1. Build web products that meet audience needs: anticipate needs not yet fully articulated by audiences, then meet them with products that set new standards. (nicked from Google)

2. The very best websites do one thing really, really well: do less, but execute perfectly. (again, nicked from Google, with a tip of the hat to Jason Fried)

3. Do not attempt to do everything yourselves: link to other high-quality sites instead. Your users will thank you. Use other people’s content and tools to enhance your site, and vice versa.

4. Fall forward, fast: make many small bets, iterate wildly, back successes, kill failures, fast.

5. Treat the entire web as a creative canvas: don’t restrict your creativity to your own site.

6. The web is a conversation. Join in: Adopt a relaxed, conversational tone. Admit your mistakes.

7. Any website is only as good as its worst page: Ensure best practice editorial processes are adopted and adhered to.

8. Make sure all your content can be linked to, forever.

9. Remember your granny won’t ever use “Second Life”: She may come online soon, with very different needs from early-adopters.

10. Maximise routes to content: Develop as many aggregations of content about people, places, topics, channels, networks & time as possible. Optimise your site to rank high in Google.

11. Consistent design and navigation needn’t mean one-size-fits-all: Users should always know they’re on one of your websites, even if they all look very different. Most importantly of all, they know they won’t ever get lost.

12. Accessibility is not an optional extra: Sites designed that way from the ground up work better for all users

13. Let people paste your content on the walls of their virtual homes: Encourage users to take nuggets of content away with them, with links back to your site

14. Link to discussions on the web, don’t host them: Only host web-based discussions where there is a clear rationale

15. Personalisation should be unobtrusive, elegant and transparent: After all, it’s your users’ data. Best respect it.

I think I could quite happily live/design web stuff by these principles. What do you reckon?

People have been talking about Twitter for a while now, and at first it held little appeal to me. I mean, exactly how publicly do we *really* need to live. Are people *really* interested in that level of detail in each others lives?

Well… maybe, maybe not. But I’m finally going to give Twitter a proper go, for these two reasons:

Firstly – I think it’s something to do with the brevity/wit relationship that means that reading what people write is often genuinely amusing. (I’m definitely going to have to work at Twittering better)

Secondly – the immediacy is second to none. I thought I was getting behind the times when I’d let my RSS reading lapse for a few days or, heaven forbid, a week. Now just by not being in the Twitter chain I’m missing out of stuff. Not missing out is a powerful social driver. So, I’m in.

Question is – who else out there is Twittering now? Want to be Twitter buddies? Promise I won’t Twitter to often or too boringly ;)

Mary, my colleague who was in the room when Michael first sent me a link to Like.com can attest to how much I enjoyed playing with Like.com when I first saw it. And I’ve liked playing with it since then too! Within a short time from first hitting the site I had a few thousand dollars worth of shoes on my wishlist (I’m not telling how many of them I actually bought!). I’ve been looking at shoes online for a while now, and nothing else made me feel like a gal in a shoe shop as much as Like.com did.

You see, this is a site that *really* gives an online experience of what it’s like to try to find a pair of boots to buy that is anywhere near as rich as actually going to the shops and browsing (but without all the crowds and the hassle). In fact, it’s like being in the biggest and best organised shoe shop in the world. Your wish is their command.

I’ve been talking and thinking about the online shopping experience for ages now – talking (but strangely, not blogging yet!) about how the search and list style of presentation is so incredibly uninspiring, so empty, compared to the ‘toyshop’ type experience of real life shopping. In a real life shop, all the merchandise is arranged in a way that guides you into the experience, that moves you through the merchandise, that present similar types of merchandise together so that you can compare and contrast, and get a sense of what the current trends are.

Online shopping does none of this. Until Like.com, that is.

When I get to Like.com I have much more interesting paths into the merchandise than just choosing ‘boots’ or ‘casual’. Rather, I can get boots like Britney. That’s a much more exciting prospect. (Assuming, of course, that’s she’s not having a bad hair, track pants and ugg boots day!)

Then I get to see a whole stack of shoes that are kind of like Britney’s.

And then, I can tell Like.com to focus on a particular style of heel, and get me more shoes that have that kind of heel. Or I want that style, but can you find me some in red?

*sigh* It’s like having your own personal shoe shopper at your beck and call.

And as much as I adore the visual browsing (and I think it is browsing and not really searching), they then through in some fantastic faceted navigation, so that I can use a whole range of facets to further refine the range of shoes in view – from price range, to brand, to store, to heel style. So useful. So easy. Such a great way to finally find a few great pairs of boots.

