2011 in preview by Nieman

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Most powerful

interfaces para informar:

UOL

twitter 

Twitter visualization

(via Tiago Dória)

RockMelt, a interface reconfigurada

RockMelt, novo browser do Facebook: o conceito de transmídia na sua forma mais expressiva até agora. Resta saber quem vai apostar na reconfiguração da interface a esse ponto.

"É a estrutura, imbecil"

Parafreaseando James Carville, marqueteiro de Bill Clinton, na campanha de 1992, sobre o que é fundamental em eleição e política ["It's the economy, stupid!"], o artigo Écrire pour le web: c’est la structure, imbécile!, da owni.fr Digital Journalism, discute a estrutura do texto na web. 


Tendo como aporte ideias estruturalistas, ainda que recheadas de links e com bibliografia antiga, o texto aborda questões pertinentes do jornalismo. 


Obviamente não é possível reverter a pirâmide invertida. Mas falta ir a fundo em algo que passa ao largo de discussões como essa: o input de dados. 


O input é feito no espaço de fluxo informacional onde necessariamente a interface não é moldada a partir da pirâmide invertida. Prova disso é a dinâmica de redes sociais como o Twitter, por exemplo, ou a série de testes que vem sendo feito pela Google.


Trata-se, portanto, de ter em mente que a rede coloca a notícia em uma nova perspectiva, explicada pela noção de revezamento de Gilles Deleuze, na série Mil Platôs. Em linhas gerais, a construção é, ao mesmo tempo. estrutural e não estrutural, compõe e se decompõe. 

Quando os números são o design

A primeira impressão ao acessar a página da CNN é de redundância, marcada fortemente na interface da rede americana...

Uma rápida navegada pela coluna de calor, ao lado direito da página, mostra que o recurso é usado para mostrar quantas vezes uma matéria é comentada ou replicada nas redes sociais. 

Mas será que a exibição de números é algo que precise mesmo ser estancado? Muda os critérios de noticiabilidade ou apenas dão ideia de participação?

Design transmídia

Não é apenas a narrativa transmídia, design e programação também são. Skype e Facebook agora na mesma interface.

Google e Lennon

Excelente a interface do Google em homenagem ao aniversário de John Lennon: simples, limpa e inteligente.

Assim caminha a interface

Mais uma demonstração de que a lógica tags + algoritmos vai ditar a interface dinâmica.

(via Mashable).

"É complicado ser simples"

O novo Twitter

Interface em tempo real

De novo, os algoritmos do Google desenhando a interface, agora em tempo real e integrado ao Twitter. A notícia em rede ganha nova perspectiva.  

Fazer rede, com humor

Muito divertida a animação do IS Parade. Usei na última quinta-feira, 16, no 1º Benchmarking da Sabesp, para dimensionar a ideia de fazer rede, de conectar uma marca no Twitter. 


Bastar inserir um nome de login ou tag para o IS Parade buscar na base de dados do microblog e montar uma interface dinâmica, semelhante à de um desfile. 

How to critique an interface

Ainda tenho dúvidas se realmente os ícones precisam de textos para explicá-los. Penso que há formatos universais que o design resolve, mas de todo modo vale a pena passar os olhos nas dicas de Aza Raskin, que reproduzo aqui:

Non-designers are often called upon to make judgments about interfaces. Perhaps you are a business owner evaluating your new website, or a project manager looking at mockups from your designer. What do you look for in the design? And how do you give feedback in a more meaningful way than “It looks nice” or “It seems hard to use”.

While the full-depth of understanding design cannot be covered in a short article, here are some guidelines to help you out.

To get you started, here is an example of a critique I recently did of the interface for the yet-to-be-released Add-On Builder* for Firefox. The Add-On Builder is part of the Jetpack project and is a web-app of medium complexity that allows you to easily build Firefox and Thunderbird extensions online and then publish them to the world. I took screenshots of each screen of the interface, put them into one large document, and commented ex vivo.

When are you critiquing?

The first factor in how you critique is determined by when you are giving it. If you are reviewing an interface just before a product or website launches, there won’t be enough time for your feedback to have a big effect and you’ll have to give smaller-scale suggestions. The earlier you can review the product, the more impact your words will have.

