Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Testing PhotoEffects Widget from RockYou.com

Another popular service that we can promote our partygoers to use. They go to rockyou.com, upload photos, add all kinds of fun effects, create slideshows, and then paste them back into their Party Sites.

The key with things like this is to let folks do something with the photos they upload to house Part when the party is over, rather than have them be sealed in our system...

Testing PhotoEffects Widget from RockYou.comSocialTwist Tell-a-Friend

Testing Slide Guestbook Widget

Pretty sweet... we should start pushing folks to go over to Slide.com to create a guestbook widget, to have it display on their party pages! I just did this in a few minutes...

Testing Slide Guestbook WidgetSocialTwist Tell-a-Friend

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Understanding the Role of Design

To start this post off, I'm going to quote someone who knows exactly how design can affect the success of a business:

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But, of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works. To design something really well, you have to 'get it.' You have to really grok [understand] what it's all about.

—Steve Jobs


Okay, let's have a show of hands. How many of you out there think that the main purpose of design is to make things look good. Hmm. Kind of what I expected. Unfortunately, there's still a major lack of awareness of the true role—and power—of visual design.

Now let's get some terminology out of the way. There are two words that should never be confused for the other. Decoration and design are not one and the same.

Decoration = the application or adornment of the surface of a thing.

Design = the intelligent construction of the underlying supporting structure as well as the outer surface of a thing, which often includes the most superficial aspect called decoration.

So, now that we've got that out of the way, how do we think about design as it applies to what we're doing at House Party? Glad you asked!

Let's take an actual company project that we're working on now as an example, the Client Dashboard. We've decided to create a web-based dashboard that our clients can visit to check on the progress of their events at any time, as well as export useful reports to show their colleagues in their organization. (hopefully to show their bosses how the money they spent on a House Party campaign was well worth the investment!)

In my book, there are two ways to go about this:

1) Create a massive page with all the information piled and stacked every which way and hope it's not so overwhelming that our clients don't go into a seizure when the page loads

or

2) Spend some solid time considering what it is that would be most relevant to a client at any given moment, and then decide what we should show them up front in the topmost level, and what can be relegated to other sub pages (deeper levels)

We live in an age of information overload. According to Jeffrey Veen (author of the Art & Science of Web Design) we process almost as much data in one day as our great grandparents did in their entire lives! An exaggeration of course, but it's probably not such a stretch. He continued to quote that every ten minutes, ten hours worth of videos are uploaded. Wow!

So what does this mean for us designers? It means that we have to make that over abundant data intelligible to the human eye and mind. To boil raw data into interfaces that are relevant to the user, that communicate clearly, and consistently. To simply make a page of text and data pretty by choosing font colors, background colors and border colors is not enough. Have you ever seen (or heard) those Ferrari body kits that can be installed over a generic, low performance vehicle chassis? That's essentially what simply "decorating" a website, or a banking application, or a client dashboard will get you.
Understanding the Role of DesignSocialTwist Tell-a-Friend

Friday, July 18, 2008

Raising the bar

Raising the barSocialTwist Tell-a-Friend

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Web Stuff Explained in Plain English

For anyone interested in learning about stuff like RSS Feeds, podcasts, social networks, Twitter, blogs, social bookmarking and the like, here's a bunch of videos that are amazingly simple and fun explanations by the guys over at commoncraft.

RSS in Plain English


Social Bookmarking in Plain English


Social Networks explained in Plain English


Twitter in Plain English


Blogs in Plain English


Podcasting in Plain English


Social Media in Plain English


Wikis in plain English

Web Stuff Explained in Plain EnglishSocialTwist Tell-a-Friend

TNT Girls Night Out House Party


TNT Girls Night Out House PartySocialTwist Tell-a-Friend

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Learning from garage sale signs.


We've all seen them. Homemade signs announcing this or that garage sale that sprout on telephone poles like strange spring flowers in the suburbs of any city in the USA. Everytime I see them I get mad all over again and consider starting up a consulting business for folks having garage sales—but when i run the numbers it's clear that it's not something you could retire on. What's interesting though is that it plainly shows how people generally don't think about context.

I can't count how many times I've seen a sign lettered with yellow or orange marker on brown cardboard. Proof that the signs author has not considered the fact that most people viewing their masterpiece will surely be further than three inches away. Chances are, they'll be in their cars driving by at at least 15 to 40 MPH, and if they're stopped, it's only momentarily for a stop sign. They've only got a few seconds at best to quickly scan your sign for content relevant to them and their lives before they move on down the road to stumble across a better, clearer, more relevant sign for a competitors garage sale.

Not to put to fine a point on it, but think about the home page of a website through this lens. Is your website more like the example in the image? The content is there, but in context of how real people surf the web, are you clearly stating what is it your site contains? What visitors can do? Why they should stay any longer than a few seconds before moving along down the road?

And people please...when making a sign for your next garage sale—or your next missing pet—lay off the colored markers and go with the black. Make it bold, make it as concise as can be. You've only got a few seconds to convince someone with cash in their pockets to come to your yard sale, and not the one around the corner.
Learning from garage sale signs.SocialTwist Tell-a-Friend