(Sidebar: Can you see why all the boy bloggers have had so much trouble getting enthusiastic about Like.com? For once, they don’t have the domain knowledge to see how excellent it is. They much preferred the more geeky facial recognition that Riya was working on before.)

(Oooh, and while I’m tangenting, I have to say how the look of Like.com and the celebrity connection reminded me a lot of a great design/fashion site in Australia called Miijo)

When I recently gave Ms Dewey a bit of a hard time, I got a few comments saying that I shouldn’t be criticising people who are trying to innovate. Well, here is an example of the kind of innovation I applaud. Here is a new way of approaching an old problem, of using technology innovatively, of taking a convention and making it better. And this innovation is good because it understands what the user is trying to do and it supports their experience and helps them achieve their tasks in a way that is better, more effective and more delightful than either the current online options OR the real life equivalent.

Go, have a play. Get yourself some Britney inspired boots. You’ll love it :)

It got me to thinking about intimidation and participation though… and then to lots of other issues related to participation. It’s a vexed but important question in a Web 2.0 world.

Many of the projects we work on these days are all about community and participation. Now, some of us are participation junkies… there are so many things we want to participate in that we run out of time for all of them and end up being online way too long!

But there are many people out there who *should* be participating, but don’t.

There are plenty of reasons why people opt out – some of them are good reasons, like that they have something better to do with their time (you know, friends, family, ‘real life’).

But other reasons are not so great.

• they don’t think their contribution is valuable/relevant/topic/important
• they’re afraid that their contribution will not be valuable (which is different to the first point)
• they’re afraid that they’ll be ‘wrong’ (they might not know the complete answer, they might miss something out, the might make a mistake)
• they’re afraid that they’ll be not good enough
• they don’t see the value of participation (there is no/not enough incentive)
• they’re intimidated by louder voices that sound authoratative
• they’ve seen other people attacked/confronted and don’t want to be subject to this aggression
• they don’t know how to work the mechanics of participation (I’ve seen a lot of this lately with people trying to work the WordPress backend! same goes with mailing lists, wikis, podcasts and more)
• they feel stupid/inadequate because they don’t know how to work the above mechanism
• they don’t understand how the mechanism works and why it is powerful/interesting/important

Now, we know that when we create an architecture for participation, the majority of the participants will actually be lurkers. Of all people, Jakob Nielsen doled out a set of tips for how to get more people to participate (mostly about reducing the effort involved and increasing the incentive). These are all great tips, but they don’t touch on that issue of intimidation that is apparent in the list above (afraid, inadequate, don’t understand).

What can we do to address these more personal issues? How can we design architectures of participation that are supportive and welcoming and comfortable and secure?

Is this just about the people who populate the space? Or are there ways that we can design to promote this?

This is something I’ve been dwelling on for a long time now. I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts.

I know for me, I ‘listen’ to a lot of mailing lists but actively participate in very few because of several of the points I listed above.

To people who wouldn’t usually comment on a blog for example… why don’t you? is there something we can do to encourage you? do you feel tempted or are you just here for the read and not the interaction?

And for those who do comment/participate regularly – are there places where you feel comfortable contributing and others where you don’t? What makes the difference?

OK. So I’m finally almost brave enough to send you in the direction of my very first ever podcast that I did for the Office 2.0 Podcast Jam. (Assuming you haven’t wandered over there and had a listen already.

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about this ‘cult of less‘ that 37 Signals seems to be leading and whether, in fact, it has an evil side. Well… ok, not an evil side. But is it all as good as it seems?

I started thinking this when I was listening to Peter Morville give the keynote at EuroIA the other weekend. He was pondering the ever increasing abundance of information that we have around us now, and wondering if it was helping us to learn, to make good decisions.

I wondered the same about information architecture and interaction design.

So, I’ve been thinking a bit about these web based project management solutions such as BaseCamp and GoPlan and thinking about what they *don’t* do when compared to more complex software such as Microsoft Project.

Now, don’t get me wrong… I’m not saying that there aren’t some *serious* problems with Microsoft Project but it was, for better or worse, instrumental in teaching me how to be a project manager. This is something that neither BaseCamp nor Go Plan could do.

Similarly, we’ve seen some interesting user testing lately that has shown users asking for more complexity to help enable their decision making.

So our natural response as designers, to simplify the interface, may in fact, be reducing the ability of the people using our software or websites to be able to learn, and to make good decisions.

So, that’s the crux of what I’m thinking of. What do we lose with ‘less’? And is it (always) worth it?

If you want to hear the full blow raving version, you can find it here.