The User’s Train of Thought is Sacred

Look for things that break the users train of thought: any time they have to think about how to use your product and not what they are doing, your interface is frustrating them. Modal dialog boxes, confirmations, settings screens, anything that requires them to think about more than one thing simultaneously, and filling out unnecessary forms before being are allowed to enter the site, etc. All of these things get in the way of the user actually using your product.

Reduce Interaction

The goal of interface design is to get rid of the interface. While interfaces with lots of interaction can look snazzy, you’ll have fewer usability issues when you minimize the amount of work someone has to do to use your product. You know those news sites where the articles are paginated into tiny chunks so that you keep having to hit “next” just to wait for dozens of ads to load? If you are like most people, you hate them and often never finish reading the article. That’s interaction overload at work.

Think long and hard about every little step a person has to do to use your product. Write them out. If you get fatigued, you know you need to simplify.

Visual Placement Matters

Make sure that your buttons, links, and actions are logically grouped. Often you will see interfaces with “save” right next to “close”, meaning a little user mistake can cause dire repercussions.

Beware Too Many Icons

Icons can be difficult to understand, even while they look pretty. Users often have to hover over an icon each time they want to use it to discover what it means. Instead of using an esoteric hieroglyph, use text to say what you mean.

Give a Good Starting Point and Keep Consistent

The best interfaces are incrementally learnable: you shouldn’t have to tackle a fifteen-minute seminar before you can do a basic task—you should be able to just learn the one thing you need to do and be on your way. Does your product give a good indication of where and how to start? And is what you’ve learned should be applicable in helping you learn the next thing. Keep the mechanisms simple and the metaphors consistent.

Fewer choices mean fewer worries

Try to avoid burdening your users with choices on how to perform an action. Giving them lots of options may seem like a good idea but it isn’t. It ends up bloating an interface and burdening your users with decisions they shouldn’t have to make. If you see more than one way to do something, ask the designer to take the time to make one simple mechanism that the user can use for all their purposes. Don’t just dump an indecision into a preference. The less burdened a user’s mind is with irrelevant decisions, the more clear their mind is to accomplish what they need to get done.

Look is Important. Interaction is More Important

The look of a product often gets much more attention than the “how” of a product. Avoid the trap of spending the bulk of the time on look: it’s like rearranging the chairs in the Hindenburg. Look is much easier to change and polish, and it is much more apparent when something is broken. Interaction is the heart of your product—spend all of your time making it act right and at the end make it look right.

Para desenhar interfaces de arquivos

Excelentes dicas da Smashing Magazine para pensar projetos de interfaces de arquivos:

1. Use as Much Space as You Need
2. Make It Easy to Find
3. Clearly Delineate It
4. Use Categories
5. Don’t Show the Full Content
6. Give Your Visitors Various View Options
7. Split Things Up

Do You Even Need an Archive?

The future of information interfaces

Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are developing an innovative work environment specialized for the management of emergency responses. A PIE system consists of a combination of novel interactive interfaces that aim to transform the way stakeholders, ranging from first responders to policy makers to the public, engage with each other and with dynamic information.

A recent "vision movie", watchable below, demonstrates how the combination of several technological advances, ranging from life-size immersive data graphs and multi-touch maps, to cool touch-enabled handheld devices for courageous firemen-in-the-field, should augment the interaction with information.

(via http://infosthetics.com)

Interface dinâmica

A interface do Observatorio Iberoamericano de Comunicaciones Digitales mostra que mais do que é preciso mais que um desenho bonito para chamar a atenção do usuário: não subestimar sua inteligência. 

Foi desse modo que a capa do OCD Iberoamerica foi elaborada, sem uma seqüência de números ou flechas. para alterar os destaques, basta deslizar o mouse entre os ícones localizados no canto superior esquerdo da tela. 

A nova interface do G1

Com mais destaque para vídeos das Organizações Globo e nova tipologia da marca, o G1 anuncia mudanças no portal.

Site de luto por presidente da Polônia

O principal jornal da Polônia, Gazeta Wyborcza, mudou as cores de seu site para preto e branco em sinal de luto pelo presidente Lech Kaczynsk, morto hoje em acidente aéreo na Rússia.