoshop. For a UX designer, knowing your way around Illustrator is a huge bonus. You will, at some point, need to create custom vector elements.You should include conceptual drawing in your toolbox as well. It doesn’t have to be realistic or “polished”. But you should know how to do a good line drawing.

A special thanks to the team at ZURB for pioneering kick-ass processes for interaction design and for providing so many great tools!