I think I sound a bit less like Judith Lucy in this one :)

Image credit: 37 Signals being featured in HOW magazine

So, in my podcast interviewing debut (and… yes, I need more practice. Want to be interviewed?), I’ve posted an interview with George on the PodCastJam site.

I feel very nervous suggesting this, but I can’t hide such a great opportunity to chat with someone who designs in such an interesting spaces…. so, go check it out!

(Does anyone else think I sound remarkably like Judith Lucy?! Surely I don’t talk like that all the time…. must be my special podcast interviewing voice. A cousin of my phone answering voice).

Personally, I’ve found it really interesting that despite all the different perspectives that people have been coming at Office 2.0 at the conference and the jam, two really loud recurrent themes keep coming out – community and collaboration.

I like that.

Technorati Tags: office20jam, george+oates, flickr

If this sounds like you, can I recommend that you invest 5 minutes in Richard MacManus’s opening keynote podcast in which he talks about Office 2.0 as a paradigm shift that is more than just web versions of the Microsoft Office suite, and discusses a few examples of Office 2.0 services that you may or may not have heard of.

Meanwhile, an amazing thing about podcasts… I love hearing people’s voices! I particularly love people being surprised to hear that Richard has a New Zealand accent!

And, I’ve noticed that people are saying ‘two dot oh’.

Surely I’m not the only one who’s been saying ‘two point oh’…

or am I?!

Technorati Tags: office20jam, podcastjam, office20

The Office 2.0 Podcast Jam kicks off tomorrow – so be sure to go check it out and get involved. There’s some really interesting stuff happening from kick off including podcasts from Richard MacManus, Rosemary Stasek (talking about her experiences in Afghanistan, now that’s a perspective you don’t get at your average conference), and Eric Severson (talking about XML single-sourcing for document management, which is, for now, lost on me, but Anne tells me is very important and often overlooked!)

The online chat is open now, so that’s one very easy way to participate!

But it’s not too late to record a podcast and send it in as part of the jam!
For many of the participants, this is their first experience with podcasting, and I can tell you, it’s pretty straight forward. It’s even easier if you have someone you think is interesting and set up an interview with them! (or get them to interview you, or interview each other!). I’ll be doing some of that during the week using Skype (still investigating the best ‘recording’ option – anyone got recommendations)

One of the GREAT things about PodCastJam is that it allows all those voices who are usually absent from a conference like the Office 2.0 Conference to participate in the conversation. I’m particularly hoping to hear more women speak, more people talk from a design and user/customer experience perspective, and more people based in places other than the US.

So if any or all of those sound like you – let me encourage you to give it a go! Just a short 5-10 minute piece on whatever you think is interesting (you can really only cover one topic well in that time I reckon), and send it off for everyone to consider and talk about.

It’ll be great fun, so get involved! :)

Technorati Tags: office20jam, podcastjam, office20

I’ve been really interested to see the way that conversations around conferences are being collated online. The recent D.Construct conference had a BackNetwork that I thought was really great – even though I wasn’t able to attend the conference. The upcoming Web Directions conference in Sydney has a similar Web Connections site set up. Even though these aren’t designed for those of us unable to attend – it’s a really valuable resource for those of us unable to attend.

A similar kind of conversation sprung up about the upcoming Office 2.0 conference. Granted, it started from the fact that there was a dreadful under-representation of women on the speaker list… but since then Anne Zelenka has spearheaded a concept known as Office 2.0 PodCast Jam.

The idea of the PodCastJam for Office 2.0 is to expand the conversation to people who aren’t invited to speak, or who aren’t able to attend, but who are still really interested in this topic. Anyone can contribute a short podcast, and then around the time of the conference, the podcasts are shared, and chats and blog posts and otherways of having this conversation allows all kinds of people who wouldn’t usually be engaged in this conversation to have a voice, and to engage with other people who are also interested – hopefully both those who can attend the conference and those who can’t.

From my perspective, this is a great opportunity for three groups who are usually chronically under-represented at these conferences to have a voice: women (which is where it started), people not from the US (as an Australian, I know how hard it is to get to these cool conferences!), and people who are interested in usable and accessible design.

So – getting to the point of this post. If you are in any one of the three groups I’ve just mentioned. Or, if you’ve got something to say about Office 2.0 but haven’t been invited or able to attend the conference. Get involved!

Contribute a short podcast, or put PodCastJam in your diary and come get involved in the conversation.

The more diverse the voices, the more successful the PodCastJam. Check out all the great people who are already involved. But don’t be intimidated – make the lineup even more special!

Don’t know how to do a PodCast? Well… what better time to have a go.

Get in touch (leisa.reichelt AT gmail.com) and we’ll get you involved!

It’ll be great!