webvisions2005

Designing for the Personal InfoCloud presentation at WebVisions 2005 Wrap-up :: Off the Top :: vanderwal.net

Thomas Vanderwal has posted the slide show of his Infocloud presentation.

Link: Designing for the Personal InfoCloud presentation at WebVisions 2005 Wrap-up :: Off the Top :: vanderwal.net.

why simplicity matters

(simplicity can make information more credible)

BJ Fogg presents:

Control Z

our digital tools are changing us.

Rituals are a persuasion technology
Replacing shamans
Persuasive technology becomes manipulative technology.
It's fire....for good or evil.

the digital products we create will change the future of the world.

Bongo Gets Nagged by his Computer.

aggregate time lost, like aggregating content

Radical simplicity

(every slide he's shown so far, I think, is about nature.Tying our feelings about nature to his words.)

Simplicity is an relatively untouched field.

Striving for competency is hard-wired - a positive instantaneous feedback loop is seductive.

Simple systems are easily broken.

How can we build simplicity.
-research
-empathy (more animal pictures)
-courageous (if data doesn't support a feature, forget it)

(simplicity can make information more credible)
helping you grow your freedom is his mission

designing for the personal infocloud

I'm blogging from the presentation designing for the personal infocloud

(my summary - . he mentions vocabulary a lot. re-use. syncing. I think an interesting thing is the granularity of content is where the design needs to happen. talk about site design, but actually each piece of content needs it's own design parameters...because more and more, structure is being applied externally, and the platform on/in which it is consumed cannot be known. Assumed but not known)

Externally structuring
(it's almost as if moving to a structure-less info space, where structure is applied externally and muteably.)

my comments in parens....

(the clickity click of people on their laptops is REALLY loud.)

the web was: navigation. proprietary. I go get.
but navigation is the wrong metaphor. we go nowhere - the information comes to us.

the personal infocloud is actually 4 clouds

global infocloud - the internet
local infocloud - community wikis, the walled AOL, location based search
external infocloud - the info you don't know - you need a problem solved but the answer is unaccessible
personal infocloud

key properties
person-centered
continuous access
organized for self
task, action and context aware.

delicious is restructuring the web based on personal vocabulary.

(de.li.ci.os is 2 for 2 in mentions in the presentations I've been in.)

seeking.recognizing.retaining.using/creating.following

focus on personal convergance
-build for use and re-use
-subscription models
-portability
-easing interaction between people and provider

(the presentations help set the context of an idea or topic. the networking that follows in the hallways and on bar stools is where the topic gets tweaked into your personal infospace, and becomes relevent through back and forth to each personal infospace.)

models of attraction - receptors
-intellectual
-perceptual
-physical
-mechanical (scraping, et. ICal, micro-formats)

Examination: Offerings
assess what you provide
Content inventory
-site structure
-page types and document types
-content object types on the pages
-related objects
-content volatility

he complains about the AIGA site's use of information being in images

(make all info scrapable)
he mentions greasemonkey
(It's interesting how all his examples have been business related 'consumer focused' sites - movies, cars.)

understanding use
Learn what people do with your information
want to do, or could do.

look beyond what people are doing and look for what people could do.

various use contexts
-what triggers use
-many environments
-actions for reuse
(actions for reuse...this seems crucial in looking for what people could do)
usable formats for content object type
what actions foollwos information use
(lots of date/time related discussion - everything so interconnected, reuse refind is crucial)

identify the gaps between what you provide and what people want
content -rss on a page rather than a site (i believe weblogs inc does this)
delivery - broadband v mobile
access
format -proprietary
notification -sms feed -( txt messaging -)(a lot of 'whats an sms feed' whispers)

gaps are opportunities to improve
current and future gaps

Design phase
Build personal scenarios
-models of attraction receptors
-location/environments
-user tasks/context
-across devices and software
Design for adaptability
-people have their own needs

Structure info for
-deep linking
(people may be dropped deep into your site)
-externally stored usage
-updates
-versioning
Externally structuring
(it's almost as if moving to a structure-less info space, where structure is applied externally and muteably.)

personal web components
-rss
-email
-sms/mms
-ical
-api
oops. too fast.

Summary -be friendly be simple. let it grow. listen, watch, embrace. get granular. test frequently.

(my summary - . he mentions vocabulary a lot. re-use. syncing. I think an interesting thing is the granularity of content is where the design needs to happen. talk about site design, but actually each piece of content needs it's own design parameters...because more and more, structure is being applied externally, and the platform on/in which it is consumed cannot be known. Assumed but not known)

blogging the future of content

I sat in the future of content session

It started out with some intros and went into a discussion of defining content

It quickly turned into what I felt like was a "context have" and "context have-nots" discussion.

they asked how many people did not know what de.li.ci.os was, and probably (and shockingly, to me) 50% did not know what it was.

It seemed like that other 50% were able and willing to engage in a conversation that was META (sorry meta-haters) about content. But then people the started talking about…well, how dumb clients are, and how writing is hard.

It seemed like it could’ve been split into two different panels. A what’s new in the world of content panel (delicous, tagging, content is a two way street) for those we were seeking a little "what's the cool new thing" explanation..., to a panel discussion slightly higher up the context chain that was a little more about what all that new (to some) stuff MEANS and where it's heading, and what's that coming up around the bend.

As it was, it devolved into a harmless but relatively unsophisticated discussion that was slightly all-over-the-map, but if you are already knew going in what RSS and tags were, you likely didn't learn anything.

there were a couple of comments at the beginning that made me think it was going to be what I was hoping...someone mentioned "passive benefit" which I thought was a good turn of phrase describing how some new apps or sites (or whatever de.li.ci.os is) accrue benefits for individual users by aggregate use, and how one panelist had an audience for his web site and....many people had actually not seen his website at all.....they were accessing it RSS-wise....and when he did a re-design of his site, and sent out an announcement was blown away by how many people said..."that's nice. never saw the old design though".

his comment was then...good thing he thought about content first, because a large % of his audience were interested in only that.

Unified Studies - Webvisions 2005

Unified Studies will be blogging from Webvisions 2005 in Portland, July 15th...though we'll be a little late to the party....hopefully blogging by 10 am!

See you there!